it's fall in seattle

i left perpetual summer (albeit a slightly cloudy one) around 9:30 last night and arrived in wet, chilly autumn at 6:30 this morning. the sun has since come out, but it's very definitely the dark half of the year; yesterday at this time the sun was directly overhead and now it's clear over *there*.

the fact that the sun is out has made it harder for me to sleep as i was planning this morning; damn east-facing apartment. i did catch a few z's on the plane, but they were not peaceful cozy z's, they were uncomfortable and slightly paranoid. (i've been having wacky dreams the last few nights; wonder if it's the full moon.)

oh, and to add to the complaint pile: the one working USB port on my laptop seems to have given way, meaning all the pictures i haven't yet uploaded to flickr (and the rest of the 680someodd i took on the trip which i wasn't going to subject the entire world to) are in limbo on that computer. i guess i'll take it into a genius and see what they have to say... but according to brian it could be the motherboard, so it might just not be worth fixing. i'll have to get firewire devices or something.

anyway, i'm going to read now, in hopes that it'll eventually make me sleepy and i can get a nap in before critical mass this evening. it's been too long since i've ridden a bike; to get to go out and do it with a fuckton of people today is just too exciting to pass up.

it is a big island

so i'm here on the island of hawai'i, the big island, so big that all the other Hawaiian islands could fit on top of it. so far i've seen the town of kailua-kona, and the northern half of the island.

the sun is huge here, especially at sunset. (the zoom lens doesn't hurt either.)

so are the waves.

the landscapes are so varied, within a half hour drive you can go from completely barren desert to lush green rainforest...

there are so many microclimates on this island it's amazing. you can see many of them at once from some lookout points... and the sunsets over the ocean are always stunning.

volcanic

so yesterday i hiked across the crater of haleakala, the volcano that makes up the east half of maui. it was a pretty awesome journey, 12 miles across the crater of a "dormant" (not technically, since it erupted in 1790, but dormant enough) volcano. "haleakala" means "house of the sun", and according to hawaiian legend, it was the place where maui, the demigod, went to lasso the sun so that his mother could have more daylight.

i'm in the process of uploading photos from the trip, but the internets are slow here at the hostel since it's free wifi, so it might take awhile. so for now, have a picture of the sunset on friday night, off my friend Cass's parents' lanai in napili, on the northwest coast of maui:

photographic

please stop loving me
please stop loving me
i am none of these things
-the cure

trying to curate a show of my own photography is a good way to ensure that i decide my camera sucks, my pictures suck, my eye sucks, my light sucks, and my show is going to suck.

i think i have the pictures picked out, but i'm panicking about resolution. i want to print at least 1 at like 12x16, but due to memory restrictions i shoot at 3MP, which means 2048x1536 pixels. when the shot is perfectly in focus that is ok, but. my shots are not always in perfect focus.

gah. i really overcommitted myself for this month. i'll be glad when it's over, when i have everything done. then next month - hey, i haven't mentioned this here yet! - i'm going to hawaii. fuck yes.