10 years of Aloha and Ohana

In Late 1997, 12 people crammed into a tiny duplex apartment that had tables and chairs laid out from the kitchen into the living room, on top of the couch and partially into the tiny 3 ft Christmas tree perched precariously atop a endtable. The bar consisted of 5 bottles of booze and a cooler sat outside the front door with a 24 pack of beer...which, if you wanted a beer, you had to ask the person sitting at the table in front of the door to reach back, around the door and grab a beer.

Tight, cramped and poor...but the spirit is still the same.

Aloha(Love) and Ohana (Family).

In 1997, it was the first year that I had NOT gone home for Thanksgiving. Homesick, I missed the family gathering wherein close to all 35 of my west coast side family members crammed into my grandparents house for the feast.

To make up for that, my novice cooking skills and I decided to have a gathering with my closest friends and co-workers....my other Ohana...my other family.

Little did I know that it would spawn a decades worth of habitually throwing this festas (Portuguese for festival, gathering, feasting).

In 1997 I threw it together, unplanned in a matter of hours. It was cheap and haphazard. A ton of things went wrong, but that never really mattered. It was the guests and the effort that mattered.

Now, a decade later, the beast has grown. This event starts getting planned 3 months ahead now. And with this being the 10th one, and the biggest one yet, ideas and concepts were starting to be slung around clear back in May.

This gathering has gone from a handful of guests to dozens. From a cheap $140 grocery bill to well over $1200. From a underage 20 yr old with 5 bottles of contraband booze to a 30 year old mixologist with an over 120 bottle stocked open bar. A tiny duplex in Tempe's ghetto with landing airplanes every 15 minutes to Gilbert's west side house 3 times the size of the Tempe location.

The irony? This may be the last. I may not be in Arizona for next year's 11th annual. My true blooded Ohana calls for my return to San Francisco. That however, is still up to the winds of fate.

This event has seen so many faces come and go. Some have moved away, some have disappeared, some have fallen out of grace, and some have stayed. One or two have stayed around for 8 or all ten of those years.

The premise is still there, and will be there again this year. The spirit of Aloha and Ohana.

The official announcement is that the

10th annual Holiday Social will be held this year on

Sunday, December 9th 2007 at about 7 pm.

Invitations are designed and will be given out a month before the event.

The September Chill, chapter 2

It never got above 81 degrees the past 4 days while I was home. Every morning the coast was socked in with fog. Yesterday, the day i left, I left a very fogged in San Jose at noon, high was 65 degrees. I sleep good in this weather. The irony is that my bedroom window faces directly East, so that I naturally wake up with the light at 8 am. The only thing that would keep me in bed, not necessarily sleeping, is the September Chill. It's perfect. The window is cracked, and the coastal air flicks you in the face with a hint that winter is on it's way. It snuggles up next to your ear and politely whispers to you to either go ahead and get up to start your day, but if you decide to linger, it will keep you company along with your blanket and pillow...nice and cozy.

I was faced with that every morning while I was there. The only time I abused it was Tuesday morning, suffering from a slight hangover, a headache and a random case of insomnia that didn't allow me to sleep until 7am.

Both my folks were in good spirits while I was home. Both moved with ease. Mom's foot wasn't really hindering her, as the cortisone shots in her tendon helped her walk normal again for most of the day. Dad's PET scan came up negative for any abnormalities, so the only thing he's taking meds for is the occasional heartburn and indigestion and some random $10 a tablet to keep the drug companies rich blood pressure pill. Mom has a pair of similar pills. At least their collection of pill containers has dwindled down from the dozen or so to about 2 plus an Advil container.

It was a enriching feeling to wake up and not really worry about anything but to take my time and spend it with them. Of course I did my own thing at times, usually when they took their afternoon 3-4pm nap, or after 11pm when they went to bed.

Yes, this time I did make a routine trip to Chuck's Donuts at 2am, plus a drive up to Canada college to enjoy said taste treat with a panoramic view of the Bay.

I shocked my parents once, and that was a random thing to happen. I actually shut my father up and expressed not only deep seeded feelings, but a somewhat master plan to move back home. Dad didn't know what to think. I'm not sure that he still does. He understands what I meant, and a general plan about going about it, but we both decided that time will permit it's course of action. In essence, things will fall into place at their chosen time and place, hopefully guided my our nudging it along.

Needless to say, someday soon, Preferably withing the next year to 3 years, I will be waking up, in my own place, to my familiar September Chill of a friend.

The September Chill, chapter 1

September is still a warmer month. Summer is in it's death throes, and fall is on the horizon come the 22nd. Back home, daytime highs rarely cross the 80 degree barrier and night-time lows are hovering around the sweater threshold of 65. Of course that means nil to us average Phoenicians, as of now the day temps are still 100 and lows are a bone numbing 77. Here I don't have the familiar September chill that I am accustomed to from back home in the Bay area.

I recently got back from visiting home yesterday. I was there for 4 days. I wanted to return home a month after my Mom's party because I didn't really spend proper time with my family last month due to throwing the party and then playing tourist with my hometown buddy Doug and Crystal, who has never really been to the area. That and I wanted to start helping to clear out the house a bit.

While I was there, I cleared out one room and reorganized another-which took 2 days. The one room was my old room. Cluttered with past high school memories, empty boxes, outdated furniture and nick knacks. I assembled 2 heaping lawn and leaf bags of trash alone and 2 more plus a old console TV, boxes,books and a computer to donate to charity. One room...and that was the easiest room in the house outside of a bathroom.

