paradise ali

I’m not sure if I can turn off the feed for individual items.  So I apologize, I’m just playing around with new widgets and tweaking things here and there.  Feel free to share your knowledge if you know of a way to control individual posts in the feed.  Hope you’re all having a wonderful day!

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

–Randy Pausch

Once upon a time, my friend and I used to go to church on Sunday mornings.  It wasn’t always easy being as both of us were single parents with little kidlets in tow.  We’d go and sit on the stackable chairs set up in the gym  and listen to the sermon intently.  Periodically, we’d smile knowingly at each other.  It always felt like the message of the day was specifically meant for us.  Somehow, no matter what was going on, the Universe knew exactly what we needed to hear in order to understand, accept, or make the best of it. 

Fast forward many, many years.  The other day, Beta and I were clashing and we weren’t really on speaking terms.  I felt like she was being a spoiled, selfish, Princess Beotch and she felt like I was the Queen Witch Supreme.  She was running the hot water while she was washing the dishes and I wanted her to conserve hot water by washing the dishes, then turning on the water and rinsing.  We were feuding over dishwashing techniques!  Well, I came across a lecture by Professor Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University.  It was long but I found myself drawn in to the presentation of this man, this son, this husband, this father.  The lecture was about achieving your childhood dreams but it was presented in such a fun, upbeat and entertaining way.  Professor Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer. At the time of the lecture, it was one month since his doctors told him that he had three to six months of good health left. His circumstances and what he had to say were so moving, I cried.  Talk about putting things in perspective!  He shared wisdom and advice that I could take to heart and appreciate and pass on to my own family. 

I have time to have fun with my kids, time to encourage them, time to try to teach them the hard lessons that I learned the hard way.  Life is to short for the negativity and strife.  The Universe still finds a way to tell me exactly what I need to hear, when I need to hear it. 

The video below is Professor Randy Pausch’s reprisal of “The Last Lecture” on the Oprah Show.  It is much shorter but it gives you a taste of the full lecture which you can learn more about at the Carnegie Mellon University site.

The front page of our local paper says, “Almost 7,000 votes cast in county, Big Island turnout for caucus was 25 percent higher than state average.” How awesome is that!

The Hawai’i County Democrats expected a large turnout but they actually ran out of forms. People packed into the meeting places and many had to wait outside for quite some time. Parking was crazy, too. Hunter Bishop has a hilarious comment about halfway down his report on the massive turnout for the caucus in the Puna area. (Locals sometimes lovingly refer to the Puna district as “Hippie Heaven” but I happen to like the progressive thinking atmosphere!)

I’m so excited! Hawai’i born Obama was the clear winner, as expected, but what I’m excited about is the level of participation! Our county, our state might make a difference this year and the voters are stepping up to the plate!

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
- Dan Stanford

When I realized that I majorly screwed up by deleting an obviously vital file (you know, the one that actually forms a link to the database where all your stuff is stored?), I copied and saved the only thing I could access at the time, the RSS feed. I thought I could just repost the few entries that were made in between February 4th and now with a straight copy paste. Well, it worked like a charm with the first entry and I thought I was so clever. I patted myself on the back, curtsied, and went off to bed thinking that I’d finish the rest tomorrow.

It’s tomorrow and ha! I just had a “duh moment!” The feed only got the entries on the front page. If a reader wanted to continue reading anything after the <more> tag, the feed linked back to the site. The original first post didn’t include a <more> tag. Some of the longer posts did. (Those were the ones that contained certain words or subject matter that may not have been appropriate for all audiences.) Darn it!

Other things I learned from this experience:

1. Back up, back up, and back up!
2. Back up your links as well.
3. If you have random quotes, back up your quotes file, too!
4. If you are going to mess with the security settings, write the old ones down first so you can switch it back if it doesn’t work out as planned.
5. Explore the Wordpress docs and forums thoroughly before giving up and deleting anything.
6. Your feed will show the test post from Flickr even if you delete it right away.
7. <br> doesn’t work but <br /> does.
8. Firefox displays things differently than IE.
9. Online storage of important files may be something to consider “just in case.”
10. If you do need to re-do it all, think of it as an opportunity to update plugins and play with the template.

Oh! And I also wish I would have imported all my archives when I changed between the different blogging tools. Although my temperment has improved with age, my memory, sadly, has not.

So, all in all, the goof up turned out to be a good learning opportunity. I’ve channeled frustration into something positive. Now, I can pat myself on the back and curtsy.

