Now that the holidaze is fading away I’m able to think again so I might be writing here more often now.  I like a good party from time to time but we’ve had parties to attend every week since Thanksgiving.  We were supposed to go with some friends to Todai’s for dinner last night but I gotta admit, as good as Todai’s is, I just wasn’t in the mood for driving 2 hours away and hope I don’t get stuck in the Seahawks pre and/or post game traffic.  So I called our friends and told them we were gonna pass on this trip.  No worries though because next week is another gathering for the same guy.

So anyway, I’ve been periodically checking this site for new comments and clearing out all the spam that’s been waiting in moderation and I happened to notice that my rant about how United Airline Sucks has been getting comments from others who have experienced the same sort of headaches and mistreatment from the airline staff.

On the homefront we’ve already taken down our holiday decorations and surprisingly, it only took about 3 hours.  Gotta love an uber-organized hubby to keep things in ship shape order.  He does it so next year we won’t have to open so many boxes to find the items we want to use.  If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have to check the boxes because I’d want a new theme for next year so I’d buy new stuff.  Fortunately for our budget and hubby’s sanity it’s not up to me. Ok Lika, now you know I’m a theme person. ~LOL~

I’ve surprised a few people this year.  My mom for instance.  She wasn’t expecting anything from me but I slipped a check into her christmas card and she was so surprised that it promted her to spend a few precious cellphone minutes to call and thank me.  My son was also shocked to receive their box BEFORE the kids outgrew the clothes we bought as gifts.  We have this inside joke about me always sending the box 6 months after their birthdays or Christmas, and that’s being generous.  Take last year for instance, I bought my grand daughter some back-to-school items that stayed packed away in the closet all year until they came to visit this past summer.  When I gave it to her, it was filled with books and other stuff that I bought during the school year with the intention of sending them to her “sometime soon”.  It was cool with her though, she was thrilled to receive it personally from Grams.

I just have to rave about our New Years Eve dinner.  Ok, traditionally we have Turkey and all the fixings for Thanksgiving.  For Christmas, we have Prime Rib and for NY’s eve we have Hawaiian food.  I called my son in Hawaii and asked him to send me 10 packages of laulau (3/per pack) and 2 large bags of poi that was the start of the menu.  Our friend Rose (from Saipan) brought me 2 takos to make poke with, I had two of my own which I used to make squid luau, Rose also fried akule.  Our other friends from Hawaii, Kim and Chris, made kalua pig, lomi salmon and haupia - from scratch!  I always used the NOH-fail mixes so kudos to Kim!  We had a spread of island favorites including ahi poke.  My mouth is watering as I type this.  We invited a black couple that we’ve made friends with and they absolutely loved everything.  While most people would make icky faces when they hear the fish is raw these people just embraced the culture and our foods.  It was awesome.  Our local friends commented on how happy they were when the husband closed his eyes and sighed as he ate the food.  It was a great experience for us to witness and for them to enjoy.  Oh yeah, and Meg invited a girl who comes from Nanakuli.  She was eating my mock squid luau (I used canned spinach because I didn’t have time to get luau leaves) when she told me she had everything to make squid luau in her freezer but she doesn’t know how to prepare it.  I gave her my “R U NUTS??” look then told her that I had to use canned spinach to make mine.  She looked down at her plate and told me she hates spinach.  I told her that it sure didn’t look that way because she was woofing the squid luau.  She laughed and said it tasted like the real thing.  We had fun that night and everyone went home with a full opu.