Printer – Epson BX300F
 

It prints in color, scans, copies. It (allegedly) sends faxes too. I never managed to figure that part of it out, though. I blame my fixed line connection, not the printer, which is still in mint condition. Comes with cables, a little printer, some ink cartridges. Price: Originally cost approx. 79€; selling for 59€

Men’s Road Bike: 2006 Scott Speedster S40

It’s so sweet and fast, I kind of want to keep it, though it doesn’t make sense to drag bicycles to destinations unknown. So here it is: A fast road bike with carbon fiber seat post, and carbon fiber front fork. Great road bike for a guy who is about 6 feet tall. This bicycle is serious and requires clip shoes to wear–luckily, mine are included in the deal! Price: Originally cost approx.430€; selling for 165

Women’s Road Bike: 2007 Marin Portofina

This thing is a gorgeous road bike. The color is Gloss Pearl Medium, and the bike is suitable for a taller woman. You do not need clips to ride this bicycle (it has normal pedals). Also carbon fiber front fork, seat post. Price: Originally cost approx.475€; selling for 175€

NOTES: Buy both bicycles for just 300€. Both bikes also include helmets, locks.

Ikea table + 2 chairs

All nut brown in color. The table is great for two people and small spaces, but then has two leaves that fold out to make it larger for four. You’re responsible for arranging delivery and costs, though I can help. Price: Originally cost approx.150€; selling for 90€

Electrolux “Minion” Vacuum

Besides having a super cool name, El Minion is great for keeping wood floors free of dust and your house squeaky clean. It’s a strong vacuum—clare doesn’t skimp on buying anything related to cleaning! Price: This bad boy cost around 180€ new; we’re selling it for just 80€

OTHER STUFF--Sure, maybe you need a couple other things around the house. Consider buying our—->

• Coffeepot:

Save money, don’t spend at Starbucks. A Bosch that uses #4 coffee filters. Price: 10€

• Kettle:

Get your tea and Ramen on, for those needing hot water quick. :8€

CONTACT ME TO BUY: Use facebook to get in touch (www.facebook.com/joencmorrison) or twitter (also joencmorrison) if you want to be the lucky buyer.

Dear Friends,

Since January, you’ve probably heard more detail than you needed to about my training for the London Marathon and fundraising for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.  Well, here is the final installment: The London Marathon 2011 – My Story.

Brilliant!  On Sunday, April 17, I completed my second Marathon in my hometown.  Mission “Run the London Marathon” accomplished.  It was an incredible experience.  The 26.2 miles of the route through the streets of London were lined with folks cheering us on and having a jolly good knees up!  All the pubs were open and pumping out lively tunes.  There were a few brass bands, a variety of other live music including some bagpipes.  I took in all the sights, soaked up the vibrant atmosphere and enjoyed my run.

At 7 am that morning, my Marathoner uncle, Gary, led me from his house in North London’s Plaistow to the Red start south of the Thames in Greenwich Park –  http://www.virginlondonmarathon.com/interactive-map/.  Gary has run the London Marathon a number of times before and has rocked it every time.  I was so grateful to have his expert advice and support.  I was feeling excited up to the point when my uncle had to leave and I was left alone, one of 33,000 runners and too shy to talk to anyone.  What a plonker!  I didn’t see any of my fellow Hearing Dog Running Buddies.  So, I had a cup of tea, as one does before one’s marathon, used the loo and headed to my line up area, number 8.

Despite the slight chill in the air, I could tell it was going to change.  The clouds were already starting to break at about 9am.  By 10:15, it was sunny and warming up fast.  The hot, hot sun took us by surprise and slowed many runners down at the 8 mile mark.   Thereafter, it seemed like more and more runners were falling casualty to the unexpected heat.  I was most appreciative of all the water stops and Jelly Babies from the spectators; that was super, in fact, it saved me.

For the last 5 or more years, my sister, Katie, and brother, Matthew have been contracted to work for the company that does all the IT logistics, elite timing and celebrity spotting for the marathon.  Katie gets all the techie jobs, while Matthew gets the fun job of tracking the celebs.  Without even saying so, I knew he was also tracking me.  So every time I approached the mile markers with the timing pads, I was sure to do several jumping-jacks on each one.  Sure enough, when I saw Matt at the end, not only did he have my timing sheet printed for me, he told how he almost lost a few celebs due to texting the family my location on the route.  He even got worried when I fell behind my pace and was “late” arriving at mile marker 16.  Too funny.  Little Brother was watching.

