Update

I don't know if anyone is still checking or reading this blog but I thought I'd provide a little update on the Moyer/Rodriguez household. Hawaii seems like a distant dream at this point especially since it is rainy and cold today and the leaves are all changing. I'm sitting in my living room looking out the window and there's no ocean there. We are coming up on the one year anniversary of Luis' return from the war.

The endless move finally ended over the weekend when we had our garage sale and got rid of most of the boxes and extra furniture. The weather was perfect for a garage sale but we had the misfortune of scheduling our garage sale on the same day as the Kansas City Marathon and a visit from Barack Obama just down the street at Penn Valley Park. Half the roads around us were closed at different times of the day. Still we had enough customers to get rid of most of the stuff. What didn't sell on Saturday sold on Sunday when our neighbors continued their sale and some customers wandered over to our house to see what was left in the garage where Luis was puttering. He's been spending a lot of time in that garage since we moved but he spent a year in Iraq where he didn't even have a garage so I won't hold it against him.

I am still unemployed trying to figure out what I want to be. I've been applying for a few jobs and volunteering at the archives of the Jackson County Historical Society. Specifically I'm working on the courthouse project going through court files from the 1800's to catalog the contents for future researchers. It's some interesting stuff. Cases range from messy divorces to personal injury cases involving the collision of a horse and buggy and a wagon with two mules to a multitude of promissory note cases. I think that the best thing to happen to the legal profession was the invention of typewriters then computers. Lawyers give doctors a run for the money when it comes to bad handwriting. I can only do 3 hour shifts because trying to read olde tyme chicken scratches is really hard and leads to headaches. I also have to figure out the abbreviations. I already knew that Wm was short for William but why is Jno short for John? How is that really a timesaver?

Luis is working like a dog again and spending a lot of time driving between the commute to Leavenworth and transporting the girls back and forth to Olathe. Mia the cat sleeps all day in order to conserve energy to play vigorously with her mouse toy at 4:00 am. I've been spending too much time on the computer following politics much too closely. It's unhealthy and I can't wait for this election to be over.

Welcome home, Mia Maria

No one was happier to welcome me back to Kansas City than my poor misunderstood cat, Mia. She and her sister, Maggie, spent the last year with my parents since it seemed it would be less traumatic than flying them to and from Hawaii. It had also proved difficult to find furnished apartments in Hawaii that were willing to accept pets.

Maggie settled in fairly easily to life on the farmette. Laps were plentiful and Fancy Feast was forthcoming. Mia, on the other hand, objected strenuously to sharing a house with a dog and registered her displeasure the only way she knew how, by peeing on all the areas of the living room carpet that the dog frequented.

After we finally unpacked everything and settled into our new house, I went to the farmette to retrieve my poor kitty. She spent the next couple of days alternately exploring the new house and then attaching to me like velcro. Since then she has settled back into her routine of sleeping and eating and giving dirty looks.

Maggie, my special needs cat, remains at the farmette for now. I'm reluctant to bring her into this turbulent household while it is still summer which, for whatever reason, is her bad season. She hasn't been right in the head since her bout with diabetes two years ago. She seems pretty content with her grandparents and I'm reluctant to rock the boat.

It's good to be home

Things I will not miss about Hawaii

As many of you already know, I've been back in Kansas City for one week and we are pretty much moved in to our new house. I've neglected this little blog since it pains me to think that the Hawaiian vacation is all over. To cheer me up, I thought I'd review the things I will NOT miss about living in Hawaii.

Hawaii is incredibly expensive. I've never been much of a price shopper and I mainly notice the total of my grocery bill more than the price of individual items. However when milk is $8.00/gallon, even I notice. It was up to $10.00/gallon in some stores when we left. Luis and I walked through Costco a few days ago and it was like a fire sale compared to Hawaii. Gas was around $4.50/gallon and it's a driving island, getting around without a car is not possible unless you are in downtown Honolulu. Even Subway's $5.00 footlong was $5.99 in Hawaii. I only know that because in those annoying commercials with the "Five, five dollar, five dollar footlooo-ooong" song, it flashed at the bottom: "It's $5.99 in Hawaii!" Yes, with the exclamation point and everything.

