The Commissary

I've made no secret of the fact that I am a reluctant member of the military industrial complex and I regard my military ID with extreme ambivalence. It doesn't help that I'm defined as a "dependent" and Luis is my "sponsor." Even the benefits that accrue to me as a result of being a peripheral participant in the military fill me with conflicted feelings. One of the benefits is access to the low low prices of the commissary and the PX, or as I used to call them, the grocery store and not the grocery store.

There are a number of commissaries on Oahu and I have access to all of them with my magic military dependent card. A gallon of milk is about $4.50 at a commissary and it ranges from $6.00 to $8.00 at a local grocery store so the savings at the commissary are not insignificant. Despite the better prices, I have only been to a commissary about half a dozen times since we moved here. I generally shop at the Safeway in Kapolei because, other than the baffling array of Asian foods available, it seems more familiar. See, the commissary looks like a regular grocery store but has just enough weird differences that I feel off kilter when I go there.

The differences start in the first aisle which is reserved for specials but I can never seem to remember that. I always see a few different kinds of cereal or one brand of soy sauce and think, "why is the selection so limited?" and make a compromised choice accordingly. That's not a big deal though and I do think, in general, that the commissaries have a pretty good selection of things. Because of the selection and low prices, a lot of people shop at the commissary. If you time it badly and go near a military pay day, you can't even get a cart down an aisle. That's what happened one of the times I went to the Pearl Harbor navy commissary and I just abandoned my cart and went home.

The real differences between a commissary and a grocery store appear at checkout. First, instead of having a line at each register like a normal store, there is one main line that is roped off like the line to check in at the airport. When you get to the front of the line, there may be a person standing there yelling at you to go to this cash register or that, "FIVE!," or "GO TO THIRTEEN!" Some commissaries have an automated system in which the cashiers secretly signal when they can take another customer and the robot voice in the loud speaker at the end of the main line announces, "NEXT PLEASE!" Sometimes it just goes off repeatedly, "NEXT PLEASE NEXT PLEASE NEXT PLEASE!" I don't know what that means or where I'm supposed to go.

At some point in the transaction with the cashier, he or she will ask to see the magical ID that entitles me to that $2.00 savings on a gallon of milk. Some like to ask before ringing up and others during the payment process and most seem to have the attitude that I should have shown it to them already. It doesn't help that I feel like a big crazy faker when I flash a military ID.

Most normal grocery stores have employees who load your groceries in bags and put it in the cart so you can wheel it out to your car. Not the commissaries though. Instead they have unpaid third world nationals, usually women, who will bag and load your groceries into their own cart and take it to your car for you. There are many signs up that say baggers work for tips only. I want to hand them a business card for a labor lawyer with a tip to give him or her a call.

If you don't want the bagger to bag your groceries and take them to your car, you have to speak up and say so but I can never figure out when or how to do that. It reminds me of the stage fright I would get in the high school lunch line on chili dog day trying to time when to lean forward and tell the lunch lady, "no chili on mine please!"

I've been lucky enough so far that I've had a few dollars on hand to tip once they unloaded the groceries into my car. I dread the day when I don't. It's one thing to oppress someone indirectly by buying a $5.00 sweatshop t-shirt at the Gap. It's an entirely different thing to oppress someone to their face.

Olivia and Caroline demonstrate what they learned from Crazy Becky

Spring Break on the USS Chung Hoon

As some of you may know, my younger brother, Eric, is a naval officer currently stationed in Hawaii with his lovely wife, Sherri, and 3 year old son, Blake. He took us on a tour of the ship to which he is currently assigned, the USS Chung Hoon. I believe it is a destroyer and it was named after the first Hawaiian born Admiral.

Unfortunately for us, the ship is undergoing extensive repairs and remodeling so we couldn't see it in its full glory but it was an interesting tour nevertheless. Luis especially enjoyed it and he and Eric were able to have many conversations about the ship and its mission entirely in military-speak which consists of acronyms loosely connected by articles. The rest of us were just trying to remember to call it a ship instead of a boat.














Since there were many construction projects going on, we had to wear closed toed shoes, hard hats, and safety glasses. Some of us could pull the look off a little better than others.













Eric is the tall one on the left dressed like a mechanic. Navy uniforms have apparently grown more utilitarian over the years.

It's 3 a.m., who do you want answering this phone?