I knew I was approaching the halfway mark when I reached the magnificent Tower Bridge.  At that point, it took every ounce of strength I had to fight back a flood of tears.  Running over Tower Bridge, the sun glistening on the Thames, I looked in awe at the Tower of London ahead: This was a magical experience for me.  With so much of our family history in London, I felt rooted to every step I made and so proud of my family.  London was in all its glory that day and I was in complete admiration for it.

I was cheered on by some folks holding Hearing Dogs signs at about mile 8 – give or take 3 or 4 miles either side of that, it was all a blur.  That was really a nice surprise because I wasn’t expecting to see any Hearing Dogs Cheerleaders until mile 19, so I really appreciated seeing them.  Then, seeing my family, 13 aunts, uncles and cousins, at mile 25 was the foot in my behind I needed to propel me to the end.  They were awesome!  I was thrilled and emotionally overwhelmed to have their support and hear them cheer me on.  It was enough of a boost to power me through to the finish line.  Plus, they were all drinking beer and wine, and eating a lovely picnic. The sooner I finished, the sooner I could join them.

This was the last stretch, I was running alongside the Thames and toward the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  Simply amazing.  As I approached mile 26, I spotted more Hearing Dogs Cheerleaders with signs and they were super-cheering!  That gave me another huge lift and I was so grateful to see them.  I rounded the corner and ran down The Mall with Buckingham Palace looking right back at me.

From London Marathon

I knew my darling Joe and my wonderful parents were going to be somewhere in the Grand Stands in front of the palace right at the finish line.  When I saw my folks waving and cheering, once again, I felt overwhelmed with emotion.  Mum started to run through the Grand Stand alongside me.  I crossed the finish line, was herded through a post to have my chip taken off my shoe, then, through the fence I held hands with my mum for a minute before arriving to a point for a group hug.

I finished in 5hrs 15mins – that was with a 15 minute queue for the loo!  All in all, it was an incredible experience and I am truly very proud to have run for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.  I’ve learned a lot about this charity, so much more than I knew before I started my fundraising.  Both the training, fundraising and completing the marathon have been a life-changing and rewarding experience.  It has been my pleasure to support such a worthy cause.

On the very same day, my amazing hubby finished his last paper for his MBA.  Both Morrisons achieved their goals, and as always we have so much to be thankful for: The encouragement, support, and love of our family and friends is more than we could ever ask for.  We couldn’t do it without you.  From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.  You’re amazing and together we do great things.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU

End of Season Bullfight in Madrid

As usual, it’s been a long time. So what’s up in the lives of Joe and Clare?

Well, we’re exhausted. Madrid is a very loud place. All night long, there’s activity happening outside. First the garbagemen come to pick up the trash, then perhaps a separate truck comes to pick up the plastics. Another truck comes to empty the large bin for glass, yet another comes in for cardboard.

At some point after all this, at o’dark early in the morning, then the street sweepers drive by.

Fine, maybe I’m exaggerating, but the point is–it’s loud. It makes me yearn for the days in Alaska when at 5 a.m., my sleep would be interrupted by two things: Either my wife getting up to go to the gym of the guy down the street firing up his diesel pickup truck and letting it run for a half hour. We live on Calle Alcala, which is one of the main thoroughfares of Madrid, just outside of the most significant bullring in all of Spain and the internal ring road that circles the city. The good news is that this is the most well-communicated city I’ve ever seen in my life. This includes my time in Japan. Here in Madrid the rail network is phenomenal, with a subway, commuter train and long-distance trains (including high-speed) interlacing perfectly. As for driving, the roads are big, broad, and tunnel under the city so as not to snarl up traffic or obscure views. The only disadvantage to all these roads is that, like I said, it seems to elicit constant use and noise.

