Life has actually picked up speed quite a bit, and I am—dare I say it?—busy. It’s nice to feel like my days have purpose, but I miss having endless time to lie on the beach and read books and ponder stuff.
We had a good time with Lauren…. Well, it was good to see her, but her time here was maybe not ideal. She came at the beginning of a massive wind storm, in which 50-60 mph wind off the ocean blew for two days straight, brought frequent bursts of rain, and literally began to tear our roof off. Her first morning, a cane spider joined us in the kitchen for breakfast. (We thoroughly killed this one, after screaming, running away from it, dousing it in bleach spray, and throwing a flip flop at it. Jeanie’s better with the actual killing of insects, but I am not squeamish about wiping up the guts afterwards. We make a good team.) On Friday, we had to work from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., between our two jobs, so Lauren entertained herself around Kahului and Paia.
We did have some fun while she was here. We went to the Grand Wailea beach, where it was windy but sunny, and Jeanie and I boogie boarded and got murdered by the waves—at one point, for a brief second, after being shoved and thrown about under water by a wave, I was sure I had broken my neck (obviously I didn’t, but my back hurt really bad for a few days and still kinda hurts). I can’t believe people surf waves larger than those. Lauren left Sunday night, and we were glad to have had our first visitor to show off our little life to.
Training at Seattle’s Best has been really pleasant so far. We have this smokin’ trainer from the mainland, Raphael, who is both energetic and laid back, and we’ve all been having fun getting to know each other. There are nine of us, eight women and one 20-something guy: Michael, our supervisor; Mae, Pat, Sanoe, and Jeffree, who worked at the Border’s Café before it became a Starbucks; Sunny, who is white but was born and raised in HI; Melissa, who has lived here three years; and us. It’s cool to feel an equal sense of ownership in the café, since we’re all starting together, and I haven’t gotten too overwhelmed, even after we started talking about recipes for all the drinks. I made an awesome latte today, my first ever :). We’ve been doing a lot of coffee tasting, and I’m SO wired from it, I hardly slept last night (not to mention Jeanie and I got up at 6:30 this morning to watch the presidential inauguration at Charley’s…. We missed most of it, but it was still fun to join the huge crowd for the tail end of it). I’m almost set on uniforms—we have to wear black or khaki pants or capris, and white or black collared shirts. It’s not too bad, though they have a lot of nit-picky specifications within that, like you have to wear a belt if your pants have belt loops, and your socks have to match your pants.
Oh, one annoying thing is that for working in food service, I have to get a TB test—not such a huge deal except that I was immunized against it as a baby, so a skin test is likely to be positive. I went to the free clinic today to ask about a chest x-ray, and they said I had to get the skin test first…. So I got the shot, will go back on Friday to get it checked, and then I might have to still get the x-ray. What a hassle.
I know this is getting long, but one final thing: Yesterday we were stopped at a red light, and this elderly man in the car next to us starts talking to me out his window. Turns out he needed directions somewhere, and who better to ask than the two girls driving the crappy car? I’ve been asked for directions quite a bit, but I’ve never given them as smoothly as I did right then. I almost felt like a local.
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