Photos for Your Fancy

Our close friend Josh came out this week. It so turns out that he is a professional photographer and the amazing camera he brought out took some really nice photos of Hawaii. HAHA!

It was a lot of fun, we did a ton this past week. Grady and Josh even went skydiving.. eek! I hiked Manoa Falls, which I had never done before. It was so beautiful to talk into a thick rainforest like you see on Big Island and Kauai, just minutes away from my high-rise apartment in Waikiki.

Here is just a taste of some of the photos. For full photos check out my facebook.


















I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Love you all, here's sending you Aloha.

Bree

Looking to the FUTURE

Tonight at work I saw over 100 dolphins. They were spinners dolphins, small but acrobatic. They were jumping out of the water and doing little flips all over the place, racing the boats and making a ruckus aboard the ships as people ran to the sides to see them. Normally I think that this would have made me really happy. I would have been jumping up and down like all the Japanese girls crying IRUKA IRUKA! But instead, I had a brief moment of glee that was quickly succumbed to a really deep sadness.

I was watching these beautiful animals and just admiring them, when I realized I was holding a filet mignon with black truffle risotto, roasted winter vegetables and cipollini. Behind me there was soft jazz playing, art-deco statues of ladies pressed up against creme-colored walls and I can hear behind, "Sir, another red wine?" I'm wearing a bow-tie, white gloves, dinner jacket...a name tag that says Brianna 5 Star Server. What?? What the HELL am I doing?

Just last summer I was swimming with them, everyday. Swimming and feeding and touching and playing and educating children and families about dolphins. I was full filling people's life-long dreams of being in the water with dolphins. I saw old gramma's cry because they kissed a dolphin and said that they had wanted to do that since they were 16. I saw a little girl who was so excited to get into the water that she left her wheel chair on the beach and crawled into the dolphin lagoon. I was giving sonograms to dolphins, doing blood work, hydrating dolphins, giving vitamins. I was so excited to get up at 5am to go into fish prep and be covered in scales and herring juice just because I got up everyday to play with dolphins, to learn from dolphins, to work with dolphins. I honestly thought, this time last year, I may have found the best career in the world.



About two years ago, this time, I was working on protecting the environment that these fantastic creatures live in. I was researching invertebrates in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, I was going to be an Oceanographer, I was going to discover a species. I was on front pages of newspapers, in magazines, on TV with the group I worked with at Oxnard College. We have a published research project, we were going to present it to a panel in DC. We were recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for our research. School was something I looked forward to, I was working on research vessels. My attire for these boats was bathing suits and dive gear. I didn't even mind spending the hours and hours in closet-spaced lab rooms sorting out microscopic abalone.



This was it, this was my dream. Doors were being flung open at me left and right!


These dreams are all there still, they really are. I promise.

They just got lost I think. I was running so fast towards them, weaving in and out of traffic and road blocks to get to them, that I think I may have surpassed them waiting on the side of the road for me, and now they are playing catch up. I'm huffing and puffing from my sprint, and these dreams are still trying to find me through the road blocks and STOP signs. Someday, someday soon, I'll be there again. I'm breathing and pacing myself on the road right now. I have to finish my Vet Tech license. I can do that. I have to apply to everything that comes my way. I can do that. I can do whatever I want to, I just have to apply myself.

I understand that at least I should be grateful to have a job right now...and I am. It was just this cold slimy dead fish named Reality that slapped me across the face half-way through the dinner cruise tonight. Reality can smell real bad sometimes. And with Reality comes his friend Money. They're good pals, those two. They hang around corners lurking and waiting for you to stumble and they jump out at the same time and surprise you. I think they're working for the head honcho Pessimism. Damn! Where's Optimism and Passion when you need them? About time they come swooping in in their red capes and save the world!

Don't get me wrong, the dolphins racing into the sunset were beautiful. I just wish I was watching them from something besides a dinner cruise boat, and maybe not wearing a bow-tie and gloves next time...

Here's to the future!

Bree

Catching you up

It has been quiet some time since I have posted anything on here. I don't know why I haven't...not due to lack of motivation or anything, just general laziness.

The past few weeks have absolutely flown by. I saw my brother graduate from the United States Coast Guard. That was incredible and humbling. To be completely jet-lagged, half-way around the world from where I started and see my brother march in a completely changed man was amazing. Within two days I had traveled from Honolulu to Cape May, New Jersey. I was in this kind of strange haze of sleepiness and shock. My cousins had drove from New York to see him graduate and being there with my family and Paige in far away place inside a military base was kind of surreal. When the ceremony started I had no idea what to expect, but when the Guardians of Uniform 182 marched into that graduation hall I was filled with pride. My brother looked completely different, acted completely different...all for the better of course. He had military bearing, was 20 lbs lighter and stood taller. It was so neat! Despite the lack of sleep and the snow flurries it was all and all a good trip.




Right now S.A. Michael Saylor is stationed in New London, Connecticut onboard the CGC Chinook.

In the meantime he said he is living in a "ghost" building. He hasn't seen very many people since he moved...haha.

Not much else happening in my life. Just the general stress that comes along with school, work and trying to figure out a meaning in life. I've almost completed my Stage 5 of my vet assistant training...only 5 more to go. Including an externship..eek!..before I can get a job in "real world"...if there is such a thing.

Alright, off I go into the ominous territory of textbooks and studying.

If I don't see you, good morning, good afternoon and good night.

Bree