Oops! Messed with some settings and couldn’t get it to work after that! Had to re-install and start all over again. Please bear with me (or if you are in the privacy of your own home or are a flagrant exhibitionist, nudist or hedonist, “bare” with me)!!! Sorry, couldn’t resist the pathetic play on words.

Originally posted on Monday, February 4, 2008.

Rainy weather is nothing out of the ordinary here. Sometimes it rains for days on end. It’ll rain and create “seasonal streams and puddles.” The sun will peak through, dry up the puddles and then it’ll start all over again. This time, it started raining and kept on raining.

A little while later, there was thunder and lightning and it seemed like the raindrops were the size quarters. We had to yell even though we sitting next to eachother because it was so loud. The driveway turned into a river.

The ditch in front filled up quickly and threatened to overflow.

Across the street at the corner . . .

Even the poor celery plant was partially submerged.

In other parts of town and even down the road a bit, the run off flooded into people’s homes. I’m so grateful that there were no reports of any physical injuries or worse.

The following is something I wrote a few months back after one of my best friends passed away very unexpectedly. We never found out what exactly happened but she supposedly fell off a third story lanai at a local apartment building while trying to help a friend who had locked herself out of the apartment. That was typical of her, always taking care of her friends and family without a second thought as to her own comfort or safety. She was the type that really would give you the shirt off her back.

I find myself expecting my phone to ring, expecting to hear her voice say, “Hey there, you sexy bitch, you!” I hold on to our last conversation, clutching it tightly to my chest, to my heart. I had no way of knowing that her huge, loving heart would stop beating that very night.

She was happy. The AC was fixed on her truck. Cool comfort for the heavy traffic on the Kona side.

She asked what I was doing and I gave her the standard answer, “laundry.” She laughed at me like she always did, knowing my disdain for domestic matters and my inability to keep things neat and tidy like she did. She said she hasn’t done any laundry since she moved back home.

“My Mommy does it for me! She even put out a hamper for me! Sweet, huh?”

She happily explained that, although she still had clothes in her nephew’s closet, she had a plastic storage thing on their porch now to keep her clothes. She had more clothes than she had room to store it.

She laughed,

“I get so much! I must have everybody else’s one!”

I giggled, remembering that we gave her those “Anna’s Lounge” shirts. She liked the two ugly gray polo shirts that both men refused to wear.

“Speaking of home, how are things going?”

I knew that sometimes things got a bit tense.

She said that she loved playing with baby and spending some time with her other son. (Both her sister’s kids look a lot like her!) She worried that sometimes her mother took on too much but she didn’t know what she’d do without her. And although she and her sister had their moments, she understood why and couldn’t really blame her sis if she had doubts. Anna took responsibility for her dark times and knew that it might take a while to earn back the trust.

Changing the subject, she asked and answered her own question.

“How’s ‘Boto Boy’? He being good? Must be if he’s still there! I hope he stays that way!”

“Me, too! If he ever screws up again, I’m going to throw all his stuff in the yard, keep the money for the car and never speak to him again! This is his very last chance! “

We both had a good laugh at that. She knew all about the numerous “last chances.” She had patiently listened to me bitch, whine and moan and complain about the same problems over and over again! Still, I knew her loyalties lay with him and that she would lie and try to cover for him if she could. She wanted to kick his drunk ass many times and I know that she could do some damage but she always held back. Playful punches only. Even if her feelings were hurt. She loved him. That’s just Anna.

She said that she envied him. He had many of the things that she wanted. She wanted to settle down and spend time with someone special. She wanted to fall asleep every night next to her lover and wake up in the morning cuddling her. She wanted to find little love notes packed into her lunch. She wanted to bring home flowers and cook and share romantic evenings at home and take care of all the little things that would put a smile on her dream girl’s face.

Ok, now it was my turn to laugh! Teasingly, I asked,

“Oh, please! Ummm, wasn’t that you who once complained that a certain girl was all over you, breathing YOUR air?! And how come every time you start to feel close to someone, you find some excuse to run away? Are you, like, waiting for a man or something? Come on, you can admit it! You’re turning straight on me, aren’t you?!”

And when the giggling subsided a bit, I added

“Don’t worry, the right one will find you when the time is right. You are VERY romantic!

And her typical response,

“Yeah! Cause I’M the sexy one!”

We chit chatted about this and that and she was happy it was pay day. We ended our conversation with our usual “I love you!”

The next morning, I got a call saying that she was gone. It’s been a few days and I still keep expecting her to call. . .