The Terrible Towel

As I mentioned earlier, the package from Suzanne arrived when we were at the hospital for Mom's transfusion on Thursday. It needed a signature, so I picked it up from the post office yesterday. Suzanne's friend Josie picked it up special for Curtis. Twice. The first one never arrived in our hands, although the USPS said it arrived at the door; that was a few days before Christmas so it might have walked away. At any rate, Josie is a true fan with season tickets, so she picked up another one for him! I gave it to Curtis this evening at dinner. Mahalo, Josie! You made this Steelers fan very happy!

My sister got a car but I got something better ... A Terrible Towel!!! (DT & Brent in background)

We went to dinner at the Pagoda Floating Restaurant because Curtis' older son, DT, is going back to Michigan tomorrow; Pagoda is his favorite restaurant. All of Curtis' in-laws were there.

Clockwise spiral from top: Asian chicken salad, chow mein, sauteed vegetables, teriyaki chicken, green mussels, roast beef with mushrooms & onions, poke, tofu poke, sushi, & baked potatoes.

The Pagoda is known for its seafood buffet which includes crab legs. Curtis cracked the legs and got the meat out for Mom & Dad. He was a little surprised at how little meat was in the legs. But he was comparing it to king crab legs; those served at Pagoda are called tanner crabs (Chionoecetes bairdi and C. opilio) by biologists. But that name doesn't sound too appetizing so the industry calls them snow crabs. (Its the crabs that the Deadliest Catch guys are going for.) In 1979 I spent a month in the Bering Sea on a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) research boat, as part of a science team collecting population data for management of the tanner crab fishery. I also did computer programming & data entry for the NMFS Resources Assessment & Conservation Engineering division. I was offered a full time job by the lead programmer for the NMFS Seattle office because I could understand both fisheries & IT; I turned it down since I would not be able to go out on the research vessels like the fisheries biologists. It took me a couple more years before I was able to get a full time job in my field.


Both Mom & Dad went to dinner tonight and enjoyed themselves. We took the new car, which they both liked. In fact, Mom said the seat got too hot for her okole at the high setting she thought was great yesterday. I showed her how to turn it down to the lowest setting, which she said was good for tonight. There was a large office holiday party at the 3 rows of tables next to us. They were doing one of those gift exchanges where you can steal any present of the persons that chose before you. They sounded like they were having a lot of fun! The guy behind Dad had a Christmas tie on, the woman behind Mom had what looked like a print in honor of Dia de las Muertos.

Dad & Mom.

The Pagoda is called the "floating restaurant" due to the koi pond that surrounds the main restaurant and the smaller teahouses. There are raised boardwalks to get to the teahouses that cross over the pond.

Several thousand dollars worth of koi.

The weather has been cold for Hawai'i, getting down in to the mid- to low 60's at night due to a cold front that moved in earlier in the week; Dad correctly noted that for me it was like Washington in the summer. It took a bit of talking but I was able to get Mom to wear her leggings with the long flannel nightgown that she brought back from Kohala; it was her mother's nightgown. Although she wore it in Kohala and also here in Honolulu, as it got colder she kept saying she couldn't wear the nightgown because it did not belong to her; she wants me to wash it & take it back to Kohala. Interestingly, she brought back 2 of her mother's other flannel nightgowns! I think while we were in Kohala she thought more about her parents and she wanted to have a reminder of her mother. But when she got back to Honolulu, the dementia altered her thoughts, making it wrong for her to be using someone else's things. I'm fine with her using them, in fact it bothers me more that she thinks she should not use them because they belong in Kohala; it doesn't make sense to me to just let them sit in the drawer when she could make use of them.

Xander leading Mom to the middle bedroom to watch TV & fall asleep.

Happy Birthday to Ben & Bick!