I have discovered a severe dislike for cockroaches. Smug creatures. The few I found walking late night sidewalks in L.A. were disconcerting but manageable if I stepped wide around them. Here, when we find one in the house, I am reduced to telling Ian, “Eeeww,” and standing a safe distance apart while he catches it with a paper towel and relocates it to the garbage can outside. The reaction is uncomfortably close to that of delicate movie ladies who scream, jump on chairs and hyperventilate when they see a mouse. This parallel may be part of my dislike; it’s embarrassing …

The weather service issued a flood watch for the island over the weekend, but our much-hyped storm turned out to be rather wimpy. Thunder and lightning but little else. It’s not rained for much of December; I wonder if that’s normal? Watched Blue Car the other night. It’s sort of a Finding Forrester (or any other older mentor encourages a young person to find his or her own voice movie) meets Lolita‘s Humbert Humbert. Unremarkable and predictable, but then I guess there’s only so much you can do with the encourage-a-teenager genre. Drove up to Kilaeua to see Cold Mountain …

I’m approximately halfway through The Briar King, and that’s probably as far as I’m likely to get. Although mildly curious as to how the story will work out, I’m finding I really don’t care. I may “release” it with Book Crossing. . . Ian’s apprentice is off to the mainland for the holidays, so we’re on a vacation, of sorts. Tuesday and Wednesday we drove down to the Poipu area of the South Shore for further adventures in snorkeling at Prince Kuhio Beach and Lawa’i Beach. These beaches are less protected from the open ocean than other places we’ve snorkelled, …

We spent the necessary three hours in line last night to be able to see the very first show of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at midnight. It’s playing at the only multiplex (four screens!) on the island. I keep meaning to determine the distance to the next nearest theater showing it. . . Excellent movie. I’ll be very disappointed if Peter Jackson does not get Best Director from the Academy this year. The entire Lord of the Rings epic clocks in somewhere between 9 and 12 hours, and Jackson deserves recognition for the consistent …

Finished Into The Wild last week. One of Ian’s editing apprentices gave it to us as a going away present when we left Los Angeles. The book is about a young man who, upon graduating from college, donated all his money to charity and headed into the Alaskan wilderness, where he starved. I’m still not sure what Dave was trying to say. The author argues that it was not this man’s intention to die and explores the various reasons he might have had for heading into harsh country with a rifle, 10 lbs. of rice and no map. But once …

Reading Wicked, another book which came with the house. The story is good, worth re-reading since there is so much meat in it (What is evil? Where does it come from? What about destiny? Free will? The ties of love and family and moral obligation?), there’s no possible way to get it all the first time. We went for a small evening stroll last night and ended up walking to town. When we got home, I did the math and figured we walked 7 miles. Oops. I made my first attempts at snorkeling earlier this week, mostly just using the …