My Summer Vacation: November 2019

As noted by Sai yesterday, the bathrooms were being worked on today. But they started before I finished the cool downs before my sunrise walk! Aue! I had to use the staff bathroom on the 2nd floor since the 1st floor is not open on weekends. Consequently, I skipped the mid-morning & afternoon walks so I wouldn't tie up the one bathroom on the 2nd floor with my sunscreen application and later face washing.

The date is wrong, it was actually the 30th.

During my drive up I didn't see any walkers; I think it was because the wind has changed and it has become very gusty. During my walk I saw no one on the circle; the first person I saw was Lorraine down by the park. The other day she sent me a photo asking about the bird in the photo; it was a Yellow-fronted Canary. She asked about another bird, which I think might be the Common Waxbill; when I saw her later on Lurline we were near an area where I see them a lot but none were there this morning. I saw The Other Wendy at her house on Lurline. As I was finishing my walk I saw LaVie in the distance coming up Sierra. During my cool down stretches I did not see any regulars.

Twenty-three minutes before sunrise on Waiʻalae.

Twelve minutes before sunrise on Maunalani.

Fourteen minutes after sunrise on Sierra.

Christmas decorations are starting to appear.

Dad was in bed eating breakfast when I arrived at his room. He ate all his fried egg sandwich and papaya, but saved his banana for later. He only drank 120 ml cranberry juice but no water.

Lunch today was Mushroom chicken (13 g carbs), Mashed potatoes, Malibu blend veggies (4 g), Garden salad (3 g), Ambosia, and Beef & rice soup. Dad ate all his 1/2 peanut butter & banana sandwich and 1 dessert; he does not really care for ambrosia. He drank 120 ml cranberry juice and 30 ml water.

I left about an hour after Dad finished lunch; I needed to finalize some things before The Roommates returned later in the day to help me move the extra bed out of the room. I am now ready for the window replacement work that will begin on Monday!

The extra bed has been removed.

My bed is going to be moved up against the things by the closet.

My bed has been moved and the window walls cleared.

I don't think Mom ever moved these beds and cleaned under them.

I bought this tonight to steam clean the floors.

The floor has been vacuumed but not mopped.

The steam cleaner is ready to work!

The newly cleaned floor.

I moved things back in to place for the interim.

The bed is in a similar orientation so I get out on the same side as usual.

I'm retiring this pair of shorts. It's a new pair of shorts; I've only worn them 3 times. I bought them because they were on sale! 👍 And they were in my size! 👍 And they had pockets! 👍 And a drawstring! 👍 But I forgot to check the inseam. 👎 It's 2"; way too short. 😕 They shall become a pair of sleeping shorts. 😴

As I hoped it would, once it got over the load of carbs I ate on Thanksgiving, my body started burning fats again! The higher ketone levels showed up by about 10:45 in the morning; about 3 hours after the end of my sunrise walk. It stayed elevated through 2:15, but dropped by 4:30; about 5 hours after I ate lunch which contained 20 g carbs. I wonder what would have happened if I had been able to do the mid-morning walk as well as the afternoon walk? And, yes, I pee a lot; I stay well hydrated so I can sweat as much as I need to when I walk.

At 6:00 am, upon waking.

At 7:51 am; after finishing the sunrise walk.

At 10:44 am; still fasting.

At 2:17 pm; after lunch.

At 4:29 pm; no walks.

At 5:42 pm; after dinner.

First thing this morning I weighed my self; I wanted to see how much damage I did to my weight loss progress. I found that I actually lost 0.2 pounds in spite of the eating I did last night! Winner! By the way, today was the 1013th day that I have been using the WiiFit; that's almost 3 years!

It tries to be encouraging, but sometimes I just find it annoying.

Today I celebrate Buy Nothing Day; which was created in the early 1990's by a Canadian to examine consumerism. It's a good excuse for me to avoid crowds. Hard core people even avoid driving, they say its delayed consumerism because you will have to buy gas to replace what you used on Buy Nothing Day. I wonder what they do about eating? I'm not hard core; I just don't buy things on Buy Nothing Day.

On my drive up I saw Loy, later I saw Wolf near the driveway. During my walk I saw Wolf in the distance; I was never able to catch up with him. Later I saw Laure with Champ and Molly. As I was coming up Lurline I saw Sue; I checked in with her about her visit to Maunalani. She said she liked what she heard but she was also made an offer from another business where she could work a lot of holiday overtime. She decided to take that for now in order to pay off a bunch of student loans; but she's keeping Maunalani in mind. During my cool down stretches I saw no regulars.

Ten minutes before sunrise on Maunalani.

Six minutes after sunrise on Sierra.

