Mission Accomplished: No Sun Burn

6/10/09: Honolulu is a tourist trap. I know what you are thinking. Just stop it already. But wait... the beach, the zillion pretty Japanese women, surfing? Nope. Those things are real but its mostly retail, awful restaurants, jaywalking tickets, gigantic tourists in not enough clothes, and fascist swimming pool rules (every pool we could find closed at seven. almost as if the hotel gets a kickback from sunburn itself). At least the ocean was only off limits from 2am to 5am, an opening time we put to the test a few times. Unfortunately I was the only one brave enough to face the killer sharp rocks and heavy surf beyond the kiddie barriers they had erected in the water. Drunk and lonely and salty and contemplative in the tropics watching the sun come up? Yes please I guess but i would have settled for a vacation sweetheart.

The most fun I had was playing basketball because it was the only time I got to hang out with real Hawaiians. They are very short, they love pot, (which was weird, because it seems like it would be hard to import and the Honolulu PD is stacked. Like 10 to a block, bikes, cops on surfboards [not kidding], motorcycles, hummers. stacked.) they all have this funny laugh which is simultaneously warm and very shy. They cover their mouths when they laugh, even for raucous humor or sick burns, even teenage boys who play basketball and wear fubu or whatever. Did you know that basketball is very intense athletic activity? I forgot. But my teams won every time, even though I am terrible. Go defense, rebounding, setting picks. Even on vacation, I can't seem to develop a lower gear.

Magic cards went pretty awesome, but I knew they would. My deck was the only real choice, and it performed pretty well, despite me giving it to everyone who asked. I only lost to double and triple mulligans, insane cascade chains, and once to the mirror [which really isn't the mirror at all because they have terrible cards that die to Bit. Blast but are awesome against me.] I am so much better at limited than everyone, but that is probably because I draft ten times as much as they do. I even dominated at money draft, which was a first. Long story short, 38th place is almost 800 bucks, plus an invitation to Austin, which is a cheap plane ticket and apparently a fun town. The bad part is that there is no reason to play magic cards right now. So the agenda has become threefold for the rest of summer.

1) parlay fixing of back door into cleanup and grill buying into massive birthday party softball bbq.

2) continued self improvement accumulating into employment at company of distinction. I get a feeling this one isn't going anywhere.

3) dates with dream girl. Lately, actually dream girl. None worth telling though. They are mostly just really nice. It always feels weird in the morning though because I'm not really that guy. How dumb is it that I get embarrassed all by myself? Like I have this notion of myself that needs protection from the invastion that is the things i want.