What can I say, Hawaii is beautiful this time of year (of course, you could say that pretty much any day of the year.) Had a really nice, relaxing holiday. Even spent some time partaking in one of your great national rituals - sitting in a bar watching the Superbowl :)

Other general observations:

All TSA & related folk I met were unfailingly polite and friendly. This was a pleasant surprise! I was on the way to my hotel within perhaps 30 minutes of landing, maybe less.

Drug ads on TV - hilarious! 5 seconds extolling the virtues of the product, with 55 seconds of "may cause death, paranoia, and the possibilities that monkeys will fly out your butt" disclaimers.

I now know more than I ever wanted to know about the Nuvaring.

Waikiki is full of seemingly equal measures of hotties, and retired Floridians.

The Bus network is *awesome*.

Oahu is an island of not inconsiderable natural beauty, pretty much everywhere you look.

The people are, often, actually as laid-back as all the tourist guff says.

Met a few nice people I'll be keeping in touch with, from Vermont, Colorado, and Massachusetts.

Chili's might just be some chain restaurant, but their Patron's margarita was worth the slightly scary price.

IHOP and Jack-in-the-box were about as artery-hardening as I thought it would be :)

Best place I ate was a little Ramen shop with gyoza that was even better than I've had in Tokyo. Keoni's restaraunt comes a close second, for its excellent Thai food an very reasonable prices.

Ala Moana Centre - I think I've died and gone to retail heaven :)

Anyway, I wish I could have stayed longer. It just really had that "I like it here!" feeling, for want of a better phrase. I will return one day - hopefully with a shorter gap than the 17 years between my first and second visits.