The day before Thanksgiving there was a concrete truck at the Lanipoko house. Because of the location of the pours they were doing, part of the road was blocked by the truck but I was not able to get a photo since I saw it as I was driving by. Today I got a look at the areas they were working on but this is not a good photo of the 2 slabs they poured; one is behind the portion of wall that is painted black and the other is behind the original foundation.

I'm having trouble remembering to get a series of photos of the Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow flowers. So I have decided to get 3 consecutive days worth of photos before I present them to you. So don't hold your breath, it may take a while since it is not really one of the top things on my mind while I am doing my cool down stretches. In case you are wondering, here are the Top 3 Things I am usually thinking about: 1) Stretch, 2) What bird was that?, & 3) Don't fall over! (For the hamstring and quad stretches I am standing on one leg & balancing. Sometimes the gusts make that challenging!)

When I went by the hāpuʻu I could clearly see from across the street that I needed to remove a frond that was almost all brown. I stopped by as I was leaving to take care of it. I forgot to get a before photo.

I was going to do my mid-morning walk a little earlier since there was a round table discussion with Sai, Maunalani's CEO, at 10, but I was delayed in leaving. I only did one lap around the circle; but I jogged for 4 segments and did not totally die!

The roundtable was very interesting; 6 residents attended, Mr. Aguillera, Mrs. Okawa, Mrs. Shibuya, Mr. Izon, Mrs. Lee, and Uncle Larry. Sai talked about the new flooring, wanting residents to spend more time outside of their rooms if they were physically able to, improvements to the bathrooms, and the 70th anniversary celebration being planned for this coming January! Unfortunately I had to leave early since RevoluSun was coming today.

Unlike ProVision, RevoluSun does the solar PV installation in phases; today is Phase 2, the racking installation. The tracks and the photovoltaic panels that sit on them were installed today. They arrived a little before noon and left about 2 pm. Fun fact: Josh, the project lead, is a client of The Potential Most Favorite Roommate!

Steve gets ready to unload the truck.

Steve (L) installs the panels, as Jordan (R) carries them from the edge of the roof over to Steve.

Jordan checks the work before they leave.

There are 16 panels; each one has its own inverter. Josh said they can be monitored separately via the app that we will be given.

Each inverter has its own serial number.

I'm not sure why RevoluSun splits the installation in to 4 phases and sends different crews for each phase. But I think ProVision did everything back to back in one week because their main office and warehouse is in Hilo, which is at least a 2 hour drive from the Kohala house. I know the 3 guys working on my project there were staying in a hotel in Waikoloa during the week they were installing the PV system. On the last day another crew working on a different project nearby finished their job before my crew did and came to help with the installation so they could all leave earlier to get back to Hilo.

Friday is usually laundry day for me. I usually wash my clothes late on Thursday night, then hang it out as soon as I return from my sunrise walk. I didn't do the wash last night because of Thanksgiving, so laundry got delayed today. Consequently I got some great photos of things in the back yard!

The first papaya that we topped; it has a few flowers forming.

Okinawan sweet potato.

A few of the many oranges on the tree.

While hanging out the laundry I also made an unwelcomed discovery; there were bits of fluorescent green on several shirts. Which means at least one visitor tag went through the wash. Aue! I later found a gummy spot on one of my shirts; I'm not sure how to get it out without ruining the shirt.

Oh, oh; where did those come from?

Oh, no! It's on one of my favorite shirts!

We had a lot of food from last night; it included a bag of salad that had not been opened because there was so much other food. I had it for lunch, but I used my own low carb dressing rather than the dressing that the salad kit came with. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Carb Manager App has the specific salad kit listed with only the vegetable portion; most of the carbs are in the dressing packet that comes with the kit.

The leftovers have filled the fridge.

My lunch.

With vegetables only it has 3 g carbs per serving.

Because it was Buy Nothing Day, I did not go to Kokua Market to buy my dinner like I had been since Kokua started its dinner offerings about a month ago. I made a Pizza Topping Casserole instead. I used the ham from last night; the mozzarella cheese, pizza sauce, and sun dried tomatoes were things I had bought previously and were already open and in need of being consumed. It was delicious! I added more salt than noted in the recipe; I have been having cramps in my calves even with the magnesium malate. I have been told while on the ketogenic diet salts are flushed from the body more readily; I was advised to drink a cup of bouillon every evening but its too hot for something like that!

The main ingredients; ham, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes.

Ready for baking.

Finished dish.

It has a much better texture than the previous one I made.

As you can see by the following ketone test strips; I never made it out of the trace range today. My body was running off of the carbs I ate yesterday. It should get back to the fat-burning state tomorrow after it has depleted the recent carb load!