It was a dark and stormy night

An early start this morning - as usual I woke up before the alarm went off. It doesn't seem to matter what time I set the alarm to, I'll always wake up before it goes off. This morning it was set to 3:45am and I was still awake to cancel it before it went off!

Still, waking up so early is not pleasant and to make it worse, it was set at such a ridiculous time because the "treat lady" had to fly back to the mainland and her home this morning, starting on the 06:23am flight from Hilo to Honolulu. This just sucked and it gets no better over the years. I hate the days when her visits end, it's always so depressing when I arrive back home after seeing her off at the airport and it's empty again. Oh well, it's back to normal life again as well as back to work next week.

During the treat lady's visit the weather has been the worst I can remember on the Big Island. Not the most atrocious storm or worst flooding rainfall I can remember, but just weeks of wind, cold and rain and very little sun. Today, after catching up on a bit of sleep, I went to the local store to get a couple of things and heard on the radio that there was a high surf warning for the east shore (which is where I live). It turns out the warning was for the other islands but the surf was also very high here. So, on the way back I took a couple of shots in the usual place, the cliffs close to my house.

It was at around sunset so the light was poor, and being my usual stupid self, I'd taken the tripod out of my car so had to hand-hold the camera despite the long exposure times required (around 1/3 sec). Given that, I was surprised these shots came out without being blurred to hell. Unfortunately, I took what ought to be a wonderful panorama with some spectacular clouds, but since the camera was in my hands rather than on a tripod, I haven't yet been able to create a decent stitched image. Oh well, there will be more occasions...

I'll have to check to see if the sky will be clear tomorrow morning, as I think these shots would have looked really nice with the rising sun in the east. The surf should still be high tomorrow, the waves are supposed to be 10-14 feet high and that looks about right given the height of the cliffs, which are around 15-20 feet.

And now back to the cats who are wondering where their next treat is coming from...