Full Moon Over Waikiki and An Upstanding Citizen

I felt the draw of the night as I stepped out of my apartment on my way to meet my friend Jacintha for dinner at a fine Italian Tratorria in Waikiki, and before I even looked up at the night sky, I could tell it was a full moon. My body could just feel it. Walking to meet Jacintha my legs were admittedly a little tired - I had just completed the AIDS walk in Waikiki that morning to show my support of HIV research and my afternoon was spent shopping at the Diesel store to get some new trunks for my upcoming Cancun trip in 3 days (remember? this is the trip I won when Victor and I went to Puerto Vallarta). But I digress...

So in the middle of dinner I get a phone call from my friend Robbie. I decided not to answer, but when he called a second time immediately after, I figured something was up. When I answered, an extremely intoxicated Robbie slurs out the words "RJ, you gotta help me!!!" I replied, "Ok, you've got my attention, what's wrong?" "RJ, my girlfriend Kylie got arrested and she's in jail, I don't know what to do! RJ - I really need an upstanding citizen to help me get her out of jail!" I laughed at his verbage but listened carefully as I tried to decipher through his drunken ramblings exactly what happened. Apparently Kylie - who was also quite inhebriated (suprise suprise)- accepted an offer from some guy to buy her ticket to a concert they were attending that night. But in Kylie's drunken stupor, she failed to remember that she already used the ticket to enter the concert area earlier, and therefore made the ticket unuseable for re-entry. The gentlemen that she sold the ticket to kindly pointed out this minor detail to a police officer, who arrested her for 'Theft in the 4th Degree', aka scalping! She was escorted off to the Honolulu Police Department and locked in the klinker at $1000. bail! So lo and behold, I got my first call ever to help bail someone out of jail. It was kind of exciting! As it turned out, Robbie (Kylie's boyfriend) sobbered up enough to get her out of jail for a total cost of $1375. ! Needless to say I didn't get to enjoy the Canoli I ordered at dinner with Jacintha, but then I figured - well, Cancun is coming up in just a week and I'm sure there will be plenty more Canoli to enjoy there ;)

So on the walk back to my apartment I noticed an estranged black woman running frantically around my apartment building. I looked inquisitively at her and could see the distress in her face. Suddenly I heard some strange screams and screeches in the distance. As I approached my building, I saw by the reflectuion of the moonlight that something was moving on the ledge of the 8th floor! "What's happening?" I asked.

"My cat! It's my cat! I let the window of my apartment on the 9th floor open for just a second and it crawled out, jumped down an entire story to the 8th floor and then accross to a different ledge! Now it's pacing back and forth on the ledge screaming for help. What can I do? Can you help me?"

I had to take a moment and laugh. I had just about reached the limit to my "upstanding citizen" contributions for the evening, but I said, "Sure, I'd be glad to help". So we went up to the 8th floor and woke up the tenant of the apartment whose ledge had the stranded black cat on it. By this point half the building was awake from the ruccus and the cat screams! And oh by the way - she had just moved in that day! So we talked the cat off the ledge and convinced it that suicide wasn't the answer (although given that I'm not the biggest cat fan, it would have been a viable option - just kidding animal lovers!)

So as the drama ended I looked up once again at the moon, which seemed to be grinning down at me as if to say "Gotcha". But at the end of it all I grinned back at it - as I exclamed outloud "One week until I'll be looking up at you from Cancun beyatch!"

Stay tuned for my next posting from Club Med Cancun!!!!

An April Fool

Well, I know I know, it's been a long time, but at least I have lots to bring you up to speed on. I'll try to make it brief though - as one of my friends kindly pointed out to me after I told him a typical long RJ story - "Conciseness is Niceness RJ!"

First off, I've made a serious decision. I'm leaving Hawaii. I feel like this was a great chapter in my life, and the perfect place for me to be a Flight Surgeon, but I'm ready to start fresh and there just seem to be too many ghosts from the past preventing me from moving forward here. Now hold on, I'm still having a blast and nothing too crazy has happened since my return from Iraq, but my gut is telling me to move forward, that something big awaits me and its not here. So, where to now? Well, I'm applying for a residency in Family Medicine in 3 cities it looks like - San Diego, Phoenix and San Francisco. I'll keep everyone posted as to the evolution of all of this.

On a more serious note - my personal life has stabilized. I'm single again and I truly feel like I need to move on from my last relationship. I've accepted that we're different people and while that person will always have a special place in my heart (or to quote Jordin Sparks,..."like a tatoo on my heart"), we're not meant to be in a relationship together. We're meant to be friends. It was a difficult thing to come to, but I'm there.

I've been getting myself involved in a lot of exciting things lately - I visited my friend (ex-roomate) Josh in Phoenix over Easter and I had an amazing 5 days! I spent my Easter sipping Veuve Cliquot Champagne and eating Shrimp Cocktail by the pool of the Mondrian Hotel in Scottdale, AZ - all comped of course. Not long before that I participated in the Marine Corpse Base Hawaii "Swamp Romp" - where almost 300 teams of 5 ran a 6 mile course through obstacles, hills, waterways and the ocean, and oh yeah, it was all through MUD! Lots of MUD! We got filthy and it was awesome! I had mud in my nails, in my ears, in my eyes. At one point I was on my stomach crawling through a sewer/drain pipe and stopped momentarily to look over at a crab the size of Maryland who gave me this look like "You're Nuts! I have no choice but to be down here, but you...what are you doing here?!" Then this weekend my roomate Tim and I (who I'm getting along very good with) are flying to Kauai for the weekend to a military resort called "Barking Sands" to stay in a cabin right up against the coast. I plan on bringing a journal, some books and just relaxing ---thats before the following weekend which is MDA Weekend!...

MDA Weekend (April 10-14) is a weekend where all of my friends fly in from all over the US to get together and go to a Fund Raiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. But we do it in style. We all get dressed up (I rented a sharp tux which I'll take lots of pictures of for ya) and we first take a limmo ride all around the island. It's great fun! Other events planed for the weekend include a Wine Tasting Party at my house the Thursday before, a camping trip to Bellows Air Force Base to one of their beach front cabins the Friday before, then maybe the Sandbar or beach the Sunday after.

But wait, my April concludes with Cancun Baby! Remember the Puerta Vallarta trip where Victor and I won the all expense paid vacation to Cancun Mexico? Well it's coming up April 25 to May 4th! Already! I'm pumped and Victor and I are very excited about it! And after that things will slow down for me some.

Life is good, morale is high and I'm keeping busy! It's amazing that one year and 3 days ago I left for Iraq...

Other updates...
Angelina is doing great, but needs her oil changed.
My mom is doing great, but get that one card paid off mom!!!
Jan is doing great (in Philly, happy in her new job)
Victor is doing great - he's getting all in shape for Cancun (as am I)
Kelly, Mike, Kiera and Ryan are great - it was Kiera's 3rd birthday recently. The theme of her party was "princess". "Like her Uncle..." - Josh pointed out. lol.
And that's about it - everyone is great!

Aloha to everyone and drop me a comment to tell me how all of you are doing!

-RJ