Resolutions

Last year, I posted a few resolutions:

1) drink more Green Tea
2) drink less Diet Coke
3) write more
4) do more pull-ups

I didn't do so great on drinking Green Tea specifically, but I fell in love with Tejava, an organic, bottled Black tea which is oh so good and refreshing.  I became a diehard Tejava fan when I kicked my Diet Coke habit.

That's right, I did a great job on drinking less Diet Coke.  I went cold turkey for about a month, maybe more, and now I don't crave it as I used to.  I still drink it every once in awhile, but it's not something I need to have every day.

As for the writing resolution...I didn't do so great.  I wrote on the blog and wrote in my own journal, but nowhere else.

Although 2011 was a lazy writing year, I know that 2012 is going to be a great launching point for writing more.  I've done some networking with restaurant coworkers who have their own businesses and need some assistance in creating prose for their websites to help advertise their great work.  I'm thrilled for the opportunity, and I've done a huge amount of brainstorming.  It's always fun collaborating, and I'm looking forward to starting these new projects.

Of course, I'm hoping that working on other people's personal projects will help inspire me to do creative stuff of my own.

As for those pull-ups...yeah, that didn't really happen.  But I'm really happy with my overall improvements in my fitness, even if I can't do more than 3 pull-ups at a go.

I haven't hammered down my resolutions for this year.  I am looking for resolutions that are simple, obtainable and measurable.  I find that most resolutions I make are a little vague, so this year I plan on being a little more specific so I know exactly when I've achieved my 2012 resolutions.

Expect those to be posted within the next few days.

What resolutions have the rest of you come up with?  Or are you skipping making resolutions for 2012?  It may be an exercise in futility considering that the Mayans predicted that the world was going to end...

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Happy New Year

I'm never ashamed to repeat myself, especially when it's to share something this good.  Just in time for the New Year, I will once again post Neil Gaiman's New Year's wishes:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.

I hope you will make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself.

Wishing you all the best in 2012.  Cheers, Paige

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Lahaina--above and below the water

My neighbors across the street have the most beautiful flowers

It's getting crazy busy in Lahaina.  There is a new cruise ship in harbor every. single. day.  The narrow, uneven sidewalks on both sides of Front Street are crawling with every kind of tourist.

This new plaque commemorating Lahaina's Front Street just popped up a few weeks ago.

I'm curious to know what kind of criteria must be met in order to deem a street a "great street."  Note to self: research further the American Planning Association and Great Places in America...

Bryan and I had the day off, so we sunned ourselves on 505 Beach.  I'm still super thrilled about my underwater camera, so I swam around and scared the hell out of all the little reef fish I encountered in order to get some good pictures.

Some more of my favorites...small female Boxfish.  

A Raccoon Butterflyfish

This male Spotted Boxfish (pictured above) was particularly frightened of me.  I express no shame when I openly admit that I chased him around and around a clump of coral to get a picture of his electric blue awesomeness.  

I don't even feel bad chasing the Boxfish around.  He exhibited zero evasive maneuvers.  He continued to swim the same direction around the coral and at no time tried ducking underneath it and hiding in the shadows.  Maybe the Boxfish doesn't need to hide from predators.  It's poisonous.  Perhaps it knows it is untouchable.

Bryan and I parked our beach towels in front of the shopping center at 505, a cluster of stores and restaurants located at 505 Front Street.

I like swimming out and then heading down the shoreline past Lahaina Shores Beach Resort.  The beach at 505 is pretty skimpy with no shade, but it's great for people watching.  A handful of surfing schools, including the well known Goofy Foot Surf School, launch newbie surfers from this spot.  

Bryan and I got a kick out of watching a French family go through their first surf lesson together.  All lessons start on the sand as instructors teach their students how to paddle, pop up and ride a wave.  Every so often the instructor would pause his lesson to allow one of his French guests to interpret to the rest of the family what they would be doing once they hit the water.