Spring Break with Crazy Becky

About halfway through the girls' spring break, Becky Kraner arrived for her own spring break from wintry Cleveland. The girls were very excited to have a big girl slumber party with Crazy Becky. She taught them all manner of things during the visit including the limbo and how to rock a hardhat or even a bulletproof vest. Fierce!

Caroline practices relaxing

Olivia and Caroline arrive, immediately submerge themselves in ocean

Christmas with Olivia and Caroline

Luis will be leaving soon to make the trip back to Kansas City to gather up his girls and bring them to Hawaii for spring break. He made a similarly grueling journey in December to collect them for the Christmas break. I picked up the three tired travelers at the airport with leis in hand. The girls were very excited to be here but less excited about the Christmas tree I fashioned out of one of the fake plants in the condo.
The first thing that the girls did upon arriving was change into summer clothes and hit the little beach by our condo. We were just going to show them the beach but the valuable lesson I've learned since being here is that you can never just show a kid a beach. Expecting a child to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a beach without full immersion is futile. I've seen countless parents at the beach exhorting their child not to get wet or not to get too sandy, all in vain. It's like expecting a child to enjoy scenery or read Shakespeare.
We live next to and are actually part of a resort area called Ko Olina. There are four man made lagoons in Ko Olina where the sand is always soft and the ocean is always calm. Nothing bad can happen here and, not surprisingly, a Disney hotel will be added soon.
About a week into Christmas break, the lure of the beach wore off a little and the weather turned rainy so we went to the Dole Plantation. It used to be an actual plantation where pineapples were grown and processed. However, there were other islands with more desperate people willing to work for less money so the pineapples went there and the plantation has been converted from agriculture into a more lucrative tourist attraction. It's a big cheesy nightmare with the world's biggest maze and every possible pineapple product made but the girls enjoyed it.
Here is Caroline having a close encounter with a train. In our back yard, we not only have a beach, a park, a wedding chapel, and a luau, we also have a set of railroad tracks. I didn't realize they were functional tracks until we had been here a few days. Every Sunday a train goes by twice in the afternoon. It's a touristy looking thing so we decided to check it out while the girls were here. The railroad and train are maintained by the Hawaiian Railway Society which is composed entirely of elderly men who share an unhealthy interest in trains. The train ride itself was about 90 minutes long with constant narration by one of those elderly men who provided a stream of facts about trains interspersed with really stupid jokes. We will not be repeating the experience with future guests.

More Christmas with Olivia and Caroline to come in future posts.

Find the real soldier

More photo highlights from Lori's visit

I didn't mean to give the impression in the last post that there was no lying on the beach during Lori's visit. Here we are at Bellows Beach on the east side of Oahu, one of the most beautiful stretches of beach on the island. It is a beach that is only open to military folks and their guests. It's one of the little perks the military gives you in exchange for risking life, limb, and family happiness in preemptive wars of choice.
We spent a considerable amount of time on the North Shore shopping and dining and enjoying the beaches. This beach is Haleiwa Alii Beach Park where we sat and watched the surfers wiping out.
This is my back yard and you can't quite see the tiny beach in the photo but it's there. We parked ourselves here on Lori's second to last night and watched the sunset. The mountains in the background are the Waianae Mountains which run up the entire west side of the island.
The actual sunset that evening wasn't as dramatic as the aftermath.

Photo highlights from Lori's visit

Some people come to Hawaii to lie on the beach the whole time. Lori is not one of those people. This is a photo from our hike to Manoa Falls through a bamboo forest.
The aforementioned bamboo forest.
The Hilton Hawaiian Village could be called a hotel in Waikiki but is more like a cruise ship in its wretched excess. There are fountains, exotic birds (including penguins), pools, restaurants, an entire shopping mall and a great beach. The Hilton Hawaiian Village is why the terrorists hate us.
Lori on Waikiki beach with Diamond Head in the background. Lori wanted to climb Diamond Head because the guide book said everyone should do it. Unfortunately I had already done it and it was kind of strenuous. I talked her out of it by convincing her that the views of the city and coast were just as good from the other volcano in Honolulu and you can drive to the top of Punchbowl. However, we never got around to it. Sorry Lori.
Fun with rambutan at Chinatown. You actually eat the eyeball part at the center of this exotic fruit. Even better were the longan which are sweeter and more eyeball-like.

Scrabble in paradise