Earlier today I was laying on my bed, looking out my skylight, basking in direct sunlight. Damn, it felt good. I’ve been so busy running around the past month that I haven’t had a chance to just kick back, do nothing, and smile at the fact I had no plans for the day. As I lay there, letting the sun send warm tingles throughout my body, I was reminded of a great Mary Oliver poem:

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone-
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance-
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love-
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed-
or have you too
turned from this world-

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Mary Oliver

I’m finally home! I’ve spent 22 of the last 30 days traveling: Seattle, Edinburgh, Dundee, London, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and Dallas. Being in one place for the whole time would have been okay, but all this hopping between trains, planes, and automobiles has completely worn me out. I’m reminded of my consulting days and how much I hated perpetual travel. Luckily, I was able to intersperse some time with family and friends among all the work travel. That definitely makes it worth it.

I’m looking forward to being home for awhile.

Though I’d heard of the ‘Building Virtual Worlds’ course when I was at CMU, I hadn’t heard of one of the course professors, Randy Pausch; I wish I had and I wish I’d gotten to know him when I was there.

On September 18th, Randy gave his Last Lecture during CMU’s first Journeys University Lecture Series. Randy is dying of pancreatic cancer (3-6 months left to live) and he’s given us a talk full of hope, inspiration, and wisdom. He called it “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. Please watch it; you’ll want to clap at the end.

Thank you, Neema and Shamit, for emailing me about it.

Last week, I got back from my first trip out to Hawai’i. Though I went to O’ahu for a work conference, I was able to take the weekend before and after the conference to tour some of the other islands. Kaua’i, the oldest island that can be visited, was absolutely beautiful. Kaua’i is unique in that it is one of the few islands that doesn’t have a road completely encircling it; much of this island is still completely undeveloped. There is even part of the northern coast that has only one-lane bridges and thus doesn’t see much industrial traffic! In the three days I was there, I was able to hike along the Na’pali coast (if you ever go, definitely hike some portion of the Kalalau Trail), swim in and stumble upon hidden, postcard-perfect tide pools, roam around small, Hawaiian towns, snorkel among reef systems, check out the largest canyon system in the Pacific basin, check out tons of waterfalls, and take a helicopter ride. Of the three islands I visited, Kaua’i was easily my favorite. At some point, I plan on going back for at least a week.

If you ever visit Kaua’i, I recommend the following:

1. Spend lots of time on the northern, wetter, Na’pali coast. This is your best bet for snorkeling, tide-pool exploring, hiking, and relaxing.
2. Visit the Queen’s Bath tide-pool on the northern coast. This pool is tons of fun to swim in and there are quite a few other tide-pools around that are more secluded (and more beautiful, in my opinion). Swimming in these pools is great because you have the ocean crashing up on the rocks and sometimes gushing into the pool knocking you around a bit. Fun and beautiful.
3. Take a helicopter tour! I went with Jack Harter Helicopters in their open-door Hughes 500 copter and it was worth every last cent. Seriously, don’t pass this up! On the tour you’ll be able to get up close and personal with the numerous waterfalls fed by Mount Wai’ale’ale, one of the wettest spots on earth (460+” rain a year) and see the island in a way that’ll leave you dazed, smiling, and speechless for hours. Ahhh…the water is sooooo blue from the air!
4. Visit the Waimea Canyon (where I took my rainbow shots).
5. Pick up $3, factory-reject Red Dirt Shirts from the Red Dirt Shirt outlet in Port Allen. These guys use one bucket of the local red dirt to stain 500 shirts. Don’t pay full price, the shirts fade quickly.
6. Hike some, if not all, of the 11-mile Kalalau Trail on the Na’pali coast. If you want to hike the whole thing (I wish I could have) you’ll have to get permits so you can camp on the remote beaches along the way. The whole hike is supposed to be phenomenal. From what I saw of the two miles I hiked, I believe it!

If you need a good book about Kaua’i, I highly, highly recommend The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook; I found it much more useful than the Lonely Planet book for Kaua’i.

More pictures from the other islands later!

As someone who loves photography and thinks some graffiti is really artistic, I *love* this blog post on COLOURlovers. Though I haven’t tried it with glowsticks, my not-so-little brother and I played around making hearts and squares with sparklers this past Fourth of July.

[Update: Be sure and check out the flickr album! Way, waaaaaaay cool!]

Over July 4th, for the first time in over 2 years, I got to spend more than a couple of days in the hot and humid trenches of Atlanta. I had an absolutely wonderful time and, after my 10 days were up, I wished I could stay for the rest of the summer. My little brother, big brother, bhabie, niece, nephew, and I talked, played games, went to the beach, lit fireworks, did yard work, took walks, cooked food, laughed, played tag, took goofy pictures, and just chilled. The side benefits were the forests of deciduous trees and, people may laugh at this, the feeling of moisture in the air and on the skin.

What made the trip more special was that my little brother was visiting for the summer because my parents are out of the country. It was the first time us three brothers and bhabie have been together, without our parents, for an extended period of time. Lots of good bonding time. I really hope all four of us can hang out together more often; it was a blast. And my niece and nephew…*sigh*…I love those guys!

This past solstice, a group of friends and I were treated to a distinctly Scandinavian style of Midsommar celebration in Madrid, NM (an old mining-town-turned-art-colony). We had herring (ugh), cheese, bread, strawberries (mmm), and homemade aquavit (ouch) and we danced around a small maypole. It was pretty hot out so I introduced some waterballoons to cool us off (check out the pictures). For the evening, Zach clued us into the Handsome Family Band at the Mineshaft Tavern and we got to do a little two-stepping. It was a good day and night; thanks Helena and Zach!