Courtenay Brown

The holidays are indeed over – Mom left last week, my Dutch niece left after New Year’s, little sis left on Tuesday, and I’ve stopped feeling the need to carry a camera everywhere I go. I’m settling into some semblance of a routine – Team Jet cycling practices are on Monday and Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings, and around that I am doing my own rides, runs, swims, and occasional glances on craigslist in search of another part-time gig.

Before Christmas, I was swimming at the University of Hawaii Master’s practices, but they are on a three-week hiatus that ends on January 18. Last week I was casually swimming in the ocean while trying to maximize time with my beach-bunny family, but now that vacation is over, I’m back in the pool! There are a couple of nearby public pools in Manoa and Palolo that are free, 50m x 25y, and outdoors. To die for, right? But there are no lane lines and no backstroke flags, no heating either (which is actually fine with me), and at Manoa they run it “double-wide” meaning you go up one black line and then cut/scoot over and head back down the pool on another black line. Fine for a workout with a bunch of 50′s, annoying for longer stuff. Minor complaints aside, I’ve actually had some awesome workouts at these pools this week. I’m really excited about this. When I was out here last March and went to Manoa for a couple of swims, I had total temper-tantrum (who, me?) meltdowns over the free-for-all setup, got all discombobulated, and couldn’t even complete a workout. Now, it’s not even affecting me, and I’m actually grateful for the open-water like experience of swimming in a choppy pool. I consider this progress, and I’m happy .

On Thursday night we went to see Avatar in 3-D. I didn’t know a single thing about the movie and it wasn’t my idea to go, but it was actually pretty cool and I enjoyed it in spite of myself, not to mention the slightly predictable script devoid of subtlety/rife with stereotype. I want a dragon and a six-legged pony and fiber-optic plants! And a healthy planet! They ran it RIDICULOUSLY loud though, so if you go, bring earplugs. I’ve been to three or four movies during the past year, each time I had to ask the manager to get the volume turned down, and everything wound up fine and non-earblasting. On Thursday, however, when I asked for the volume to get turned down, the two responses I got were “that’s just part of the experience” and “we have no access to volume control”. Wow. The “experience”? And are you guys that stupid that they can only trust you with one button now? All you get is “play”, no “up” or “down” arrows? Sheesh. My complaints didn’t fall on completely deaf-thanks-to-the-movies ears, though – Ben found some earplugs in his wallet and I happily sat down and watched the movie!