Last full day in Hawaii...

8 months.

It's all coming to an end tomorrow.

Crazy.

This week we had the new cast on board and showed them some of our favorite places to go.

Oh yeah. Also, on our last day of Tennis, we got a little out of hand and broke our rackets.

It's been a long journey.

-- Post From My iPhone

Honolulu...

Yesterday in Honolulu I taught my last class at Laughtrack Theater.

After class was over they had a Potluck dinner to say farewell to us.

There were all kinds of foods that I've never seen before.

It was great.

Jen made this crazy Timpano dish. It was featured in "Big Night" with Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci.

Inside this gigantic thing is pasta, bacon, ham, meatballs, 3 cheeses, pepperoni or salami and hard boiled eggs. It's like I've died and gone to heaven and heaven's chef is and Italian chef.

Crazy.

Larissa made a dish from Saipan. Cindy made fish tacos.

Steph brought sponge cake. Somebody brought lots and lots of sushi.

And, there were Malasda's.

Man, oh man, I cannot tell you how nice it was.

I have really enjoyed teaching them every Saturday. It's just been a real joy to have something constructive to do every time we got to Honolulu.

I'm really, really going to miss everyone in the class.

The boat's a'creakin...

We have hit some rough waters.

Literally.

We'd heard that fall and winter waters could be rough around the islands, but we haven't experienced it. Wednesday and today, we're getting the full brunt of it.

It's usually so calm and peaceful.

This is usually what the Kalapuki Beach looks like...

This is what it looked like yesterday and today.

People told me that the water the past couple days has been the roughest it's been in 20 years.

Great.

On a different note, we're excited because the new cast joins us tomorrow. They're going through fire and safety training so the two casts overlap for a week.

It's very exciting.

Hilo…

The great change exchange happened today.

Brett, Jeannie and I have been saving our change in peanut jars.



We've kind of been competing to see who had the most.



Brett went first. He had $50.06 in his.



We went next. We had to double him up to beat him.





We finished up with $119.56!



We were all happy with our winnings. It was a lot of fun.






-- Post From My iPhone

Bears…

Between the Bears and the Cubs, it's been a miseable sporting season.

Actually, the Bears have been worse than the Cubs.

Ah, what am I talking about. They've both been collossal disappointments.

The Bears still have a chance to turn it around.

Hopefully, they'll do it soon. Right now they're pathetic.


-- Post From My iPhone

Kauai...

We have a new podcast that we're doing.

It's an improvised one.

I interview Brett and Jeannie, but don't tell them anything about who they are or what they do until we start the interview.

They then have to improvise as those characters.

We're still doing the old one, but this one is a fun little one we're toying with. It's called, "Aphasia Presents Something Else...The Improvised Interviews".

Take a listen, if you have a chance. It's on iTunes, but you can also listen to it on the internet.

Powered by Podbean.com

***

There's a guy who works on the ship who I see everyday. Today he stopped me and asked if I've been on vacation this whole time.

I told him I work on the ship and he was very surprised.

"I've been on the ship since March," I told him.

"Yes, I know," he said. "I thought you were on a really long vacation."

He's from El Salvador and has a very thick accent, so we were not really communicating too well. I explained to him that I was a Guest Entertainer and did shows on the ship for Second City.

"Oh, you are here with your family?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "I do shows for Second City."

"Yes," he said. "I see you with a girl all the time. You are here with your family."

"Well,..." I started to respond.

"What is jer name?" he asked.

When he said "jer", I thought he was saying "her", meaning Jeannie. So, I answered, "Jeannie".

Well, "jer" meant "your". He responded by shaking my hand and saying, "Nice to meet you Jimmy. I hope you and your family have a nice vacation."

I didn't know how to respond. I just shook his hand and said, "Thank you."

For the next two weeks I'm going to have to deal with him waving at me and yelling "Hi Jimmy."

Honolulu...

Tonight we get an hour closer to coming home!

While the rest of the world turns their clocks back an hour, we stay the same. That means that we gain an hour on the rest of America. We'll be 2 weeks, 6 days and 23 hours closer to coming home.

We'll be 2 hours behind L.A., 4 hours behind Chicago and 5 hours behind NYC. That's a lot more manageable.

****

My own personal tour of Lost filming locations made another stop today.

This one I didn't stumble across on my own. Someone from my class at Laughtrack tipped me off to this one.

It's Penny's door.

You can see Desmond knocking on it and looking up to the window for her.

Across the street from it is a magnificent building where they've also filmed a lot of scenes from Lost. Although, the reason I'm pointing it out is because it's amazing entrance door.

Look at that thing! It's very cool.

It looks like it would take five people to push it open just so that you could leave.

***

After my class at Laughtrack, Brett and I met up to watch Paranormal Activity at Ward Theaters.

It was pretty good. Not as scary as they made it out to be, but very entertaining.

It was too scary for Jeannie to see. We wouldn't let her go with us. Instead, we made her go the Michael Jackson movie, which she liked a lot.

Afterward, we saw tons of kids trick-or-treating at the Ward Center.

They were very cute.

Kauai...

A few months ago Jeannie and I visited an old sugar plantation in Kauai. They had a train that circled the property and gave a tour of what life was like on the island in the mid 1900's.

We arrived too late for the train, but a walking tour on our own. To our delight, we returned there later that night for a Luau.

Yesterday, we decided to go back and ride the train.

This time, Brett tagged along.

Instead of taking a cab this time (Last time it cost $40), we took the K-Mart shuttle and then walked to the plantation. It was a little bit further away than we had realized. The biggest problem was that once we got on the property, we still had another half mile to walk.

We looked at the time and realized we were going to miss the train once again. Jeannie dared Brett to hitchhike and to our surprise, he did!

A car pulled over and an older lady in a BMW pulled over and drove us up the driveway to the train depot.

We then got on the train and choo-chooed around for 40 minutes.

It was great!

The highlight was pulling over and seeing the animals they have on the plantation.

Jeannie and Brett even fed some wild Hawaiian pigs that lived on the farm.

Afterward, ate at the plantation restaurant and sat outside on the veranda.

It was a nice relaxing day.

Kauai...

Kona…

Kona is always hot. Always!

Strangely, that's where we decide to play tennis every week.


After three hours, we're all exhausted, dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke.

Kona also has some of the best restaurants in Hawaii. One of our favorites, we call "the icebox".

We call it that because we can't remember it's name and they have an sign on the side of their building advertising that they have air conditioning. On the sign there is a drawing of an ice cube and squiggly lines above it to look like wind blowing over it.

For some reason, that made Jeannie think the name of the restaurant was "The Icebox" and we have called it that ever since.

Ironically, it's always a bit stuffy and hot in the restaurant. There's nothing ice boxy about it at all.

The reason we go there is because they have possibly the best fish and chips I have ever tasted.


They make it with fresh Ono.

I've never even heard of Ono fish, but it taste incredible. It's not oily or fishy like halibut, which is what most fish and chips is made from. Ono is thick, tender and flakey.

Even Brett likes it! And he doesn't like fish!

It's absolutely outstanding.


-- Post From My iPhone