Malama Pono, Grey!

Grey left today, after stuffing everything into the rental car. He left some food here, like the frozen fish sticks since I will eat them on the keto diet and they won't survive the drive to Hilo without defrosting in transit. He also left some enoki mushrooms that he had forgotten about, basil pesto, 1/2 a head of cabbage, kim chee, & some carrots. Grey and his fellow sailors will be back in a week or so when they sail around to this side of the island after having gone through customs & immigration & all those other bureaucratic things when they arrive. He left a frozen pizza, frozen orange juice, & a couple of bagels for that part of the trip. He has to return bedding that he took for camping out tonight and he wants to harvest more fruit; and if stuck here for several days, they may dry more of it, too. We have plans to meet up in Indonesia some time in the future. Malama pono, ā hui hou!

All packed up and ready to go.

After Grey packed his all his food up, the ants that were getting in to his cookies were very confused. They started swarming all over the counter looking for their missing cookies! And he had even wiped things down and also wiped out a bunch of ants. I put out Terro Ant Bait to get rid of them; it took me a while to get to then under control; when I first started working on the house it would take them about 30 minutes to find any food on the counter or table or rubbish can. Up until yesterday we were able to have a compost bucket on the counter and did not see any ants.


It was drizzly this morning when I woke up. It had drizzled on and off last night.

Two minutes after sunrise.

Jessie called this afternoon; as we were talking she mentioned that she wanted to sew a face covering but could not figure out how to do it. I told her I could set up the video on my laptop, start it, then move away so she could come closer to look at it. She said that wouldn't work because her cataracts were getting worse so she had trouble seeing a computer screen. So I drew pictures for her! They are from the CDC website.

I also gave her 4 new hair ties that I had with me.

While watching some ketogenic diet You Tube videos this morning ... Yes, I was watching videos, who isn't watching a lot of videos these days? ... the Examine.com webpage was mentioned in one of the videos as a source of well-researched information about supplements and other things. It turns out they also have a page on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 because of people asking about supplements to help fight against COVID-19. I love this site! The information they provide is research-based and they provide links to the research that was summarized in their articles. For example the Research Breakdown section on COVID-2 cites 131 references and provides links to all of them! Winner! (For geeky people like me.)

The reviewers for Examine.com also show their sense of humor, which I think is needed in such gloomy times, in the corona virus myths section, when talking about whether pets can transmit SARS-CoV-2; the answer is, "It appears unlikely according to current understanding, unless your pet is a bat or a pangolin"

One of the write-ups in the COVID-19 section referenced Nextstrain.org regarding virus mutation and spread; another great site based on science! This is for those of you who are wondering, "What if the virus starts to mutate??? 😱" I have had several people ask me this (from 6 or more feet away). The answer is, viruses are always mutating, that's why we are here dealing with COVID-19. Nextstrain.org has people smarter than me who have been examining the mutations across the world. (For those of you whom I have just made more anxious, generally virus mutations do not become more lethal because becoming more lethal means you kill off your host sooner so your transmission rate, i.e., your ability to spread, becomes self-limiting. Which means if all your hosts are dead, they are not moving you around to the next host. Not that viruses can think this through like this, they are just tiny bits of RNA with no brain.)

This is how much it has already mutated that they know of.

Nextstrain.org also has  great map showing what is thought to be the path of transmission from country to country; it also has the different mutations color coded. Click on the play button to watch the map as the pandemic starts in 12/06/19 and spreads. The transmission map is hypothetical based on phylogenetic changes but is the "best guess" based on science.

When you press the green play button on the website an animation shows how the different strains spread.

I also watched a video on, "What To Do When the Toilet Paper is Gone"; it's a prepper video made back in 2017. And I watched, "Press Pizza Dough in to an Ice Cube Tray and Bake It"; that was pretty cool. And so was, "14 Best Recipes for Easter". Obviously these last 2 were close to dinner time!

Drop a mozzarella ball in each pocket.

Top with another piece of dough & sell shut with a rolling pin.

Cut the pieces apart.

Bake.

Serve!

Split an avocado & hollow it out a little more.

Wrap an egg in plastic wrap & cook.

Put cooked egg in center of avocado & join both halves.

Wrap avocado with bacon.

Fry until bacon is done.

Serve.

Enjoy!

When Grey was packing up this morning he left one of the eggs he was given; it was considerably large than a large egg and did not fit in the egg carton so would be in danger of cracking on the trip. I used it in my casserole tonight; it had a double yolk! I also used the basil pesto that Grey had left in the casserole.



On March 30th, Lt. Governor Green said that today there would be 43% more COVID-19 cases if we were not doing a good job of social distancing and hand hygiene. That would be 446 cases if I did the math right. Today's report shows 20 new cases for a total of 371! Yay! Maybe its working! Since the start, 21 people have been hospitalized and 85 have recovered. The number of cases on Hawaiʻi Island has remained stable at 22. Dr. Anderson from the Hawaiʻi Health Department says basing it on other examples from around the world, our peak should come in about a month or around the 1st week of May. FYI Only the main COVID-19 summary page was updated today, I think that is because it is Sunday; I have only provided the updated page for you.