That "she" is not me. It's ʻŌhuna. After I got all the luggage in the house, I went to check on the cats. I did not see her in the cat room or when I looked out the window on to the deck & areas closest to the deck. But as I began to fill up the feeder while the 3 other cats milled around me, I heard the cat door open & close. And there was ʻŌhuna! So she has now become adept at getting in & out of the cat yard.
She had been outside of the cat yard this morning. Briefly. I think Moʻo was on patrol & spotted her so came over to see what she was up to. And ʻŌhuna being a very cautious cat, ran for cover under the house! Moʻo appeared to stop & check things out before returning to the front yard.
We started out the morning having breakfast at Zippy's before going to the airport. Curtis had the Chili Burrito, Kai had the Ube Pancakes, & I had the Mini Breakfast Special which was comprised of 2 meat choices, 2 eggs, & choice of carb (I chose "wheat" toast).
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| There was no wait for a table. |
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| Curtis' Chili Burrito with side of toasted cornbread. |
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| Kai's Ube Pancakes with vanilla cream. Photo by Kai. |
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| My Mini Breakfast Special. |
Getting bag tags & checking bags in went smoothly. During breakfast, we had a lively discussion about whether my big suitcase was more or less than 50 pounds. I said it was less & I was right!
I got to the TSA checkpoint, put everything on the belt for the scanner, & kept my boots on because no one had to take them off. That went well except the full body scanner said there was a problem with my boots! My boots have plastic hooks, eyelets, etc.; no metal. But the scanner didn't like them anyway so I had to take them off, put them through the machine, & walk through the scanner again. Auē!
Waiting was uneventful, as was boarding, & the flight. When I had checked the National Hurricane Center information at 5 this morning, it showed Fausto well easterly of Honolulu. In the air, I was unable to see any cloud cover that might have been Fausto on my way back to Kona. The only difference I could see was that we came in from the south, which is rare; Fausto must have changed the wind pattern enough to make us have to use the south approach.
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| No Fausto in sight. |
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| Banking as we come in from the south. |
I stopped to pick up my mail on the way home & found a black box in my mailbox; it was about 1/16" too big for me to pull it out of my box from the front. I had to have postal worker Rod pull everything out from the back so I could get my mail. It turns out the black box is from my friend Jody. It was a really cool box with a painting of hummingbirds on the front à la Audubon, with a surprise inside! Jody also included the program of a Japanese Bunraku puppet presentation that she had seen.
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| I love these! |
One of the other things waiting for me in my mailbox was the book, The Art of War by SunTzu. It's another book that is somewhere in a box in the house. My martial arts library is now complete.
I took a quick walk around the yard when I returned. I wanted to make sure the plants survived without me watering them for 10 days. I was pretty sure they would since I was seeing some amount of precipitation on most days. They did. And the kalo looked like it actually got taller!
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| Kalo is now as tall as me! |
While I was away, I saw it had drizzled or rained on most days, such as the light rain early this morning. This is one of the benefits to living in the windward Kohala field system area.
Later in the evening, it rained again.
The house was hot & humid when I returned; I had closed most of the windows to keep any rain out. So now I opened up the windows to get some ventilation. I ended up taking a shower shortly after that since I was now drenched in sweat from hauling everything in. I washed my hair; the lather was bright blue like the blood of a horseshoe crab! Surprisingly the rinse water was not blue & nothing stained the shower stall blue. But to be sure, I dried my hair with a dark blue towel.
Lori had given me a small, hand-held Desktop Vacuum Cleaner for my birthday. She wanted a review because she had never seen anything like it. It does suck up things but would not be able to handle large things, just fine, powdery stuff.
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| Didn't even know fine stuff was on the desk. |
Hoʻokoa & ʻAlani were acting just like those 2 cats in the cartoon that Kai sent me about 3 weeks ago. They're usually very mellow with each other with occasional batting at each other.
When Spencer picked me up from the airport, he had just come from Costco. While there he picked up a hot dog & soda for me for lunch. But I was still full from breakfast so I saved it for dinner. Of course, I had to add sauerkraut to it!
I watched Episode 12 of Judge Dee's Mystery this evening. SPOILER ALERT - The mastermind behind the murders & stealing the gold is Di Renjie's friend Hou Yu. Di Renjie confronts him in an undersea trench that is exposed on a strange annual tidal occurrence which looks to me like when the water recedes just before a tsunami occurs! When it comes back in, it is somewhat tsunami-like as well. Qiao Tai & Ma Rong ride in to alert Di Renjie about the incoming tide; Di Renjie tries to get Hou Yu to leave with them but he stays with the gold & is inundated by the in incoming tide. The 3 make it back to the boat before the tide catches them; but the boat is broadside to the incoming wave. Miraculously, it is not flipped over by the wave; it just ends up floating away! Hollywood physics!
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| 真的吗？ (zhēn de ma? Really?) |
The area Di Renjie was in was open ocean, not a confined area like the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tidal range in the world. It varies between 11 & 53 feet depending on what part of the bay you are at. Here is a 4-minute time lapse video showing what happens in the 6 hours or so that it takes for the tidal change to occur. Watch for those big waves.
In Duolingo, several new words were introduced this evening. I had learned the seasons in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, but not the word for "zoo" or "admission". FYI the pictures for the seasons & "cold" are the same as they are in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi.
I chose to just do the quiz on Lingopie this evening. They present you with 9 words or phrases & you have to identify what they mean. If you get them wrong, you are presented with the ones you got wrong until you get them right! Then you can move on to the next quiz.
In the evening, which is when I usually capture the screen shot of storms heading our way, the maximum sustained wind speed for Tropical Storm Fausto had decreased to 40 mph from 60 mph this morning. It is now about 310 miles east-northeast of Honolulu & continues to move west-northwesterly at about 12 mph. It is expected to become a tropical depression by tomorrow morning & a remnant low by late tomorrow.
If you have been watching national news, you have seen Hurricane Genevieve has formed in the east Pacific & is heading westerly. Although it has sustained winds of 130 mph, making it a Category 4 Hurricane, it is of little concern to us here. Due to the colder ocean surface waters it must pass over to get to us, the prediction is that it will peter out before it reaches the Central Pacific region.
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| From the V3 camera. |
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| From the V1 camera. |
Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mona, Mark, & Limaikaika!