The French family looked like an enthusiastic bunch, and none seem deterred by the language barrier.  I'm sure they had fun.

Lahaina Shores Beach Resort

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A Rockin' Christmas

Maui is moving and grooving with a flood of tourists here to enjoy their holidays come hell or high water.  The pace and anxiety has increased exponentially at the restaurant.  Just a week ago we were serving less than 300 dinners a night.  The past few nights we were selling over 400 dinners, and tomorrow night for Christmas Eve, we anticipate selling over 700 dinners as guests flood through our doors to celebrate the holiday with us.

I will be working Christmas Eve on the restaurant floor.  I will be saying my Hail Mary's and praying to the kitchen gods that all goes well.  I expect to be frantically busy, but I also expect to be making some serious dough tomorrow night.  Merry Christmas to me, indeed.

As much as I would love to tell all of you how much I am in the Christmas spirit, I honestly would have not known that the holidays were here if it wasn't for the Christmas carols piping through the restaurant's sound system.

Even though I don't like being cold, and I'm not a big fan of snow, I have noticed that in its absence, Christmas feels a little less Christmasy.  I haven't even been playing my Christmas music this year.  Sad, but true.  I'm sure my neighbors are grateful.

I do have Christmas off, and I am planning on making a very simple Italian dinner for my boyfriend and his roommate at their house that evening.  Maybe I can torture them with some Christmas tunes then.  I have a feeling that neither would object too much when it comes down to Zooey Deschanel's sultry crooning.

I plan on opening Christmas presents in the morning, making a few phone calls and hopefully getting some video chatting time in with the family so I can bask in their praise for my amazing gift-giving abilities.  

And then maybe I'll spend the afternoon on the beach getting a tan while all of you are freezing in Arctic temperatures.

Merry Christmas.

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For All of my Favorite Grinches

My faithful blog readers will surely recognize the following video from 39 Degrees North, a Beijing based motion graphics studio.  39 Degrees North adapted Neil Gaiman's poem, a dark little twist on the origins of Santa Claus, into a short video.

I posted 39 Degrees North's 2010 Christmas "card" last year because I couldn't help but be enchanted by the darkness in its message during this time of cheer.

As much as I relish and celebrate all the wonderful things about this time of year, it's fun to be a little naughty as well.

So, to all my Grinches out there who have had it up to here with all the presents, Christmas caroling and reindeer prancing, come to the dark side with me...


39 Degrees North Presents: Nicholas Was from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

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Baby Beach

I had the entire day off from work, and I spent most of it being lazy indoors.  Most of the island seems to be battling off a head cold, and I seem to have gotten it.  It's one of those annoying afflictions where it hasn't quite settled in to become a full fledged illness, but you still feel lethargic at all times and stuffed up at night.

By late afternoon, the light pouring over the ocean was too gorgeous to ignore, so I slowly gathered some gear together and pedaled to Baby Beach to catch some rays, read my book and FINALLY plunge my underwater camera in the ocean!

Baby Beach

Spotted Boxfish

These are some of my favorite fish!  I love spots!

I didn't notice the rainbow arching over Baby Beach until I looked at the photographs at home

Back under the water

Lagoon Triggerfish...but can you say it in Hawaiian? 

Humuhumu Nukunuku A Pua'a

Some guy had anchored these little boats in Baby Beach and was slowly dismantling them

For the shots featured in this post as well as the post covering my Christmas Party on Lanai, I am using the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS10, a water and shock proof camera given to me by my parents.

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

This camera takes AMAZING photographs!  It has a 14.1 megapixel resolution, which means the photographs capture enough detail to make poster-size prints.

It was so easy to use underwater, and I was really impressed with how well the photographs came out.  The only times I weren't happy with my underwater pictures probably had more to do with the way the light was streaming through the water and how much sand I was kicking up swimming around in about 3 feet of water.  The tide was WAY out today, but it wasn't going to stop me from dunking the camera underwater and snapping away!

