Good Bye Paradise! I'm having second thoughts about this....

The catching up continues.....

It is here - moving day. We loaded up almost all our worldly possessions into a big box, and then watched as some dude came and shook it like a Polaroid picture before putting it on his truck and driving it away to the docks, where he supposedly shook it again to make sure everything that could break would before he put it on the boat. You have to make sure of these things - some slacker on the mainland might drop the proverbial ball. Or container.


David is tired. You have to pack the container perfectly evenly, which is harder than it sounds, even when you have David's foresight.

Also, naturally, at one point I was mountain-goating it over all our stuff to move it around and slipped on who knows what and fell on an upside-down chair. I was out of commission for a few hours.

The best part is while this whole 'pack up our lives and put it in a box' weekend was happening, we kept getting interrupted by the police wanting to question us.

The long and short of it is this - annoying. No really, our bike/car reside in an underground, gated garage. Of course it was stolen out of this supposedly locked place the night before we sent all our stuff home in the PODS.

The best part is the video. Luckily, they actually had well-placed, running cameras. So you can clearly see the perp break in pick up a few choice things, hear a noise, duck behind a car, and then you can see US WALKING ACROSS THE PARKING LOT TO OUR CAR, noticing nothing. Considering that it is such a tiny garage (15 spots?) this is kind of a feat in being un-observant. I blame exhaustion. We were probably going out to get more bubble wrap or something.

Anyway, the real kicker is that after we pull out, our bikes come into view and you can see him stand up, crane his neck as he notices this new merchandise, and proceed to steal one of our bikes. Naturally, he took the Trek.

The only highlight as I watched this, under the eyes of several judging policepersons, was that when he got outside and tried to ride our bike, he fell over. Ha! Take that, jerk.

But we were still pissed.

For my last day at work, my wonderful coworkers went with me to lunch. I wanted to hit my favorite ramen place, as I knew I would probably not be able to find a good place in Dallas. Heck, before I moved out I thought ramen was only found in 10 cent packages at the grocery store. I was so wrong.

REAL RAMEN IS AMAZING. David, if you ever want to get me a fun bday present, a set of real ramen bowls with those circle wooden spoons would be good. I might even attempt the 5-hour long recipe. Make a note.

You know what else I'm going to miss?

STEAK SHACK. It too, is magically delicious.

MMMMMM

Finally, my great co-workers and boss. Here we are, in Davis' office, taking a break on the Playstation 3. Favorite games were Call of Duty and some quiz game that was actually pretty addictive. In the heat of battle, I may or may not have called my boss a bad word at some point. Luckily, he thinks that kind of thing is funny.

Hi Garren and Grant! I miss you guys.

View from the office

My office space! Darren (the DT to my TD!) Bought me a beautiful good-bye lei.

For my last beach outing, I wanted to hang out with the dogs, so we headed over to one of the prettiest spots- Lanikai.

One of the many flowers that just grows wild along the walk to the beach- it's kind of ridiculous.

Dude paddle-boarding with his dog. My dogs would never be that cool.

Final sand-sculpture. Of course it's a horse.

Tiff Was Here. And she will never be this tan again.

Hi and Goodbye to our engagement island.

I wanted sushi one last time, and I always have fun at those conveyor-belt places.

We went for a walk along Waikiki beach at night - not that you can tell. All the lit-up courtyards of the hotels reflecting off the water makes it truly lovely.

Best picture of approximately the 1,473 that we took, if you can believe it.

I really need to get a camera with a night setting. This is the great courtyard of the Sheraton on Waikiki. The lights strung from the trees were beautiful.

Hanging out with the bebes one last time.

Having a fun tropical who-knows what. I think I asked the waiter for the drink with the 'most things in it". It had a pineapple, cherry, orchid, and an umbrella in it. Ha.

Shortly after this David drove me to the airport and I flew back to the mainland. While I was glad to soon be able to see friends and family again, a few tears might have been shed as the plane turned away from the lit island and towards the darkened sea.

David party

For those poor souls who have me on their feeds for some crazy reason, this is me, still trying to catch up from when we were living in Hawaii.......

Sorry.



