Now I know

What do these two movies have in common? Well, I've seen Clueless multiple times, but I've seen Emma only once which is probably why I hadn't detected any similarity before now. I decided to read Jane Austen's Emma recently and I discovered that Clueless' plot is closely based on Emma. I'm only about eight chapters in so I don't know how deep the parallel will go but so far it's pretty blatant.

This is what I've learned so far from reading Emma:
Emma is rich and beautiful and she decides to take in a girl named Harriet who has no money and no connections. Harriet spent the summer previous to meeting Emma at a farm of some friends. They have an older brother named Robert Martin and Harriet thinks the best of him. Emma sets her straight saying he is too low for her, uneducated and his wife, whomever that will be, will have no association with Emma. Emma decides to match Harriet with one of her neighbors named Mr. Elton. That's probably the most obvious common element the book has with Clueless. If you remember right, Elton is the name of the boy that Cher tries to set Tai up with. If you also remember, Elton posts a picture of Tai in his locker. However, the reason he does this is because Cher photographed the picture. In the book so far, Emma has made a drawing of Harriet and Mr. Elton has taken it to London to be framed.

I don't really like reading books after I've seen the movie. I like to create my own scenery and images in my head. If I've seen the movie I can't do this because I'm always comparing what I read to the movie. Plus, if I've seen the movie I already know what's going to happen and that's no fun. This situation is a little different because Clueless isn't a movie adapted directly from the book, but I know things that will probably happen and I'm also guessing who each character from book is represented in Clueless. This made me wonder how many modern things we read or watch that has been influenced by great works of the past. If we don't read classic literature we will never know. By reading Emma, I now know that the writer of Clueless was influenced by Jane Austen and that makes the movie a little more sophisticated, right?

The good years

Today is my birthday, but it's almost like any other day. This was not the case when I was younger. My birthday was a big affair, thanks to my mom. These pictures are from 1990 when I turned 6. The picture to the left was at the "friends" birthday party and the picture below was at the "family" birthday party. I remember the excitement I felt when I had a birthday coming up. It's sad, but I don't ever feel that excitement anymore. That made me think about how many things thrill us when we're kids and how we can never pinpoint the exact time, but that excitement for certain things and events usually fades away. I don't mean to be such a downer, but these are just my thoughts.

It is nice how my family still gets together to celebrate birthdays, no matter how old we are getting. So today, I can look forward to Briton, Melissa, Caroline, Cole and Jacob coming over for dinner. I love them all so much and wouldn't want to spend my birthday any other way.

This picture cracked my up. It's of me and my grandma Zurcher, but I don't know who's hand that is reaching for the cake. I think it was my sister, Mary's hand.

Maui 2008

Kate, Melissa, Emily, Caroline and Me.

I'm back from my first trip to Hawaii. We left Saturday, February 2 and arrived there around 4 in the afternoon at which point we went directly to Costco. We stayed in a condo at Marriott's Maui Ocean Club on Ka'anapali Beach near Lahaina. It was really nice because, besides being brand new, it had two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a washer and dryer, and flat screen hdtvs in the family room and both bedrooms. We also had an ocean view from our balconies. We cooked dinner almost every night because it is pretty expensive there. But that didn't stop us from going to the Häagen Dazs store a couple times to get a dazzler for dessert.

These were the views from our balcony.

Kate and I went snorkeling the first day. We stayed near our hotel but the next day we walked down to Black Rock to snorkel. We saw tons of cool fish and then decided to go around a big rock where there weren't as many people. I saw a turtle coming up from the bottom to get a breath so we went right up to it. It acted like we weren't even there and then went back down to the bottom and settled under a rock. It was so neat to be so close to it. We even touched it's shell and Kate touched one of it's flippers. Also, the whole time we were snorkeling we could hear the whales. They are really loud! It sounded like there was a stadium nearby.

Later that week, Briton, Kate and I went scuba diving. We went out to Lanai so the boat ride was about 2 hours. We did two dives. One of them was called Cathedral. We swam through these huge rock formations. On the second dive we saw an octopus. One of the guys picked it up so we got to touch it. It felt like a silk scarf. I was disappointed that we didn't see any sharks. We did see whales and dolphins, but not underwater. Humpback whale season is from December to March so we saw a lot of whales. Everywhere I looked there were whales. In the morning we saw a mother and her calf jump. On the way back from diving there were a group of whales close to the boat so the captain stopped the boat. When the whales are under the water, their pecks look turquoise so it's easy to spot them and then they come up and blow water out of their blow holes. They circled our boat a couple of times. I couldn't believe how near they came. It was awesome to see them that close. Unfortunately, Briton didn't get his camera out so I don't have any pictures to post.

Here I am coming out of the water after our first dive.

Here's the captain of the boat with Kate after our first dive.

We had one day that it rained all day so we went and did the road to Hana. We went over a million bridges and at each one was a waterfall. At the end of the road is the Sever Sacred Pools or O'heo Gulch. We were almost there when Caroline threw up. So we cleaned her up and headed back. We didn't jump off any of the waterfalls because it was raining so hard and the water was muddy. Despite the rain, it was really beautiful. I wouldn't mind doing it again on a sunny day.

Caroline, Me and Kate during one of our stops on the road to Hana.

To sum up this post, here's a story that was requested to be posted on my blog. We were all in the elevator going up to our room. There were two ladies in the elevator and they asked Melissa if she had been out surfing today because I guess she looked like someone they saw. She told them no and then Briton cut in with this witty comment: "She can barely surf the Internet." The ladies of course laughed and as soon as they got off at their floor we all began mocking Briton for his brilliant quip. He says he was just playing to the audience but I think he thinks he was pretty clever for coming up with that one!

Briton and Melissa: Thanks for inviting me. It was a lot of fun!

Me and Kate. This is an example of what we did most of the time.

Here's Caroline sitting in the sun while we waited to eat at a restaurant.

Caroline and Briton.

Whalers Village (a mall) on Ka'anapali Beach.

Gone to Hawaii

After waiting for so long and taking no days off from work during Christmas, it has finally all paid off. We're headed to Hawaii tomorrow morning! We'll be staying at Marriott's Maui Ocean Club (as seen in the picture above). Although it may rain a little while we're there, the high will be around 79º F everyday. That sounds like heaven right now, especially since it's snowing this morning and I'm sitting at my desk at work with my coat still on 'cause I'm COLD! I probably won't make another post until I'm back so goodbye for now!