Shopping with Sushi will remain one of the highlights of my holiday. I'm thinking of it now because my room smells absolutely divine.

She led me into the Lush shop and I bought things. Lovely, jasmine-scented things and it smells like prom time in Hawaii. I've always love jasmine, pikake by any other name. Now I'm sitting here inhaling as deeply as possible to hold in the fragance and the memories :)

Matt recommended that I read Freakonomics. He rather insisted since every day after he lent it to me (often more than once a day), he would ask, "Have you read that book yet?" Thanks to the miracle of a week off, I finally have. It's pretty interesting, though I think the authors skip around so much it felt disjointed. I know they're trying to show the relationships or lack of one between different events, but at some points I would be certain I'd just read the same sentence two pages ago.

Next on my reading list is The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. SteveD recommended it and even lent me the copy he keeps on his desk. Steve writes really well; apparently he won an award in college for a paper he wrote about this book. I've liked everything else he's suggested I read (we were trading poetry websites a while back), so off I go to my next reading assignment.

Back in San Diego again. The cats are very happy to see me, for I suspect my return was heralded by Chris vigorously cleaning their litter boxes and that always makes them happy :)

Thursday was our last evening as the Three Chickas of the Apocalypse, so Barb, Sushi and I went to see Don Ho. I've never seen him perform before, but he was very entertaining, considering the surgery he underwent not too long ago. In fact, I'm sure he was wearing the very same hat in the news article at his show!

Kurt caught up with us after the show. I don't think I mentioned it before, since it happened at the same time that I was in hospital, but he was promoted to Major with HPD. Which is kind of cool...except when he has to dash off in the middle of dinner to don his mask, cape and tights to fight crime -- as happened this time. He did stop before reaching the nearest phone booth to take a photo or two with me, but alas...some of them are on his camera so we will need to see if my eyes are open in any of those.

Friday, my sister and I (sans Sushi, who had to return to Austin that morning) took my mom out to lunch. We thought of Broos and created this photo tribute for him because we wished he had come to Hawaii, too.

I'm back at home, after accidentally wandering into the office on the way home and sticking around to get caught up on stuff. Working tomorrow, too. No sympathy from Matt and SteveD, who've been putting in late nights while I've been lounging on the beach.

It's good to be back :)

E3 went rather quickly. Other than a severe bout of stage fright the first day, I remembered everything I needed to say about our game and was very charming to the folks I got to meet. Got to do a drive-by hugging of Steph and Mike P., but apparently missed Melissa's visit to our booth.

And now we are on holiday with Sushi and my sister! Barb took the week off, and we've been behaving like tourists. Yesterday, Sushi and I shopped for hours, then sat on the beach fronting her hotel, followed by consuming mai-tais at the bar.

Today, we did the semi-circle island tour, driving around Kailua, over the H-3 to Pearl Harbor and out to the Dole Plantation to totally pwn the maze. :)

We finished the day with a picnic dinner at Haleiwa Beach. Now, the three of us met due to our time as GMs for Simu, so we're an imaginative crew, but we each have different approaches to things. We illustrate our different approach to things with this dinner theater vignette:

Sushi: Is that...do you have turtles? Oh, my god! That's a turtle! [stands up and points]
Barb: They're a protected species; let's get closer and take pictures! [grabs camera and heads down the beach]
Me: We shouldn't disturb them because...ooh, look! There they are! [sits up straighter, staring into the waves]

Later, after parallel pursuing the turtles along the shore, Barb returns from her photo-taking, ecstatic and babbling.

Barb: I'm calling Erik!
Sushi: It's like...midnight where he is.
Barb: That's okay; if he doesn't want to talk to us, he won't answer the phone!

And so our heroines watch the sun set while Barb and Sushi relay the day's adventures to Erik, who's apparently recovering nicely (so to speak) from his surgery, while the turtles frolic in the surf and Tracy picks up stray bits of rubbish along the shore.

This is a very nice holiday. Tomorrow we plan to go to Hanauma Bay and snorkel. Alooooooha!

Leaving for E3 in the morning, followed by vacation. I'll probably not post unless I can wrestle my sister's computer from her :)

See you all in a couple of weeks!