Independence Day!

For a number of years now I have celebrated the Monday after Mother's Day as the anniversary of the date of my divorce; I don't remember the exact date or even the year of my divorce, but this works well for me. There are a lot of rituals for when people get married, but the only ritual our culture has for divorce is the paperwork! So I made up my own ritual for my Independence Day, part of which is going out to dinner. So I took The Roommates out to dinner at The Himalayan Kitchen; they had never had Indian food before. They both liked it. I decided I'm going to use one of my 8 monthly cooking days to take them out to dinner and introduce them to a new type of cuisine each month.

The Himali Plate of appetizers which includes papadam, pakoras, tikka, & samosas along with sauces.

Navratna Biryani, it's sort of a vegan Indian fried rice.

Raita, a yogurt based sauce to eat with biryani.

The Himali Bread Basket, with two types of naan.

Butter Chicken. Yum!

Keema Matar Curry, a ground lamb based curry.

A steaming platter of Tikka Chicken.

Dragonfruit Ice Cream (L) & Four Spice Chocolate Ice Cream.

After dinner we made a quick trip up to Maunalani to show the potential Most Favorite Roommate what the view looked like from up there; we could see it from The Himalayan Kitchen. It had been misting down at the restaurant, it was raining up at Maunalani. But we could still see the city lights; they were beautiful. We talked about going up to Maunalani on Friday night to watch the fireworks again. Hopefully it will be clearer this time.

Dad still had a fever, 102.2 degrees F. Dad has had fevers on and off since Saturday. If he continues to have fevers even though they have him on intravenously administered antibiotics, we will have to make a decision.

When I got back from Maunalani earlier in the day I went to check on the papayas; none were ripe yet. But I did see that there are now 3 new flower sprigs on Mom's last orchid. It also has a few new starts; I'll have to see whether I can take one to Kohala in July to plant in Grandma's anthurium garden. I also need to start splitting the mini-anthuriums. The last orchid that Mom got as a gift is also producing a couple of new blossoms at the end of the flower sprig that had the previous blossoms; I'm glad I didn't cut if off!

Mom's last orchid.

Mom's last gift orchid; there are 2 blossoms forming at the end of the sprig.

At the start of my walk to Maunalani Park today it was drizzling while it was sunny. It wasn't the best weather for walking or field work. But its better than being totally sunny. I did the walk at a pace of 2.9 mph, same as yesterday. I'm not sure how much faster I can get, but I definitely know that I am not jogging up the hill; that's too much work!

I got an e-mail from Kyle today! I met Kyle on Saturday at the Manu o Ku Festival; he's the one working with the Pueo Project that was glad to have a volunteer who knew the difference between a Pueo & a barn owl. He invited me to  join him on a survey on Thursday; unfortunately I can't make it. I told him I could do other days except Sundays & Thursdays. Hopefully I will get another chance. In the meanwhile, I've got to find out about sun-protective clothing that will stand up to the Hawaiian sun; I don't have any of my previous field clothes, but they're for Washington sun, not Hawai'i sun.

I was so tired last night I didn't post about Briy and Dylan's tattoos.

Briy's tattoo, I will have to get the meaning again.

Dylan's left arm. the top design is the sun and the moon, all of the components have meaning, but I couldn't remember them all.

Dylan's right arm. FYI He took his shirt off on his own.

Happy Birthday to Enola, Ron, Doug, Jeremy, & Richele! And Happy 2nd Anniversary to Tami & Goldry!