Trinity the Turtle!

If you have ever met our little turtle in person you would know that she shatters every stereotype about turtles you can find. She is so fast it took over 40 pictures of her to finally get some clear ones for this post. It may sound odd, but she has as much (or more) personality than a dog. She ranges from excitable and frantic, to moody and distrustful, to sneaky and  playful. However, the mood of the last 24 hours has been one of pure exuberance. Since last Friday she has been living in a towel lined box with a Pyrex pan of water. She hasn't been happy about it! If you were near the box and not obviously feeding her she'd glare at you and if you tried to pick her up she'd give you a angry hiss and retreat into her shell.  Poor thing :( 

But, last night everything did a 180. We finally got the water level's into her safe range and were able to introduce her to her new home!

At first she just sat petrified on the log.. then like a bolt of lightning SPLASH! into the murky water she went. within the next 3 mins she had climbed out of the water and jumped back in at least 7 times. If you came anywhere near the tank she'd rush over and hide in the water weeds. Poking her little face out as if to shout: NO! You are never going to catch me! I will never leave this tank! Then giving you one last defiant glare she'd dive under water and stay there until she was sure you were gone. 

I sat and watched her from the couch and for hours, it was just like watching a little kid at the swimming pool. Jump in, climb out... Jump in, climb out... Jump in climb out... over and over and over. By the time Richard came home from work, she had decided that I wasn't trying to take her away from her new paradise, and even came over to see if he had brought her anything to eat. He had. She greedily grabbed it and made a dash for the water. Woosh... over the edge of the log she went, legs flailing... Splash!.. nom nom nom nom.

She now is back to her old Trinity self. Running up to the side of the tank to greet you and begging for food. I wish I had a web cam set up for her so you could watch her funny little antics. I'd take video but she wont perform when I'm recording, of course.

In other news: 

The book I bought for Richard finally arrived!

He has been loving it!

We learned that the little white sacks on either side of this female house gecko's head are called 'Chalk Sacks'. They store extra calcium in these to help them lay eggs. She was living in our curtains :)

We also learned that they have communal nests. This explains why there are so many gecko eggs in our screen door seam and why this very pregnant one was hanging out there.

Last weekend was a bit 'ick' with the computer dying and trying to figure out the tank set up. To make up for it this weekend we are going to have a relaxing beach day and maybe some snorkeling, I don't plan on bringing the camera so this will be the last post until after Ben leaves. 

Oh ya...

 EXCITING NEWS!!!! BEN WILL BE HERE IN 4 DAYS!!!!

He's going to spend the week with us and I am sooo excited!

I am queen of the nerds!!!

Ok I cant quite claim that title,

But I have at least upgraded to Nerd Duchess of Hard Drive Removal.

Saturday morning my laptop's mother board blew. 

HP is going to fix it for me but there is a good chance that I would loose all my files.. Pictures, music, vidoes, old school files, resumes, all my student edition design software ...EVERYTHING! I took it into Best Buy to see if they could back up my files. They could, but it would cost me 100 bucks!

Instead I bought this for $43 and did it myself:

Chinese Dumplings!

I feel ... I feel ... I feel Happy of Myself!

I made them 100% from scratch!

Here's how I did it:

Wonton wrappers: 

Ingredients: 

1 egg

1/3 cup water (I've found I need almost 1/2 cup)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

In a medium bowl, beat the egg. Mix in the water.

In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Create a well in the center of the mixture and slowly pour in the egg and water. Mix well. If the mixture is too dry, increase the amount of water one teaspoon at a time until a pliable dough has formed.

On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough until elastic. Cut dough into two separate balls. Cover the balls with a damp cloth for a minimum of 10 minutes.

Cut each ball into four equal pieces. Roll the pieces into 10 1/2 by 10 1/2 inch squares. Cut each into nine 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch squares.

(got that from allrecipes.com)

Filling:

Finely minced chicken

Sprinkle of garlic

Sprinkle of salt

Sprinkle of ginger

Aloha Soy Sauce

Mung bean sprout coarsely chopped

Water chestnuts coarsely chopped

Finely minced green onion

(I made this part up by myself!)

Use water to seal up a little bit of filling in the wonton wrappers.

Heat up enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a non stick pan. Cook 'til the bottoms get brown and toasty. Add 1/3 cup of water. Put a lid on it and let them steam for about 5 mins.

Serve with your favorite dipping sauces.

TRINITY!

For the last 2 months Eli has been kind enough to take care of Trinity for us. Getting her over here was an expensive fiasco but its all worth it when you look at that adorable face :)

 We are so happy to have her back! And she is so happy to be out of that tiny box she's been in for the last 30+ hours!

We'll post pictures of her new home when Richard gets it set up. For now she's burning off some energy by running laps in her empty tank. 

THANKS ELI!!!

Day Gecko Rescue!