My sleep wasn’t helped Tuesday night in that I was trying to digest a gourmet burger, and that I’d had a big day.  For one thing, I had met my team for the first time that’s attempting to launch a tech business related to rewards programs and marketing analytics. Second, before that in the day I’d returned to a vocation previously given up ten years ago, that of having my first class as a volunteer teacher of English as a Second Language. So all in all, it was a good exciting day: Two things accomplished: A business venture, a volunteer job, started.

As for Clare, things have been equally hectic. She too has picked up the mantle of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, but as a paid teacher who generally specializes in one-to-one lessons. It’s taken off; word of mouth and connections are how things spread in Madrid. She has students who are 20-somethings and kids of all ages. Meanwhile, she’s also investigating her next career options, that of achieving her Ph.D in Education and becoming a college professor to help teach teachers. She holds down the job, and the future job search, all while doing her own volunteer work for the IE Partners Club, which she’s trying to improve. And she’s cooking two Thanksgiving dinners, I think. Amazing!

Happy November to all; we’ll post again on this blog come December, when we have some fun trips scheduled: To Germany for Christmas markets over the early-month Spanish break (the “Puente”) then to England for Christmas and New Year’s, then back to the continent for yet more school, but maybe we can do some skiing beforehand. After all, one of the key benefits of coming to school here was to travel and have experiences; we’d best keep taking advantage of these opportunities.

http://bit.ly/bYO71g

This guy is outside the Metro stop that I emerge from each day when I arrive to walk to school. In front of me is Velazquez, to the left is Starbucks. Don’t worry though, it’s a Spanish Starbucks: Great food, great Americanos, but they usually have zero coffee brewed. Joe’s intake has dropped way down.

Term one is successfully under Joe’s belt: He did well in IT, survived quantitative methods and accounting (scratch that–he learned far more accounting than he probably ever intended, including firm valuation, but as my accounting Teacher would say, accounting doesn’t kill people, stupid people kill other people with accounting, and then he’d go on to rant about massive value destruction in Enron, Time Warner, Bear Stearns, Citi, Merrill and so forth). I learned a lot from my Organizational Behavior class despite the occasional diversion into discussion of dolphin sex, watched my marketing professor nearly spontaneously combust while speaking (he reminds me of–me),  found a dyed-in-the-wool free market Econ prof who is both a Spaniard and a Ph.D from U Chicago, and put together a plan to become a vending machine magnate with my fantastic first term workgroup: One American, one Armenian accountant, one Italian logistics/HR queen, one ex-military Singaporean, one Mexican entrepeneur and one Venezuelan operations guy. And yet they are, and here we are, and we are so much more than that.

Bienvenido a Madrid. As you can tell from the lack of posts from me, we’ve been rather busy out here. An intensive MBA will leave little time for one’s pleasure writing. So here’s the story in a nutshell: After arriving in Spain March 22, our initial accommodation was out in the south of the city, near the stadium of Atletico Madrid. While we really liked the neighborhood–there was a wonderful park nearby, cheap stores that you can’t find in the center of the city, the best kebab shop we’ve found yet– it was a temporary thing that we needed to get as far away from as soon as we could. That’s because our temporary accommodation we found out, upon arrival, was a dark, nearly never-cleaned, oddly bare place generating an endless amount of dust all over our stuff. Since we were paying to housesit the place and Clare still found it necessary to bleach-clean the woman’s bathtub and was about to do more, we both realized that we needed to focus on finding our permanent home. We bailed. It was surprisingly easy to find our new place,  a modern apartment with air conditioning out by the bullring, the only disadvantage being that it’s on a fairly busy street.

We have lived in Spain for two months. Though we miss home often, and the grass isn’t greener, we’re making this adventure worth it: Clare has spent a few weeks at home with her Mum, at a time when she could help the family out. Joe has grown both personally and professionally, and it’s astonishing how much a person can and will change in a compressed, intense ten weeks. We regret this not at all, and paying for education really is an unbelievably worthwhile investment.

As for Spain, we’ve eaten breakfast during an Opera performance, driven out to wine country and small villages in the North, seen Valencia, eaten Paella, accidentally ordered beef for lunch three days in a row, seen a really cool summer country palace (google Aranjuez), stumbled across tango while looking for dinner, made friends, seen flamenco, and managed to get in bed my 2:30 a.m. every night, which is harder than it sounds. And more. And more.

