reception

hey look, i remembered to post the blog!!!
so, reception a few weeks ago. It's hard to describe the joy of watching my brother's groups of friends from high school and college converging on one spot at one point in time... it could be monumental, it could be the end of the world, but in the end, it was just a great party. From my end it was great to see, since the high school set brought me perspective on ages 11-14 and the college group of 15-18. These are people I only knew in passing, but have great memories of, and it is always great to add to them. Also, i couldn't drink when i knew them, now i can and do :)
but first, the weekend started with the arrival of Kyle's best friend from Australia, Toby. Arriving on the "liquid bomb" day meant not only was the trek into logan a nightmare due to the fallen concrete while we were in hawaii, but an utter disaster when at baggage claim. So after a couple passes, since neither of us knew what the other looked like and i mis-remembered the clue kyle gave me, we set off in old faithful (the crown vic) for CT.
After some great interchanges about international politics and life in the aughts, toby and I were on our way to great friendship.
Halfway to Kyle's we stop for gas, and then old faithful proves its name... it can always be counted on to fail when you need it most. but ten minutes later, frightened by the sight of another tow truck, it started right up.

after the first night at kyles we met up with mom and dad, and the rest of the attendees at this great little spot in torrington connecticut.
Established in 1891 (see) the Yankee Pedlar Inn provided a great venue.








A classic old hotel with a linearly oriented bar and... well...
a very
shinning kinda vibe...

and, now i am having some crazy formatting problems (for example, i have no idea why things are blue and underlined and i am struggling with picture orders and such but i'll try.

The reception itslef was held at a winery (in CT? who knew?) ain't it pretty?


Hey look, i got a picture of Liza's mom smiling!! go me!!


There's something very, well, godfather about this picture... i can just imagine my dad saying something about going against the family, and kyle's expression looks like he is receiving "orders " I was there and none of that was said, but i like this picture anyway.

Kyle and Toby, great capture :)


ok, at this point everything is screwing up, so iam just going to post this as is, enjoy the pics, i'll try and fix it later

Party Party Weekend

Welcome back, well to me.
So here is the epilogue of the blog... the epiblogue if you will.
This saturday is the 1 month anniversary of Kyle and Liza's wedding and to commemorate, and more appropriately, to have a fete with all of the friends and loved ones who were not in Hawaii with us. And so, the blog reappears to cap off the festivities, and i'll start a new, regular, personal blog after that.
one catch, i don't have my cable to connect my camera, so there may not be any pictures or resolution for a couple of days.
So to help you envision the pure rockness of this weekend, this is a picture of Seamus. A True Guitar Hero.

the wrap up

so here's the wrap up of the rest of the week.
thursday - time to beat myself up surfing, oh yeah.
On thurs Kyle, Liza, and Myself went down to Waikiki for some surfing in the resort town amongst all of the tourists. Surfing was great, caught two waves, and thoroughly beat myself up to the point where i had serious welts on my chest, my knees were bruised and i was completely exhausted since i don't exactly have any arm strength. Then to litertally add insult to injury, when i went to return the board (which i couldn't get my arm around) my tired arms we slowly moving the board back on the rack when the guy running the tent takes it from me and says "man, you're fucking weak" no, really? I couldn't tell by the fact that it took me 20 minutes to get back to shore and was struggling to catch my breath. grr.
here's the thursday pics (obviously none of me surfing, since, well, i was surfing)



aaawwwwwwwwwww














give it up for DJ TIKI!!







On friday we went to the polynesian cultural center for entertainment, lu'au, and a nice touristy day. at times it was a little bit like prarie home companion, but fun none the less.






and saturday for one last time we went down to waiamaia bay where, at long last, i got my obligatory sunburn, making the flight home oh so uncomfortable and opening up into the utter itchy discomfort hell that happens to me, meaning i had to take the day off today as well, since i didn't really recover from my jetlag or burn on the monday i had planned. i think it has subsided, but we'll see what happens when i hop in the shower later. grrrr


i guess i'll end this one with the rest of my favorite pics.









if you haven't figured out by now, one of my pastimes was hunting crabs with my camera
this blue guy didn't do a very good job hiding himself.


however...





this one is a bit harder to spot.











and for one more where's waldo
find the fishy










the coral looks a bit like a moonscape









speaking of which
















Coconuts are scary.




and finally,
even the ocean could feel the love.

thanks for reading,
justin

Wednesday

Remember in elementary school when they were teaching us how to spell wednesday and they said something to the fact that you should never wed on a wednesday? well kyle and liza forgot that. still a beautiful day.

