Rooftop Garden Experiment

Mr. and I don't have any semblance of a yard but we do have a rooftop deck that gets a ton of sunshine. So while I have planted flowers out there in the past, I decided to take it up a notch this year and plant some edibles.

As of right now, I have three tomato plants, a banana pepper, some basil, and oregano.

Mr. is wary about this attracting local wildlife onto our roof. I am slightly concerned as well but if I see a raccoon out there making spaghetti sauce or something, I will get rid of the plants in question and move on. I am not that vested in this.

I am lazy about watering plants (usually hoping for rain or my next door neighbor to do it which she nicely did today when I went to check on them) and don’t expect much out of this (especially since I have only today learned how big a tomato plant can get) but maybe these plants will surprise me and we will be eating home grown treats in about 90 days....

Aloha!: The Hawaii Recap Part II

Mrs. did a great job of recapping the first leg of our Hawaii trip, and after departing Oahu we were on our way to the island of Kauai, where we spent six nights at the Grand Hyatt.

With Oahu we wanted to see Pearl Harbor, but with Kauai our goal was to relax by the pool, enjoying the sun with a book and a drink. And that's exactly what we did for the most part (although we only had drinks by the pool once – at $12 a pop we weren’t about to go crazy).

Our only excursion away from the resort was a full day tour on our second day, where we saw several of the island's notable sites. This included Waimea Canyon (The Grand Canyon of the Pacific), the Spouting Horn, the Wailua River, and the Fern Grotto. It was nice to see some of the island, but unfortunately it was a long day, mostly spent driving around on a large motor coach while our driver went on and on about the island's history and the flowers and indigenous plants and who knows what else. But either way, the island was beautiful. Here are some pics:







So after the tour it was back to relaxing in the sun. And it was fabulous. The weather was great (is it ever not in Hawaii?). We had rain a few of the days, but it was like 15 minutes of rain followed by the sun immediately returning. We enjoyed the Grand Hyatt and would definitely recommend staying there. Our only "complaint" was that there seemed to be a lot of young children at the resort (and very pregnant women for that matter). I guess this was a popular resort for families and expectant mothers. The good news was they had an adult pool where kids weren't allowed, so that's where we spent most of our time. They also had a salt water lagoon, and few a times we had the lagoon all to ourselves, which was nice. The resort was also right on the ocean, so we took a dip in the Pacific one day and even saw sea turtles in the ocean while taking a walk. Overall a really great vacation and we're looking forward to returning to Hawaii one day. Some final pics:

Read This!: Weep No More, My Lady

By Mary Higgins Clark

I read this on the plane back from Hawaii while Mr. was sitting next to me hating his life as he entered phase 1 of our food poisoning. I was fortunate enough to not get sick until we landed. Mr. was very fortunate in this as well.

I have never read a MHC book before so this was new territory for me.

The gist of the story is that a famous actress falls off a balcony to her death. Was it an accident, suicide or murder?

Mary Higgins Clark is no Agatha Christie in terms of surprise endings at least in this book. I also thought it was worthy of note that while I was reading I thought the book had to be written in the 80s based on the clothes and attitudes of the characters as well as the descriptions of some of the things . It was.

This was a good plane read because it was easy to read and didn’t require a ton of thought. I’d read another Mary Higgins Clark book based off of this but to be honest, I expected more of a wow-factor.

Aloha!: The Hawaii Recap Part 1

Mr. and I left for Hawaii on April 29th, the day of the big William and Kate wedding. I woke up early to watch the wedding only to discover that I figured the time wrong and I was an hour too early. In the end, I watched a bunch of arrivals and the vows and went to sleep for a few more hours.

Our flight from the mainland to Hawaii was 9 hours long. I have to say, I was unpleasantly surprised that for almost $1000 a ticket ($924.86 to be exact) that we had to pay $25 for each checked bag (total $50) and that no food at all was free on board, not even some peanuts. For $10 you could get a sandwich, but the flight attendants made sure to let people know they didn't have enough for everyone. What? What am I paying for? At least my Coke was free. I will be writing to the airline to complain about this. While I understand this is a domestic flight, it's 9 hours! Throw us a bag of peanuts for our money! Mr. and I always travel with a hefty load of treats because I don't really like airline food so we didn't starve but still. The icing on the cake was that our movie there was Tron Legacy and coming back was Justin Beiber: Never Say Never. Thank heaven we brought our own DVD player and lots of activities to keep us entertained. Anyways, we arrived in Hawaii unscathed around 3:30PM on Friday.

We spent the first two nights in Oahu because this was both of our first time to Hawaii and we wanted to see Pearl Harbor.

So to PH we went on Saturday bright and early. We like to economize every once in awhile but after waiting forever for the public bus and googling at the bus stop how long it actually was to PH, we called an audible and took a cab. I will say our new iPhones came quite in handy because 1. we got lost finding the bus stop and it was able to tell us exactly where to go 2. we could look at bus schedules and maps on the go. Fantastic!

Arriving at Pearl Harbor, we walked the grounds until our time to see the Arizona Memorial. It's a timed entry because you go over to it on a boat after watching a short film. Key point: Everything we read said you are not allowed to bring any kind of food or beverage or bag to the AZ. So we did not buy any water. I was dying and hence drank out of the water fountain in my previous post. You can in fact bring water. So if you are heading there, all bags can be checked and bring a bottled water. At the AZ, we were surprised at how much it smelled like oil. Oil is still leaking out from the ship but it was still surprising.



After the AZ, Mr. and I took the tour of the battleship USS Missouri (the Mighty MO!) where Japan surrendered to the US at the end of WWII and the Bowfin submarine. We also saw the USS Oklahoma memorial. At the start of both the MO and the Bowfin, they take your picture and yes we were roped into buying both of the pics. Hee! At least with the MO, we got free dog tags with our name on them. I have to say that life on a submarine is not for me. I am way too claustrophobic to ever want to live in some place where you are sandwiched in and stuck under water. I am having a panic attack just thinking about it.





After PH, Mr. and I had some time so we went to the Waikiki Aquarium. I expected a bit more to be honest. I thought they would have like a dolphin show or something. I guess there is some kind of fish park elsewhere that has more attractions. We did see some cool fish though.



On the shuttle bus ride at Pearl Harbor, our driver mentioned that SPAM Jam was happening that night. Now, my family is nuts when it comes to SPAM. In fact, Mr. was introduced to my entire extended family at SPAMFest, a party devoted entirely to SPAM with only SPAM foods and we all wore SPAM shirts. It was quite the event so we had no choice but to go to this. We didn't sample any of the SPAM but we did buy some t-shirts. Miss Hawaii was there so you know it was a big event.

We closed out our Oahu visit the next day by going down to Waikiki beach for a bit. We didn't swim because we were flying out to our next island in the afternoon but it was fun to get our feet wet and just enjoy being on vaca.

Here is a Waikiki sunset from our room:



In Oahu, we stayed at the Hyatt which is across the street from Waikiki beach. I loved that we had free breakfast included and that breakfast started at 6AM. This may seem early but we were still on our time zone and we wanted to get out early to get to PH because we heard the crowds get nuts. The Hyatt was nice and I would stay there again. It was convenient and everyone there was friendly. No complaints.

Up next.... Kauai!

Hawaii Prelude

My exact quote to Mr. before this pic was taken:

"Hey Mr. Take my pic because I am breaking my golden rule of never drinking from a water fountain. Watch me end up sick or something."



Is this where we got infected with the bacterial disease that ravaged us for the past two weeks? Oh the irony if it is.....

Read This!: The Phantom of Pemberley

I promise a Hawaii post soon but alas a trip to the ER this weekend and our slow recovery have set us back in our vaca recap. In the meantime, here is another book review.

By Regina Jeffers

I don’t tend to love sequels written by not the author of the original text. Some end up decent like Rhett Butler’s People. Some are awful like Scarlett. But, I bought this book during the big Borders sale. I spotted it and was like “I like murder mysteries. I like Pride and Prejudice. How could I go wrong?”