After moving to our new place, we were then hit with Semana Santa or holy week, and the city basically shut down as Madrilenos took off to visit family or just as commonly, get some sun in the South. Thankfully, Clare had purchased enough foodstuffs to prevent starvation over the four day weekend. After that, starting Tuesday April 6 we hit the ground running: Joe started precourses at IE Business School for Quantitative Analysis and Accounting, while Clare took on a one-week stint working as an assistant for Social and Emotional Learning out at Universidad Camilo José Cela. For both of us long days, late nights and hard work ensued.

In closing: We will do a better job of posting stuff about Spain, Madrid, travel and personal life stuff here. Yes, we are both now active on Facebook now, too, so look us up. Joe has yet another blog, demanded by Info Systems class which will be more about my business life; so see some of my B School papers over at this new blog, Biz 21. Warning: Right now it’s all IT, so watch out. And stick around here for “the personal touch” of the Morrisons.

God bless, keep in touch, and stay cool. I will try to as well. The weather forecast is 96 degrees and sunny skies for the indefinite future. I had Gazpacho today for the first time, and it actually was delicious and refreshing.

Finally, you know August? Yeah, we’re goin’ to South Africa. So like I said, we will make all this worth it.

More on all that later. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures. Hasta Luego.

So, wait--do you guys like ham in Spain?

Dinner and wine time- at least we know where we put our corkscrew! Note the tiki.

If I’m ambitious, i will finish this post with a glass of wine in hand today. That’s a cold, crisp, clear (yet still somehow damp) English day. As you read this, our travels are pretty much over. We have been in England for almost two weeks now to see family before we move to Spain. While significant logistical challenges remain–getting our stuff to Spain, dealing with residency paperwork, finding a place to live–many logistics are over, and our time as travelers is pretty much finished. Now we’re spending time with family, later on we’ll be setting up a life. The wrestling of hotels, car rentals, taxis, jet lag, for the most part that’s all done.

Since we are home, of sorts, I thought I would take this opportunity to provide some quick takes on our destinations.

1. Hawaii: Too commercial, mass market and chintzy? Not far-flung or “off the grid” enough? These are the standard criticisms of Hawaii. None of them are true. Granted, I’m a biased, known Hawaii-lover, finding the place pretty much perfect except for the rare sunburn or cockroach. With one of the coolest, strongest and most local cultures in America, with shared principles like Respect the Aina and Live Aloha, Hawaii is a good place to live a life or take a vacation or get your head in a better place. Clare and I spent a month there and were very happy: No isolation, boredom or stir craziness set in. It took me a while to detox to a slower pace, but Hawaii eventually got me there, even if it was as I was leaving. Walking by a massive wall-sized poster advertising Hawaii in a subway station in Japan, Clare put it best: “Ah, that’s my hawaii.”

Todai-ji, which houses the great buddha of Nara

Hong Kong at Night from The Salisbury Hotel

Orosi, Costa Rica

5. Orlando: I was in Orlando a year ago for work, and I thought of it as a concrete jungle hellhole. In America life is commercial, and Orlando is at the top of that list, the mass-market mecca for every American family to take their children. But my, Orlando does it well, and don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, because it’s a great time. You can find a good French restaurant in Disneyworld. After that, you can outlet shop until 11 p.m. Shoving its travelers to endless cheap hotels with a variety of snaking superhighways, Orlando pulls off American tourism with the greatest of ease. There’s still a lot of room to build in Orlando, and while I’m no fan of tons of cheap crap from China, I will admit that being in Orlando as my final time in America was fun. I even felt buzzed afterward.

Iceland's Blue Lagoon Spa

As for Britain and Spain: More to come, I’m sure.

Just a quick update on our adventures so far while I can get my hands on the laptop, and before I have to cram for Spanish class starting in 1.5 hours. Crikey!