I'm excited to go out and take more underwater photographs.  Hopefully in deeper water...I think my next excursion will be snorkeling around Black Rock in Ka'anapali!

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I Must Confess...

I must confess, I barely cook at home anymore.  Actually, "barely" is much too generous of a word.  The amount of cooking I do at home is between "scarcely" and "never," with the scale sliding a little closer to "never" than I would like.

There are several reasons for this:

1.  I am lazy
2.  I only have a hot plate, a chopping board, a microwave and two square feet of countertop to prepare meals with at home
3.  Fresh produce is expensive here in Maui
4.  I work at a restaurant that provides a free employee meal with every shift
5.  I am lazy

All of the reasons mentioned above does not stop me from borrowing cookbooks from the library, perusing recipes online and dreaming of fresh fruits and vegetables.  However, I still end up getting most of my meals outside of the house.

Right now, one of my favorite places to get food is Bamboo Fresh, which I have mentioned previously in other posts.  I can get a ridiculous amount of fresh, local and organic produce rolled into a delicious wrap for about $5 a pop.  Since I go often--I am ashamed to write here how often is "often"--the owner has begun to tone down her sermons on the benefits of organic and healthful eating, and now she seasons my food with her Himalayan rock salt without going on and on about it as she did before.  She's a lovely woman, and I appreciate her business, her food and her friendship.  It's just nice that we no longer just talk about nutrition.  I can be a fitness nut, but even I need to talk about other things.

Although I try to convince myself that I make healthy choices when dining, I don't always get an organic vegetarian wrap at Bamboo Fresh.

I also eat a lot at my restaurant.  Not only do I get my employee meal for every shift I work, I get 50% off all menu items, and the menu for lunch and dinner is expansive and relatively inexpensive after my discount.  Although we serve the freshest fish in town, most of our preparations are not really intended with a guest's health in mind.  This is not unique to our restaurant.  This is the typical M.O. of any restaurant.  They want you to like your food, and most people simply cannot resist the delectable taste of meat and fish and vegetables lacquered in butter and oil.  Of course, you can still order sensibly at our restaurant, or at any restaurant for that matter--assuming you have the will power.

Sometimes I do, but most times I do not.

Actually, will power does not have a whole lot to do with it.  When I fall prey to less nutritious items on any menu, it's less to do with my will power than my whimsical powers of persuasion.  The cheeseburger that I disregarded at first for being too fatty begins to look more and more appealing as I realize that the slice of cheese provides dairy that contains calcium, and I don't want to get osteoporosis, now do I?  The vine-ripened tomatoes and shredded iceberg lettuce is a good dose of vegetables, and the pretzel bun the burger is served on could possibly be whole wheat--but why bother a server to double check?  The cheeseburger is most definitely not the worst nutritious choice on the menu, so I'm ordering it...and possibly going for a run later in the afternoon to make myself feel better about a slightly dubious choice.

I realize that I could possibly rationalize myself into obesity.

And I do miss preparing my own food.  Granted, I'm still lazy, but I've been known to whip up some tasty fare in one pot or pan in less than thirty minutes.

But with the hot plate situation at home, I feel less than inspired.  Whenever I think of perching on one of my kitchen barstools and plucking my hot plate from above the cupboards, any desire I had to cook gets instantly squashed.  Especially when my hot plate cannot decide what temperature it would like to remain.  It either barely warms my food or burns everything into a blackened crisp.

Discouraged as I am with the hot plate, I decided that I need to have food at home to inspire more healthful eating and will myself to stay home and eat.

I went to Foodland, the grocery store a block from my house, this afternoon and purchased fresh fruit, sprouts, salad greens, hummus, tomatoes, whole wheat bread, eggs, slices of turkey, garlic and artichoke stuffed sausages and vegetables to steam in the microwave.

I'm not used to having so much food at my disposal.  I made myself a mega-sandwich this afternoon with a side of fresh snapped peas, followed by one of the sausages.