Richard saved this little Gold Dust Day Gecko from work. 

 The little guy had gotten comfy in his new bottle home and it took forever to coax him out,

Once he came out he ran up my arm and onto my head.

 He didn't want to leave there either

Luckily Richard was able to get him off

 Look at all those colors!

 He really liked the lemon tree. He stayed on it all night. 

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Laniakea

We drove up to Laniakea on the North Shore today! I think North Shore may be my favorite part of Oahu. I had heard nice things about Laniakea, but when we went looking for it before it was later in the afternoon and the tourist crawl (a rolling traffic jam of all the tourists doing the 'drive around the island' day trip) had already made traffic in that direction unbearable. Remembering this, we got up really early so we could beat the crowds. 

There were tons of these tiny little crabs. They were the exact same color as the sand and you only could see them if they moved.

 Even their eyes are sand colored!

 These were some adorable little shore birds. They are super fast and stay right on the edge of each wave as it breaks on the shore but never get hit by it! They are called Sanderlings but the Hawaiians call them Hunakai. It means 'sea foam' and if you watch a large flock of these on the sandy part of the beach that's exactly what they look like.

 I'm so impressed with my camera for this shot.

 As we got further down the beach we went from super fine and soft sand to a beach made almost entirely of crushed shells! I want to go back and get pieces for a puka shell necklace.

 Notice how empty the beach is! We are excited to come back later on and do some snorkeling here. The water is crystal clear.

I live in a postcard :)  Can you see the little sail boat? 

 Here is another Where's Waldo shot. Can you find the little fish sneaking up on Richard's foot? (It's hard to tell because it's so clean, but the water is coming up to his ankle.)

 This is a Pacific Golden Plover. I was taking its picture because we have never seen one with this neat calico pattern. Turns out it's just transitioning from its winter to summer plumage.

 Richard says, "Hey! whats that?" I respond, "I think a rock...."

 NOPE! It is a Hawksbill Sea Turtle!

 She was feeding here in this very sallow section of the reef.

 See the sea grass/lettuce in her mouth?

She was so beautiful! We hung out with her for a while, and then she decided to go back to sea.  

Back here at the apartment, Richard installed our little AC unit into the wall. It was a lot of work but as you can imagine he did a wonderful job. This will be the first night since March 1st that we won't have to bring ice packs to bed to try and get it cool enough to sleep! Yippie!

If only I had remembered the camera.

(all the pics in this post are lame because I forgot to bring the camera with us to any of the places we went, so these are all phone shots)

We were up bright and early -7:30am! Why? Because I found a free dishwasher on Craigslist! We drove down to Honolulu to pick it up. It fit neatly in the back of the golf, and we were back home and running it in no time! It works very well considering its probably 15 years old. I'm so happy to have it I could burst :D

 

As you can see they decided to make it Ivory, White, Black, and Butcher-block, that way it would match with every kitchen it was put in lol.

We also had to get the golf safety checked so we can get it registered here. While we were waiting for the mechanics to check it out we walked down to a tiny nursery. They had cool air ferns, waterlilies, all kinds of succulents, and some of the biggest most beautiful orchids:

You can't tell from the pics but several of these had a perfect iridescent shimmery coat of what looked like fairy dust on each of their petals.

We have been using the Unreal Hawaii blog for tracking down good hikes. This time we decided to try Waimano Falls. It was BEAUTIFUL! It was actually a very popular day for the trail so we only went swimming in the smaller top pool. "Cardiac Hill" a particurally steep section on the way back up from the falls has my calves still burning! I wish I had taken my camera so you could be impressed by the size of this root gnarled hill but we'll be back there again and I'll be sure to remember my camera next time. David Chat took some awesome pictures of the same trail back in Nov 2010 so go check those out!

As you can imagine after the hike and the swim were were FAMISHED! Lucky for us it happened to be Eat the Street Mililani. Its a food truck rally where food trucks from all over the island cram into a few parking lots and have a big party. There was live music and delicious food smells everywhere. We ended up having Fire Roasted Guava Chicken from Hula Shrimp and Kalua Pork from Aloha on Wheels. For desert we had the Romeo and Juliet Crepe(Nutella, bananas, strawberries)  from Le Crepe. Here is a picture of the Guava Chicken:

 

All the non-chain fast food is served this way in Hawaii. They are called plate lunches. I LOVE THEM! If we ever live somewhere else I guarantee I will lie awake at night craving plate lunches.

It rained on us as we were getting our food but they had big tents to eat it under so we only got moderately soaked. We need to learn to put an umbrella in the car along with our camera every time we leave the house :)

On a sad side note that night Richard got really Really REALLY sick ( I think food poisoning from the mac salad ) So that was the end of our weekend adventure :( 

He's feeling better today though so that's nice :)

Also, I finally got all the pictures off his phone so here are of some of the gecko friends he's been making.