We arrived in Orosi, Costa Rica last Sunday at 9pm after a fabtastic time in Japan and Honkers (as our Aussie mate, Ali, calls Hong Kong). We started off in chilly Kyoto – I know, I’m a tough Alaskan but the damp will get ya to yer bones, mate. Brrrr!!! This was Joe’s first trip to Kyoto so he had the lead on the agenda. The whole experience was amazing! Unfortunately, we’re still bloody awful at communicating in Japanese but the people were gentle and as patient as ever. We have some great stories: Rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The sushi that moved. The funky Japanese diner with the American music from the 50′s, crazy weird decor, eating
pancakes with chopsticks, and the sweet lady owner who shows us a letter from her Japanese friend living in Anchorage on W. 26th. Small world! The seven course AUTHENTIC Japanese meal that was a test of our culinary limits – octopus, pondsmelt, fish liver, jellied fish, eel, to name but a few, all very artistically plated with unknown accompaniments, but we ate it all and left the chef impressed.

We broke up our stay in Japan with 4 nights in Honkers visiting with our mate, Ali, and her family – hubby, Tez and 14 month old, Zara. Awesome! Honkers felt very polluted. It was also very foggy, cloudy, and rainy. However, you can’t pick the weather and it certainly didn’t stop us from getting around. We were so grateful to Ali, Tez and Zara for showing us around because it’s quite the maze. We ate amazing food, again thanks to Ali and Tez for hanging out with us.

We went back to Japan for four days in Tokyo. We visited our Japanese Mum, Noriko, and had just a lovely time. She’s just the sweetest. It was fun for Joe and I to visit our old stomping ground – the karaoke pub, our
apartment building, the local supermarket, our workplace. We also caught up with an old buddy, Steve, (he’ll be 40 this year, but he hasn’t changed a bit). We had a great night at a restaurant in Roppongi called Gonpachi. A bit of useless trivia: The set of the fighting scene in the movie Kill Bill is almost identical to the layout of this restaurant we were at. It was really quite romantic to be back in Japan together after 10 years and we were really happy we went.

We had a bruiser of a journey to Costa Rica! We left Japan at 10 a.m. on Saturday 13th Feb. and arrived, after a 7 hour flight, in Honolulu at 10 a.m. Saturday 13th Feb. Este loco! Verdad? Crazy, right? The whole
crossing the dateline thing really messed with our body clock. We left the airport for a lovely lunch by the ocean before our next flight at 2 p.m. that afternoon, which took us to L.A. We spent the night in a crazy, weird, party hotel near the airport that played disco/dance music in the reception and Willy Wonka Umpa-Lumpa music in the lift. Scary, but true. Needless to say the freaky aspect of the place, the party-goers coming and going, and the jet-lag, kept us awake all except for 2 hours. The next day we felt like we’d been hit by a truck. We flew to Phoenix where we had to run for our connection to San Jose. Finally, after an hour and a half roller-coaster taxi ride we arrived in Orosi on Sunday 14th Feb. to be welcomed by the monster cockroach in the bathroom of our guest house.

Fabuloso! Welcome to the jungle, Alaskans!

That was one of two monster cucaracha encounters in the same bathroom, and while we also spent the first week in the same guest house taking cold showers with mini-Charlotte in her web in the corner of the shower and many other creepy crawlies, we thought very seriously about where we would stay and what we would do our second week in Costa Rica. We decided to continue with our Spanish classes because we’re really enjoying them and we’ve become friends with a few folk here who are also taking classes. Orosi is a lovely village in a beautiful, very green valley where there are lots of hikes to do and other small villages to see. However, we do spend 3 hours in class Monday through Friday and an additional 2+ hours of studying daily. We’re
both determined and dedicated to getting a good foundation in Spanish, however, we do find time for hikes, a few beers, and afternoon tea and cake. The afternoon treat has become an addition to our schedule due to the upgrade in accommodation we made on Sunday night.

So, we decided to stay in Orosi but the deal was that we needed to find other accommodation. We followed the sign to the Orosi Lodge, had a chat with the German owners and ended up paying 30 dollars extra to live in a monster-bug free environment with hot showers, a small kitchenette with a coffee maker and fridge. Most important of all, it’s clean, a big deal to this Domesticated-Dolly who keeps a pretty much spotless home! We were paying just 30 dollars in the guest house and the price upgrade for an additional 30 is truly worth it, especially for me. I can do the jungle Crocodile Dundee cold shower cobweb dusty thing for a week before it simply exhausts me. Getting up to use the loo in the middle of the night and having to turn on all the lights and look for what moves first – exhausting! More than once did I have to stifle a scream at o’dark early. Anyways, the lodge is great and we’re feeling very spoiled, especially while partaking in
the afternoon tradition of delicious german chocolate cake. The sugar helps us study.