Some of David's friends at work got together and threw David and I a going away party at a park on the beach. We had a great day of football and hanging out, with all the best parts of Hawaii food we were going to miss - garlic chicken, malasadas, pineapple, etc. It was a nice day.

Team Building by Throwing Heavy Spheres

Bowling! I may be a huge dork, but I still love bowling. I think it's the pimptastic shoes. When I came across all these I remembered how much I miss working with these people.

Wendell, Grant, and the best boss ever, Davis

This is Reed, bowling. He was the consummate bachelor of the office, and all-around nice guy. He went to the Olympics in Bejing and brought me presents! Love him.

Having a good time. David had bonded with these people previously during another office fun-day, in which we all played paintball. I was the only girl in a field of Japenese buisnessmen, and I think they were taking it easy on me, bless their overly-polite hearts. At one point one of Davis' friends came around a corner at me and we both forze, not wanting to shoot the other person at such a close range. The ref came over and said ''no surrender in this game!'' And, well, I squeeeeeezed the trigger, bc man, I was not getting shot that close.

David, of course, had absolutely no problem shooting me. At one point, we were among the last few people in a game, and on opposite teams. I heard later from my coworkers who were out, watching from the sidelines that David sneaked up behind me, tried to shoot me but his gun jammed, wiggled the hell out of there to fix his gun, and then came back and shot me in the back. They were horrified on my behalf. Ha.

We're weird.

Reed was very good at bowling, and they throw the peace sign a lot over there. Apparently this is the 'I'm a boss' version.

Grant was good too. I'm pretty sure Davis lost some serious coin after this game.

Davis! So fun.

Shawn, Davis, Reed, and Dallas showing off their bowling moves.

My bowling 'form'? If you can call it that.

David, throwing the crazy face.

You know we closed that mother down, what?!

Arboretum

Look how happy he is. David loves him some Hawaii. I think we might have to retire him to ensure his happiness. Considering we had a 'Tiffany's life-long dream is to have a ranch with horses before she dies' clause in place before we got married, one of us needs to win the lottery to combine these two things.


The point of this post is just for us to relive a nice long lunch break we took one day, having a picnic in the Honolulu Arboretum. It was beautiful, the plants were exotic and fun, and mainly, I got to eat a lot of cheese. YESSS.

Smoked Meats. Mmmm

Cream puffs of Deliciousness

Powdered sugar mustache! David is kind of like a little kid - there is always some leftovers on his face. Love you dear!

I don't know what this is, but it's cool.

Apparently I'm going to be repeating the above statement a lot.

David as a totem pole.

Ginger! Ha ha, I knew one.

Orchids

Plumeria Tree

We had a wonderful time wandering the gardens together, and viewing the beautiful flora one last time before I left to go home to Texas.

Car-Baked Cookies

I saw this on one of the blogs I read, and I just had to post it for all of ya'll.

'Texas - it really IS an oven'

I'm probably going to have to try this at some point.

Car-Baked Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies July 19

It is scorching hot here and to put that heat to good use (i.e. to give me a reason to go outside and leave the air conditioning), I decided to bake up another batch of cookies, using my car as a oven. Baking cookies in a car is very easy and has the added benefit that you don’t heat up your house at all, but still get to eat freshly-baked cookies. I’ve posted some tips on how to bake cookies in the car before, but the most important things you need to know are:

It should be about 100F outside and the car must be in direct sunlight

Put a potholder or something under the baking sheet so you don’t damage your dash

Cut cookies into an even thickness so they cook at the same time

And, ideally, use an oven thermometer to make sure that your car gets up to about 180F (which it will as long as the windows are up and it’s 100F or more outside)

I like to use slice-and-bake cookies to ensure I get an even thickness, and this batch was Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, instead of the regular chocolate chip I’ve used in the past. The cookies baked up very well in the 180F+ car “oven” and even retained a hint of chewiness. If you don’t use a car, these can be baked in an oven, too. Mini chocolate chips make slicing the log of dough easier, but I actually used a mixture of regular-sized white and semisweet chocolate chips for these. They took a while to bake through, but since my car smelled like cinnamon when they were done, it was well worth it.

To see the original post from Baking Bites, click on the blog title.