They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it; for it is money they have and peace they lack.
  -James Earl Jones "Field of Dreams"
and don't go mistaking paradise for that home across the road
  -Bob Dylan "Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"

Friday, June 22, 2007

Let's Spend the Night Together

It is December 13, 1981, Sun Devil Stadium. We have some reasonably good seats, have sat through Joe Ely and then George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers. The Rolling Stones are on the stage. The song is "Let Me Go". Mick Jagger climbs down a ladder from the stage and heads into the crowd with a wireless microphone. He is suddenly running down the aisle that we (Bonnie Braun, Susan and myself) are about 6 people over from. In the first shot here you see him standing in the aisle (pink shirt). In the next scene you can see me in the extreme lower left corner (Levi jacket, shades). You can't really see Susan, you can see Bonnie (hooded sweatshirt). Jagger is still visible in the aisle. In the third shot, you can make out the three of us well, but Jagger is no longer visible, although you can tell where he is (as before just behind the guy in the windbreaker and the sunglasses). To find us, start at the upper left hand corner and head diagonally towards the center, we are about halfway to the center, first me, then Susan, then Bonnie. This footage is from the film Let's Spend the Night Together, which I have been trying to get a DVD copy of for years, which Mike bought me for Fathers' Day.

Used Too Often

The following phrases really get on my nerves and are overused by baseball people in general and Diamondbacks TV announcers in particular:
  • grinding
  • the way he goes about his business
  • a guy like INSERT PLAYER NAME
  • ...if you're INSERT PLAYER NAME...
  • ...if you're a INSERT TEAM NAME fan...
  • lights out
  • years young
  • you gotta tip your cap
  • at this level
  • every single day

And weather announcers should never say "gorgeous".

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Should go alone more often

I didn't think about asking anybody to go to tonight's Tampa Bay game until it was too late. Rather than upgrading, though, I just ate the ticket and enjoyed the elbow room. Like the Boston game, this one had disaster written all over it. The Diamondbacks had gotten shellacked by TB last night, had Doug Davis on the mound tonight and had never beaten the Devil Rays. Ever. The first pitch of the game was a Tampa Bay home run. It was 3-0, 5-1 then 7-1 bad guys. I thought about leaving several times, but the home team snaked their way back into it. Carlos Quentin, who was in a horrid slump and had been benched the night before in favor of Scott Hairston, had a couple of hits, including a home run and 3 RBI. In the 9th, Tony Clark's pinch hit two run homer tied it up. They failed to finish them off in the 9th, though, so I left, just in time to get in the car and hear Chris Young's game winning walkoff home run. It went from down 7-1 to winning 10-8. The game was over four hours long.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Colors

Mrs. Blandings: Now, Mr. PeDelford, we'll discuss painting.

Mr. PeDelford: Okay.

Mrs. Blandings: I had some samples. Here we are. Now, first, the living room. I want it to be a soft green. Not as blue-green as a robin's egg.

Mr. PeDelford: No.

Mrs. Blandings: But not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow. But don't let whoever does it get it too blue.

Mr. PeDelford: No.

Mrs. Blandings: It should be a sort of grayish yellow-green. Now the dining room. I'd like yellow. Not just yellow. A very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiny. I tell you, if you'll send one of your workmen to the grocer for a pound of their best butter and match that exactly, you can't go wrong. This is the paper we'll use in the hall. It's flowered. But I don't want the ceiling to match any colors of the flowers. There are some little dots in the background. And it's these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf. But the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now, the kitchen's to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic, hospital white.

Mr. PeDelford: No.

Mrs. Blandings: A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now, for the powder room in here, I want you to match this thread. And don't lose it. It's the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it. As you can see, it's practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy Winesap and an unripened Jonathan. Oh, excuse me.

Mr. PeDelford: You got that, Charlie?

Charlie: Red, green, blue, yellow, white.

Musical (!)

