8/9

What an eventful week (in what's been a blissful bunch of UNeventful days since work ended) -- but it's a good thing. It started, I think, with a nice meal that included some of Eugene's Brother and brother's bountiful Ruby Queen harvest. Jewel-like corn, picked and delivered not two hours later to the dinner table! My dinner contribution was shrimp skewers with vegetables freshly harvested from chinatown (also where I met D for lunch; it was his birthday. Next year he will be Old.) This was Tuesday, actually. Monday I had class (if you remember, I decided at the last minute not to skip it for DB practice.)

Finally, the red corn! The inside of the kernel is yellow, though, like regular corn.

... husked.

Ruby goodness, gone. It was extremely sweet, though E's B waited till he couldn't wait anymore to pick it. (Corn at its youngest and sweetest is not my favorite, heck, I even prefer frozen "carnival" corn to fresh, but this was damn good.) Anyway my mom claimed it tasted like beets (in a good way) but I'm sure she was just "tasting" the redness.

The kabobs. They tasted a little better than they look here. A little.

Wednesday we packed up and drove out to the North Shore, my family and I. The rents wanted to stay at Turtle Bay for a couple of days, which was surprisingly refreshing. I kept forgetting we hadn't left the island. We went swimming, walking along the beach, saw a monk seal just hanging out. Also went horseback riding, which kind of hurt but was really cool anyway. We ate at Spaghettini's and Rosie's in Haleiwa and at the buffet downstairs at TB, once at McDonald's, had an overpriced poolside lunch of burgers and hot dogs. It was so relaxing, and nobody got into any arguments, not a single one, till we got back and we decided to "talk" about my brother's college plans and the path I chose to take and so on and so forth. But it was a nice mini-vacation while it lasted.

We got back yesterday and were all very tired which was actually good because we then went to bed very early and so were able to get up at 6 for the race today. I love love love the races and I hate it when I'm off-island and miss it. Even when we don't win (though we always at least advance to the semi-finals) there are not a whole lot of things I would trade it for. Anyway, we got lucky and really pulled together and also did not have to race any Laotian teams, just other Chinese clubs, and we had good boats and a good lane for the semi and finals. The first heat was tight, though -- just a matter of flag-catching know-how, hehe. Really.

Anyway,

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! *sway* *sway*

But we were so excited about being division winners that we all went home and forgot to stay for the all-division race. Oh well. First (not second) for once!! YAY!

What a fun week.