Kawehena's Ideal Cupcake

If I were to guess what Kawehena's ideal cupcake would look like, I'd imagine a paper cup filled to the brim with icing and then finished with a sprinkling of cupcake crumbs over the top.

Lord of the rings was too long

Quite funny. Quite.

Laupahoehoe 2008

Pictures from Laupahoehoe 2008 are now available! Have fun!

"Baby" Carrots

When you go to the supermarket to pick out some tomatoes, or onions, or carrots, which ones do you pick? I'm sure, like me, you pick the roundest, brightest ones with no apparent bruises or disfiguration. And this all makes sense if you've ever gotten home to find that your onion is bruised on the inside, rotten, and no good for your famous goulash recipe. But if everyone's picking out their vegetables that way, what's happening to the ones that are bruised and disfigured?

Everyday, thousands of tons of produce are discarded at supermarkets, and what's more, thousands more are discarded before they even make it to the supermarket. Probably millions.

So, imagine this, you're a California carrot farmer with 400 acres of land devoted to carrots and other supermarket produce and everyday, 2500 tons of carrots are harvested, but only 2100 are sold. The other 400 tons are simply tossed out because they're bruised, or discolored, or not straight and pointy. That's 800,000 pounds daily!

Mike Yurosek couldn't take it anymore, so he invented the "baby carrot." Mother Nature invented the baby carrot, but he invented the "baby carrot." Note the quotation marks. In 1986, Mr. Yurosek used an industrial green bean cutter to trim his unusable adult carrots to two-inch lengths. From there, the carrots were removed to an industrial potato peeler, where they were peeled and whittled down to the nubs pictured above.

"The babies were an economic powerhouse. Stores paid 10 cents a bag for whole carrots and sold them for 17 cents. They paid 50 cents for a 1-pound package of baby carrots and sold them for $1. By 1989, more markets were on board, and the baby-carrot juggernaut had begun." - USA Today 8/11/04

Now they're everywhere. People take them to work as a snack, they're served on airlines, they're in kids lunchboxes. When, as a whole, Americans are eating worse than they were forty years ago, we eat 67% more carrots than we did in the 60s, and that has quite a bit to do with the "baby carrot" phenomenon.

Mr. Yurosek, who died of cancer three years ago, is credited with changing the entire carrot industry. And from the articles I read, he was a charitable man with strong ties to his community. His Bunny-Luv brand continues on.

Exam P/1

About a half hour into the test, I damn near cried. After months of studying, all the frustration, afternoons at Starbucks instead of at the beach, missing The Office, paddling and other events, I was going to fail. And not only was I going to fail, I didn’t even know where I was going wrong. If I failed this test, the backup plan was always to figure out how to answer the questions I got wrong and retake the test in July, but what would be the point if I didn’t even know what the questions were asking?

The first actuarial exam is a 3-hour, 30 question multiple-choice focused on Probability Theory and Calculus. When the same test was administered in February, an unusually high 43% of all those who took it passed. Usually, only 37% of the 3500 people taking Exam P/1 are successful.

In theory, you only need to get a D-minus to pass. There are 30 questions and passing is just 60%, or 18 correct. Sort of. An undisclosed number of questions are just “practice.” They don’t count. They’re in there as a trial run for next year’s exams. So really, passing is 60% out of 26, 27, or 28 questions. Except it’s not. There’s also something of a curve, and the test administrators are vague about what this means. Officially, anyone who exhibits all of the skills necessary to become an actuary passes. So if Dave gets 19 questions right, and Onaona only gets 17, but Dave clearly has no idea what the Cumulative Distribution Function of an Exponential Distribution is, then Dave fails, and Onaona could very well pass. Moreover, if the administrators notice that almost everyone got question #21 wrong, they might conclude it was too hard and just strike that from the records. Even if I got that one right. Oh well.

So after having my fingerprints recorded, and my pockets emptied in front of a test official, I was signed into a private exam room. On the whole, I felt pretty confident going in. I had taken some practice exams and consistently scored above 80%. Anxious to get this over with, I dived into the tutorial that preceded the test. Almost all the tests are now administered by a new technology called, “Computer.” The tutorial familiarized me with what a “Mouse” is and how I was about to use it in taking this exam. Nevermind the fact that I registered for the test using the Internet. Five minutes later, I hit a button, “End Tutorial” expecting a screen to pop up introducing the forthcoming test. Instead, I found that the test had started! On the screen was question #1, and the 3-hour timer had already started counting down.