Over the weekend we hiked 7 miles, hung out at the village festival and went rafting on one of the world’s top five rapids – El Rio Pecuare. Loved the hike. Great and iffy food at the festival, however, we had fun hanging out with the locals and our buddies. We will not raft for a very long time or perhaps ever again. A near death experience in rapids through a jungle will do that to ya! We’re alive to tell the tale so no worries. Pura vida, as the Ticos like to say. The saying is like the Hawaiian, “hang loose” or the Jamaican, “eire.” I’m pretty beat up with bruises but Joe will tell you, I am one tough chica! I didn’t cry (well I did when we finally got to our
room and the shock hit me). It’s a long story, and great over a few bevvies, so it’ll have to wait until we can catch up. Since then, we’ve played it very safe this week.

We were going to take off this weekend and spend our last 2 nights exploring another part of Costa Rica, but why bother with the hassle: Hours on a sweaty bus lugging heavy backpacks for a half a day sightseeing at best. No, gracias! We’re now taking an extra Spanish class on Saturday and hanging out in Orosi until Sunday morning before we fly to Orlando, Florida.

Well, it’s back to work for us, we’ve both got homework and a Scrabble game to finish. Keep checking out the blog: joeandclare.wordpress.com

In the meantime: Pura vida! Hope all is well with you and yours. Look forward to hearing from you and/or seeing you soon!

Lots of love and hugs,
Clare and Joe xxx

As we write this we are, we think, over five hours in to the flight from Honolulu to Kansai International Airport. Four hours to go. My Gameboy has finally died after persistent attempts to subdue various Mongol tribes. Meanwhile, Clare’s been reading about the romancing of mortals by vampires. She claims the book is killing her and it’s awful, but she’s read three of the Twilight series books and now feels she has to see it through. I’m staying away from coffee until we nearly land, because that’s when we need energy to manage our still-bursting bags*, find a train bound for Kyoto, and then get from the station to said hotel. I don’t know how we’ll do that yet, I suppose a Taxi would be simplest but not cheapest. While I think I read something about the hotel having a shuttle to the train station, figuring all that out in Japan after a one hour train ride and nine-plus hour flight is another matter entirely.

This morning’s travel went off without a hitch and the bags, check in, seat assignments and everything for Clare and me has gone the best ever in our travels. After getting to the airport and waiting in what was a very unclear Hawaiian Airlines check in line, Joe tried his luck with skycaps. What do you know? No extra or overweight baggage fees, got bags checked through to Japan, all for ten bucks. Reckon we’ll consider using Skycaps a lot more in the future. We landed in Honolulu, found a Gordon Biersch, pounded and ate a few.

And the best part? We’re flying first class.

Not technically. But this is maybe evern better, check out the legroom that was all hours. We even had our own water fountain. The key might be our three-hour early check in combined with an American gate. She asked if we liked our seats because we had an aisle, but only in the middle column of this double decker 747-400. I said no, we’d really prefer getting an aisle seat on the side of the plane. So she ended up putting us next to what is the world’s largest exit door. I haven’t noticed any envious looks, but the Japanese are an exceedingly polite people. Keep the champagne up in first, folks. I’ll take the legroom.

Well, if you think about it, fancy folks, pass that bottle back.

Clare mentioned she wants me to put something in the blog post about the “sea of masks” on this flight. I’ll also mention that our Japan Airlines Service today started with our impeccably-dressed flight attendants bowing before take off, that we were welcomed onboard with irrishisamasen, that I’ve seen one other gaijin on this massive plane, an older haole. This is the cleanest international flight I’ve ever been on. They are detailed flight attendants, and fastidious: One noticed something spilled on the carpet and she wrapped her hand in scotch tape before picking it up.

*Yet another footnote. Here’s what I don’t understand. I had an entire videogame system in my backpack when I left for Hawaii, and my backpack weight a crushing 50 pounds. No, we didn’t really play it, and yes it’s gone so it’s no longer cruising around with a Wii and a balance board that weighs things down. Whey, then, does my backpack still weigh 50 pounds? All I bought was a new, custom carved Tiki. What the hell?

