I know it may sound cliche, or repetitive, but I just love my life in Hawaii. Guess I will get all the sleep I need when I am dead.

finally moved into my place at work, evidently the fastest I can get internet hooked up is on the 15th of December so I am surfing free wi-fi at Starbucks right now. Got most of our furniture, loving my job, making good friends, now looking for a car.

Today we went to Brandon’s house in Ko’Olina for thanksgiving, stuffed ourselves on some excellent food, and then went down to Paradise Cove after to snorkel. I have never been in the Ocean before and was amazed at how salty it was. I saw amazingly colored fishes, but the highlight of my day was the Sea Turtle, he was enormous, came right over by me, so I started to swim along side him for a while, at points he would meander closer to me out of curiosity, and then wander back out, and then eventually he took off for the deeper ocean and I went back in to shore, it was awesome, and I will always remember it. I love living in Hawaii.

Loving it out here in Hawai’i. I met my lab manager, his name is Justin, and so far he is a pretty cool guy, glad I will be working with him. All in all this was a great decision moving out here, plan to go snorkelling in some secret local lagoons that have been recommended to me, still so crazy learning how to drive and get around here, still looking for an apartment, looking for a car, but have a feeling that things are going to work out well.

It just overwhelmingly beautiful out here, the weather is wonderful, the scenery is gourgeous and there is something amazing everywhere I turn. I wanted to take more time to absorb before I posted something here about it, but the only thing I can say is life seems like a completely different kind of thing here…I think Joe and I are going to like it here.

busy packing, trying to condense my whole life down to 3 bags of luggage. Starting over a whole new life in Oahu

I just got back from a public library event “An evening with Max Brooks”, Max is famous for his Books; “The Zombie Survival Guide”, “World War Z” (my personal favorite, and soon to be made into a motion picture starring in and produced by Brad Pitt) and now his newest book “The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks”. I tried to go two years ago when he was last here, but got stuck at work, so being able to see him in these last few weeks of my being Vegas was a real treat for me. He spent the last hour taking questions, and I actually got to ask one. I asked “Zombies are penetrating into the collective consciousness of our society more now more deeply than any other time in history, What reason would you guess why that is?” and he had a very interesting answer, which was not at all what I expected, he said “Well you remember back in the 70’s, there was un-popular wars, a huge financial crisis, environmental catastrophes. Then along came George Romero’s Dead movies and they were a hit because…” and then he went on a little tangent about how Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” was a blistering indictment of the Baby Boomer generation, and then returned to his point to summarize, “ and they were popular because they are a problem you can solve by shooting them in the head!” So, in some sense, zombie fiction, at least with Romero zombies, they are a horrifying, and yet still manageable problem. I had always had a nagging suspicion that there was a Marxist interpretation to blame for most horror icons, for example, I had always thought that most iconic horror monsters tapped into a kind of economic fear about life-force, and that poor people, by and large, feared vampires ie Dracula, because he is wealthy (he has a castle, he wears a silk cape, has a title, etc), and survives by draining their life-force (blood as metaphor for work or wealth) and that, by and large, wealthy people has nightmares about zombies, vast hordes of those who do not have plentiful life-force (or wealth) rising up to take it from those who have it in abundance. I think that Max Brooks explanation is interesting though because it highlights an interesting controversy about the classic slow-walking Romero zombies and the newer fast-running ones, and that perhaps the classic zombies actually were fun in some way because they were scary but you could still handle them, and that the modern ones reflect despair and hopelessness in that they are terrifying and not manageable, they run forever with out getting tired, they attack with the fury of a cheetah and they truly are a force beyond any control. I wonder if these differences really reflect the different social mindset of these generations?

I just had a pharmacist use a special drug discount card for people who don’t have insurance for my partners heart medication and it saved us 50% on a 3 month supply, he said the card can be used by anyone (don’t know if it only works at target or not) here is the info: UNIVERSAL Rx CARD BIN: 600428 Group ID: 05361001 PCN: 05080000 Member ID: 05361002 it says on the card “Discounts average 28%”, “Any drug” and at the bottom left it says “FOR PHARMACY TECHS”, “APPLY DISCOUNT FOR CASH PAYERS”, then finally “UNLIMITED CARDHOLDERS & USES”