I couldn’t answer the question. I jotted down a few things, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so keeping my composure, I moved on to question #2, and started a new page in my test booklet. Shucks! I didn’t know that one either. In fact, I couldn’t figure out any of the first 4 questions. At this point, I was sweating – both literally and figuratively. I managed to squeak out an answer to question #5, only to find that I had no idea what to do with question #6. It was now 30 minutes into the test and I had answered only 1 of the first 6 questions. Generally, I like to think of myself as proud and determined, but I can honestly say that I was very close to walking out of the exam room. And I might have if I had had my wallet with me, or my cell phone, or a ride.

I didn’t want to go back into the restaurant industry, but I would have to. I would have to explain to everyone that I had failed this test that I had been studying for for so long. I would have to tell my 93 year-old grandmother. And since she doesn’t hear very well, I’d probably have to tell her three or four times with increasing volume. But I had nowhere to go, so I might as well see what the rest of the test looked like, and besides, technically speaking, I could still pass if I get most of the remaining questions right.

I got 21 of the next 23 questions, I even had time to go back and figure out one of the questions I had skipped at the beginning.

After the test is over, you are virtually required to take a 15-minute survey. It’s not really required, but after you take the survey, a window pops up to tell you if you’ve unofficially passed or failed. The real results aren’t mailed for eight weeks, but most of the time, if the computer says you’ve passed, you’ve passed.

I passed.

It was a delicious feeling. Also delicious was the Champagne Onaona and I drank after. And the TV we watched after that. And the first night of deep, peaceful sleep in a long while. I probably wouldn't have slept so well if I had walked out.

"I will kill you!"

says I, if you are a rather large centipede running around in my living room. Tuesdy, on the other hand, says, "I will sniff you!" if you are a rather large centipede running around the living room. And occasionally paw at you.

For most of the morning, Tuesdy was preoccupied with the wicker basket in the corner of the living room, hopping and jumping around it, trying to crawl in it just to crawl back out again. I figured he had decided to claim the lucky basket as his new fort--much like he had commandeered our mailbox as his clubhouse--and was frustrated with the still current tenants of the basket: Hiinae's weights and exercise equipment. Not noticing anything unusual about this typically bizarre Tuesdy behavior, I paid him no heed and left him to his business while I tended to mine--checking email, making coffee, taking a shower.

Almost an hour later I noticed him still hovering around that basket and decided maybe I should check out what he was up to. There must be more to it than just the basket itself since his attention span isn't generally focused on one thing for this long. And also, its gotta be a bug, or something thats moving, cause cats lose interest in stationary objects like its their job. So preparing myself for a cockroach, and praying its not too large, I approach the basket and peer inside.

Chills ran down my spine when I saw a large centipede about 6 inches winding its way through the weights, trying to avoid Tuesdy's curiosity. I almost cried. My first instinct was to designate this a "man's job," wake Dave, and make him groggily destroy the monster. But my ego quickly dismissed the idea, so I put on my superhero cape, grabbed two magazines, rolled them up, and started removing the weights from the basket while screaming and doing a tribal dance to intimidate my enemy. Tuesdy seemed excited to have a playmate join his game and became even more enthusiastic about sniffing his wiggly friend. Well, the "friend" soon shot out of the basket and began crawling across the living room floor. Still screaming, I wack it repeatedly with my magazines, but the blows do nothing to penetrate the shiny brown armor. Tuesdy continues to excitedly sniff and paw, and twice I accidently hit him on the nose.

Finally I realize this wacking isn't working, so I pin the centipede down and with it securely writhing between my magazine and the floor, I catch my breath and decide what to do. I need a heavier tool than a makeshift-magazine-turned-sledgehammer, and thats when I remember Hiinae's weights. Continuing to pin the centipede down with one magazine, I unroll the other, lay it flat over the animal-monster, and proceed to drop a 10-pound weight over the writhing bug. Three times. I was taking no chances here. There is no way it could survive these fatal blows. And I was right. But what I failed to take into account was the mess such an impact would leave. There were centipede guts EVERYWHERE, in gooey clumps on the carpet and on the magazine with little centipede feet strewn across the floor. I almost threw up.