This was really dumb but I enjoyed it. Susan's boss gave her tickets to this touring musical at Gammage Center. Ironically, the only other musical that I can recall going to since moving to Arizona was also a 50s thing and also at Gammage (Grease). Most of the songs were Elvis Presley songs but it wasn't about Elvis. Sort of a "Fonzie visits a small town" thing. Some of the performers were pretty good, the plot was nearly non-existent. The one person I had heard of (Susan Anton) was in a minor role. I don't need to do this again any time soon but it was actually fun.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

On the road again


Move to Tempe will ends Motorola's long legacy in Chandler

Edythe Jensen and Luci Scott
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 14, 2007 12:00 AM

Motorola is selling its Chandler facility, its largest in Arizona, and consolidating operations in Tempe, company officials confirmed Wednesday.Most of Motorola's 1,200 Arizona employees work at the 152-acre Chandler site northeast of Price and Queen Creek roads, spokeswoman Kathi Haas said. Cellular network engineering operations done there will move to leased space in Tempe early next year. There have been no official layoff announcements, and Christine Mackay, Chandler economic development specialist, said she was assured by a top Motorola official that no Chandler workers would lose their jobs in the move.

However, Motorola reported to the state Department of Economic Security last month that it intends to lay off 79 employees in Chandler and 46 in Tempe before August. "Those job reductions are part of the 3,500 announced earlier this year and are not associated with the site consolidations," Hass said.Initially surrounded by alfalfa fields and dairies when the company moved to the city in 1985, the Chandler Motorola plant spurred development along the Price Road Corridor and for a while expanded to a second site on Alma School Road, now home to Freescale. The company isn't releasing the asking price for the plant and 152 acres it has up for sale, but Haas said the decision to sell was "real estate asset management." The property is valuable, and Motorola wants the cash, Chandler officials said.Motorola has been pared down by layoffs over the years, from its 20,000-strong workforce in the 1990s. Chandler Councilman Martin Sepulveda said it's a lesson in why cities need economic diversity."Companies like Motorola and Intel have brought us from agriculture to technology, but the semiconductor industry isn't at the top of the food chain anymore," he said. "What's next? It's bioscience, biotechnology."Councilman Matt Orlando is a business development manager for technology firm General Dynamics. He said that several prospective buyers, whom he declined to name, are eyeing the Motorola site and he expects it to sell "within the next few months." Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman is rolling out the red carpet. "I'm delighted Motorola has had a good experience in Tempe," he said. "We look forward to welcoming the expansion of their plant and operations."

Republic reporter Katie Nelson contributed to this article.
==================
This will be the 5th place I have worked at since I joined Motorola on June 1, 1998, having worked at:

51st Street/Piedmont (Phoenix/Ahwatukee)
Hayden/McDowell (Scottsdale)
56th Street South of Indian School (Phoenix)
Price/Queen Creeek (Chandler)
and soon Diablo Way (Tempe)

My commute will be cut in half, approximately.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Don't Say a Word

Last night was the final episode of Sopranos. Due to Susan being in SF, I have not watched it yet, will probably watch it on Tuesday night. I am trying to avoid all TV news, radio, internet news, etc. until I have seen it. There was a picture of Tony on the front page of today's Republic. I quickly switched to the Sports section. I may not be able to pull this off.

[Answering the phone] Jerry: If you know what happened in the Mets game don't tell me, I taped it. Hello?

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Let's go Red Sox ... not

The day started out badly. I was to go to game 3 of the Red Sox series with Mike. I originally had tickets for Saturday's game but at some point I realized there there were two problems. First, Susan had gotten plane tickets to go to San Francisco to see John this weekend, second, I got invited to a wedding on Saturday night that I really had to go to. So I traded with Jodi for Sunday's game and asked Mike to go. I had been looking forward to it but there was an email from Mike when I woke up that said that he and his family were sick and he could not make it. He felt bad about it and when I talked to him on the phone he sounded really out of it. I first planned to just go downtown and scalp the tickets then come home and watch on TV but then I looked on the internet and there was a single ticket available that sounded really good, so I bought it online and then scalped my two tickets. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised. I had thought the seat was more or less straight down from where we usually sit, just above the owners' box, but it turned out to be right behind home plate, three rows above the luxury suite that you see on TV behind the plate. I was reluctant to go at all because the Red Sox fans had more or less taken over the stadium and were being loud and obnoxious and their team had won the first two. There were a bunch of these people around me, but actually more (but quieter) Diamondbacks fans. The area that I sat in was dominated by scouts. I think that the bottom few rows are reserved for scouts and that they claim the middle seats first but that the remaining seats are released on game day if not sold. I really wonder what is up with these Red Sox fans. They are all decked out in jerseys that say Ortiz and Papelbon and such what. If they are local, what do with their little costumes? Do they wear them in front of the TV when they watch the Red Sox? Or do they actually travel from Boston to games like this? Do they wear their Schilling jerseys on the plane? Anyway, this was the perfect storm. The game was tied for most of it, first 0-0 and then in the fourth it became 1-0 Boston but quickly 1-1 in the bottom of the same inning. Both Johnson and Dice-K were on top of their games. Finally the Dbacks scored another run in the sixth and it was 2-1 until they scored 3 more in the 8th, primarily on a 2-base 2-run throwing error by the Boston reliever on a Carlos Quentin bunt. Still they chanted Let's go Red Sox like they were at a high school football game right up to the end. This was one of the better games that I have attended. It is too bad that Mike was sick and couldn't make it.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Arizona Republic gets it right