I went to the movies shortly thereafter to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie (highly entertaining) and promptly ate a second sausage upon arriving home and have now just had a serving of fruit in the middle of typing this.

My wonderfully willful powers of persuasion is telling myself right now that really, I didn't eat that much food and at least the portion that I ate was all very healthy (minus those two sausages).

I'm sure my ravenous appetite is simply the result of having 24/7 access to food rather than relying on restaurants that are open and affordable at any given moment.  I have every confidence that tomorrow my desire to eat every single thing I bought (including all 12 eggs) will subside, and that I will once again crave hot meals prepared especially for me by someone else.  In a kitchen.  At a restaurant.

I never said this was going to be easy, now did I?

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Christmas Party

The restaurant that I work for was closed all day yesterday for our Christmas Party.  All of the employees were invited on a day trip to Lanai, one of our sister islands, chartered by Trilogy, one of the best catamaran fleets on Maui.

The last time I was on Lanai was for a brief moment during a snorkel trip in 2008.  Bryan has never been, and I was ecstatic that I was allowed to bring him.  Originally, no guests were allowed on our Christmas trip, but we had room on the boat, and my managers told me I could bring him if I wanted.

Bryan and I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:30 in the morning, got our belongings together and met up for breakfast at Pioneer Inn at the Lahaina Harbor.

As we were wolfing down eggs and toast, several of the restaurant employees stumbled in and ordered Bloody Marys before checking in with Trilogy.

At 8:30 we all checked in.  The restaurant had booked two Trilogy catamarans to shuttle all of us there and back.  As we were loading onto the boats, the restaurant managers handed out different colored tank tops to designate all the employees into five teams for all the relay games on the island.

The ride over was smooth.  I love being out on the water, and I hope to find several more opportunities to get out on some boats this winter!

I didn't see any whales close up on our trip out there, but I saw a few spout from a long ways off.

Once we arrived on the island we all trailed down to the beach.  It was a wide gorgeous strip of soft sand curving around the quiet bay of super clear ocean.  There was not a lot of time to kick back and relax because we got divided into our teams and competed in relay races.

I sprinted across the beach, I paddled out in the ocean and back, sprinted some more, put my head down on a baseball bat and spun five times, and ran some more.  I got some serious exercise in at Lanai yesterday.

Because of all the activities, I didn't take any photos on Lanai.  All the following photos are from the trip back to Maui in the afternoon.

Toes!

Sun setting above Lanai

The second Trilogy catamaran with the other half of the restaurant employees

Cruising back home

Captains at the helm

Trilogy flags!  Not windy enough to let loose the sails though.

Maui ahead of us

Coming back home!

Horseplay on the catamaran

Coming back into the harbor

Just some of the boys

Front Street from the ocean

Lahaina Harbor

It was an amazing day at Lanai, and I hope to go back soon.  There is a ferry that you can take that will shuttle you to the island and back.  I'll have to check on rates.  I think it's worth the ticket for such a fun day trip.

I can't wait to go back!

But I must say, going back into work this evening was brutal.  My entire body is sore from head to toe from all the strenuous relay racing!

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Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

I watched last week's episode of Glee "I Kissed a Girl" and although I enjoyed Finn's cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" the more solemn arrangement of this pop tune was originally done by Greg Laswell.  Laswell has the better voice, so I thought I would share this with you here:

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Best Lunch

Inspired by how well my Not-so-Devilish Eggs turned out, I decided to make a healthier version of Tuna Salad.

I took a can of tuna (packed in water) and mixed it with my leftover nonfat Greek yogurt, lots of Dijon Mustard and paprika.  The result was a creamy yet spicy tuna salad.  And it's delicious!  I sliced up an avocado and some cheese and brought out my box of crackers.  I also have some leftover Edamame Hummus that tastes great with the avocado and crackers.

This is a light lunch, but it's packed with great flavors!  I'm going to have to go back to the store and load up on this Greek yogurt.  I like how versatile it is.

