The First 100 Hours

I've been meaning to post about what we've been doing since we got to Hawaii. Here's what I've been up to so far:

Monday - We arrived a little late in to HNL. The temperature was 88 degrees, and I was a little worried about Rudy. The rules say that he has to stay in the crate until he's off airport property, and with the heat I was concerned he could be dehydrated. We picked up our bags and then walked over to the holding area, where we signed the rest of the paperwork to get him out. I went to get the car that was waiting for us (we borrowed from a friend) while Scotch waited for him to be brought out. When I returned, she said he seemed ok, so we threw him and all the bags in the car and headed for our house.

At home, we gave Rudy some water and made sure all was well with him, and then headed straight to the beach so we could baptise the whole family. It was Rudy's first time swimming in the ocean, as he's never been around water that wasn't freezing. He did great! We had him swim back and forth between us, and we even put him up on the beach and coaxed him in to jumping in on his own. He's still a little freaked by it, and he gets a little excited (which makes him have that snorky breathing thing he gets when he runs around too fast), but he really seemed to enjoy it. He also enjoyed plunging his face deep in to the sand, getting it in his eyes and face, which meant that he had to get dunked underwater to clean it out. He wasn't quite ready for that, but he handled it fine.

After the beach, we went to Rainbow Drive Inn (an Obama favorite) for some plate lunch, and took it to a nearby park. Yay plate lunch! Later, I went to the store for dog food and some essential stuff. Simon and Erica came over for a quick welcome visit, but we crashed pretty early, jet-lagged and exhausted.

Tuesday I got up at 5 and worked what is now my normal work day, until around 2:30 or so. There was a lot of waiting for clients during the day, so I did some much needed carburettor adjustment on my Vespa. It took the better part of the day, as I kept acquiring the wrong tool for the job at various attempts. After work, we rode out to Ala Moana mall to Sears to get the proper tool. While we were out there, Scotch and I went to the beach and swam in the beautiful water. We stopped in at Foodland for groceries, and then headed home to have our first Hawaii edition of Taco Tuesday.

Yesterday, work, and then we met up with Simon for lunch at Big City Diner here in Kaimuki (the Honolulu neighborhood we live in). That was good. Afterwards, Scotch did some Goodwill shopping while I worked from the coffee shop and sipped on an Acai smoothie. When that was done, we came home and picked up the dog and took him for a nice long four and a half mile walk, with a stop at the beach, of course, for more swimming. We were pretty exhausted when we got home, but managed to rally enough energy for dinner at Zippy's near our house. For those in the know, the dessert flavor this month is Lemon, and my giant lemon donut was AWESOME.

I'm back in to the grind today, but I think I'm only going to work half the day or so, and then take tomorrow off. I need to catch up on some moving errands and just chillax. We have a lot of action going on with our realtor now that we're here and we're going to try to make this house purchasing business a reality.

So that's life in da 808 so far!