The Amazing Mysteries of the Sphinx

Yesterday, my 3 year old granddaughter could hardly wait to show us on Skype that she had a huge Sphinx (stick on) tattoo applied to her arm. She'd gotten it as a present from our anthropologist neighbor who'd been to the British Museum.

We told her that we knew what the Sphinx was and had seen the real thing in Egypt.

Then late last night I thought I would check my old, old, old e-mail address that I no longer use just to make sure nobody had tried to get a hold of us. There were over 200 junk e-mails.

And then, I saw it... a name from the past. Chris! We'd met him during our trip to Egypt in November of 2007.

Chris was saying he'd be in Hawaii for a robotics conference and asked if we'd be available on the 18th? Arrrghhhh! 18th???? It was the 17th! Oh my gosh!

I sent him a message back right away saying we most certainly would be, but didn't hear back this morning. So I tracked him down via Internet and looked up his university and his work e-mail. That did the trick and he called right away.


Chris is Canadian and we have yet to meet a Canadian we didn't like. We spent a lot of time together in Egypt. Chris was one of the people who got me thinking about blogging. I don't know how to explain what he does. He's working toward his PhD. in aeronautical robotics or something like that... creating robots to work on the moon, etc. (Here we are sailing on the Nile.)


He was really good at getting around and especially at haggling (I mean, getting a good price). Here are Chris and Art in Petra,Jordan discussing the cost of a camel ride, I think.


We picked up Chris in Waikiki and took him up to Tantalus. We take everybody up there to get a bird's eye view of Manoa (University of Hawaii), Waikiki, Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, etc.

Ooops! Diamond Head, too!


Our next stop was the Nuuanu Pali where King Kamehameha battled and defeated Oahu's armies and sent the warriors over the cliff to their death. People go there for the view and to be buffeted by the strong winds. It was definitely WINDY today!!!


Another stop was to that Hitachi (monkey pod) Tree at Moanalua Gardens just because it was on the way to our house.


It's really a pretty place and Chris got to see taro being grown there. We had another stop at the Dole Plantation so he could see lots of different kinds of pineapples.

We had dinner, picked up his wife at the Honolulu International Airport who was arriving from Pittsburgh and took them to Waikiki. They're leaving for Kauai tomorrow morning. It was such a wonderful day!

Isn't it amazing that our granddaughter would show us that Sphinx tattoo yesterday?

Isn't it amazing that I happened to check that forgotten e-mail address last night? Not tonight, not tomorrow, not next week, but last night?

Isn't it amazing that today was the only day we could have met because Chris was leaving and we had a memorial service to attend tomorrow?

I just think it's pretty amazing!