Tuesdy, not knowing the game was over, continued to sniff, but I took him away before his paw dipped into and spread the disaster.

The Neigbors (aka I am a product of pop culture)

We have new neighbors. They moved in a few weeks before Mom's birthday, and it was at her birthday party that we all realized a loud local family now lives where the quiet Japanese family used to. The neighborhood is definitely more lively with them around, due in part to the fact that they have a few young kids (which inevitably attracts other young kids from around the neighborhood), and in part because peculiar things happen around their house, like random cars driving slowly past their house at night, and policemen suddenly stopping by.

However, they are not the only house whose domestic noise spills out into the streets (goodness knows we've contributed our share over the years). The house across the street also contributes a good deal to the accoustic makeup of our neighborhood, not to mention that they get A LOT of visitors. Random cars frequently pull into their driveway at all hours of the day, though a policeman has yet to make an appearance.

So, with all this excitement in the neighborhood, I guess I'm a bit on guard. Or on edge. Or more aptly, just really want some juicy gossip to happen. And I thought I was going to get my wish last Saturday morning when I heard a big booming voice coming from outside. Immediately I rushed to the kitchen window, thinking it was coming from our new neighbor's house, considering they already had a previous brush with the law. But when I didn't see any people, cars, or anything unusual from that direction, I glanced across the street, and thats when I saw a large man dressed all in black yelling into the window of the house across the street. I thought "No way!" because I thought it was the cops and how crazy is it that both our neighbors get visited by the cops in one weeks time!? But then thought "Awesome!" cause the guy didn't seem to be wearing an official cop's uniform, so I thought maybe he was part of the Hawaiian Mafia, here to collect his large sum of cash, or someone's left toe.

Being that our kitchen window screens are filthy, I ran to the living room to peek out the large glass windows. I saw the man in black move into the garage and start rummaging through all the items, perhaps looking for something valuable to confiscate or destroy to assert his dominance. The man was quickly joined by his accomplice, a short, squat, blonde woman with a cropped haircut wearing a bright turquoise tanktop, denim culottes, and sneakers. ....Huh? His accomplice is a rather round, middle-aged woman?

Thats when I saw the sign..."Garage Sale Here Today."

My fantasy shattered, I realized the man in black was not a cop or part of the Hawaiian mafia, but just a garage sale customer trying to get the attention of the family inside to let them know he and his wife were here to peruse their wares. And come to think of it, he wasn't even wearing black.

Snapshot

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

I've installed Snap Shots on both Closed on Sundays and my personal resurrected blog Critical Marginalia, each with slightly different features. The most noticeable is that Closed on Sundays contains the Snap Shots icon (which looks like a thought bubble) next to each link while Critical Marginalia does not. Also, Closed on Sundays requires you scroll directly over the icon specifically--allowing for a more directed, less accidental experience with Snap Shots--while Critical Marginalia allows a scroll over just the link, making Snap Shots more accessible, possibly to a fault.

Which do you like better? Do you like Snapshots at all? Feedback would be great! Thanks guys!

Our Ka'u Adventure!

Dave and Onaona's Ka'u Adventure album.

Ok, this post is a long time in coming. Dave and I took an adventure to Ka'u a few weeks ago and ever since, I've been trying to figure out a way to post a slide show of our adventures, rather than a series of pictures like I did for our "Thailand" adventure. Because blogger is affiliated with Picasa (and hence google) they require you use this software to embed a slideshow. Well, I wasn't too happy with the results and plus the template for this site is a little different from standard blogspot sites (which we changed to connect to davidguay.com), so embedding a slideshow wasn't all that easy. Instead, I decided to use a Flickr slideshow, accessed through Snapshot. Just scroll over the link, click on the pop-up and voila! I'm still experimenting with different media, so please bear with me, but in the meantime, enjoy a little into our adventure! And don't forget to click on the "i" for some "witty" captions!

Tuesdy the Cat

To our devoted fans:

Sorry. We've been busy and we've been lazy. You'd think with both of us unemployed we'd post more. Well, to quickly make up for our lack of noise in the face of time constraints, here is a video of Tuesdy...being a cat.

And a new song inspired by the Orange&Fuzzy:

Tuesdy the Cat
Is gettin' really fat
Whadda ya mean by that?
Its just my fur!