A Strange Mix of Topics .... Enjoy

Lately the weather in Laie, has been less than favorable ... lots of rain. So this weekend when we had the chance to go into town we jumped at it! Our friend Nate needed to pick up a guitar that he was having fixed and run a few other errands. He decided to take the Pali Highway into town, off of the Pali highway there is an AWESOME lookout ... you can see all of Kailua & Kaneohe. There also a path, which used to be the old road that you can walk down quite along way. The whole time that I have been in Hawaii, I have never stopped at the look out. The views were beautiful ... Here are some photos of our adventure:
Nate climbed down the hill for some fresh guava (such a happy camper, as you can see below!) Me, Kaitlyn, & Nate:


Kaitlyn & Nate:

In other news:
1) I hate the BYU-Hawaii housing department.

2) California Residents vote Yes on Proposition 8. My boss Larry sent me an email this morning regarding proposition 8 today. Being from Idaho I haven't done a whole lot of research on the topic because it is nothing that I can vote on and I thought that it wouldn't affect me. In the email that he sent it included these videos, I would suggest watching them, especially the one about the Parker Family... I was shocked, I might home school my kids:

The Parker Family Video
Proposition 8 Video

Since I never have any actual work to do at work, I did some more video watching and reading about the topic. It is scary what can happen if Proposition 8 doesn't get passed, educate yourself on prop 8 ... even if you can't vote on it. Soon other states will follow California's example. Anyways ... Marriage should be between Man & Woman. PERIOD!

3) On Thursday, I went to town and attended a ISACA conference for work. The topic of the conference was basically about the "financial crisis" . The speaker was from Ameriprise financial. I am far from an expert on the economy but he dumbed it down quite a bit so even I could begin to understand what is going on. He related our economy to going to the desert with only a bar of gold. No food, No water ... but a nice, big, shiny, valuable bar of gold. We know that the gold is a valuable asset BUT at this point what we really need is water. No one in the desert has or is willing to give us the amount of money that our bar of gold is really worth. So we have a decision to make do we hold on to the asset hoping that we will survive and eventually get what its really worth or do we sell the asset for whatever we can get for it ... so that we can have the things that we need to survive (i.e. water and food). 

SO many people are in that situation right now... they have possessions (homes, cars, whatever it may be) that are of value but right now they can't get what they feel they are worth out of them & on top of that there are a MILLION other things that they need to pay for gas, food, etc. I feel like the root to this whole problem is that people were choosing to live above their means. After leaving the conference, I had a whole new appreciation for the church and for the council that they give regarding avoiding debt and having a food storage. Food storage doesn't just have to be for earthquakes and tornadoes ... it could be for a lost job or when you are short on money. What a blessing it is to have wise leaders of our church that teach us the importance of both spiritual and temporal matters.

I am not sure how I started going off on all of those controversial topics ... but it happened, if you stuck it out and read all of this you will realize how much time I really do have on my hands during the day.