Yesterday was an embarrassing moment for the media in this country. This young woman, who appears to be famous for nothing else other than being famous (has no apparent talents and not even the good looks that help people like Britney Spears) was yesterday ordered back to jail after conning (or bribing or whatever) the local sheriff into letting her out early after spending just a couple of her 45 days in jail for DUI and related bad doings. The three cable news networks chose to cut away from a press conference containing breaking news about a new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have wall to wall coverage of this meaningless event. NBC Nightly News had it as its number two story after the Joint Chiefs deal. Today I was pleasantly surprised to look at the front page of the two newspapers that are delivered to my door on Saturdays. Although the New York Times had an article at the bottom left corner of page 1 "Celebrity Justice Cuts Both Ways for Paris Hilton", the Republic had nothing on page 1, not even a mention in the sidebar that points to articles inside. The article that they did run "Screaming Paris Hilton ordered back to LA jail" was on page A26 next to the ad for the Ashley Furniture HomeStore $295 Event.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Fun to Boo Barry

For the second night in a row, Barry Bonds was not in the lineup at Chase Field. This time I was there, and I was pleased that he was in dugout instead of on the field. The Dbacks were up 1-0 at the end of 8. In came José Valverde from the bullpen. At this point, instead of hero's welcome with fanfare and excitement, which would be fitting for the guy who is (at least off and on) leading the NL in saves, they have this dumb "guess the attendance" contest on top of the home dugout, which is nothing more than a paid commercial for the Arizona Republic. Some of us try to cheer Valverde on as he makes his entrance but are drowned out by the loudspeaker "Is it A? or is it B? or.." and so on. Then I hear a groundwell of boos. The crowd realizes how tacky this is, I think for a second, but then I realize that in the on deck circle, swinging bats, is the devil himself, the pride of Arizona State University, Barry Bonds. The boos get louder, so do screams of "steroids", "you belong in jail", "you are an embarassment", "criminal", etc. I have to admit that I was amazed just how much fun this was, joining the crowd in its uniform (well not completely, there were some Giants "fans" there but not as many as usual) distaste for this man who has defiled the game. The boos and the taunts continued through his at-bat, followed him to first on his base on balls, and back into the dugout when has was replaced by an actual athlete as a pinch runner. This was a very enjoyable negative experience. The crowd, who could not begin to agree on immigration, global warming, the war in Iraq or whether the U of A winning the NCAA Softball Championship was a good thing or a bad thing, were unanimous on one thing. Barry is bum. And the Diamondbacks won 1-0.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Sad but Inevitable

Rockies designate Finley for assignment
Denver, CO (Sports Network) - The Colorado Rockies announced on Tuesday that veteran outfielder Steve Finley has been designated for assignment. The 42-year-old Finley, who signed a minor league deal with Colorado in the offseason, hit just .181 with one home run and two RBI in 43 games this season. The Rockies now have 10 days to trade, release or send Finley outright to the minor leagues. To take Finley's spot on the roster, Colorado purchased the contract of outfielder Sean Barker from Triple-A Colorado Springs. In 45 games this season in the minors, Barker hit .333 with five homers and 30 RBI.
06/05 13:14:44 ET

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Recipes

No, I am not fixing to die over here, just cleaning up my hard drive. I provided this to somebody who was attempting to put together a family recipe book a few years ago. I don't know if anything was ever done with it.

