on Reverse Fall and Slow Bruising

We find ourselves in the earlier stages of Reverse Fall. Reverse Fall is that time in Hawai`i, beginning around my birthday, in which the weather becomes so hot and dry that all of the greenery shrivels and dies. Grass dries out to brittle crunchy shards. Leaves drop and litter my driveway in inches thick carpet. Diamond Head changes color in entirety from luscious green to tumbleweed brown. And plus it becomes 90 in parts of Honolulu, including my part. Today's Weather is wrong!

What I have to look forward to is Reverse Spring. Sometime around Halloween and Thanksgiving, the temps begin to cool, the rains begin to fall, and everything becomes green again. Winter here is rainy and sometimes stormy, and now that I've been here two years -- cold.

I like them both in ways, the hot and the cold. The hot because I don't have to wear so much clothes, the cold because my laptop doesn't overheat, and plus sunscreen is less an immediate necessity.

I carry an umbrella year round, protecting from sun after Reverse Fall begins and protecting from rain after Reverse Spring. Summer also mean sunscreen if I go outside for anything, even to walk to the grocery store. When I decorated my Wonder Woman Filing Cabinet:





(Previously, it was a rusted out metal filing cabinet a la Mimi's office at St. Paul Elementary which my adviser had had in his basement storage for upwards of three centuries, but kindly dedicated to the cause of my organization.)

I put sunscreen on my shoulders and face, but failed to anticipate that the back of my shirt would ride up a little bit as I bent over the 70sriffic tank of office furniture on my lanai, and now I have a stripe of brown across my lower back. I had gotten a touch of pink on my shoulders, and complained to Michael that the sunscreen hadn't done much. Then I showered and saw the gash of lobster red at my shirt line, and took it all back.

Go sunscreen.

This week I've mostly been indoors. Work was quite busy at the beginning as I finished a report on what we learned from the interviews and focus groups we did with the teachers. Since that finished, I've been working hard on thesising.

I have "slow bruised" my elbows from sitting such long hours in front of my computer this week. There was no impact, no blow, just a gradual bruising from near-constant desk-elbow action. I have cloths underneath them now, padding them from the genuine wood grain appearance of my desktop.

I have two more days of this stage of my thesis. The coding will finish tomorrow if I just keep with it, coming in four days early from my scheduled goal. Next stage is analysis, which I've never done before, but I'm hoping I can finish by July.

In my spare time, I'm reading a history book covering the struggle between Cromwell and Charles I for the people's control of government or the government's control of people. It's about a young Lady forced into marriage with a dashing, but severe Lord who is a close adviser to Cromwell. Is there love in her future and will The People succeed in enforcing their rights? Who can say -- there's no way anyone could determine the outcome of this one. But ah, what a ride!