Do what you want to do

Today I had a hard time remembering what day it was, so I guess that means I have officially slipped into "vacation time". After enduring an almost 2 hour timeshare presentation this morning, thanks to TJ and his curiosity, we headed downtown to Hilo Hattie's, a huge Hawaiian souvenir store with the largest collection of Hawaiian shirts I've ever seen in one place. We got some gifts for our families, a few T-shirts for ourselves, and a cute Hawaiian sticker for Otto, and then had lunch at Sam Choy's Breakfast, Lunch, and Crab. According to my guidebook, Sam Choy graduated from the same culinary program as Alan Wong, and his restaurants are not to be missed either. This one was a brewpub, pretty casual, but had really good food - I had the kalua pork quesadilla and an amazing Hawaiian banana bread pudding for dessert.

Unfortunately the weather hasn't been the island paradise we hoped for - it's been cloudy and raining on and off for the past few days. It is nice and warm, though, so when it's not raining, it's good to be outside. Now, I'm trapped in front of the TV and watching American Idol - without TiVo it's seriously painful. They have a commercial break after every singer!

Tomorrow we're headed to the North Shore and our second hotel. I've actually managed to get some exercise, and am starting to remember what it feels like to actually *want* to exercise. There's an awesome 1.5 mile beach path by our hotel (3 mi roundtrip) that I've walked a few times - I think our next hotel will have something similar as well.

Well, back to being lazy!