cruel sun

Lahaina, once the royal capital of the Hawaiian Islands after King Kamehameha conquered all of them and brought them together, means "cruel sun", but it did not quite live up to its name today. I drove to Lahaina this morning, intent on exploring, and had breakfast at a restaurant overlooking the harbor, which was v. nice. Then I wandered around downtown Lahaina, which is mostly full of tacky souvenir shops, although I did find a cute pair of shorts and a totally kickin' skirt. I also took a quick peek at one of the old missionary homes in Lahaina; the missionary did pretty well for himself, since he was also a doctor, and the dude's descendants now control significant land in Hawaii, including the US's largest pineapple production company, as well as some major resort holdings in Maui. Nothing like converting the natives and making a land grab at the same time, eh?

After deciding that I was done with Lahaina, I came back to the hotel, v. carefully applied sunscreen to every bit that could be exposed to the sun (sometimes more than once), and then spent four hours on the beach. I took a brief break for another delicious kalua pork sandwich, but the majority of the afternoon was focused on a) stimulating a case of skin cancer sometime in the next fifty years, and b) reading a romance novel. I'm having a lot of trouble reading romance novels right now, and I must say that the drubbing that the agent who rejected me last week gave me is annoying me as I try to get into new books. She mainly critiqued my point-of-view switches and the fact that it was highly implausible that Amelia would wander around in her nightgown; and yet both the books that I've read so far on this trip feature similar POV switches and highly implausible behavior from both the hero and the heroine. So maybe I need a break from the romance genre altogether -- although if I don't get Madeleine and Ferguson together, ain't nobody going to get them together, so I need to get back on the writing train posthaste.

I leave you with a picture of me and Katie prior to the luau on Monday night. Tomorrow I'm getting a manicure and a pedicure, which is pretty much the extent of my exertions, before lying on the beach again the rest of the day. Goodnight!