My parents are pack rats to a point, either that or they are lazy, or ignorant as to how to get rid of something outside of bringing it to the city dump. You mention EBay or Craig's List to them, and they'll ask who Craig is.

After clearing out my room, Mom tells me that this room's walls were untouched since 1984, when we moved in to the house. It was evident even more so after rearranging furniture and tossing away old posters and frames. Apparently I used the walls as a target range for numerous pointed projectiles.

As a youth, with limited friends, no girlfriends and no real quality family time, being by myself in my room was a daily event. Boredom led to various imagination induced behaviors, some creative, some pointless and some destructive - those stories are for another blog. One year for Christmas, my Uncle frank gave me a mini-desk dartboard with mini metal darts. I quickly found that they stick in the wall better than the dartboard. Posters, stickers, pictures...none were spared. Neither was the walls. Thousands of pinhole marks are all over my old walls. It's a spackler's and painter's nightmare. Those weren't the touchstone scars from this room though.

Two small pieces of defacement meant more than anything else. I couldn't tell you when I made them back then, but the meanings are still fresh. One was a magic marker sentence above my headboard, underneath the window sill which says, "Go to the place of peace". The other, a knife carving in the wall next to the floor that simply said in bold blade wounds, " NO LOVE".

Two statements that screamed out for attention and help back in my adolescence. Some may still have some credence in my current adult life, but the latter is mostly a ghost now. If anything, the former is still a beacon of guidance at any point in one's life.

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"—Mark Twain

There's a middle eastern proverb that I came across the other day that makes a lot of sense-

"You my friend have lost your camel,

Your people have told you many advices,

All of it are nice casual words,

Yet you still have lost your camel."

I would assume that back in the past, in that part of the world (and possibly still) that if you lost your camel, you were good as dead in the desert. It provided you with means to haul food, water, other items as well as give you transportation, bartering leverage, status and in a last case survival scenario-sustenance to survive. In effect, it was your life. You lose it, you have lost your life.

It's a clever metaphor for losing one's self. Despite all the well meaned advice from those around you, you are still lost, and the only person that can really dictate the finding of your camel, or in effect, finding yourself, is well....you.

And like Mark Twain's blank envelope, you have no idea what direction you should go.

I'm hoping that by escaping from this place for the next few days and going back to a easier time and place, that it will shed a little bit of clarity onto myself.

The only option outside of that shred of self guidance that I seek is to quit my job, cancel my bills, buy a surfboard, cash out a few thousand dollars in travel cash, pack up some essential gear & my dog in my truck and leave for a few months to I don't care where, just as long as it would be a place with no memory of anything.

Either that, or i stay here, lost in the desert and lose my life.

In the meantime, I'll settle for a small 4 day trip to find quiet with my family.

"Here's to getting the hell out of this foul stench-hole of a state."-D.H.

See you Weds nite.

Viral strain

Most attributed to my recent stress levels breaking me down lately, I got knocked on my ass by some random form of viral infection the past few days.

It's been really rare that a sickness kicks my ass, as usually I'm done kicking sickness's ass within 30 hours with the help of NyQuil, vitamin C and rest, but this one came out of left field and did a number on me.

Monday night I got home early and went to sleep before midnight, only to wake up after an hour and a half because i was shivering uncontrollably. It's 80 degrees in the house...

I get a winter comforter and get the dog on the bed and I'm still freezing. I never got any more sleep that night. Tuesday morning at work I was a zombie. I ached all over. All my joints were froze up, my head was pounding, I was sweating, and dead tired. I got off at 6 and went home. Napped for 2 hours-once again under 80 degrees of blankets. After midnight, once again, couldn't sleep-chills, sweats, fever, etc. I knock myself out with a NyQuil/Tylenol PM combo and slept through 3 pm the next day.

Wednesday sucked ass the worst. Work was slow and I felt like shit. I had a constant headache all night and I was so stiff that it felt like I was wired together with re bar and concrete. As per this virus' motif, come after midnight, he came out to play. I'm working in the back, where it's 90+ degrees and I'm shivering. I actually had to step outside where it was 100 to warm up a little.

I got dizzy and lightheaded and remembered drifting into unconsciousness once, but was smart enough to know to take a seat and focus on my breathing. That freaked me out man. All my joint and muscle pain mixed in with my breathing as i slowly started to have my hearing fade out and things got numb. Right when I thought I was gonna go down, my last thought was-"fuck, that hard kitchen tile is gonna do some damage when i fall face first into it."

I found a breathing cycle and slowly regained stability. I said fuck it, I gotta go. Since it was slow, I had done everything needed to close down already except mop the floor. I did so and left work early-driving home in 100 degree heat, with the truck heater on.

Crystal followed me home for my safety, and I got into the shower and cranked it as hot as I could, and it was still cold. I got out, double dosed the NyQuil and Advil and tried to sleep.

Now I was too hot, but I wasn't sweating. Little bastard got an immunity to NyQuil too, because that wasn't working. I eventually passed out across the house in the spare bed a few hours later out of shear fatigue from the day and fighting off this bastard.

Got up at 2pm and I was, well...fine. A little sore and grumpy, but ok.

Did some chores, watched some football, regained my appetite. Slept ok, still sweated my ass off and was sore all nite.

Friday, 2pm.

My neck and headaches are still fading in and out today, which I'm sure will be much worse when I get to work tonight, but tonite I hope for a first nite of solid, no drug induced sleep in eager anticipation for me to fly home to see the family on Sunday.