July 30th, 2014

Someone crashed their car into me on my moped today, but I’ll get to that later.

I woke up around 9:30 and made breakfast while watching a movie on our new tv. I went outside and watered the plants and realized it will be a full year before either of my pineapple plants will produce anything edible.

I got on my moped and headed to the bank to deposit my tips and paycheck. As I was pulling in the parking lot, the person in front of me stopped suddenly. They sat idling for a good 5 seconds and then backed up. I was scrambling to get out of the way while the valet attendants were screaming and waving their arms trying to get the person to stop. I frantically reached for my horn right as they made contact. I threw the moped down and fell to the ground screaming in agony holding my leg…… Well ok, in reality I just backed up, drove around the car, parked and went in the bank. I didn’t get a look at the driver, all I could see was a mess of grey hair and wrinkly skeleton-like hands on the wheel. Once I parked I inspected the damage and when I saw that there was only a scuff to the fiberglass I decided to drop it and not escalate the situation.

After the bank I rode to a restaurant where I talked to the manager about joining their staff as a server. I talked to both the general manager and the server manager and they said they’d review my application. I also went to P.F. Chang’s to drop off an application, but I was told to come back tomorrow to talk to a manager.

I went home and started watching the Seahawks 2013 season highlight DVD until Rebecca came home. We went to Walmart to buy pillows for sleeping and snacks for the movie. We got dinner at a pizza place and then watched a movie about talking monkeys that attack a colony of humans. I don’t think it was very realistic because at no point during the movie did a monkey throw feces.

After the movie we went home and I stayed up to watch movies while Rebecca went to bed.

July 29th, 2014

Today I woke up at 6 something to get Rebecca to wake up and turn off her alarm. I wasn’t able to go back to sleep on my own. I was expecting a package to arrive around 9 so I stayed awake and did laundry and sated busy.

At 11:30 a coworker who is moving to the mainland came over and sold me her TV/DVD player combo for $100. We finally have a TV. I have nowhere to put it, so it is resting comfortably on the floor next to the chairs I got from work.

Rebecca came home around 2:30 and reintroduced myself to her as it has been a few days since we have seen each other, something that will be more common throughout the school year I’m afraid.

I headed in to work where it was disturbingly slow. I only had two tables for the first three hours. It never got really busy which was a bummer. I was doing money again tonight so I spent two hours alone in the air conditioned office listening to music.

July 28th, 2014

I woke up at 9:30 and started my day by watching a documentary about Columbian drug lords smuggling cocaine out of the country using elaborate, crudely made submarines. These things are made out fiberglass, yet they can still go undetected past the coast guard up to 30 feet under water. It is amazing what people can do with enough determination and an unlimited cash roll.

I got to work super early and hung out in the air conditioning. My shift started at 4 and while I was waiting, I changed the fish of the day to read “Brown Trout” with a note that said “Push the brown trout, it’s starting to smell”. In some circles, brown trout is a crud way of saying feces, so I basically took 5 minutes to make a poop joke at work. I thought it was hilarious.

One of my female coworkers had a very serious/fierce look when she started today. I asked “what’s up with the rage face? You ok?” she informed me while breaking out in hysterical tears that her cat had just died yesterday. I didn’t know how to console her so I patted her on the shoulder saying “there, there”. I should look in to being a grief counselor.

The shift went well, I did the cash deposits again tonight so I got home around 11:45 and Rebecca had long since fallen asleep. I didn’t get the chance to see her and ask how her first day back at school was.

July 27th, 2014

We woke up at 9:30 and headed to church. About a month ago, I waited on a guy and his kids and we got to talking about churches. He invited me to check his out, and I thought nothing of it at the time. During the summer, Rebecca and I kept looking for excuses not to go to our usual church, stuff like it being “Ohana Sunday” where you have to get up and meet strangers and talk story, or the associate pastor is speaking today and he is about as fun to listen to a burlap sack full of menstruating badgers. The last time we went, I told Rebecca that we should look at other churches because we were obviously not interested. We went to the new church today and were warmly welcomed and we lookout seats in nice comfortable chairs in an air conditioned building. I know comfy chairs and air conditioning shouldn’t be the deciding factor in church hunting, but they don’t hurt. The sermon was great, the pastor spoke on the book of Revelations and he had a point and he stuck to it without rambling off on some tangent. We had to leave before the service was over because we parked next to a meter and only had enough change for 1 hour 24 minutes. We stopped off for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall café I found when my parents were here back in June.

After lunch, I got ready for work and headed in a little early. The shift went well, I was in a busy section and stayed occupied for most of the shift. Around 7, I was running food to a table and there just so happened to be the man who had invited me to the new church last month. I told him that I had gone to the church and liked it, he said that h’s wife was having a baby on Saturday, but he would be sure to be there on Sunday to say hi to me and introduce me to some people. Cushy chairs and air conditioning aside, I think there might have been some divine intervention going on.