First, here are 3 simple recipes that my mother used a lot when I was growing up. She wrote them out for me when I had my first apartment in
Ann Arbor. I tweaked the punctuation and spelling but left the rest alone. My comments within the recipe are in [brackets] and after the recipe are in italics. Susan copied the cookie recipe from a recipe written out by my mother.

Sloppy Joes

2 lbs. hamburger
salt and pepper
1 medium onion cut fine
2 stalks or pieces of celery cut fine
2 Tablespoon butter
1 cup catsup
1/2 cup [yellow] mustard
2 Tablespoon [cider] vinegar
4 Tablespoon sugar
pinch of cloves

Melt butter, add onion and celery, simmer about 5 minutes. Add hamburger, salt and pepper and simmer until a little brown. Sprinkle a little flour on. Add rest of ingredients. Cook about 15 minutes over low heat, ready to serve.

My mother got this recipe from a neighbor in Livonia, Joyce Botelho. My preference is to lose the cloves. Susan also omitted the vinegar when our boys were growing up, but I prefer it with vinegar. In case it is not obvious, this is served in hamburger buns.

==============================================

Macaroni Salad with Tuna

2 cups uncooked macaroni
1 can tuna
1 cup Miracle Whip
1-1/2 cup diced celery
12-14 sliced stuffed olives or more if you like

Cook macaroni in 2 quarts water plus 1 teaspoon salt. Chill macaroni in cold water and drain. Add remaining ingredients.

I usually end up adding a fair amount of salt to this.

==============================================

Goulash

Cook 2 cups macaroni
1 lb. Hamburger
1 onion diced
1 can tomatoes large
1-1/2 teaspoon salt, a dash of pepper

Brown hamburger with onions, add tomatoes from can and break or mush them up, add macaroni, then add enough juice [from the can] to make goulash a little soupy, add salt and pepper and cook slowly for 15-20 minutes or longer if so desired. Stir to keep from sticking, add more juice from can if needed.

Again, this ends up needing salt.

==============================================

The next two recipes came from my mother but are in my words, not hers, and probably altered a bit since I have been making these at least once a year since the 70’s.

Giblet Gravy

The night before, boil giblets and neck for 5 hours. Done when the meat pulls off the neck bone. Stick the pan with giblets and liquid in the refrigerator overnight, boiling more in the morning if necessary. Don’t lose the liquid.

In the morning, after removing the meat from the neck bones, put giblets and neck meat in the blender with enough of the liquid to cover the meat. This should be about half of the liquid. If it isn’t enough to cover, add water. Cover, put blender on low setting briefly, enough to mix and chop the meat. You should have a muddy, lumpy sort of substance. Put in a bowl, salt and pepper to taste, refrigerate.

After the turkey is cooked, combine the giblet mixture with the turkey drippings. Heat on the stove, add flour and water, simmering. Continue to add flour and or water until consistency is right.

==============================================

Stuffing

A couple of days before you cook the turkey, cut white bread into cubes (1 to 1-1/2 cups for each pound of turkey). Put the bread in the roasting pan. Every few hours, turn it.

In the morning, fry 4 medium onions (for a big turkey) in butter, and add it to the bread. Cut up two apples (I use Rome apples, but that is my tradition, not my mother’s) into small pieces and add that. Add some water to the remaining giblet juice. You are going to want enough liquid to make the mixture soggy. Pour liquid over bread. Add 2 Tablespoon of sage. Mix thoroughly with hands. Salt the neck and body cavities of the turkey. Stuff it.

==============================================

Tomato and Sauerkraut Juice

I posted this one to sauerkrautrecipes.com

Honolulu 1990

In my continuing effort to bore the crap out of anybody reading this stuff, here is an account of a trip that we took in June of 1990 to Hawaii for my nephew Chris' wedding. In typical fashion I started out in great detail and never finished. This gets you as far as the first night in the Waikiki hotel. I was apparently in love with ellipses at the time.

Wednesday, June 13 Getting ready for an afternoon flight. Took Mandy to the pet motel and gassed up the truck. Decided to take pickup to airport, cramped but better than leaving the van there to get dented or giving a fortune to a cab driver. Had a free parking coupon from Ask Mr. Foster...

Everybody ready to go, four suitcases, two backpacks, Susan's carryon bag, a big straw purse and a camera bag. A bit cumbersome but handleable. The fourth suitcase was necessitated by decision to take: baseball gloves and hats; smashball paddles; frisbee; cd player and cds...

