Been on a bit of an adventure of my own over the last week.  Due to my job, my spouse and I moved from our home on an island in Alaska to Hawaii.  We greatly enjoyed our time in Alaska, we originally agreed to go there years ago because we figured it would make a great adventure and we were right.  In our years there we made great friends, saw amazing sights on both hikes and from our home,  and greatly enjoyed the close community of living in a small, remote town.

Hawaii offers another adventure, though of a different flavor.  More people for sure, and a different environment most certainly (I worry that I will never stop sweating).  However, there’s great opportunities to experience new things, make some new friends, and grow with some new skills and hobbies.  I’m excited especially for some new hikes to try and also for the greater travel opportunities.  Traveling to and from a remote location in Alaska was time consuming and costly and so I’m both excited for the opportunity to easily travel to some locations and also for friends and family to come and see me.

All that said, the first adventure was getting here.  Moving from one island to another is definitely a challenge and more so as we were moving two dogs with us.  Piece of advice if moving to Hawaii, become familiar with the rules for bringing pets.  We did and took care of the all the paperwork and testing in advance but if you don’t you may find your pet quarantined when you first arrive.  Which is an instant dampener at the start of a trip.  My spouse travelled separate from me due to the logistics of moving the dogs.  She took one dog and I had another.  Mine was the smaller of the two dogs and he was in the airplane cabin with me.  That was nice from being able to keep an eye on him but exhausting from the standpoint of carrying him between three flights across a day and a half of travel (Again, travel to and from a remote Alaska island is tough).

Everyone arrived safe and healthy and we reunited over the weekend.  In fact, I posted the story Saturday while on my flight over the Pacific Ocean.  Now comes the process of finding a new home, getting our possessions moved in, and settling into our new life.  Oh, and starting a new role at my job.  It may make for some chaos in the near term and I apologize in advance if it plays havoc with the posting schedule.

Speaking of stories.  This last one threw me for a bit of a loop.  The intent was to write a drop story of Quartes’ first time watching Keto perform for a crowd.  As I wrote it, the fun of them interacting ballooned how much of the story I wanted to tell and so what was suppose to be a standalone post will now conclude this weekend with Keto’s performance.  The other fun part of the story was writing Quartes in first person.  That’s not something I’ve done in recent memory, and certainly not with Quartes developed to the level he is now.  It created an interesting exercise to figure out how someone with his longevity and memory would see the world and those around him.  It gave me some hang ups during the writing but I think helped me further refine the character which is good.  It’ll be all the more fun to see him watch Keto’s performance next week.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean