Yesterday, after returning from the long weekend with Mom, I tried valiently to catch up on my Intarweb™ communications: reading emails, skimming websites, scanning blogs. About two hours into my word overload, I came across Messina's post about Boris being in town.

Boris is Fru's Canadian twin, and there's pretty much no way I was missing an opportunity to hang out with him. To my surprise, he was down in Mountain View (for an Identity Workshop), and needed a ride into the City. WhoO! Captive audience!

So, I drove to the Computer History Museum, picked him up, and off we went, heading up 280, talking about Drupal, various projects, my work, his work, Vancouver and the Bay Area, roadtrips and vacations, and all sorts of topics in between. We arrived an hour early for dinner, so wandered around looking for a Sephora, to buy a hairbrush for his wife, but ended up at the corporate headquarters instead, so no brush.

When we arrived, we asked if there was a reservation under "Messina," but were told there wasn't, did we want to sit? Sure, so appetizers, a lychee tini and a mango tango later and we were all set. Terrell Russell and Fred Stutzman of ClaimID showed up, and we moved to the table Messina had indeed reserved, under the accidental name "Christ."

Holly and Bill Ward, Kieran, Zach, Niel, Tantek, Messina, Tara, Cal, two people I didn't know all showed up and had a wonderful dinner. I enjoyed talking to Fred and Terrell, about all their various projects (ah, the time available to doctorate students). After dinner, we wandered over to Mel's diner for dessert, having been unable to find an open gelato place for dessert.

Turns out, Boris was staying at a hotel around the corner from my house, so heading home was easy. We talked more projects, with Boris (Bobo, Bruno, take your pick), with his asking what project I would work on if I could work on any project. I talked about Mom's website, a Drupal rewrite of ultiteam.org, and a start of ultileague.org. Boris liked Mom's project, so once I'm done with my super seekrit Drupal module, I'll start work on that.

A remarkably wonderful evening. Really must head up to Vancouver to say hello.

Oh, and Brussells in September.

This morning, as I was going through the 1800 email messages I received while I was gone this past weekend, I received a call from the 402 area code. Not recognizing it immediately, I answered it. It was a sales guy from Omaha Steaks, where I had bought steaks from recently. We receive a box of steaks every Christmas from Kris' parents, but they're always gone by February. I figured I'd help out on the quick, but tasty, meal front and order extras in March to last us through at least July. Much more than what I ordered and we would have zero room in our freezer.

So, the phone rings, I answer, the sales guy starts speaking. After an introduction, he starts the sales pitch, "I'd like to tell you about our specials happening right now," ending with the rhetorical question, "if I may?" I immediately responded, "No, you may not."

This threw him off for a moment, as I continued, "This is a business phone. Please remove it from your call list."

"Oh, sure, let me do that. What number can I use instead?"

"I don't have another number. Please remove this one from your list."

"How about if we call you quarterly?"

"No, remove the number."

"But we have our best deals quarterly. Take for example the reserve filets where we take ..." and he went off on the exact spiel I tried to avoid by requesting my number be removed from his list.

I listened for about ten seconds, my annoyance growing. Sure, I was impressed how deftly this guy turned the conversation around to exactly what he wanted to be saying. However, it was exactly what I didn't want to hear.

How much courtesy do I owe someone who is being particularly rude? How long do I listen to someone's sales pitch for something I already declined? Sure, the best deals are by phone, but how often do I make those purchases (oh, once so far)? And how much will I have? Maybe eight, ten dollars?

Not worth it. I hung up.

Pleasant day strolling around Hawai'i with Mom today. As she said, "We're in, as well as on, Hawai'i." My first time on the big island.

We arrived, picked up the car, drove to the town of Kailua Kona (the other Kailua!), found the Jamba Juice, Borders and Starbucks before shopping at the Safeway (finding the biggest avocado I have ever seen, then buying it - it was bigger than my mother's breasts (combined!)), dropped all of our stuff off at the condo, then dashed off to the town of Captain Cook for souvenier and knick-knack viewing (where most everything was crap, I have no idea how those places stay in business).

Since we had arrived fairly late in the afternoon, had been up really early in the morning, and spent time dealing with the condo, most of the good tourist places were closed. Heh, like we go to the normal tourist places. Heck, are there any real tourist places on the Big Island?

