The force is with us

We got back from Kauai this afternoon at about 5pm, which was noon Hawaii time and my body is completely confused (isn't daylight savings time on Sunday? Woo!) It's good to be home, although it took getting off the plane and feeling the blast of icy air come through the plane door for us to grasp the fact that it was not in fact 80 degrees outside. Ouch. I wore my flip flops all the way to baggage claim but then admitted defeat and brought out the sneakers.

Hawaii was great. Is Hawaii ever not great? I feel trite and obnoxious getting into how great it was, but we had a wonderful time. Maui was pretty and had lots of whales (we now have video clips and lots of photos of empty ocean where whales were only seconds before--those suckers are hard to catch on film). It reminded me a bit of La Jolla, California, if only because after flying 6,000 miles you expect to get off the plane and be in a foreign country, not be driving by a KMart. Not that La Jolla has Kmarts, but Wailea felt a lot like La Jolla.

Kauai, on the other hand, was wild and gorgeous and uncommercialized and spectacular. We climbed the dunes in Polihale and watched crazy waves hit the shore in five different directions at once. We did a spectacular hike on the north side of the island past the point were you can drive a car. There were no bugs (or, as Lunchboy likes to point out, snakes). After two days of being marooned at a tacky, 70s era hotel, we escaped to the Hyatt and didn't move for 3 days. Bliss.

It wasn't until we got off the plane in LA at 4am that we heard about the helicopter crash in Kauai. Scary. We saw the helicopters buzzing overhead all the time. They seemed safe. But we didn't take a helicopter tour and now I'm extra glad.

As soon as we walked in the door this afternoon, the cats were bewildered. Perhaps it was anger that we left them for two weeks, or that they had a phalanx of friends coming to look in on them (girls, you are well loved!) Or maybe it was the 8ft. tall Darth Vader cut out that Lunchboy's sister used to decorate the house for our homecoming. Not only is he huge and is holding his big pink lightsaber, he talks. "You are not a Jedi yet," he says. "Your destiny lies with me, Skywalker." Perhaps, but you are not my master. At the moment, the bed is my master. ZZzzzzzzz.