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Lahaina: I love my town

I love living in Lahaina.  I know that many don't feel the same way since it can feel a little overcrowded, especially during the holidays when the streets are overflowing with tourists.

But I like that everyone knows me here.  I got the employee discount today at a clothing store when I picked up a t-shirt.  Then the owner of Dan's Greenhouse brought out one of her baby sun conures for me to play with even though she had already started putting all the parrots to bed.  And the guy at The Banyan Tree Bakery & Deli gave me a chocolate peanut bacon (yup, that's right, I wrote bacon) treat "on the house."

Lahaina, you have spoiled me rotten today.  And I like it!

And speaking of that sun conure at Dan's Greenhouse...I'm totally in love with it.  I'll be seeing him again soon!

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Terrified Jogging and Deviled Eggs

I didn't fall asleep last night.

After getting a late dinner with Bryan, followed by two rounds of Skip-Bo (he is officially hooked), Bryan went to bed and I stayed up to read.

And I just never got tired.

I read until about 3:30 in the morning.  I finished my book and began a new one, and when I realized that the reading wasn't putting me to sleep, I decided to step outside and take a short walk around the block.  Sometimes a quiet late night walk will help my brain quiet down, but my walk last night had the opposite effect.  It got my blood flowing, so I came home and threw on my running clothes and headed out for a quick 1.5 mile loop.

And let me tell you, running at 4 in the morning is scary.  It's dark out there!

My familiar running loop lurched with ominous shadows.  Only a handful of street lamps dot my route, and I sprinted from one spot of light to another.  In one particular dark and shadowy spot, I startled a cat  who startled me and I shot off in the dark.  I don't think I have ever run so fast.

As you can imagine, by the time I got home I had adrenaline roaring through my veins.  I was not tired in the slightest.

I showered and stayed up and found an awesome recipe for Deviled Eggs online.  I put the recipe aside and told myself I would make them soon.

I managed to fall asleep around 6:30 in the morning and then I was up again by 10:30.  Instead of moping around the house I got busy.  I went Christmas shopping and grocery shopping and snagged ingredients for the Deviled Egg recipe.  When I got home I cleaned.  I pushed aside my bed and cleaned under it for the first time ever.  That's kind of gross to admit to all of you, but I'm happy that it got done.  I dusted, mopped and vacuumed.

While I made my lunch I started boiling my eggs!  I'm no expert at hard boiling eggs which is another horrible thing to admit to you because I'm well aware of how easy it is.  I tend to overcook my eggs.  But I read some tips on Martha Stewart, and I made a batch of perfect eggs:




I scooped the yolks out into a bowl and crumbled them up with a fork.  Instead of using Mayo as my base, I threw in some Greek nonfat yogurt.



I added Dijon mustard, finely chopped raw yellow onion and lots of paprika and chili powder.  I also swirled about 2 tablespoons of honey onto the mixture.  I stirred everything together until the mixture was whipped smooth.

I used a small spoon and gently dabbed the mixture into each egg white cup.  I sprinkled a healthy dose of paprika on the finished product.  Ta Dah!!



Although I had a recipe on hand, I ignored all measurements and did everything to taste.  I am loving my Deviled Eggs, but I think I'm going to be braver and go a little heavier on the Dijon and use more onions in the mix.  The onions add a great bite and flavor to the Deviled Eggs.



This is my pre- and post-work snack this afternoon.  I'm looking forward to coming home after working at the restaurant and wolfing down a few of these.

The substitution of the Greek yogurt is such a great idea!  It makes these Deviled Eggs a little less devilish.  I highly recommend you give it a try!

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Cheese and Crackers

I've been craving some serious cheese action.  I caved this afternoon and picked up this interesting Irish import:



I sliced the cheese up and laid the pieces on Wheat Thin crackers.



Craving satisfied!

Now I can make my lunch: warm spinach salad with tuna.

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