The Phantom of Pemberley: A Pride and Prejudice Murder Mystery takes place a year after Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s marriage. They are happily situated at Pemberley with Georgiana. However, a big snow storm brings a variety of guests to their house for a few days and soon murders start happening. Who is haunting Pemberley? Will we ever find out?

I read this while reclining by the pool in Hawaii. It was the perfect book for that. However, this book was so terrible in spots I had to read it out loud to Mr. It read like a romance novel with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy getting hot and heavy ALL THE TIME. This was a bit much for me and not how I like to envision two of my favorite characters in literature. I also eyerolled through the constant “You are my life” type comments Elizabeth and Darcy kept making to each other in front of other people. The Mr. Darcy from P&P would not go around proclaiming his feelings like this one did. It was just a bit much. I was also annoyed at the constant borrowing of Jane Austen’s text. I am very knowledgeable when it comes to P&P and the borrowing of text annoyed me and I questioned whether some copyright laws were being broken. Anyways, aside from all of that, the ending murderer reveal was the most ridiculous murderer reveal I have seen since the movie Identity. In some cases I would have given this book a Don’t Read This review but its pure ridiculousness made it a great vaca read.

Read This!: A Murder Is Announced

By Agatha Christie

I finished this right before we left on vaca and to be frank, I am having a hard recalling all the details and am too lazy to look them up so I will keep this short.

An advertisement is put in a paper announcing a murder that will take place at Miss Blacklock’s house.

Miss Blacklock goes along with the ad thinking it’s a joke and decides to have a party that night.

At the said time from the ad in the midst of the soiree, someone is murdered.

Agatha got me again with this one. I didn’t guess the ending although I did figure out some clues beforehand. (I am patting myself on the back.)

Keeping Cottonelle in Business

Warning: There may be TMI for some folks in this post. I will try to keep the gruesome details to a minimum.

So have you missed us? Mr. and I returned from a FANTASTIC vacation in Hawaii (blog post on that to come). It was seriously one of the best vacas we have been on. I was singing the praises of this trip to high heaven. But there is always a catch....

Saturday we flew home (arriving Sunday AM). Mr. was not feeling very well on the flight and I kept forcing food on him telling him he was hungry. Then, Sunday afternoon, I started to feel achy and my stomach was slightly upset. I attributed this to lack of sleep. Mr. was fluctuating between fever and chills all day and spent the day in bed. Sunday night I was still planning to go to work on Monday. We went to bed around 10PM. At around 10:30 disaster struck, for the next 48 hours, Mr. and I made trips to the bathroom every 10-30 minutes round the clock. It was bad. Thankfully we have four bathrooms. On top of the fever and chills, my body was so achy. I seriously wanted to die.

On Sunday before I became ill, I went to the grocery store and picked up a few items. Unfortunately, I managed to get all items one does not want to eat when their intestines are exploding. Because we had been away for so long, we had no other food. We had no one we could really call locally to help us out. And after lying around our house like beached whales for most of the day on Monday, we managed to find the energy to make our way to the gas station on the corner and buy some gatorade. It was heaven.

I finally went to the doctor yesterday because there was stuff coming out of my body that should not have been and I freaked out. Her diagnosis: salmonella or a similar type issue. She put me on high dose antibiotics. Mr. goes to a different doctor and Tuesday afternoon, the same bad things that had come out of me were coming out of him, so he made an appointment right after my doctor gave her verdict. His doctor's verdict: a parasite. He put him on the same antibiotic that I am on. We are awaiting the results of Mr.'s "sample" to find out what is exactly affecting us.

Ironically, we always tend to go on big vacas outside the US and aside from some minor stomach issues I had on coming back from Cabo, have never gotten sick. It figures we tried to do a big vaca in the US and had a near death experience.

In case you are wondering, we are on the mend now. The antibiotics really helped as has the liquid diet I was put on by my doctor. I can start on the BRAT diet this afternoon but to be honest, I have no idea why I ever decided I liked to eat. I can't even think about chewing without wanting to throw up. On the bright side, I have lost a nice amount of weight so always a silver lining.