Christmas Eve

Day 6 ( Christmas Eve )
Lihue
80-ish degrees

Apparently, it's not only -my- tradition to leave Christmas shopping til the very last minute. It seems that it is an ancient custom passed down through many generations of native Polynesians as well, so that the modern Kauai shopper also waits to do -all- their shopping on Christmas eve.

I wonder if they had canoe parking problems, at the local coconut and mac nut orchards, way back when.

That would be yet another tradition they would have passed down, then. Traffic was as bad as anything I've seen on the mainland, around the malls... and that's saying something. Traffic here is usually a joke, even when the locals maintain it's “total gridlock, bra”.

The malls in Hawaii are typically outside malls, like long strip malls placed facing each other, with lots of plant life around. There's no reason to pay for the overhead of air conditioning and humidity control and all the other headaches that come with an enclosed space when you don't need them, because the weather is perfect for most of the time. The local malls follow this model. There's a huge mall on Oahu in Honolulu called Ala Moana, and despite it's size it's also a very intriguing blend of inside and outside architecture. A cool place just to walk around, and see what can be done with a space when you remove the necessity for enclosure.

Anyway, the malls and other stores were busy, but we got our shopping done. We spent the early part of the afternoon relaxing.

Later in the afternoon, we headed to the resort city of Poipu, to the Marriot resort ( yea, another one ) located there. Charles' friend KB was staying there with some family, so technically we were guests ( or at least associated with guests ) while were were squatting there.

Canoing, whale-spotting, and then hot tubbing were on the itinerary for the day. I also got a chance to do a bit of work, believe it or not, as I spent some time around the pool.

For dinner, we had the traditional Christmas Eve fare of pizza, just like grandma used to make. Brickoven Pizza provided us with galic bread, sausage pizza and beer. Mmmmm.

Well, kinda Mmmm. As you might be aware of, the only time I've ever really had beer was the night after Boot Camp. I had 4, and they all tasted like whiz. That was also the first time I'd ever had a drop of alcohol ( I had turned 21 in Boot Camp ). All the beer I've sampled before or since has tasted like differing vintages of piss.

Mmmmm.

After getting home, I had the very cool treat of having people at my mom's house in Chicago for Christmas Eve call me and pass the phone around. It's a tradition in my family to invite friends of the family over to have a ( very ) early breakfast, served around midnight. We then exchange presents, and in general have a very cool time.

Phil was one of the people who was at my mom's place.

He's never missed one as long as we've been doing it and he was in town. The thing about this is that I haven't talked with Phil in about 8 months. This is definitely a topic worthy of a separate blog entry; we had a falling out of sorts, and I was happy that he was there even though I wasn't. In a moment very true to his nature, he gave me quite the tongue lashing over the phone when it was passed to him; nothing less then I deserved of course, but still.

Anyway, after talking with everyone, we stayed up for a bit more, then retired for the evening. I knew it was going to be an early day tomorrow... it being Christmas and all.