Honolulu City Lights

The big event for us today was viewing the Honolulu City Lights. This is the 34th year of this month long celebration which ends on January 1, 2019. Yesterday was opening night which was too much people for us, so we went tonight. It apparently started with just a tree but over the years large displays & a parade on Opening Night were added; there are food vendors as part of the celebration. And there are apparently different vendors on Opening Night (December 1st), the 1st 2 weeks, and the 2nd 2 weeks.

Shaka Santa, Tutu Mele, & their visitor from Antarctica who is being attacked by an octopus.

We saw her as we drove by & someone joked that her name was Leilani. And it was!

There is a wreath contest as part of the Honolulu City Lights celebration. We found 2 wreaths made by the folks at Feather & Fur Animal Hospital. Here are also a couple of my favorite wreaths.

 
Each of the City & County departments also decorates a tree in keeping with the theme for the year. This year the theme was, "'A'ole hana nui ke alu 'ia", No task is too big when done together by all. This is the tree by the Department of Parks & Recreation; it shows the path taken by Hokule'a during the Malama Honua voyage around the world. The tree was made of plastic bottles & caps

A chart showing the voyage.

Hawai'i.

The Brazil to Virgin Islands leg that Kelly was on.

On my morning walk today I saw Lorraine, Steph, & LaVie. I also saw Duke at the park, but he was at the other end of the field.

Sunrise on Maunalani Circle.

From Sierra below the park.

Dad was awake and eating breakfast in bed when I arrived at Maunalani. He said he wasn't feeling well and he seems to be coughing more. I will have to check what the results of the chest x-ray were from the other week. He didn't touch any of the solids and only drank 1/2 of a Boost Breeze.

I took Dad to the Namaste massage before I did my mid-morning walk. On the way there I saw a dead rat in the courtyard; Popokilani is working overtime! During my mid-morning walk the breezes picked up considerably so it didn't feel as hot as it could have been.

Popokilani's night time catch.

Lunch today was Pork loin roast, Steamed rice, Tossed salad, Seasoned green beans, Caramel cheesecake, and Garden vegetable soup. We ate out on the lanai and Dad ate all of his 1/2 peanut butter & jelly sandwich! This will count as 50%.


Because of my professional experience I am aware of tools that might help me in my search for the source of that box culvert that I found yesterday at the bottom of Lurline. I found the State of Hawaii Office of Planning's GIS links page and saw they had a link to Lidar files which was my favorite tool for finding the potential course of a stream or drainage since it can penetrate foliage & show you the contours under the canopy; so I started with that. It was not really available to me. Then I went to the City & County GIS sites. There I found the Honolulu Department of Planning & Permitting's page for GIS databases.



Nothing looked too promising so I clicked on "Maps of O'ahu" and found their stormwater system map. Frequently natural drainages are used for stormwater conveyenace so it was worth a look. Success! It turns out that the catch basins on Maunalani Circle feed in to a series of reinforced concrete pipes that make their way under yards from the top of Sierra Drive down to Matsonia. From there it is in a ditch that runs from Matsonia down to Lurline where I saw it. It continues in a ditch until Iwi Way where it runs for a short distance in a reinforced concrete pipe before once again running in a ditch down to the Mau'umae Nature Park. From the contours that are visible on the base map, it looks to me like a bunch of it was a natural drainage way that has been reinforced with concrete to handle the additional runoff caused by construction of homes & roads on the hillside. When it leaves the Mau'umae Nature Park it is contained in pipes until it reaches a channel on the makai side of the freeway. From there it stays in the channel until it reaches Maunalua Bay a couple blocks south of where Wai'alae Stream also enters the bay.


During my afternoon walk I was checking out the stormwater conveyance features I had noted on the GIS map earlier in the day. I pretty much found all of them along my walking route for today. Now I need to make a special trip down Matsonia to find the location where it crosses Matsonia and opens up in to the ditch.


We didn't know there would be food at the Honolulu City Lights, so for dinner tonight we walked down to What It Dough; its a vegan wood-fired pizza place that Google Maps says is about a 15 minute walk from the house. It actually took us 16 minutes to get there; we went at geek pace.


The Potential Most Favorite Roommate met us at What It Dough when he got off from work. What It Dough is next to the original Banan food truck; since it closes at 6 pm we started with dessert! The Roommates shared The Original, Kai had the Guava Jams, and Nikki & I each had a Chunkadelic. We ordered 3 pizzas, The Duke, a Deluxe, and a Terence McKenna. We were originally going to go to Honolulu City Lights by bus but The Potential Most Favorite Roommate had just gotten off work and he didn't want to bus; since he was driving us back to the house we let him do what he wanted. We drove to Honolulu City Lights; parking was no problem tonight.

The Original.

A half eaten Guava Jams.

One of the Chunkadelics.

The pizza choices.

The Duke.

The Deluxe.

Terence McKenna.

S'mores and Chibi seem to have reached a state of equilibrium. S'mores follows Chibi who heads out the cat door to the cat run and goes to sleep while S'mores tries to attack her through the screen door; she hasn't figured out how to use the cat door yet and we don't plan on teaching her about it until she is a bit older. That way Chibi has a quiet place to get away from her while she has a lot of kitten energy.

S'mores getting ready to launch a sneak attack!

Happy Birthday to Stan!