Good thing It Wasn't A Jack Daniels Distillery

This one's for you, Trampass:

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You never know what your bees are going to stick their little stingers into.

EARTHQUAKE!

Big honker of an earthquake here, around midnight Eastern time. 4.6 on the Richter scale. Must have lasted 20 seconds or so. Then an aftershock about 15 minutes later.

Wheeeeee!

I Don't Like The TSA

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Catchy tune. And the subject, of course, is poignant.

I do not, however, agree with these guys:

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One of the most infuriating things (in my estimation) about the whole ridiculous TSA Barefoot Kabuki Dance is that it just takes so fucking long. In this age of science and technology, in which iPhones and Android and noise-canceling Bluetooth headsets can literally change our lives (for the better) overnight, I simply can't believe that Google or Apple or Dean Kamen can't invent a machine which we can walk through, fully clothed, with our laptops in our rollaboards, which will accomplish "security". These new "porno-scanners" may not be perfect, but to me they're a step in right direction, toward what I described in my previous sentence. I really don't give a shit if some Wackenhut-reject knuckle-dragging moron can see my junk or the roll of fat around my beltline. I just want to get through their hoops as quickly as possible and get to the Admiral's Club.

When leaving Hawaii for the mainland, you are scanned TWICE at the airport for FRUIT. I shit you not. You are scanned three times - once by the TSA and twice by THE FDA. I guess Osama must be sitting in his filthy, stinky cave in the mountains of Pakistan plotting to blow up LAX with an orange. It's way more infuriating than the TSA bullshit.

Both are carbuncles on the butt cheek of our society.

You Look Like Shit

Guaranteed. This will be the funniest thing you see all day.

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Double Rainbow

Time: Thursday morning.
Place: My office window.
This is one seriously vivid-ass rainbow.

Actually it's a double rainbow.
We regularly see even triple rainbows around here. The absolute coolest is when you get a double MOONbow. The air is so clear here, and hence the moon is so bright, rainbows are visible at night.

Hangin' Wit Da Monk Seals

What a spectacular day here today. Last night, what NOAA calls an "Extra-Large-To-Giant" swell hit the Hawaiian Islands. So big that the North Shore was completely closed out, "Condition Red". Unsurfable, although those with the ability and equipment could tow in.

The waves were so huge that they wrapped completely around the island to Kihei, so I threw my board on the car, drove over to a spot called Guard Rails near Lahaina, and rode glassy little head-high waves all morning. Blue sky, glassy waves, and a couple of big fat lazy Monk seals dozing in the sun on the beach. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.




Monk seals are like housecats. They eat and they sleep, that's about it. They even have whiskers like housecats.

I topped off a great surf session by climbing into my hammock, making like a Monk seal, and dozing most of the afternoon away. A few more days like this one and I just may recover from 3 weeks without sleep at the World Equestrian Games.

From Pat Caldwell's O'ahu Surf Forecast:

The NNW component was generated by fetch starting late last Friday over 1200 nm long and 900 nm wide stretching from near Kamchatka to about 40°N latitude NNW of Hawaii, or about 1000 nm out, by mid Sunday. The winds in the 325-345 degree band ranged from gales to storm-force, with the strongest winds toward the eastern side of the Hawaii swell window. The jason altimeter on Sunday validated wave model expectations of seas over 40 feet in the patch aimed NE of Hawaii. For seas pointed toward Hawaii, heights were to 30 feet in an area about 1000 nm away late Sunday. Long period swell of 14-19 seconds from this source is expected to fill in locally Monday night, peak on Tuesday, and slowly drop on Wednesday.