I got home around 11:30 and Rebecca was in bed but not asleep. She has to go back to school tomorrow to begin a new year of teachering.

July 26th, 2014

I work up at the crack of noon today. My back was still hurting so I stayed in to keep stretching so it wouldn’t bother me at work.

I didn’t do anything “productive” but I spent time with Rebecca before she starts school next week and I will never see her.

I got to work early and did my stretches. I was in a very busy section which made me a happy boy. About two hours into the shift I had a table that has our rewards card. It is designed for repeat customers who’s business we would like to keep. With the card the customer gets all sorts of incentives and discounts. They ended up getting sat right away and not having to wait in line, they got a 10% discount which we give to all members of the military, as well as a $25 discount on their mean from their rewards card. As I was running their credit card, a server who had helped them last week told me that they were terrible tippers. I was hoping that I had charmed my way to at least 10%. Their bill came to $135 and they left me $5. Not even enough to cover the tip share. Tip share is the percentage I have to pay to the bartender and hosts at the end of the night.

The rest of my tables treated me well and it was a descent shift. The restaurant died around 10 so all the servers were phased. I finished my side work and was out of there before the restaurant closed. I walked over to Rebecca’s restaurant and waited for her to finish so I could walk her to her car. We went home and I stayed up watching Breaking Bad.

July 25th, 2014

I woke up this morning with terrible lower back pain. I have no idea what I did, but everything was uncomfortable, and no position I could sit or lay in brought relief. I found some how-to lower back stretches on the online and that helped a little bit. Rebecca went to the beach while I laid flat on my back on the tile and tried to stretch away the pain.

I went to work and it was moderately busy. It was quite an uneventful shift until about 7:45.I was standing near the bar pretending to look busy. I heard some yelling coming from the bathroom area heading towards the tables. The bar next to my restaurant does not have a restroom so their customers will walk in our restaurant to use the bathroom. They are usually obnoxious and drunk so I figured that is what was going on. I looked around the pillar and saw a skinny twerp of a local in baggy clothes chasing after a well dressed man who was obviously trying to get away from the situation. The man walked to his table while the twerp was yelling obscenities at him and using the “H” word. Haole is a derogatory term used to describe white people who come to the island. It is not as bad as other racial slurs, but it is never used in a positive context. The man walked briskly to his table where there were two other gentlemen, as well as their wives and a small child in a high chair. The twerp was yelling and the man was trying to get out of the situation. The twerp threw a very telegraphed and ineffective punch which the man ducked. In all of my years training in MMA, and watching hundreds of live fights, my initial reaction wasn’t “I should stop this” but rather “oh cool a fight”. I am so used to seeing men punch each other that it didn’t ever register as a bad situation. The punch was thrown and the two other men at the table got up. These were not regular computer nerds, they were soldiers who had just moved here. One of the man’s friends held their friend back while the other stared down the twerp who was just starting to realize his mistake. He bolted for the door and was immediately caught by security and removed from the premises.

After talking to the man, and people who saw what had happened it started like this: The man was in the restroom when the twerp began yelling at him because he was a “Haole” the man tried to leave the situation but he was followed and verbally assaulted all the way back to the table. The twerp threw a punch and then ran like a French soldier during a thunderstorm. The managers were at the table right away and I hope they did right by him.

After the excitement, I was talking to the kitchen manager about starting a food truck. He admitted that he too had wanted to start a food truck when he first moved here. He told me about the start up costs and all the licenses I would need to obtain before I could even get going.

I got off work around 11:45 and headed home to relax and watch Breaking Bad.

July 24th, 2014

After going to sleep around 3:30, I slept until 10. Rebecca cooked breakfast while I packed the car and we headed to the leeward side of the island, or the West side for those not up on Hawaiian slang. We usually go to the windward or south side of the island, but never the west side. Most of the true locals live on that side of the island, and they have a reputation for not taking kindly to outsiders. It is also where my families van was broken in to and I lost my phone and wallet back in 2001. Up until 2012,it was the largest homeless camp on the island, a vast contrast between the paradise image the tourist industry wants to portray. I believe the tourist industry keeps the rumors about violent attacks on tourists going so visitors don’t wander to the “poor” side of the island and see how real people live.

There have been thousands of jelly fish washing up on Waikiki shores, and the tropical storm that just passed us brought a lot of rain, which washes down the hills collecting waste water, garbage, dirt, chickens and whatever is laying about. All of this dirty water floes to the streams which make the water unbeatable for the fish causing them to die off in large numbers. The dead animals attract sharks, which can’t see well in the murky water and they will bite anything the can sink their pointy teeth in to. The leeward side of the island has no major streams, and is typically the dry side of the island so that is where we went.

