Fun fact: geckos sing.

This beautiful flower is called a Bird of Paradise, for obvious reasons. They are quite large, and apparently a good hiding place for sneaky little geckos.

"What sets the world in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions... By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life."

Kofi Annan

For the love of Spring.

Corinne, Kirsten and I decided to take a few pictures together, before going our separate ways for the summer.

Corinne is in Vietnam, Kirsten in Washington and I'll be in Italy.

Hawaii: The Aloha State

My trip to Hawaii was full of surprises. Good and bad, though predominately positive. This first set of pictures are just a small part of my adventures.

Disclaimer: my camera was having trouble focusing on automatic, so I had to use the manual focus. Sadly, most of the pictures that other people took of me are blurry, because they couldn't figure out the manual focus, despite my instruction.

This is Ryan. He was visiting as well, and hadn't gone to the Dole Plantation yet. Most of the people I spent time with didn't like to do the touristy things, since they live on Oahu.

Makapuu Point Lighthouse.

This lighthouse was so beautiful- it felt like New England. The Saturday before Easter Sunday we did a sunrise hike up to it.

The shops around Oahu are generally little and run down, like this one. They sell rice and pork. All the time.

These last pictures were taken at Sacred Falls. This hike is a little scary. The deeper you get into the mountain, it turns into a slot canyon. A few years ago there was a rock slide that killed quite a few people, but, we got by without any mishaps.

April: the fourth month of the year, consisting of 30 days

"April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain"

T.S. Eliot

these are a few of my favorite things

We went to Payson and ran (well, walked) a 1 mile/5k "non-race". The point was to get people active, without having it be a competition. The girls were great- Megan even wanted to do the full 5k, so Kim and I continued with her, while Rusty stayed with Liz and Katie and played in the park. It was a lot of fun- and we even got these sweet medals at the end.

Liz doesn't like pictures. Can you tell?

Later that night, we did a bit of bedaubing:

...to make these pretty nifty yarn balls. You dip the yarn in glue and wrap it around a balloon. Once they're dry, you pop the balloon, leaving you with a whimsical little yarn ball to decorate with as your heart desires.

I love hanging out with my nieces. (Though I'm glad I can pass them off when they get too cranky.)

From the wise words of Dante Alighieri:

And here we both sat down to face the east,

to rest, as we surveyed all we had climbed--

a backward glance can often lift the heart.

..."But would you kindly tell me, if you please,

how much more climbing we must do: this peak

soars higher than my eyes can see." And he:

"This mount is not like others: at the start

it is most difficult to climb, but then,

the more one climbs the easier it becomes"

The Divine Comedy

quattuordecillion

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That right there is a quattuordecillion. Sometimes, I feel like I have this many things to do. Naturally, it's really quite a bit less. Probably about 970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 things less.

Yesterday, I decided to ignore all those things and take some time to go running in the canyon. It was one of those days that makes me realize, in the long run, none of this stress really matters.