Because of my normal vocation, I have daily meetings at 8:30 am CST. Six hours ahead of Hawaii. This means I had to wake every morning at 3:00 am local time at the latest to prepare for the meeting. In addition, I had to try to be in bed at a reasonable hour, so I shot for 8:00 pm local--2:00 am back home in EST. Now, the sun sets at 6:30 pm and rises at 6:30 am in Hawaii, which made this a little easier, but it still felt inexplicably abnormal.
On Tuesday, most of the day was spent working again. The evening--my evening being between 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm sort of--was mostly spent making phone calls and attempting to get my dad out of jail. For the purposes of this blog, the method employed to accomplish this is not important, but it cost me around $500. At some point in the afternoon--local--I ate another Cliff bar.
While I was making my calls, I spoke to one of my dad's friends on the island. I haven't received permission from him to mention him in my writing, so I shall call him Barry. Barry told me about the events leading to my dad's arrest, he told me some stories about he and my dad's local hangouts, and he extended an invitation to show me around a little. I accepted and told him I'd contact him as soon as I had finished with work the next day.
The hotel had a small, covered smoking bench in the parking lot that I was going out to fairly often. I saw a few of the guests, and even spoke to some. Most of the ones that were frequent visitors would regale me of their past expeditions around the island, the first-time visitors would regale about yesterday's expeditions around the island, and the few locals would point me in the direction of the things that the tourists didn't do--once they got to know me.
After talking with one of the regulars that came to the island to work--he was a roofer--I decided to try to sleep. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and attempted to sleep. I attempted from 8:30 pm to about 12:30 pm local time. I just could not get comfortable. I missed my wife and our bed. Four hours of staring at the ceiling can really drain you. Don't get me wrong, I tried to watch some TV, put on some music, white noise, open the curtains, shut the curtains, open the louvers in the wall, close the louvers in the wall, sheets, no sheets--nothing seemed to help me, so I mostly stared at the ceiling.
Perhaps getting more acquainted with the island with Barry would help mellow me out.
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