Mom really wanted to go to a local thrift store, where she's been finding fantastic deals on secondhand clothes, but the store was closed. There was a garden next to it, so we wandered through it. It was absolutely gorgeous. Lots of interesting plants, various palms and beautiful flowers.

We wandered to the fabric store, which Mom just loves. She wasn't able to find a new pattern she loved, but I found a crapload of, well, crap. There were things there that were years, nay, decades old. I kept wondering, why have this stuff around? Do they really expect to sell it someday?

Afterward, I convinced Mom to head over to a nursery. I'm not quite sure why it is, but I always seem to find plants and pots I want when I'm at inconvenient nurseries.

We were tired, given the time zone change, so, we went to dinner early, then to bed early.

At the garden today, there was a "Live Aloha" flyer. I kept a copy, because I liked what it said:

Respect your elders and children.
Leave places better than you find them.
Hold the door.  Hold the elevator.
Plant something.
Dine with courtesty.  Let others in.
Attend an event of another culture.
Return your shopping cart.
Get out and enjoy nature.
Pick up litter.
Share with your neighbors.
Create smiles.
Make a list of your own.

I've discovered my true reasons for marrying Kris.

He reminds me of my mother.

Today, we had to leave from Helen and Toss' house at 6:00 to get to the airport in time for our flight. Or so we were told, based on Friday morning security line and traffic patterns. In reality, leaving at 6:03 AM meant we were at the terminal before the airport had posted which gate our flight was departing from.

But, at that point, I had been awake for two hours, and already ready to go back to sleep.

Mom declared the night before she was getting up at 4:30 AM. "Why so early?" I moaned.

"Because it takes me that long to get going in the morning."

"It takes me that long, too, but you don't see me getting up that early."

"You might tomorrow, dearie."

Along came 4:30 AM, and off went the alarms. Mom turned it off, and snuggled back into bed. I, vaguely awake, thought, "All right, some sense!" and started drifting back to sleep.

To be woken up nine minutes later with the realization that Mom had hit snooze and her alarm was going off again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

She managed to get up around 5 after only a half hour of snoozing. Remarkly similar to Kris, except he has her beat with his usual one hour of snoozing, which is really one hour less of sleep for me. I'd rather sleep soundly with that extra hour than wake up every nine minutes to turn off the snooze.

Last Friday, I had dinner with Pine. He barbequed, dinner was tasty, movies entertaining. Before dinner, he offered me my choice of wine glass size: small, medium, or large. I requested small, but he handed me a medium glass, pointing out the wine needed to breathe and the medium glass would do that better than the small one.

He then took out a large glass for himself to use.

A really big glass.

"This glass will hold a bottle of wine."

"It will not."

"Yes, it will."

"Prove it."

Rather than pouring the whole bottle of wine he just opened into the glass, as I was pre-drinking encouraging him to do, he filled up a measuring glass to 750 mL and poured it into the glass.

It fit.

Fast forward to tonight's communal dinner. Paul and I are washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, with Doyle helping dry and clean, too. Paul had just finished washing a really big wine glass, handing it to me to dry. I dried it, and said, "You know, this glass will hold a full bottle of wine."

"No, it won't."

"Sure it will."

"No, it won't. Who would believe that glass can hold a full bottle of wine?" Paul asked.

"Kitt." Doyle piped in.

"Fine," and I went about putting the glass away as Paul and Doyle continued talking about it. As I wandered back, I heard something about a wager. Neither seemed to believe me, so I just said, "I'll take the wager," and went to get an empty bottle.

I filled the bottle with water, comfirmed the level was reasonable with Paul, took out the glass and started pouring.

When the bottle was half way empty, and the glass looked three fourths full, I started thinking, "Crap. This may not be a Pine-large wine glass. Crap, crap, crap." But I kept pouring.

And pouring.

And pouring.

To end with the water level a half inch below the top of the glass. I turned to Paul, "What did I win?"

"Paul will be the team drink bitch."

"Sweet!"

Too bad I won't be at practice this Sunday. There's a team barbeque. I'll have to make sure the team abuses the privilege.