Category: joanna irl
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Moonlight Ukuleles
As the air cools slightly and the sun drifts toward Waianae on Wednesdays in the summer, the zoo closes down for five minutes. After those five minutes, the gates reopen and the zoo lawn is transformed into a picnic ground, a play field and an amphitheater. Wednesday night, the zoo becomes the Wildest Show. Every…
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The Frocking Date
Today they held the frocking ceremony on J’s ship. What is frocking? It sounds kind of… bad, doesn’t it? Like it might even be painful. Well, back in the old days, the sign of a Petty Officer or commissioned officer was that they wore a frock coat. When they got promoted, it sometimes happened at…
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Lanterns on the Sea
Yesterday was Memorial Day, which in Hawaii means it was Lantern Floating. As someone who enjoys observing cultures, I had to see for myself. My friend and I went down to the beach in the afternoon and enjoyed the sunshine and the breeze in the trees. I entertained myself watching the birds in the trees;…
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Visits from the Sister
I’ve been bad at writing lately. In my defense, I’ve had company for nearly two weeks, and then entirely too much going on this weekend. Time for an update! My sister came and spent 11 days with me, and we did more things than I can even remember all at once. We made a list…
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The Disenfranchisement of Military Spouses
I’m getting on a soapbox. You have been warned. This has been brewing in the back of my head for a long time, but I wanted to wait until I was calm before writing about it. You see, every so often something happens that makes me really angry at the way military spouses get treated.…
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Memories of Being Nine.
This weekend I went to a Spongebob themed birthday party for a girl turning nine. It took me longer than I thought it would for me to pick out a gift for her, because nine is a difficult age. At nine, kids are too told for “little kid” toys, but too young for “pre-teen” things…
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Pilling the Cat
Sometimes I wish I could explain things to my cats. I mean really explain them, like “I know the medicine tastes yucky, but it’s going to make you feel better” explanations. This all started a week and a half ago when I found some small infections on Caspian’s stomach. I took him to the vet…
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The Tail-end of Whale Season
While my company was here visiting, we were out at the beach whale watching and noticed a whale breaching repeatedly. This happens sometimes, and if you sit there long enough there’s a decent chance you’ll see a breach. What we didn’t expect was this: The colloquial name for this is a “heat run,” though it…
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Stayin’ Alive
I feel that I should post something, but as I also feel I don’t have much that’s interesting to say, I haven’t posted anything. The past two weeks? Oh. That. Well…. We need new tires, Caspian has a possible systemic (i.e. his whole little kitty body) infection, the next door neighbors had their baby girl…
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That’s a Spicy Pasta Sauce!
Last night, my sweet husband decided to help me out by cooking dinner. I was tired, after working at the zoo all day (8am to 4:30pm), and didn’t feel like cooking. We had planned on grilling out, but the steaks were still frozen and baked potatoes take some time, so he offered to make pasta.…
Joanna Volavka 