Southwest Airlines to LA. Terminal 1, what a relic. Beers and pops (outside) while waiting for the plane. Festival seating, but they let you on in the order you got there pretty much. Plane not full...

LAX! Got the bags with no hassle, expected to see a phone with the name of our (obscure) rental car company on it. No luck. They weren't listed in the phone book. A menacing looking skycap kept hanging around trying help. Finally I found a phone number on the Ask Mr. Foster itinerary. They will be there in 5 minutes. Go out to the second curb where the sign says (unintelligible)...

We find what appears to be that curb. The nice man directing the mob at that curb asked us what we were waiting for and we told him. He responded that yes, they would stop there. Next thing we see is our van, zooming past to stop about a city block down. We grab up everything and run. I am at the head of the pack with John close behind. He steps off the curb and nearly gets run over. As we close in on the van the S.O.B. takes off again. I continue the chase and finally reach him, probably 1/8th of a mile from our beginning point. I get on and determine that the guy can barely speak English. "I stop there I ticket" He closes the door and starts to leave as Susan tries to board. Mike had fallen down at least once...

Welcome to Los Angeles...

We get to the car rental and get in our Chevy Nova (the Japanese kind). The steering pulls to the right and the wheel goes thumpa-thumpa-thumpa when you move. This outfit was known nationally as Airways Car Rental but was known locally as Pacific. Ask Mr. Foster was responsible but I did ask for a cheap rental and the price was right ($23.50). I understand why they change the name...

The hotel was the Airport Century Inn, midway between LAX and the 405 on Century Boulevard. This was a good deal, $56, clean, with a nice pool, which we didn't use, and a Denny's, which we did...

After an early meal at Denny's we headed out for Anaheim, leaving around 5:15 for a 7:35 game. Making that game on time soon became a question. The 405 was nearly gridlocked. You'd think, with all of their freeways, that getting from the 405 (San Diego Freeway) over to the 5 (Santa Ana Freeway), which is where the Stadium is and which roughly parallels the 405 in this area would be fairly straightforward. It wasn't. Beside from the fact that you thought yourself doing pretty well to be going 15 mph on the damn thing, you really had to take a non-freeway route (Redondo Beach Blvd.) to get over to the road you needed to take to the 5 (91-Artesia Freeway) or go south to the 10 (Harbor Freeway) and then back north to the 91. Neither way seemed to promising, we chose to stay on 405 to the 10 and the ballgame seemed hours away although it was already past 6:00. When we finally got on the 91, we found a diamond lane, determined that we qualified, and cruised for burgers (or rather thumpa-thumpa-thumpaed for them). The big question became whether or not the 5 would be paralyzed like the 405. It wasn't, and we found ourselves in the parking lot at the Big A with plenty of time to spare...

"It never rains in Southern California," right? It's even rumored (not true) that they don't own a tarp at Anaheim Stadium. This night was a weird one. It sprinkled during the early innings. It was so cold that I (who had said that I would be just fine in a tee-shirt) had to buy a long sleeved Angels shirt in the gift shop. The seats were awful. They were what would be called loge seats at ASU, but they were in deep left field just inside of foul territory. For having been purchased in mid April for a game that turned out to be lightly attended, this was pretty bad. I am going to have to figure out how to do this better the next time. The Angels were awful too. They had been hot and the Royals had not. They had their ace, Jim Abbott (the guy with one hand), on the mound. The Royals sent out Mark Gubicza, no slouch himself, but he left after the first inning with some sort of muscle pull. When Abbott finally left he had given up 7 runs and was ultimately responsible for a couple more. He walked in a run at one point. We got the boys some hot chocolate and left after the 7th inning stretch. The final score, which we heard on the radio, was 11-4...

We got to the hotel with no hassle, other than an abortive stop for sodas at an AM-PM Mini Mart on Century Blvd., which was ended by an aggressive pan handler who made me decide to not get out of the car...

We watched David Letterman and went to sleep...

Thursday, June 14 We had thoughts of going to the Griffith Observatory and Planetarium, but it turned out that it didn't open until noon. After breakfast at Denny's we decided to go on the NBC Studio Tour. It wasn't expensive ($20 for the four of us) and was 75 minutes long. So there we were thumpaing north on the 405, not much better in the morning after rush hour...

