…when there’s a perfectly good sidewalk right next to them?

I keep seeing this all the time, and saw it again today on my way home. I made a left turn and almost hit some jackass who was jogging right in the middle of a right-turn lane on Koko Head Avenue. This wasn’t on one of the small, empty parts of Koko Head Avenue, either. The part right at the offramp where this happened is about 5 lanes wide.

This fool was jogging next to an evenly paved and empty sidewalk just three feet over. Even worse, he was jogging in the same direction as traffic and had headphones on. All during rush hour traffic.

I’ve seen this happen quite a bit, and have no idea why people would ignore perfectly good sidewalks and choose to do their jogging where they’re way more likely to get hit by a car. A few months ago, I was around KCC and again, there was a guy and a girl jogging on the road - again, going the same direction as traffic. And again, they were holding up the right turn lane. I had to slow down to jogging-speed where I was stuck behind them until they cleared the intersection.

That other wasn’t as irritating though, because the girl was wearing spandex. But still.

My mom bought a cemetery plot today. It was one of those things she wanted taken care of, especially because of what’s been going on lately.

So Evan and I went to Diamond Head  with her this morning to pick out a plot. The whole process didn’t take as long as we thought it would. An hour later, we had a plot picked out and mom charged the whole thing on two credit cards.

It’s a nice spot; kind of near the entrance and near the dog park, and that’s where mom and dad will be laid to rest.

It’s nice to have that settled. We’ve also been able to get a bunch of other stuff settled, and dad’s condition also seems to have stabilized. So I’m going to be flying back up to Vegas next week.

My mom just went to feed the dogs. When she came back in the house, she was a bit upset over the newly dug up dirt (which she was previously unaware of). Here’s a breakdown of her little rant.

• “Stupid Dog” (3-4 times)
• “Every day I have to..”
• “Stupid Dog” (2 more times)
• “Take him back to the Humane Society”

Oh, mom!

My mom and brother spent the last few days cleaning up the courtyard outside our house. Yesterday, our ungrateful dog dug up a bunch of dirt. We scolded him and cleaned it up. Today, I found this:

He dug everything back up again and was sleeping on the dirt. I don’t know why he likes to sleep in the sun, either - today was a hot day. Our other two dogs were sleeping under the roof.

Yeah, so I decided that he’s got better odds out in our yard (that’s full of vegetation and small insects) than in a plastic box in our house. We let the gecko go this morning. I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear from him…

During our daily visit to the hospital this afternoon, Evan and I were hanging out in one of the waiting areas and made a small new friend.

It was a gold dust day gecko. I’ve seen pictures of them before, but this was the first one I’ve seen one in person. He was still a baby. Evan and I named him Mark. We’re not sure how he got there, but I’m guessing he may have hitched a ride on a bouquet of flowers.

We played around with him for a while and took him out to one of the windows facing toward the sun to warm him up (later on, Evan said he saw a nurse sitting by the window and quietly taking pictures of him with her cell phone camera).

When we were about to go back in to visit dad, we brought Mark back to the waiting area where we found him.

A few hours later, when we were leaving the hospital, we noticed he was still hanging out on one of the tables. I scooped him up and brought him home with us. He’s sitting in one of our small tanks now, and I’m going to try this trick that Dave did raising baby jackson chameleons - leave the tank outside with some fruit in it to attract small flies.

Hopefully we can give Mark a fighting chance. Our yard’s got tons of little lizards all over the place, so after he gets big, he can go make friends (or go eat some of them).

I landed back in Hawaii one week and six hours ago. Kerri’s still up in our new apartment by herself. The place is nice, from the 3 or 4 days I spent in it. Over the last week, Kerri’s been busy making multiple trips to Target and Walmart, stocking up on housewares and groceries. Yesterday she also spent the day at the DMV to get her car changed over to a Nevada registration.

I think it’ll be a while longer before I can fly back. We’re still playing it by ear here .. in the meantime, my mom, my brother and I have been seeing a whole lot more of each other lately. That’s a good thing, though.

I actually flew back in on Friday morning to help out with a family emergency. Kerri is still in Vegas, holding down the fort. I’m glad that we were able to get a place before I had to leave, and my last few days there were spent accompanying Kerri to pick up various housewares (a task that she’s been continuing on ever since I left).

I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I go back up. It may be a while.. Life happens.