Four Year Anniversary

Hello everyone!  I'm happy to announce that yesterday, May 15th 2012, was Olin and my four year anniversary!  Four years is a respectable amount of time for younglings like us, and to celebrate, we went out for breakfast, then took a drive out to Bird Park, the same place we went for our first year anniversary!

Bird Park is a lovely little picnic area in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, but since it's not actually in the National Park, admission is free!

It looked the same, if a little dry!

 Mysterious berries were mysterious.

 Olin investigating little caves.

 For those of you unfamiliar, this flower is called ōʻhiʻa lehua, one of Hawai'i's endemic flower species!  Local folklore says that if you pick one, it'll rain, so I've never picked one!

Bird Park is full of old, fallen over trees.  I'm not sure why, but they're fun to play on!

We found a new addition since we were here last: some charcoal drawings!

...And a name badge.  From an elementary school field trip, maybe?

Since it was just the two of us, we tried to take a photo together with my camera's self-timer... but I was bad at running into place in time.

So I stayed put and Olin did the running.

It's not fair when your boyfriend has longer eyelashes than you, right?

All in all, our day trip was really fun.  And at the risk of sounding mushy, it's hard to believe that it's been four years since Olin and I first started dating!  So much has changed since May 15, 2008 - we've moved houses twice, adopted two cats, started jobs (Hilo Bay Cafe for Olin and Gamestop for me), ended those jobs, and then we both got jobs at Target!  I feel like we've both done a lot of growing up in these four years.  I think our teenage years are officially behind us, and young adulthood is just beginning.

I can say with certainty that at this point in our lives, we both anticipate celebrating many many more anniversaries together!

Olin Gets a Haircut!

Hey guys! I'm so sorry it's been so long - I've been so busy with school and work, and the longer I went without posting here, the more nervous I got about trying to start again.  But I received a very sweet comment from a reader on LiveJournal, and it convinced me that it's worth it to post here again!

The days have been getting longer and hotter here!  One such sunny afternoon, I gave Olin a much needed haircut.  Here are some photos of that! (Sorry they are all Instagram photos, but my dad stole my camera again!)

And so it begins!  (Actually, I'd already cut a lot of the length off at this point!)

Halfway done!

The finished product!  I call it the Tintin look.

I am by no means a barber or hairdresser, but Olin refuses to see one! (He can't justify spending any money on a haircut that he'll grow out in two months - yes, ladies, feel free to eyeroll here.)  And so, the task of cutting his hair has fallen on me, and I've been doing it for the past eight months or so!  I think I do alright?

If any of you out there need to give your men a haircut, the only advice I can give you is: cut vertically, and at an angle so the lower section of hair gets cut shorter than the top section, to give it a more natural blended-look.  Don't ever cut horizontally, or your man (or short-haired lady friend!) will have a big chunk missing that'll be very noticeable!  (Yep, learned this one through experience.)

That's all for now!  Have a great week everyone!

Olin & Kira and lots of animals

It's no secret that Olin and I love animals.  I love furry things and flying things, and he loves creepy-crawlies and big dogs.  So when Olin's friend told us about free baby Jackson chameleons, of course we said yes!

His friend gave us two babies, and Olin made them a home in our giant 40-gallon aquarium tank.  (I know a mesh enclosure is more desirable, but our friend who works at a pet shop - because of course we have a friend who works at a pet shop - said the tank should be okay for now!)  Unfortunately,  one baby figured out how to climb up the seam of the aquarium tank, over the mesh screen we use as a cover, and onto the porch.  I think it fell the 12 or so feet to its death, so now we only have one baby left.

Here he (she?) is on Olin's fingers!

The other night (also on our porch), or roommate Tomus declared, "That's a huge moth!", so Olin and I went to investigate: and it was, indeed, a huge moth.

After a quick Google search, we believe this moth is a Daphnis nerii, a Oleander Hawk Moth!  The green, pink, and purple are ridiculously pretty, right?

Finally, this past Tuesday Olin and I went to the local zoo with our roomies, and here are those photos:

Olin trying to pet Namaste, the resident white tiger, because that's not illegal or anything.

Sorry I haven't been updating much - my ultimate goal is to try to write here at the very least once a week, but midterms and work have been successfully kicking my butt.  On the bright side: SPRING BREAK IS HERE!

I'm going to Oahu tomorrow to visit my mother and brother for three days and four nights, and I think this is the longest amount of time Olin and I will have spent apart in almost three years.  (Is that sad?  That's probably sad.)  I'll try to take some good solo photos while I'm there. Without me around, Olin will have nothing to do, so maybe he'll finally get around to poking in and saying hi here.  A girl can only hope!

Our Zarkana Tickets!

Our Cirque Du Soleil tickets for Radio City Music Hall came in yesterday!!

I suppose I need to go back in time a little to explain: in September, Hawaiian Airlines announced a new flight, direct from Honolulu to NYC - a city that Olin and I have dreamed about for so long.  With the announcement came a special low price for tickets, and we nabbed tickets for about $312 one way!  (Right?! So cheap!!  For both of us go to and come back, it was about $1,300!)

We booked our NYC trip from June 29th to July 5th, and we've been saving up for it ever since!  As soon as our tickets were bought and paid for, we began plotting out what to do once we're there.  I've always wanted to see Cirque Du Soleil in person (and watch my feeble trapeze skills be put to shame), so I looked to see if any Cirque shows would be in NYC when we were - and Zarkana is!!  Tickets for Zarkana at Radio City Music Hall went on presale a week or so ago, so we bought ours.  I'm so excited!

Other New York plans are: to catch a Broadway show, maybe an off-Broadway show, and... that's about it.  So if you have any recommendations as to what we should do while we're in NYC, where we should shop, or where to eat, please drop us some comments!

Hope you all are doing well!

- Kira

Welcome to the Adventures of Olin & Kira!

Hello everyone! My name is Kira, and I am super excited to welcome you all to the grand opening of Olin & Kira!

This blog is the brain-child of my boyfriend Olin and I.  It's a place for us to share with you our lives: the interesting parts, the boring parts, and the just plain weird parts.  If all goes according to plan, we'll both be posting our daily activities, recipes we've discovered, photos we've taken, doodles we've done, gardening tips - everything!

To get us started, here's a little bit of background info on Olin and I.

I'm Kira, a 21 year old Japanese American girl.  I've lived my whole life here in Hawai'i (although Olin and I are saving up to change this soon!).  I have one older brother who has helped shaped my identity by sharing his interests with me (namely comic books, martial arts films, b-horror movies, punk rock, and hip-hop).  I'm currently going to a community college, but am about to graduate with my AA in Liberal Arts, at which point I'll transfer over to the local university to get my B.A. in Japanese Studies.  My favorite musicians are Astronautalis, Dessa, and Murder by Death.

This is Olin.  He's 23 years old, and has lived his whole life on the Big Island!  He has two older brothers who helped shaped his identity by beating him up all the time.  (Don't worry - now that the brothers are older, they don't fight... as much.)  His brothers got him into heavy metal and punk rock, and from a very young age (6 years old!) Olin was listening to the Dead Kennedys and Gwar.  Olin currently works at Target in the Electronics department, but has also spent over five years working in kitchens.

We've been dating for almost four years, and currently live in an old plantation-style house with four roommates.  Olin and I have four cats together who will probably make several appearances in this blog.

Well, that's it for now!  Thank you all for visiting!  I home you come back again!