Here we’ve put together a view of the back yard taken from our lanai. Very pretty. Back there are some banana trees which we’ve been given permission to pick. 🙂

Here is a little something we threw together. This is the main section of the house we got in Hana. Hence the name “Hana House” 🙂

So Holly found out that they want her to start on Maui this coming Monday. Which gave us approximately one week to find a place to live in Hana. And since Hana is only about 2 or 3 blocks long and about 2 hours away from civilization, there are not a whole lot of apartments for rent there. So this past Monday, I flew over to Maui for a few days to try to find a place to live. It was an interesting trip seeing as how I’ve never been to Maui before. It was all new to me. I rented a little Chevy Aveo right off the plane. I thought about getting a motorcycle. But then I thought about the hotel rates and decided a car might be better.

The ride down to Hana was absolutely beautiful and dangerous. Especially for a driver. But I guess that is why they make those little scenic turn-offs. I didn’t use any on the way down to Hana the first time because I was a little anxious to get there. And once I did, I was a little surprised at how small it was. I knew going into this all that it was small, but wow. Even the Hana Hotel was tiny. Not at all like the hotels I’m used to seeing in Honolulu. No tower. No large tacky entrance or huge hotel name signs. Just a little building with a lobby and a parking lot. Then the Hotel “rooms” are kind of spread out throughout the town. Interesting. But they were pretty nice. And for $600 a night, they better well damn be good. Which is why I spent the night in Hana in my Aveo on the beach. Compact cars are not the most comfortable to sleep in. Not at all like my Monte Carlo that I could lay down flat in. 🙂 I do miss that car. But the Aveo was gas friendly. That won out in my choosing a car. $4.50/gallon. Ouch. Oh well. With 2 blocks of Hana, I don’t think we’ll be driving a whole lot.

I looked at the general stores and the post office to see if there were apartments for rent. Between the 3 places, there were only 2 posted places. I say apartment, but really, in Hana, there is no such thing. You rent houses. Or parts of houses. Anyway, right away, i called the two numbers. One seemed to be the number for a apartment owned by an answering machine. The other was the number for a nice 2 bed/ 2 bath place that was nice. I talked to the owner and made arrangements to see it. I was really hoping this would be a nice place because it was the only place really. The first house had the address on the flyer, so I drove there to check it out. It was kind of small and only 1 bedroom. With a 5 year old and one on the way, I’m pretty sure we needed bigger. So I spent the rest of my time on Maui waiting to get in touch with the owner of the 2nd place to tell him we want it and would like to make arrangements for payments and what not. To do that, i had to drive back up to Kahului so that I would have phone service. Apparently T-mobile has little to no service on Maui let alone in little ol’ Hana. So soon, we will be switching to either AT&T or Verizon. I’m voting AT&T. Yay iPhone. hahahaha. Anyway. It was a good experience. I learned that you can mooch internet from hotel parking lots. I learned that white people love to rent red and black Mustang convertables and PT cruiser convertables. I also learned that you can buy almost anything at a general store. Including christmas ornaments year round.

Overall it was a good trip. A little stressful with the time constraint. A little relaxing. A little tiresome. A lot beautiful. I missed my kiddo and my girly of course, but I had a good time. A successful trip. Go me.

After settling on the larger of the places in Hana, I made arrangements to move in on Sunday. So that gave us a few days to come up with the money order for the rent, make arrangements for internet and also the phone. After a day of running around we finally managed to get a money order. Apparently it’s not as easy to get a money order short notice if you’re funds are not located in the same state as you. Huh. Who’d have thunk it. As for the internet, I’ll have to use the library computers until next week. And the phone? Maybe thursday. All depends on if they telephone company can determine what unit I’m living in. Sheesh. It’s all so complicated. But I feel much better about things now. I was so stressed out last week. With all the arrangements that had to be made and trying not to lose any work time and knowing that I’d spend my first week in the new place without Gavin, I was getting a little worked up. And that made me susceptible to illness. Just a cold, but so inconvenient.

Today is my first workday in Hana. I’m working at home offline, saving everything to a zip drive, then using the library computers to email my work to NY at an incredibly slow rate. Holly is doing well her first day. The people here seem to be very nice. We went to the post office to see about getting a P.O. box and it would seem that in order to get a P.O. box you need two forms of identification. And for some reason they don’t accept social security cards, birth certificates, credit cards, or insurance cards. So what two forms are accepted you might ask? Driver’s license is a given right. But what about the 2nd? As far as I can tell, the only other form they accept is a car registration. So if you don’t have a car, no P.O. box for you. Muahahaha. Oh wait! My car is on a barge. Crap! Fortunately since Holly and I are both getting the box together, the post lady was nice and accepted one ID from both of us. Yay. We’ll have a mailing address in 4 days. Phone in 3 days (maybe). And internet in 9 days. Ugh. At least it’s beautiful here. And the house feels cozy. I like it here.

As it turns out, yesterday was Friday the 13th. And when did I figure this out might you ask? That would have been after my second phone call of the day somewhere around 3 or 4pm. The first call was from my dad and the second call was from my mom. Unfortunately neither call was of good news. I’m very sad to say there the reason my dad called is because a good friend of our family has passed away a few days ago. He was a very active man who spent his summers at Lake George driving the Morgan. And a few days ago he just up and died. We will miss him very much. The second call from my mother, which I assumed was to mimic the news, was actually calling because my grandmother’s sister died a few days ago. It was her only living immediate family. So she is feeling very alone now. Fortunately, in both situations, there has been sons and daughters to be there for support. 🙁 Not the best of days. Then after sharing the news here in hawaii, it was pointed out that it was Friday, June 13th, 2008. I’ve had better. Then again, comparatively, I suppose my day was better than those left alone.