Pure Manaʻo

I think it was Sandra Cisneros that wrote that diseases have no eyes, they just pick and choose. Today 's news is about the death of Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor that became a spokesman for living despite his battle with pancreatic cancer through his last lecture . He was 47 with three little kids and I wonder why these things happen? How do diseases choose their victims? Why is the timing not convenient? What are we supposed to learn? As I write this, a family is standing by as their mother also is dying from pancreatic cancer. She too will leave three children behind. Her children are not as young as his, one is a sophomore at Harvard, one will graduate from high school this year and one will be a high school freshman. Still, they are children too, her babies, and they will lose their mother soon. I had all the Carvalho children in my 8th grade English class and they were all brilliant and kind and positive. The influence of their parents, and the love and accep...

I am in a love-hate relationship with the other woman. Her name is Magellan and she has this very calming voice, even when she is giving us the wrong freaking directions. Magellan, our GPS, is actually my husband's girl. She has replaced me as the official map reader and navigator on our travels (travails). This other woman was supposed to curb our stress level and keep our bickering to a minimum. I, as the map reader like to have all the instructions plotted before we leave the parking lot, my husband likes to start up the car and go, which starts us arguing right away, because if he takes the wrong turn out of the parking lot, I have to throw out my directions and look at the map again. Magellan has ended those arguments, but even if she doesn't snap at my husband or give him the silent treatment, she is not always perfect either and this other woman has changed the way the two of us navigate our way through life. Before Magellan, my husband and I had to up our learning curve...

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman My review rating: 5 of 5 stars We went to our timeshare in Keauhou this year for a mini vacation, but the only ones on vacation were me and my youngest, so we rented a car and drove back and forth to Hilo for work and baseball. The four of us listened to Golden Compass along the way and we all couldn't wait to get back in the car to see what Lyra was doing and how she was going to escape Mrs. Coulter and find her friend Roger. Ahi usually just sleeps when we get in the car, but even he stayed up to listen. My husband and I talked about this hoopla following the movie, on how Pullman was an atheist and this book was against the church. I read the trilogy a while ago, and yes, there is a Catholic church type of organization with the kind of power that they had in the middle ages, but I didn't see it as atheist then or now. View all my reviews.

Dear AT&T, Why do your plethora of plans have to be so complicated? I have the family plan. Just my teenager and me. He has unlimited texting, I have nothing right now because I don't know how to use my phone for anything besides dialing and answering. So, to lure me into upgrading my ghetto, but perfectly usable phone, you enticed me with the iphone hoopla and not only expect me to pay the cheaper $199 price, but you don't have them in stock, so I have to order it, wait my one month AND decide on a plan, because an iphone is a smart phone, so the options are different. If we go with a family plan, then it doesn't make sense for me to have an iphone unless we all have iphones. However, with the unlimited stuff plan, it doesn't come with texting, so you have unlimited except for texting. Teenagers are all about texting. My other option is to get the family plan for more than my contract price, AND pay an extra $30 per month for the iphone. Your rep. tells me to feel...

Despite the articles on how long people waited for iphones yesterday, or how messed up the server was, or how some people were sent away at the end of the day without a new iphone, I still want one. No, I crave one. I get back to Hilo on Monday. Do I think my local AT&T store by Ben Franklin will have one saved special just for me? Probably. . .NOT. Still, I'm going to be there on Tuesday morning to check anyway. Why do I want an iphone? Because then I can use brightkite the way it's supposed to be used. How ridiculous is that? The more ridiculous thing is that my husband knows that and he's still letting me try and get an iphone. If I find out that I can't do brightkite on my iphone, then I will be truly pissed off. I think that cell phones should look like mini phone receivers, and be made specifically to call people and receive calls. I don't think that cell phones should do anything else, like make light for commercials, take pictures of girls' ...

The problem with being married to a foodie is that our life, both on vacation and off, is a singular pursuit of food. Food is not sustenance. Food is an obsession. It is a one-track mindedness, a quest, a voyage, and a way for my husband to follow his whims. For a control freak like me, this is not very conducive to planning ahead. When we are on vacation, like now, I like to have my whole day mapped out at least the night before with a pretty solid itinerary of the week already down. After 20 years of marriage, I do allow for my husband's whims because of the one-track mindedness. Still, with internet and our handy portable gps, things just get more tiring, which leads back to fatness. Yesterday, it was Chuy's for lunch. Why? Because he met someone on Britekite from Houston and they started corresponding about food. When we got there, I asked him what kind of food they served. His answer. . . "I don't know." That means we had to order a lot of food to figure out ...

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs My review rating: 4 of 5 stars If you're looking for a female bonding book, Friday Night Knitting Club was a great read. It centers around single mom Georgia Walker and the people that frequent her yarn store in NY city. The characters are likable in their flaws and strengths and it's a great airplane or beach read with all the right elements: humor, romance, intergenerational wisdom sharing and sorrow. View all my reviews.

I love airplanes, small ones, big ones, cramped, spacious -- airplanes represent freedom and travel and anticipation and yearning and sadness and loss. Despite rising airfare and ridiculous charges for EVERYTHING, I still love flying. Last night we left Kona Airport for Houston via Phoenix on US Airways. It wasn't too crowded, so my husband actually got to move to another seat so that we could all spread out. Sweet! Except that 2 1/2 hours into our flight, the captain comes on and says we have a mechanical problem and we're flying back to Honolulu, another 2 1/2 hours away. Yes, safety, I'm all for safety so this is actually THE GOOD. US Airways rocks. The people on the phone are not cocky like Hawaiian Air (yes, my son works for Hawaiian, and I tell him all the time that they are rude, obnoxious and cruel to their customers), the people on the ground (contracted from Hawaiian) are pleasant and accommodating, and the agents in Honolulu were very helpful and calming. We got...