Pure Manaʻo

If you ask my family, they will tell you that I am very pake in many ways. I hate paying full price for anything. When I shop, I go straight for the back of the store where the sales and clearance items are. The only thing better than not having to shop is getting something at 70% off. I love to go to Vegas, but I never gamble. Putting $100 into a penny poker machine is just poho (wasteful). I could have bought groceries with that money. I live right in town, but I carefully plot out my errands so that I don't go back and forth or cross my own driving path. That would be a waste of gas. At the supermarket, I write my list according to row so that I don't have to go back and forth in the aisles because my time is money. If I forget something, too bad, make do without. However, there are certain things that I think are worth paying extra for: freezer strength Ziploc bags, Bocca meatless burgers, 0-point tortillas, Kleenex with lotion and double ply Charmin toilet paper. In fa...

Chocolates Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I've been doing pretty good on my Weight Watchers journey, but I'm being undermined by Christmas chocolates like these gourmet dark chocolate confections in their own little cubicle, packed in bubble wrap and designed like jewels. Some people are alcoholics, drug addicts, shopoholics. . . I'm a chocoholic. I shouldn't eat any. Cold turkey is the only way for me to survive. Like all addicts, having even one leads to another, leads to another (you get the picture). So this Christmas, the chocolate fudge, led to the truffles, led to the chocolate chip cookies, led to the hot cocoa, and the Buster bars at Dairy Queen. Help!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. . Isaiah 9:6

Tea Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I absolutely hate water. Mostly because, well, it just tastes like. . .water. But in WW (weight watchers), part of the program, and my weekly challenge to myself, is to drink water. . . LOTS of it per day (6 - 8 cups). Most people can drink that amount in the morning, but I could last on that amount for the whole week. My body is used to being dehydrated. It's my training method for survival in case of nuclear disaster and the water supplies are contaminated. They say that humans will die within several days without water, but my finely honed, water-starved body can last for months. Anyway, since I have to drink "water," I drink lots of tea (one cup equals 1/2 cup of water because of the caffeine). This is my latest tea obsession flavor and I drink lots of it because the stuff I tend to like usually is seasonal or on its way out. This vanilla caramel truffle comes in these cool pyramid shaped loose tea bags and they smell heavenly, l...

Hubby made two kinds of fudge this year. One tastes like a homemade PB Reece's cup and this one is a chocolate fudge with chopped pistachio nuts. This shouldn't be a problem since we did say that we wanted to make gifts this year so we made corned beef and yam lau lau, mini chocolate and cream cheese truffles, candied walnuts and pecans, and those dreaded fudge monsters. The problem with making all these goodies is that eventually, we run out of people to give these gifts to, so now I'm stuck with two pans of fudge in my freezer. What's more appalling is that not only are they precut into nice little pieces, but they keep calling me! I'm trying to keep busy so I don't think about it. AAGGH! Anyone want some fudge?

I have not talked to too many teen girls in school who have not seen the Twilight movie. Even my high school son saw the movie with his girlfriend and she was watching it for the second time. She is reading the books, however, and he is adamantly NOT. Do movies like this help to encourage reading? I must admit that I have a list of students that are waiting for my Twilight series and they include both girls and guys. But after Twilight, like the Harry Potter books, the books tend to grow in size. These books with their black covers have been mistaken for Bibles. They are not light reading. I finished four of them in a week, but I didn't sleep much. Still, if kids are reading, it's a good sign, even if I REFUSE to pay $9.50 to watch the movie, I do like that it gets kids to read. My true test of a book's worth is whether or not it gets stolen from my classroom. New Moon has already been stolen from my classroom. Other books that were stolen in the past: Speak by La...

One of the latests posts on the ASCD In Service blog talked about the possible death of the the novel in the secondary classroom. I remember in high school I actually took a novel class where the teacher gave us a speed reading test in the beginning of the semester, and based on that we were given a number of pages that we had to read per week. When we finished a novel, we had to have a conference with him and maybe write a paper. During class, we all faced each other in rows and. . . read. I think my number was 250 pages per week, on top of my other work from all my other classes, so I ended up reading a lot of trash novels and none of the heavier classics on my "to read before I die" list because I needed to make my pages with minimal brain strain. In my other senior English class, I took short story and poetry, so not too much reading in that one either. I must say, I did not get very far on my list before I got to college and decided to major in chemistry. I did not stay...

The gondoliers in Venice are eating breakfast as the city floods, and as I go through the pictures on the Time.com photo essay site, I'm always struck by the resiliency of people to just keep keeping on. I think journalism is not just about highlighting the plight of others, I think it's also a way to rile people up, to get them off their bottoms and take action, but really, with the immediacy and visual and aural stimulation of the instant news, I feel more numb than horrified, scared or even motivated to do anything. Living on an island, I've always had that dream that the oceans are so high that we live on the tops of sky scrapers, and the majority of the buildings are under the water. We have to work our way up in order to get to see sunlight, or risk living in the murky grey, green and black of the ocean. So when my husband told me that Venice was flooded last night, I thought of people hanging out on the tops of buildings, jumping off of ledges to get on the boats. ...