After a grueling 11-hour flight from D.C. to Honolulu, I finally arrived and could begin to enjoy my month-long winter break.  Unlike what I've heard from a lot of people about their breaks, I actually had a whole lot of stuff to do.  Unfortunately, I got very little of it done, or at least that's what it felt like, especially considering that I caught the flu with about a week of break left.
 

One of the things I most anticipated doing was working on my 1/35 scale World War II models, which I had just had mailed from a friend's house in Arlington, VA.  Unfortunately, the local model shop had zero inventory due to shipping problems, and things just got too busy.  Hopefully summer...

Probably the biggest thing that happened over the break was that we finally got a dock--we live on a marina--and a kayak ( Cobra's Navigator) to go with it.  This is a picture of my parents with the kayak on the car, a rare thing since we don't have to transport the kayak to get it to water.

One day we found this huge and bizarre moth (or one just like it) sitting on a plant on our back lanai (porch).  Attempts to scare it off were unsucessful; I did manage to get it on a stick, but when I tossed the moth, it didn't even try to fly and just landed in the water.  A day or two later, it (or one just like it) turned up again on the steps by the lanai, where I took the above picture of it.  I'm not sure, but I believe its length from head to tail was about 2 inches.

These last few pictures were taken the day before I left.  Note that the carbon-fiber paddle cost nearly as much as the kayak itself.

This is called good water--little or no wind.  As the wind gets really strong you have to paddle harder to move and worry a bit more about keeping your balance.

Me in the kayak...

Me in the kayak a little farther away, trying to decide which end of the paddle to use...

Eventually, I decided to chase a duck, but being unequipped for flight, this proved rather fruitless.
 
 

And then I caught that plane back to UVA...