It’s truly unbelievable how much ‘stuff’ we accumulate, and you don’t realize it until you have to pick it all up and move it somewhere. Moving from a 2000 square foot house to a 600 square foot apartment really shows it. Before moving Kim and I donated boxes and boxes of books, clothes and other things thinking we’d be lean and mean for the move. Then we opened up cupboards and cabinets and nearly cried. Thanks goodness we’re getting this taken care of now and not right before we’re planning on leaving the country for Peru.
On the upside, it’s easier than ever before to get rid of ‘stuff’ responsibly, that is not just throwing it in the dumpster. Anyone who hasn’t heard of craigslist has been living under a rock and missing out on the best mover of stuff maybe ever. Freecycle is another cool idea, but I use it much less often. People will come and take your stuff off your hands, usually picking it up at your house and sometimes paying for it! It’s a great way to accumulate a lot of stuff for dirt cheap too… Of course, if your stuff is worth a lot and small it’s probably better to put it on ebay and get more money for it. Or you could get all philanthropic and probably save yourself a lot of time by donating your stuff. I’m finding out the tax benefits are decent too now that I’m having to itemize my tax returns. For clothes we like giving to The Last White Elephant in Seattle, which uses money from sales for educating people about animal rights and vegetarianism. Books and CDs we always give to EcoEncore, partly because Kim used to work there but mostly because they’re a great organization that uses proceeds to support local environmental nonprofits.
EcoEncore even promotes a great book called Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everday Things that’s a great little read on how much energy actually goes into making ‘stuff’.
The less stuff I have, the better I feel lately, no matter how much I sometimes crave buying new toys, they don’t usually satisfy me for long, but having a clean, clutter-free environment really does feel satisfying, even if it’s difficult.
At last, we’ve rented our house out and will be moving to Capitol Hill! We applied for the place today and will probably move in Wed or Thurs. Kim will be able to walk to school and I will be able to bike to work without getting totally nasty sweaty. We almost splurged and got a place on Queen Anne with a Space Needle view, but then we found a closer place for cheaper that we liked.
I don’t think there will be time to throw a goodbye party for the house we’ve lived in the last 2 years since people are moving in on the 24th, but it’s been a good time, and hopefully the house will continue to be a good one to own. See y’all on Capitol Hill.
I said earlier I wanted to take swing lessons, but lindy is pretty darn similar. Kim and I are loving the class through the UW Experimental College taught by Travis Whetman and Lorraine. Kim and I had seen lindy once before at the Century Ballroom, but with only a 1/2 hour intro to it, we really didn’t get it. However, even that one night of just trying it helped a lot, because there’s these weird triple steps all over that just take a lot of getting used to. Kim said I’m probably the best lead in the class, which is something I’m not used to at all. However, that’s not saying much, especially as we’ve gone out dancing recently and watched some really good dancers that just blow me away. It’s like watching a gap commercial with people jitterbugging all over and jumping and being thrown.
Anyway, it seems like learning to lead is really hard to start, and not all that fun and just awkward for the first few dance classes, but once you get some basic leading down, it applies all over the place and makes classes really fun.
Kim surprised me today with a trip to Banya 5 and a deep tissue massage. I felt sick with a sore throat last night and knew I wasn’t going in to work today, and I slept for 13 hours. It was wonderful. I was on the verge of lucid dreams a few times too, but kept waking up for some reason when I realized I was dreaming. Kim had been planning this trip the last few days and didn’t tell me anything. On the way there she finally told me where we were going since I was driving. We relaxed in the steam room and sauna before I went upstairs for my hour long deep tissue massage. I’ve never had professional deep tissue massage before, but I’m never getting that wimpy Swedish style relaxation massage again. At a few points the massage was on the verge of being too much but never was. I still feel good from it. After the massage we spent another few hours doing the spa thing before finally heading home. Now that’s a kick ass valentines. Forget dinner and flowers.
It’s time for me to branch my blogging: one for personal stuff, one for work related technical stuff. I’ve never really wanted my personal blog to be big on search results for my name, even if I have a way of keeping my personal posts mostly personal. However, it’s always bothered me a little that searching for “Matt Robinson” I don’t even register on the first 5 pages (I quit looking after that). So I’ve nabbed a sweet new domain: mattrobinson.net. Both .com and .org had been taken, and honestly I’m surprised this one hadn’t with all the matt robinsons there are. Now I can write technical, nerdy stuff and get recognized for it. Potential employers will Google me and find stuff that looks good for a job app instead of my vacations and movie reviews that I post here at mmrobins.com.
Anyway, hopefully anyone who actually reads this isn’t upset about possibly subscribing to two RSS feeds, but then most people who read this don’t even know what RSS is, so they definitely won’t miss my tech writing, of which there should be a lot more now on the other site.
(I had this 90% written for the last few months and am just now finishing it. This happens right after The Big Island at the end of October 2006 to early November) Kim and I flew into Lihue, got our rental car, and got out. However, first we tried to find camp stove fuel that would fit my pocket rocket stove. As far as we could tell, the only place on the whole island that sells this kind of fuel is Pedal N Paddle in Hanalei. Fortunately, we were heading that way. We camped the first night at Kokee State Park, and in the morning sat around waiting for Pedal N Paddle to open so that we would have fuel for our hike into Na Pali.
We hiked all the way in to Kalalau in one day. That was a hard hike. It’s only 11 miles, but it’s all up and down, often along steep, very tall cliffs. It was a beautiful hike. The trail isn’t nearly as well maintained after the 6 mile mark, which has the last pit toilet before Kalalau. We thought about camping there, but we got there early and the camp spots aren’t that cool. At one point we followed a bad side trail, and were about to turn around and go back to find the right one when some crazy guy hiking in barefoot told us we were on the right path. Turns out he was wrong, but he lives out at Kalalau and didn’t seem to mind leading us up crazy streams to get back onto the trail.
We got into Kalalau right at sunset, and didn’t get to see everything before the sun went down. There is no way I would ever want to hike that trail in the dark, even with big head lampst. We setup camp and ate. We were both exhausted and a little beat up. I found the waterfall at the end of the beach to wash up. This waterfall is probably the best part of the camp. It’s refreshing, fresh, beautiful water that’s perfect for a shower. There’s even pipes people have modified to make nice showerheads. Kim waited until morning.
The next day we setup the hammock and just lounged on the beach all morning. It was heavenly. I wish we had budgeted more time, because we decided that we needed to start the hike out that day to avoid doing the whole thing in a day again. It was a smart choice, but if I ever go back I’m spending at least a few days at Kalalau. We hiked to the 6 mile camp, Hanakoa, setup the tent, and took the valley trail to see the waterfall. The path to the waterfall is okay to follow with daylight, but you’ll get easily lost if you try to do it at night. We almost did since we were hiking back right as the sun was going down. We were within 300 ft of the camp and totally lost in the dark. Kim suddenly developed amazing navigational skills and got us back. We cooked in our tent because the bugs were pretty bad.
The next day we did another side hike to Hanakapi’ai falls, which turned out to be one of the most enjoyable waterfalls of the trip. We could swim under the waterfall and behind it. We got there and were the only ones there since we hiked through a torrential rain storm while others took shelter. We were already soaked so figured why bother. After enjoying the secluded spot for a little while, a few dozen people showed up and took over. We then left.
It felt sooooo good to get off the trail after 3 days of hard hiking. Especially since we knew we had a timeshare in Poipu for the next week where we could live civilized for a little while. On the way down we stopped at the Taro festival in Hanalei as it was ending. We discovered that Poi could be very tasty if prepared well, and that we wanted more Kava.
We checked in to the Lawai Beach Resort, which we got a screaming deal on thanks to Kim’s parents time share membership. We got a week with our own small apartment for $300! We could cook our own food, sleep in a bed, shower regularly. Ahhhh. It rained very heavily the first few days, so we took it easy. We drove around the area, and went to a few timeshare presentations. By going to these silly presentations we got screaming deals on later events.
One of those events was a boat tour on a Zodiak boat. We got right next to a group of spinner dolphins, including a baby. We beached on some remote beach and had lunch and snorkeled. We took the boat in a sea cave and it was a beautiful day the whole time, which was great because it had poured like crazy the days before.
We also went to a luau. It was at one of the upscale hotels, I forget which one. It was fun to be all you could eat and drink, but the entertainment wasn’t that amazing. I think I liked the fire dancers best.
We spent a day exploring the Waimea Canyon area. It was overcast and drizzly most of the day, but very pretty. We didn’t hike down into it because of the weather and how slippery the trails were.
Another benefit of our time share time was a half off helicopter tour. It was pretty amazing. Kim had never been in a helicopter before, and I hadn’t been since Alaska. It was sweet to see all the places that we had been by land and sea, now by air. When we went up it was crystal clear too. The pilot said it was the clearest he had seen in probably 3 or 4 months. The only downside to this is that at the end of the ride there’s a place where if it’s raining there’s waterfalls all around you on the rainiest spot on earth. No rain that day.
After about 10 days on the island we checked out of our timeshare and headed back to Oahu for one more day in Hawaii before home.