Jeff & Konnor's Blog

...is the top of the bobsled run at Olympic Park in Park City. Meanwhile, Jeff is still reading business plans. They range from excellent to, uh, not so excellent.

Konnor's work takes him all sorts of random places, like the Grizzlies practice session shown here. Be on the look out for some ice skaters in a Proctor & Gamble commercial. Jeff is in week 11 of an 11.5 week quarter, and is currently reading through lots and lots of business plans.

We will leave you with this sunset as our final Hawaii photo on our blog, but there are about 50 more photos at our Smugmug site. Take a look!

Right in the middle of downtown Honolulu is Foster Botanical Garden, which has some unbelievably huge trees. This one here with Konnor is a cuipo, planted in 1930.

The Byodo-In is a Buddhist temple in the Valley of the Temples, a large cemetery with ponds full of koi, swans, and turtles, backed by the Ko'olau mountains. Inside is an impressive, large Buddha. The temple is a replica of the original Byodo-In built in Japan about a thousand years ago. We quite enjoyed our visit.

In addition to walking beaches, we also wandered around a number of botanical gardens and parks. The best, we think, was Waimea Valley. It's almost 2,000 acres of gardens worked into the natural scenery, with several trails and a main path that leads to a waterfall. We decided that the Monkey Pod Tree, pictured here, is our new favorite tree. Click for the large version so you can see the people for scale.

Our favorite activity while in Hawaii was walking the beaches. We walked on sandy beaches, rocky beaches, beaches made of old coral reefs, beaches made of crushed sea shells, old lava flow beaches, and beaches that were a combination of the above. We also ran into a couple Lost sets, which answers our "Where is it" post. We saw lots of fish, but no turtles or whales. We also didn't see a lot of people -- maybe two other people per hour of walking. If you want a Hawaiian beach all too yourself, the North Shore in December is the place to be.

We had one of our own surfer photos ready to post, showing waves of 10-15 feet or so, but that's nothing compared to the 50 foot waves that hit the North Shore today, so we're posting this Reuters photo instead. Not that we went to Hawaii just to watch surfing, but this would have been neat to see in person. One thing we found interesting about waves -- without any point of reference, you judge them to be much smaller than they actually are -- it's only when there are surfers on them that you can really see how big they are.

For those of you who don't know already, we spent last Monday through Friday in Hawaii. Here is the view from our cottage at the Turtle Bay Resort, about ten feet away from the ocean on the North Shore of Oahu. We highly recommend Turtle Bay. It's one of only four hotels on Oahu which is not in Waikiki. We picked it for just that reason -- we're not big fans of anything touristy. The room and grounds were so incredibly nice that we could have easily enjoyed spending the whole week there without going anywhere else on the island. This picture was taken during a low-surf moment, but we did see waves of about 15 feet, which brought out lots of surfers who we could watch from the room.

Like our "What is it" game but with an added twist. Whilst on vacation, we randomly stumbled upon this site. What and where is it? Double bonus points if you don't know where we went on vacation last week.

We actually don't watch anything that is televised on Saturday; it's a DVR catch-up or movie night. Pictured here is our satellite covered in snow. One of our main concerns in switching to satellite was possible signal loss during rain or snow, but we're happy to say that this doesn't seem to be a problem.

Once upon a time, Sci-Fi Friday had some of our favorite shows: Farscape, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica. Now, the recently-renamed "Syfy" channel has drek. Stargate Universe is nearly unwatchable for us. It's boring, and we dislike almost every character. We hope they get past the "low on resources" phase and move into a "meet some aliens" phase fast. Plot of every show so far:

"We're out of [resource]!" "Hey, look, our ship has magically taken us to a planet with [resource]!" Characters take an hour to dramatically retrieve [resource] from planet. Rush acts like a jerk the entire time.

The only episode we liked consisted of killing off the entire cast, but unfortunately, that fate was averted by sending a message back in time (using a method completely ripped off from SG1).

Following Stargate Universe is Sanctuary, a really cheesy show that's still watchable because it doesn't try too hard to be more serious than it is.

Flash Forward. Our favorite new show. Mind-bending with some Lost-like aspects, off to a good start.

Fringe. Fringe episodes can go either way for us. We much prefer the alternate universe/observer story arc to the creepy death of the week mysteries.

30 Rock. The only comedy we watch.

CSI. Jeff watches CSI, and only the original Las Vegas version, but Konnor doesn't watch any of them. He finds these types of shows to be too formulaic (which is why we both stopped watching House, incidentally).

Fortunately, we have the capability of recording three things simultaneously.

We will watch Glee if it happens to be on, but we're not sure what to make of it yet. We do like the music they use, and kudos to the various artists for making their songs available. Pictured here is not a Glee character, but rather Seven of Nine, representing the fact that Star Trek Voyager is the only re-run show that we currently record. Fun will commence.

Lost. Our favorite current show. Pictured here from the Dharma Initiative Orchid Station orientation film, Dr. Chang (or Candle, or Halliwax, if you prefer) and rabbit #15. Or technically, one of the rabbits #15.

[Yes, we know it hasn't been on since May and it was on Wednesdays, but season six is airing on Tuesdays, so we're putting it here. Otherwise, the day would be a blank. "V" was dumb in 1984, and it's dumb now. One astute IMDB reviewer called it "unintentionally hilarious." As for the various reality results shows, we don't watch those. We just look up results online.]

Heroes. Better this season than last, but still nowhere near as good as the first season, to which the picture here is a tribute. We have noticed that our enjoyment of an episode is inversely related to the number of scenes containing Matt Parkman.

Of the dancing shows, we prefer Dancing with the Stars because it has a more enjoyable and sometimes humorous tone. Plus, we find the commentary on So You Think You Can Dance to be intolerable, and some of the dance styles just weird.

Amazing Race. The only reality show we have watched every season of, and will continue to watch until they stop making it. This season (15) got off to a really shaky start with the immediate elimination and the ridiculous Japanese game show knock off, but was fine after that. Our problem was that we like all the final teams, and it takes away most of the suspense when you aren't rooting for someone. We continue to be "amazed" at some of the things Amazing Race contestants fail to do before competing: learning to swim, learning to paddle various types of boats, training to be able to run a good distance without being exhausted, that sort of thing.

Good colors for continuing our Thanksgiving posting theme, and incredibly fragrant. We don't have a lot of this kind (Catasetinae) because they are picky and require relatively meticulous care, but they are worth it.