Another Drizzly Day

I had great plans for today; I was going to cover all the African tulip stumps with cardboard & black plastic. Unfortunately the moisture from the now tropical depression Greg created a steady drizzle for most of the daylight hours. So I had to switch gears; I worked on getting things down from the top of the closet in my room and putting some of my boxes there in their final resting places. On the bright side of things, I don't have to worry about the anthuriums getting too stressed out now that the invasive trees are no longer shading them; the light mist will help keep them wet while they get used to having more sunlight.


I started the closet clean-up by taking down all the things that we stored on top of the closet when Chris was installing the new flooring; there was a small table, 2 boxes, & some miscellaneous plastic packing materials. I think that I will clean up the table and put it by the front door so I have a place to set my things when I come in that door. It will also have to be defrassed; I could hear the termite droppings rolling around in it when I moved it.

The table is about 2' wide by about 1' deep by about 2' tall with an angled shelf underneath for books.

One of the boxes proved to be more problematic; I spent a lot of time looking at things in the box. Besides a bunch of contemporary books and miscellaneous stuff, there was also a 1933 yearbook from Kohala High School that belonged to Uncle Zensan (Grandpa's youngest brother), a letter to Grandma from cousin Mark when he was quite young, and a photo from a funeral.

1933 Kohalan.

Uncle Zen-san was in the 8th grade in 1933 so there is only a group photo of him and his 21 classmates.

Typical Mark!

I'll have to see if Lem remembers whose funeral this was; he's in this photo along with Mom & Grandma.

I couldn't see the top of closet so I had to take photos with my phone to see what was up there. Bonus! You get to see them, too!

I'm pretty sure this pile of termite droppings is from the little table. Not sure why there was a board running down the length of the closet.

Looking easterly down the top of the closet & shelf.

I think this pile of sawdust at the east end is from the smoke alarm installation. (It's visible in the upper right corner of the previous photo.)

Not being able to see made it difficult to clean. I had to go by a combination of cellphone photos and feel. But I think I did a good job; won't matter much though, it will be under the cardboard that I put down to make it easier to slide boxes over the random boards on the top of the closet.

Before cleaning.

There must have been some very specific things that fit between these boards, they're not needed structurally.

With the help of a little bit of tape, it took only one of the cardboard boxes that the flooring came in to cover the top.

I took a break for lunch after installing the cardboard. I made an avocado sandwich with part of the avocado that Jessie gave me the other day. (I had part of it for dinner last night with my leftover mac nut crusted chicken from Bamboo.)

I opened it up so you could see the ketchup. In Hawai'i we also eat avocados with sugar or shoyu.

After lunch I started reorganizing boxes. I put the ones containing seasonal items on top of the closet since they won't be needed all the time. I unpacked most of the things from the white suitcase; I hung up the nicer things (although they're quite wrinkled from being in the suitcase for a year). The remaining things in the white suitcase will go in the drawers once those are cleaned out. The shelves on the right will be worked on later.

I also put some plastic over the top of the clothes to keep off most of the dust & gecko poop.

I finished this phase of work just in time to shower up before dinner. I picked up Uncle Kazu and we went to Minnie's for their prime rib & lobster dinner special. The special is only served on Fridays and you have to make a reservation in order to get it. Minnie told me to bring Uncle Kazu in at 5:30 so that we could be sure to get the parking spot next to the sidewalk so he could get in to the restaurant; they open at 6 pm for dinner. I'll come back for this one!

I only nibbled on a small part before I remembered to take a picture!

It had conveniently stopped raining just before I needed to pick Uncle Kazu up. And it stayed dry during dinner. We could even see rays of sunlight in the tree tops across the street. So we decided to go to Mahukona to watch the sunset. But it drizzled on and off during the 15 minute drive out to Mahukona. In spite of the drizzle there were about a dozen cars right at the harbor and another 5 or 6 on the opposite side with people camping under the kiawe trees. And there was a pretty thick cloud bank on the Maui side of the Alenuihaha Channel.

This is the best sunset we were able to get this evening.

On the way back we stopped at King's View Cafe for ice cream. After our first experience a couple years ago of ordering 2 scoops in a waffle cone and making a big mess while it melted quicker than we could eat it, we now order 1 scoop in a bowl. This time even that 1 scoop in a bowl was a mess! This server gave us more than how much they give at lunch time, I think if they keep serving that much ice cream for 1 scoop they won't be making any money off of their ice cream!

Happy Birthday to Mona & cousin Mark! (Yes, the same one that wrote the letter to Grandma!)