Sunset Last Night

Visited a friend yesterday. A peaceful evening in good company at the loveliest house right on the water in Aina Haina. Here's the sunset from the backyard :)









Aloha!

For A Friend

Wish the video were better for this.
You're on my mind today :)

Little Things, Simple Happies

Ah, I love this neighborhood!

Three blocks away, we have a community park, which has a pool. The pool was closed for repairs when we got here, but it's open now, and it's wonderful.

Remember those lazy summer days playing at the pool when we were kids? Well, Kevin has that now, too. Free swim every afternoon with a lifeguard, right around the corner, and it's free. So when we can't get to the beach during the week, there's the pool. :)

My class is also going much better than expected. The teacher shocked me last night by asking if I wanted to bump up to the next level class. I know I'm not ready, and she said that's fine, but she thinks I should at least come and try out the harder class. I actually feel like I'm starting to "get it", and it feels great!

Oh, and for my cooking friends who might appreciate this, a friend helped me move the electric stove over a smidge to center it under a shelf. Lo and behold, behind the stove is a gas hookup. So when we get a new stove, it can be a gas range, which is something I've missed for years now. Woo-Hoo!!

It's the little things in life...

The Moon...The Moon!

Took a walk last night, rushed out camera in hand to capture the sunset, but I missed it. So I headed back up to Diamond Head, and there was this gorgeous glow behind a bank of clouds. The full moon; the harvest moon. Such a gift, so I'll share. Here it is from the little Amelia Earhart monument underneath Diamond Head overlooking the ocean.

...And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon
The moon!
The moon!
They danced by the light of the moon....

That's for you, Chris :)

Aloha pumehana...

Truer Words...

...for a new millennium...

"We can't kill our way to victory."
~ Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

There are leaders who understand this, and leaders who don't. Those who don't will never win.

Honor heroes and the fallen innocent; all of them, every day.

Button

Break Out The Bubbly!

[Update 9/12/08: The alternative theory to the Big Bang that I mention; the evolution of quantum foam theory, is actually that of my friend Alan P. Scott, and you can read it HERE. A few years ago, we were emailing back and forth about the origins of the universe, and he posited this theory that was a real eye-opener for me; intuitively, it just makes so much more sense than the Big Bang. Should note that I'm neither atheist nor agnostic, though. For more on that, just email me...heh.]

They've fired the sucker up! Literally! And unless we're in a parallel universe, we didn't get sucked into a black hole, either....woo-hoo!

The Large Hadron Collider was started up today, and so far, is working like a charm. This is BIG, on so many levels. Scientists are chomping at the bit to find the Higgs Bosun, a particle that would validate current theories of the existence of dark matter and the Big Bang itself. I'm particularly interested in this because despite that scientific theory, a Big Bang makes absolutely no sense to me on a purely intuitive level. Everything else appears to be some form of evolutionary process, so why should the mother of all beginnings of all evolutionary processes be any different? An evolutionary process of quantum foam; dynamic "bubble" formation with occasional random mutations has been posited and makes much more intuitive sense to me. But hey, I know nothing. All I can say is it's absolutely fascinating and I'm more than a little curious as to what they'll find.

There are just two niggling little buggers on my mind:

The LHC scientists say not to worry about the black holes that will most likely be formed by the LHC, because they'll be too small to form into anything dangerous anyway. Yet in the next breath, they say they don't know if they'll form at all, and then excitedly "We have no idea what we're going to find!"
...heh...heh....yeah...tra-la-la, faith is a beautiful thing, people.

Then second, since the LHC will recreate the conditions of the Big Bang only on a miniscule scale, what if we inadvertently form a Whoville of sorts? Or Whoville(s), plural? Ya know, the little microscopic world with little Whos at our mercy? What would be the ethics involved there? Would we be responsible for the new little universe(s)? Would they die when the LHC is powered down? Think about it. We could end up with a real live 'Horton Hears A Who' scenario.

Anyway, it's all very exciting. Makes me all tingly :)

Oh and here's some gee!-krap that's been floating around. It's cute in a nerdy way, and actually does an excellent job of explaining the LHC in a nutshell.

Certain Subjects...

Tonight Kevin innocently asked me to watch a YouTube video because he thought it was SO funny that I'd love it, too. To my utter shock and horror, it made a joke out of something that is NEVER a joke, in ANY context, under ANY circumstances, for ANY reason.

I was alarmed and offended and incensed to think that my child is exposed to this CRAP that's teaching him that such things are funny. I lost it and went into a rant all about precisely WHY that video is incredibly offensive, NOT FUNNY, will never BE funny, and the harsh realities of life concerning the subject that it mocked with such unfathomable flippancy. Suffice it to say, I hammered it home and sent him, completely blown out of the water by my reaction, to his room to think about everything I'd just explained to him.

So he comes out of his room later, contrite and apologetic, and says to me, "I get it now, Mom. Man, you should've been a prosecutor!"

HAH! Now THAT made me laugh. :)

I do so hope we both make it through his adolescence...