Top: Legroom extravaganza. Bottom: Temple near our hotel in Kyoto.

We’ve been in Maui for nearly four weeks now–come to think of it, we will have been here a day short of four weeks come Sunday–and from our previous post you can kind of tell our state of mind for half the time we’ve been here. It was hard. We dealt with paperwork for the house, paperwork for finalizing our trip, all without an internet connection. All I can say is, coming here was overwhelmingly the right decision for us, because after selling our house, cars, quitting our jobs, leaving our families, friends and dog, we needed to heal up. And Maui’s a great place to do some healing. Maybe we could have done it elsewhere, but maybe not. This island is special for us, and it’s just what the doctor ordered. Incidentally, it’s not lost on us that if spending a month in Hawaii is something one really wants to do, the way to pull it off might just be to quit jobs and sell personal possessions. I remember my first job out of college: Work for an entire year, get five days of vacation time off.

OK, on to the fun, juicy stuff.

Here in Maui we’ve stayed in the Kihei Kai Nani, which has been interesting. One: It’s right next to the jumping off party spot in Kihei, Moose McGillicudy’s. But we’re at the back of the condo complex, which is right across from Kam II beach (a glorious, amazing stretch of sand–all the Kamaole beaches are). Other nearby amenities include a natural foods store, internet cafe, good eats nearby like Fred’s Mexican, and honestly this condo complex is astonishingly well run. Joe prefers it to the fancier “Maui Kamaole” while Clare’s taste may run a bit more toward the fancier side, you guessed it. Still, if you stay here you could be happy, just make sure your unit is away from the road or you’ll be up late.

Now, are there quirks? Sure. And I’m not just talking about the three to four retirees who takeover the pool every single day at 3:30 PM  to play their jazzercise tape. Yes, seriously, and for at least an hour. They’re pretty efficient though: They use milk jugs filled with water for resistance, then chug some of the water when finished with their workout.  They may not necessarily care if anyone else is in the water swimming laps during their daily ritual, but I’m sure they’re just sweet old ladies.

No, the quirks about our condo would include the pair of pink panties Clare found while cleaning the unit upon our arrival (which, incidentally, is probably something she shouldn’t have had to do). “Alright,” Clare said to Joe, with a smirk on her face. “Who’s been in here?” There’s also this interesting gummy brown colored smear on the top of the kitchen sink handle, which is one of those detachable handles so you can rinse out the sink properly. Unfortunately, the brown smear likely comes from adherent that was once used to keep a plastic button on the top of the tap (you know, that could turn a more powerful stream on an off) and it’s like the button disappeared and then the adherent melted away, and now the adherent’s chief purpose isn’t to hold anything to the faucet head but instead to drive Clare and Joe crazy when they cook or rinse out the sink and disgust them because yes, the adherent kind of looks a little bit like poop.

What else? There’s a fancy stereo cabinet from the late 90′s that looks really cool, but if you don’t McGruber the volume knob, you either turn the volume down so low it’s inaudible, or wake everyone in the building up. Learned that one the first day when I was trying to listen to NPR at breakfast. And incidentally, Hawaii Public Radio, what in hell is it with you guys doing nothing but playing classical music all day long? Two news programs a day, that’s it?

In all, the place hasn’t been lived in for about two years, and it shows. One night one of the storm windows by Joe’s head got stuck in the “open” position because the knob used to open and close the shutters rusted out and broke off. Did it rain the following night? Yes, it rained the following night. Did that keep Joe awake? Only if it was a tropical storm in Hawaii that pelted his head with rain every few minutes.

But we’re playing these stories for laughs. We’ve laughed at them. These are small things and as Hawaiians and similar-minded folk around the world say, no worries. Mostly the place is nice, and everything is functioning, and we’re not spending too much time indoors anyway. So that’s where we’ve been living. Now for some pictures, and in my next post, I’ll try to discuss exactly what we’ve been doing while we’ve been here. A hint: Nothing has been a big part of that.

Much Mahalo and Aloha,

Morrisons out.

*Ya, I know, it’s Marvin Gaye. But only because I’m still so OCD that when I wrote the title of this post, I googled it.