NBC, as we all know, is in Burbank, a few miles northeast of Universal Studios, on the Ventura Freeway. Susan read the beginning of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe aloud as we approached. We bought the tickets and were informed of a 40 minute wait prior to our group leaving. I think it would have been a shorter wait if we'd gotten there a few minutes earlier. The tour was great. This is a real studio, not an amusement park like Universal. We saw makeup (Susan recognized some soap opera queen), costume, set construction (we saw the set from Wings, the new sitcom from the makers of Cheers), the WNBC news studio. The best part, of course, was the studio where the Tonight Show is taped. There was also some demonstration stuff, a studio where they pointed cameras at the audience and showed how they did fades, splitscreens, etc. We all got on camera a bunch. Later on they took us in a room where they asked for volunteers. They picked me because I had a blue shirt on. They had me stand in front of a blue background and then superimposed some image on the wall (and my shirt). This is the technique they use for weather reports, etc. Then John got to put on a Superman cape and appear to fly over the Hollywood Hills, swim with dolphins, etc. We all enjoyed this tour a lot and can recommend it...

Back on the freeway, heading for lunch at Venice Beach. Seemed worth a look, anyway. More C.S. Lewis on the way...

Venice is pretty grubby. Lots of tourists. There were some characters as advertised but mostly tourists. Seems like a nice enough beach. Ate hotdogs and later some frozen yoghurt. Found a reasonable comic book store...

We decided to avoid the 405 and drive straight north to the airport. This got us to the airport nearly an hour before we expected. The rental car place decided to only charge us for one day although they had earlier threatened two. I told them about the condition of the car and they seemed real concerned...

We were to meet Pat and Suzanne at the airport. about 6:00. I called him when we got there (5:05) and he hadn't left yet. The plane wasn't to leave until 7:30 so it was boredom time. The kids and Susan read, I walked around a bit. I had (still have as of this writing) to read this software metrics book for work. It's awful. Moved to the Domino's/bar at 6:00 to catch the beginning of the Pistons/Trailblazers game. This was to be the last game but we didn't know that and were hoping for a Portland win so that we could see the final game on Sunday in Honolulu. Pat and Suzanne showed up about 6:20. Not nearly enough time to visit, but so it goes. Pat has stopped drinking even near beer. We boarded about 7:00...

DC-10, two pair of outside seats together. Headphones around, even though the movie was Steel Magnolias, which was likely to entertain only Susan. The kids fell asleep shortly after dinner. We were due in at 10:00, which was 1:00 a.m. LA time. I managed to knock off a chapter in that awful book. Steel Magnolias was awful, and I was the only one to stay awake all of the way through it. (Actually I think I dozed once for about 15 minutes but didn't miss a thing.) We got in, got our bags and rental car with minimal problems considering how much of a madhouse the baggage claim area was. Short hop in an AVIS mini-bus and we were in our brand new (4 miles on the odometer) Olds Calais looking at maps...

It was around 11:00 when we hit Waikiki, which is a very busy place, even at that hour on a Thursday. When we got in our room on the 35th floor of the Outrigger Prince Kuhio, I opened the door to our lanai and saw... the mountains. I had specifically been promised an ocean view. The bellman arrived with our bags and I informed him of the problem. All they could move us to was a room with a king size bed instead of to doubles. They would have to bring in two rollaways. We moved an spent the night with wall to wall bed. The room was very nice with a lot of extra touches like a hairdryer, a stocked refrigerator, a makeup mirror, bathrobes, etc. The top three floors cost $20 extra and came with such amenities along with continental breakfast. I reasoned that it was worth it and I'm glad I did. We caught part of the Johnny Carson show that we had watch them getting ready for many hours earlier and went to sleep...

At this point I should explain the Hawaiian language, or what I understand of it. There are a few words that are used universally. You are familiar with aloha. Another, that we first heard from the flight attendant on the way there, was mahalo, which appears to mean thank you. It's used a whole lot. What I don't know is where it is a thing done for/with tourists or actually used by everyone, i.e. when one Anglo businessman holds the elevator door far another, does the second guy really say mahalo? Another word is lanai, which I used earlier and means balcony. Significant to directions are makai, which means towards the ocean and mauku which means towards the mountains. That was the problem with our room, we were supposed to be makai but were mauku...