My Summer Vacation: Quarantine #3, Day #1

I always do laundry after I return even with a new washer at the other house. There are always a couple of things that I wasn't able to wash the day before and have dry by the time I needed to leave the house. This time it was a couple of really dirty things! I soaked my UPF 30 shirt in OxyClean to get the dirt stains out; I don't know if that affects its UPF abilities.

Keala has gotten a little tubby like the other kitties. I'm not sure what to do about it since they have habits that make it difficult for the Wireless Whiskers to work properly. Like ignoring the fact that the doors are closing; Keala just leaves her head there and keeps on eating. The doors have sensors on them so they stop closing and don't hurt her. But she keeps on eating. Before I left I was squirting her with water when the doors started to close and she was getting her head out in order to not get sprayed. But no one has kept that up while I was gone so she's back to doing that again.

Apparently S'mores has learned to trigger the doors to open, then reaches in for a pawful of food. She has been consistently eating 0% according to the Wireless Whiskers but has managed to maintain her tubby figure.

Luna neither keeps her head in the doors when they begin to close nor reaches in with her paw to get food when it is open. She just attacks the doors and pries them open if she has reached her limit and they refuse to open for her! Auē! Those cats!

Last time I returned, I found a bath mat being used as a dish towel; not this time. I only found a lot of frozen prepared food in the freezer when I was taking inventory to see what I needed to ask someone to get for my keto diet.

Yesterday was Kamehameha Day; a celebration in honor of King Kamehameha the Great who unified the islands. He was born in North Kohala near Upolu Point, spirited away to Awini on the other side of Pololu Valley, and raised there until he was a young man. The original statue of him stands in Kapaʻau where there is usually an parade in his honor. But not this year. I had been thinking if it was happening I would attend since I have never seen the parade in Kapaʻau. But then I realized the reason there was no parade was also the reason I could be there for such a long time! Auē!

The Kohala Reunion was also cancelled. It is a gathering of anyone with a connection to Kohala; it happens every 5 years. It has been postponed to next year; I think I will make it a point to attend.

I watched a You Tube video of a guy trying to prevent squirrels from getting in to his bird feeder. He made a squirrel obstacle course to make it more difficult to get to the birdseed; which they mastered in about a week. I don't remember which of the 4 squirrels that visited his yard was the 1st to figure it out but they all did in the end. He has also figured out they liked nuts better than birdseed and walnuts were their top favorite. In the end he built the squirrels their own little picnic table where walnuts would be dispensed at intervals; they left the bird seed alone. I solved my squirrel problem by making my feeder more difficult to get to than my neighbors' feeders.

The 1st half of the course.

The contenders.

They have to start here because the other poles are lubricated so they can't climb up those.

The 1st obstacle.

They quickly learned to just jump over it.

This obstacle really wasn't.

Almost there!

Just one more task to get the walnuts.

In the end he built this.

The squirrels would sit there waiting for nuts and leave the bird feeder alone.

It sounds like I should have made my reservation another week later. From what I heard on the news this evening, people arriving on inter-island flights before the 16th will have to do the entire 14-day quarantine including days after the 16th. But arriving on the 16th or later you will not need to quarantine, unless you are showing symptoms and later test positive. Auē!

I checked on the cost to ship my car to the Big Island versus how much it costs to rent a car while I am there. I am considering it; if I rent a car for longer than 2 weeks it is more cost effective to ship my car. The round trip cost, especially if I send the car back within 30 days, is about $100 cheaper than a 2 week rental. Though if I leave the car there for the duration while nursing homes are off limits to visits it would be even more cost effective. I would just need to have someone pick me up & drop me off at the airport each time.

There was a big jump in new COVID-19 cases today; 15 people were added. Of these 10 were from one family & resulted from close contact during a graduation party. It was interesting listening to the questions from the reporters during the press conference; they don't seem to understand the biology of disease transmission. Their questions seemed to imply that they did not think the health department notified people soon enough that they had been exposed so that they could isolate themselves from the person in their household who was positive. In reality, all were exposed at the same time, the 1st positive person was just the one who became symptomatic 1st. Everyone else was still incubating the virus and not aware they had it. Which is why the health department then tests everyone who was at the triggering event even if they are not symptomatic, in the hopes of cutting off the transmission route at the point that it becomes apparent what the source was. In this instance, they also tested everyone in the neighborhood; they were all negative.