Travel Report, part II

One thing you need to understand about this trip is that the primary intent of it was for my parents to spend time with my daughter. It wasn't a vacation in the traditional sense; in fact, for me, it wasn't really a vacation at all. I've started doing some part-time QA consulting work for a company here in town, and I brought that work along with me. In addition, I completed a review of the new McAfee wireless security software while I was there. Those two things consumed pretty much all of my available time for the first week. As a result, I didn't actually do much other than work; I barely even went outside.

Having said that, the stuff I did get to do was great.

My brother-in-law is a firefighter. Towards the end of our trip, we got to visit his station and see all the equipment and the trucks and such. It was pretty cool. We even got to eat at the station--as you can imagine, it was a fairly protein-laden meal. Fire trucks are neat. It made me want to get back into model-building, just so I could build a fire truck. It's too bad that model trucks are so expensive, too bad that you can't find the right equipment, and too bad that I'm allergic to the glue.

I went with my mother, daughter and niece to the Hawaii Children's Discovery Center. It was really nice. We have a Children's Museum here in Madison, but the Honolulu facility is huge! It's a great place to bring kids--kind of pricey, but you can get there when they open and spend hours and hours inside. I know Lani would have cheerfully stayed for the entire day, had they actually been open that long.

We also went to a free concert sponsored by a hotel chain. I won't mention which one, since they mentioned it once every five minutes during the show--I figure they advertised themselves enough and I don't need to do it for them. There was some great music and some good music and some music. I don't want to be too critical, since I doubt I'd do that much better, but two of the singers were flat and that's kind of a shame. But it was good to sit in Kapiolani Park with the breezes blowing and music in the air. I felt lucky: we were sitting under some birds and the one time one of them really let loose, the wad of crap missed me completely. Seriously, though, some of the instrumentalists just shredded, it was great.

Did I mention that I'm a terrible vacationer? I really am, and I submit as evidence the fact that I took not one single picture while we were there. I made sure there were fresh batteries in the camera and everything, but the camera itself never even made it out of the suitcase. I had intended to let Lani use it, but couldn't even muster that up. Fortunately, my dad had gotten her a couple of little disposable cameras and she took some nice-for-a-six-year-old pictures.

Those were the major things I did, except for getting together with some old friends for some good food. That's for tomorrow.

(And how sad is it that I never got around to going swimming?)