Oahu is a very crowded little island. People are everywhere all the time. There are some deserted beaches but you might get robbed if you hang out there. Every store is crowded at every hour of the day. Here in Kansas City you can run into a Walgreen's at 2:00 in the afternoon and pick up a few personal items and see, maybe, 5 people. Not so on Oahu. Every time I went to a Long's Drugstore, or the Safeway, or Costco (yes they have Costco on Oahu) there were hundreds of people, or so it seemed.

Then there is the traffic, oh there is the traffic. Oahu is by far the most populated of the islands and a lot of the population is moving west where the affordable housing is. Unfortunately the jobs are still primarily in Honolulu. Rush hour starts around 5:30 am in the morning and about 3:30 pm in the afternoon. Entire days have to be planned around the tides of traffic on H-1 since it is often the only way to get from point A to point B.

Oahu is disadvantaged by a couple of things when it comes to traffic planning. First there is that whole island thing. Can't build a road in the ocean. Then there are other geographical challenges such as gulches, mountains, Pearl Harbor, etc. The midwest with it's unlimited amounts of level land has sprawl because we can. Oahu has sprawl even though it's unwieldy and unsustainable. Which brings me to the other primary problem, short-sighted developers and local government. The communities and small cities that have sprung up to accommodate all these folks moving west are planned in exactly the same way that, for example, Olathe was planned. There are large housing developments with a separate area for strip malls and big box retailers. Feeder roads connect them to each other and to the highway. The big difference is the in Hawaii, there is only one feeder road because of the aforementioned geographical challenges. The result is not just the endless traffic lights like at 119th and Roe but also bottlenecks that cannot be resolved.

I'm sure there are other things I will not miss about Hawaii but now I've started thinking about all the things I miss so terribly so I'll go unpack a box to distract myself.

Presenting Lt Commander Eric Moyer

During my last week in Hawaii, my little brother was promoted to Lieutenant Commander on the deck of the U.S.S. Chung Hoon. It was coincidentally his son's 4th birthday so there was much to celebrate. The captain of the ship thought to mention little Blake's birthday before the promotion ceremony and suggested that all the officers gathered on the deck sing Happy Birthday to him. When everyone turned to look at him and sing, Blake was briefly paralyzed with horror by the unwelcome attention then burst into tears. Poor little guy.

Goodbye to Luis and the girls

Going going gone

Aloooooohaaaaa!

I've mentioned before that we live right next to a luau called Paradise Cove luau. Every night we hear the show, some nights better than other nights depending on whether trade winds are blowing the sounds out to sea or kona winds are blowing them straight into our living room. I don't mind the music and drums so much but the announcers are straight out of Vegas. "Any newlyweds in the house?" "Let's make some noise!!!" Luis and I went to the luau in November when my older brother, Doug, and his family were in town. It was what you might expect with flashy shows and mediocre food.

We decided to take the girls while they were here thinking that they would enjoy it since there are lots of games in addition to the show. Olivia loved every second while Caroline was more reserved in her appreciation of the show. She was falling asleep before the end and asked to go home while Olivia was running back and forth to the front to take photos.

A day at lagoon 1

Sea Life Park

When the girls were here over Christmas break, we visited Sea Life Park, a small Seaworld type of park on the southeast coast. Olivia and Luis did an interactive encounter with dolphins that they really enjoyed. Olivia was determined to return to the park and do a sea lion encounter on this trip. Not to be left behind, Caroline wanted to get in the water with the dolphins. I put aside my misgivings about wild animals being used as playthings by humans and enjoyed the day.

Walker and Robin

Since this is the third trip to Hawaii to visit us, the girls have pretty much grown jaded about just going to beaches. The highlight of this trip seems to be the horses, Walker and Robin. Luis' boss and his wife, LTC Martin and Stacy, bought a couple of horses for their daughters to ride while they are here. Both girls got to groom then ride the horses.

Farewell to El Fuego

As part of the pomp and circumstance of Luis' departure from the 25th Infantry Division, Luis was given a medal, a flag in a frame, and a lunch at a restaurant called The Shack. We started the event on the same lawn where he had his promotion ceremony and the same cast of characters presided and attended. The only difference was the addition of the girls. They were both proud and embarrassed about all the attention. About halfway through the medal ceremony, Caroline decided that standing still was for losers so I was focused almost entirely on curtailing her windmill arms. She is an army of one.

Happy anniversary to us

Last year:















This year:

The floating head of the stepmother will grant you three wishes