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Just a little treasure that I picked up in Austin at Parts & Labour. They carry wonderful locally made things. It’s very, very hard to choose just one or two items to take home, but if you blow your budget at least you can feel good about supporting local artists! Click the photo to go to the artist’s site.
It’s a fact of life that Austin is a cool city. It’s consistently ranked as one of the best places to live and retire, which is exactly what my parents are doing. We went to visit them this weekend and Austin forever secured its placed in my heart with its cupcakes.
Oh sure, every city has cupcake boutiques these days, but it seems like most of these designer cupcakes are small in size and high in price. Austin’s goodies satisfy and can be had for a mere $2.50. Could I make my own for even less? That is not the point. The point is instant cupcake gratification. If you haven’t already concluded that I probably brought a few home, then I’m afraid you just don’t know me at all.
Excuse me, I have some eating to do. Tonight I’m not going to bore you with more Hawaii photos; I’m going to bore you with some Hawaii videos! Click the photos to go to the video. I don’t have very good video editing software, so no color correction, sorry!
I have a bunch of enticing recipes but no mojo with which to cook them, so let’s play vacation photos again… One of the interesting things we saw from our balcony was the Battle of the Paddle. They opened the competition with a Hawaiian prayer, which was pretty neat, and then they were off toward the enormous buoys (it’s hard to see in these, but try to compare the green cubes in the water to the people near them):
One early evening we noticed an incredible amount of boat traffic out past the reefs. Just from my vantage point on the beach I quickly counted 26 sails, but when we got upstairs we could see that there was much more traffic than we thought:
Other assorted views:
And the strangest balcony creatures of all:
Just some scenes of the dock action at the Hawaiian Hilton Village. And yes, I’m still milking this trip almost a month after we got back. With any luck, maybe I can keep this up until it’s time for the next vacation. ;)
We were hungry when we got to Hawaii, so one of the first things we did was sit down to eat a couple of the world’s most expensive hot dogs and drink the world’s most expensive half-cup of soda. While we were enjoying our 36-dollar lunch, I spotted this odd, neckless bird eyeing a pond full of cichlids:
I was hoping he would go for it, but he just stood there watching for the longest time. We kept running into him around the garden area and I was fascinated. He didn’t seem to have any friends and he was a little creepy, the way he would just sit motionless and stare at the fish like he was willing them into his mouth:
I named him Herman. Naming him seemed the polite thing to do, if I was going to stalk him for the duration of my vacation, which I did (Mark humors my little obsessions). Every time we were out and about, my head was on a swivel looking for Herman. Once we found him drawing a crowd as he paced excitedly next to a man who was sitting on the lanai and throwing bread to the cichlids. I thought for sure this time he would try for a fish, but we gave up and moved on before he did.
By the way, Herman is a black-crowned night heron, but he can be found hunting (or hanging creepily in the shadows) at all hours. And it turns out he does have a neck, but he most definitely does not have any idea how much smaller he is than the monster koi at the Hilton:
Wonder what Herman is doing right now. Just kidding, I can guess exactly what he’s doing! I have mentioned before that Mark is an excellent photographer’s assistant. On the rare occasion that I put myself in front of the lens, his job involves being my subject while I take test shots. Thus:
He came up with those poses on his own, believe it or not. And I think his hard work paid off:
(I’m not really taller than him, but he really was that red!) One of the coolest dives we did in Hawaii was a wrecked Corsair from 1946. It sits in about 110′ of water off the southeast end of Oahu. Apparently the pilot just ran out of fuel during a training run. Whoops! Bad for him, awesome for us. We dove that site twice — once in the morning, once at dusk. Both times we saw tons of schooling fish, including a monster amberjack. During the morning dive we saw some freedivers spearfishing at the site (I think Mark wanted to swim over and join them!). It’s tricky to get photos down there because there are changing currents and you only get about 15 minutes of bottom time under normal recreational diving conditions, so my approach is to snap away and hope I get a few good ones. Here are some of my favorites!
One last one — I took this on the way back up the mooring line. We had a couple safety stops with nothing to do but hang on, and we were treated to a ballet of pennant butterflies:
One afternoon while having a snack on our balcony, we discovered that finches LOVE Sunchips.
Word spread quickly that we had the goods.
Little birds can get very bold when you have something they want. I’m pretty certain we could have gotten them to eat out of our hands, but those little beaks looked sharp. I was fluttered at when I held a chip aloft too long on the way to my mouth.
We spoiled them so much that they came to expect a daily snack, and assembled en masse to wait for it. We generally left the sliding door open while we were in the room and they gradually edged their way in, landing about 16″ inside until being scolded and hopping back out. I did worry a little that the chips would give them teeny-tiny heart attacks, but figured there are worse ways to die than eating treats in Hawaii. One of my favorite things during our vacation was walking around the property after dinner. They’ve got it beautifully landscaped with tons of orchids, birds of paradise, and other exotic flowers. There are also ducks, flamingos, penguins, and other birds. The gas torches give everything a warm glow.
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