What I was doing for work finally demanded that I learn Debian/Ubuntu. So I found some Ubuntu AMIs, some HOWTOs on apt-get et al, and crash learned it while trying to figure out how to install an application that was brand new, and never had been installed as it was.
I fought with that and that all that day, until the setting sun blazing in the windows forced me out. I went home, got on EDGE (which was working a bit better), and kept working on it.
And then the next day, walked back to the same cafe, and kept working on it, got it working just in time for the team conference call on this project. It's a demo for Network.com for JavaOne, next month.
When I left the cafe that night, the barasta stopped me on the way out, and told me I was welcome to keep staying there all day for days to come. Hmmm...
That Wednesday night, I went with Tigris to her Non Violent Communication seminar. She had a few hours before it started to do some personal stuff, so I wandered down the road from the Unity Church, and then suddenly recognized where I was. The hibiscus garden, and the park with the yoga tree, and that one particular beach on weikiki. I walked around them, remembering, and took a couple of pictures with my camera, just to lock down the GPS locations, so I could go back and geotag the photos from 16 months ago.
Wandered back, did the NVC workshop and some exercises, and then wandered around the park and the beach again with Tigris, talking into the night and the darkness.