fun with the graveyard!

I survived the graveyard (night audit) shift and actually had a fun time doing it. My trainer was named Penny and in between her showing me how to close the different accounts, we got to know each other. She owns a ranch with her husband in Kapahi (just outside of Kapaa) where they train and breed horses. She’s a big rancher, or as they say in Hawaii a “paniolo,” and I got to ask her questions about the upcoming rodeo in August. She also has a son my age and a daughter the same age as my sister. So we had lots to talk about and that made the night pass fairly quickly. Once 3 am came around, I noticed that it took some effort for me to continue to focus on numbers from all of the closing reports. Gotta love coffee though! Once we hit 4:30 I was pretty good until when I was finished at around 7 am.

I got to see the sun rise and I was blown away by it. Penny and I had pretty much finished everything by that point, so she let me go out on the balcony to watch the sunrise. I am so mad that I didn’t have my camera, but it was just breathless. I did notice a difference between the sunrise and the sunsets I’ve seen here before. I’m not sure what was different about it, but something more inspiring about the sunrise. I guess the whole symbolism of it . . . here I go again on my philosophic mumbo-jumbo :).

After I finished, I grabbed some breakfast and went straight to bed. I was out until about 12 pm, so it was a good 5 hour catch-up. Later, I jumped on the bus to explore a little bit of the other near-by town Hanalei. Definitely more upscale than Kapaa, with more restaurants, bars, and boutique clothing and antique stores. They even had a Subway! For some reason, it just felt weird to me to see a Subway in Hawaii, but I bet it’s a big comfort to the tourists. I was waiting to catch the bus back to Princeville, when I ran into Shawn, Princeville’s IT person. She was heading back to Princeville and offered to give me a ride back. It’s funny and cool, that already I’m getting that small town feeling and running in to people I know on the island.

I came back and headed to the employee cafeteria for some dinner. I sat and talked with one of the room service attendants, who is about 40ish and a huge surfer. It’s so neat to see how his eyes light up when he starts describing different swells or surfing techniques. I swear, if you’re a true blue surfer it’s practically like a cult following out here. It’s fun to learn about it and even cooler when you can start using the lingo and talking the talk, but an entirely different thing to walk the walk :)