Rebecca drove while I read the tourist book looking for the best place to swim. We finally decided on Makaha Beach Park, which is almost as far as you can go on the island. I swam for a couple hours in the crystal clear blue ocean, and of course dug random holes in the sand. After a while we decided we were hungry so we drove to the furthest point you could go on before running out of road, and then we turned around and headed home.

We stopped at the store because we had hatched a plan to make enchiladas for dinner. I took Rebecca’s recipe, and my mom’s recipe, and mixed them together in a delicious symphony of flavor. I should seriously open a restaurant, or food truck. I kinda like making food, I just hate dealing with customers.

After dinner we watched Breaking Bad, and then I went to the drugstore to buy new cockroach poison because Rebecca found one crawling on our silverware this morning. I stayed up really late again, but its ok because I don’t work until 4 tomorrow.

July 23rd, 2014

I woke up at 8 to the sounds of leaf blowers song battle outside my window. The morning just got worse from there. You know the feeling you get when you pour a bowl of your favorite cereal, and then you go to get milk and find that there isn’t any? That was my day.

I went to Kinko’s to print out some papers I had to send to my former employers, I had everything printed and ready to fax, but the fax machines were down. I called the HR director in Modesto and she gave me her mailing address so I could send her the form to fill out. I then called the HR director in Seattle, but she refused to sign anything. Instead I was directed to go to a third party and have them verify my employment. I only needed someone to sign their name and send the form in using the self addressed and stamp envelope I had provided. She flat out told me that she wouldn’t do it. I tried using the third party’s website but hit a road block, so I called. They told me that they couldn’t give out employment verification to employees, only businesses. I called the HR lady back and explained my situation and she was able to talk me thorough the website where I had to pay a $17 fee to get a form saying that I did indeed work for the company in the past. I explained to the HR lady that my school only needed a signature and she said I could send the form, but she was going to volunteer in Eastern Washington with the Forrest fires and she probably wouldn’t sign it. I really hope she breaks her leg falling down a huge ravine in a comical way.

I had the form saved on my Surface so I went to Kinko’s to print it out, but I could not connect my Surface to their system to print. I had to copy and paste the document to a word file and email it to myself and then print it like some sort of Neanderthal. I left Kinko’s and went to the post office kiosk at Safeway to mail a package to my niece. I had the box ready, stamp purchased and all the information written on the box, but not a piece of tape in sight. I asked a cashier if there was tape for the boxes and was sternly told that I had to bring my own. I walked through the store and bought a roll of duct tape and sealed the box and sent it.

It was now 2 in the afternoon and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. I made some nachos and then Rebecca and I did laundry. Rebecca left at 4 to go to her chiropractor appointment and when she came back we headed to Waikiki to enjoy a delicious dinner comprised entirely of happy hour appetizers. I talked to our server a little bit about applying and she said they are hiring right now for the morning shift. I think I could handle two separate restaurant jobs if I maintain 30 hurts a week at both. It would give me something to do during the mornings, and it would definitely help financially.

We went home and watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad and then Rebecca went to bed while I stayed up late to watch Breaking Bad.

July 22nd, 2014

I woke up at 7:45 for some reason and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went out to the other room so I would not wake up Rebecca and I started watching ESPN on my surface. Right around 8:30, the human resources lady from my old EMT job called. I guess it was a good thing that I was awake. I got everything situated just before Rebecca woke up.

Rebecca had to work at 11:30, and it was unbelievably humid again today, so I did what any responsible adult with no furniture or air conditioning would do, I rode to work three hours early and sat in an empty section and watched Breaking Bad on my phone.

I started at 4 and it was a bit busier today than it has been this week. I was doing cash deposits again so I got home around 11:30 and settled down to watch Breaking Bad while Rebecca went to sleep.

July 21st, 2014

I woke up this morning right as Rebecca was heading to work. My mom called and I talked to her for awhile before spending the rest of the morning/early afternoon trying to get a hold of someone from human resources at my former ambulance job(s) to answer their phone or call me back. I never did get to talk to a live person, but I did leave plenty of messages.

I got to work early and sat in the air conditioning. It was disgustingly humid today. All day long I have been damp and sticky. I was working on the lanai, and most people opted to sit inside away from the view to be in the air conditioning. I only had two tables for the first two hours of my shift. To pass the time, and get some relief from the stickiness, I spent a good amount of time hiding in the walk-in freezer.

I got off around 11 and went home and sat in front of my fan to try to cool off. There has only been a faint breeze throughout the day which makes the humidity more severe.