We packed up this morning and went off to the 33rd annual Windward Orchid Society show. I’ve rather got the black thumb of death with orchids, I can’t grow them at home at all….. if for no other reasons than the cats eat houseplants, but I find them fascinating. The mixture of the bright, strange color combinations and the absolutely alien shapes is so cool!

And I got a nice little Cliff Notes tutorial on orchid care which I needed since Joan has a great enormous pot bound orchid that needs to be re-potted and my concept for re-potting things would likely have killed it outright.

We had a lovely time then we dropped Libby, Joan, and half a dozen or more plants back at the house and then Andrew and I went out journeying. We were mainly in search of inexpensive, likely used, bicycles (fail), lunch (NOT fail!) at Rai Rai Ramen, and a few other peculiar errands. Rai Rai Ramen ROCKS! Yummy thick miso broth, nice al dente noodles, crunchy veggies, house made gyoza (they may not be as cohesive as the mass produced ones, but I’m willing to trade in having my gyoza hold together for the flavor). Andrew had a nice spicy multi-seafood ramen that was picante enough to make him sweat…. can you use the word picante to describe Asian food?

Then we went off on a safari looking for ginger-mint body spray. See, I bought a bottle of this stuff when we were here in December 2011 and I found that Flitter goes absolutely batshit for it. I don’t know what it is about the combination of scents, but Flitter will chase me around the house to jump on my shoulder, smear my head, and chew on my hair when I wear it. The first bottle is almost gone, I can’t find the correct scent at home, so I wanted to go back to the store where I got it to see if I could get some more.
We pulled into the parking lot at Down To Earth just as it started to rain. I’m constantly amazed by people’s reaction to the rain here. I mean, it’s drenching and all, but it’s warm!
Anyway, we pulled into the parking lot and found this dude lurking on the enclosure around the dumpster.

See the parking lot backs on the Hamakua wetlands and as I walked around the edge of the dumpster enclosure to get this photo we ran across this dude…

And then this dude…..

It’s really fun to pull into a parking lot at a little strip mall and have interesting birds just hanging out.
I also amazed one of the checkers in the store by getting close enough, although not fast enough, to catch a small dove that had wandered into the store and was enjoying himself cleaning up in front of the bulk bins.

We’re going to adventure around with Libby, Caitlin, and Lucy tomorrow with the plan being to hit at least one collectable and anime store.
I’ve got nothing more left for today, so here’s a couple more cool orchids.