In the morning when liza went off to get her hair done, kyle mom and myself went down and did some snorkling at shark's cove... fun, no sharks though.

The wedding was wonderful. The wind died (a little) and we avoided the sandblasting we had been experiencing over the past few days, and the ceremony was wonderfully simple and short. then followed by some absolutly amazing food. You must excuse that there aren't a lot of pictures from the event (since there was an official photographer) But what follows are the better shots from the party which followed.
Great cake, of course.











Happy relatives












Happy hubbies
(note: as soon as i took this picture the wind picked up and blew my champagne off the ledge to shatter beneath my feet... that sucked, but i got the picture. FYI that palm try is where they were married)






The lovely couple enjoying the view













another one (for these pictures they were posing for the actual photgrapher, hence why they are never looking at me)











my camera didn't quite grab this one, but it's the best front on one i have.









and as you can see, we finally had a real sunset.


















mmmmmmm, cake


that's my wednesday pics.


time for a new blog with more pics.
jd

the blog is back

hey everyone,
as you probably noticed, we lost our internet connection on wednesday, so i could not keep up the blog.
so now it's time to write about the trip, upload more picks, and do the rest of the bloggy stuffness.

I'm going to break these into a couple entries to try and control the amount of space i take up.

So, heres some house pics.
Here's the front of the house, though to be fair, it's more like the back since the front really is facing the beach.


et voila





And here's some of the interior:

downstairs entrance

Upstairs Entrance

downstairs kitchen and pool table

Downstairs lounge

Skylight


and because i think they should have their own place, here are a couple of my favorite shots, long exposure, nightime, looks painted, very cool.

this one isn't as dramatic as what will follow, but there is something about this shot that reminds me of Ronin or some of the early john woo films where the color is just so extreme.







breeziness is cool, and getting close to impressionism.






pretty cool, huh? :)


ok, time to end this one, I'll start a new one broken down by days from here.

Tuesday continuum

welcome back.
Today was a pleasant day. Spent much of it in the water both outside the house and over at waiamai bay (i make no attemt at spelling correctly) where a rather large sea turtle and I went for a swim for a while, leading me far from shore, but getting back was ok.
so i have a correction to my googleearth long and lat.
we are at:
21 40'50.82" N 158 02'06.83" W

Tomorrow is the big day, going to have to make some sort of speech, shouldn't be a problem, but we'll see.

my jaw is very tired from the hours of snorkling i involved myself in today.

Tomorrow i expect to be up at 6 again, and will walk in the other direction for some photos. Everyone here went to bed around 9, i doubt that will be the case tomorrow.

here are some of the better pics of the day.
two chalfonts? nope, just two sforza's. here's my maternal lineage.












So the place is called sunset point, i guess you can see why. But once again we are about to be thwarted by a line of clouds.













But as Kyle and Liza went out for a nice quiet walk, this thwarting turned into something quite spectacular.











lets just say sometimes it's ok to have the sun blocked from view. Note the kitesurfer who has been present in the last three photos. This guy was out doing flips and such for about an hour, we were rather tired just watching him, but it was quite a sight. Earlier one of our neighbors went out windsurfing, and with the abnormally strong winds we have been enduring, he took off like a rocket and was barely visible within 5 minutes. But then after about 45 minutes he came back into view and returned to the beach at a serious clip.

Kyle, Liza and I ended the day with a nice game of cutthroat. Played the best pool of my life and ended up Two and One. This was my poor attempt at getting a timer shot with all of us in it... well we are all in the shot, but liza is the only one in focus, oh well, pretend it is artistic like most photgraphers my age.






Goodnight everyone, you'll be seeing this sun make its way around before i do.
jd

few words, just images

Hey kids, I woke up early again and went for a nice walk, so this post will be almost entirely pictures with some comments. enjoy


















Best Word, Ever





This is the upstairs main room. Stairs on left lead downstairs, pictures of there later.








So while we were all staring at this rainline approaching, none of us thought to look behind us, which is when the sudden downpour snuck up.



























ocean fingers










Everytime i try to take a picture of these birds they escape, I caught this one just as i was heading down to the beach at 6 am










i like this mermaid shot, note how the footprints disappear into the inlet










and now for the where's waldo the crab shots. i noticed this very little guy scurring beneath my feet, and then proceded to harass him for the next 10 minutes, after 25 or so shots, these two are the only ones where he was in focus.
this last shot is of a different crab, this one wandered into the shade and made it much easier to capture.

sorry to any 56K users.
see you later