Congratulations, Cohort 3!

Cohort 3 of the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu Community Contact Tracer Training graduated today. They will be joining the 80 or so of us who graduated in Cohorts 1 and 2 in looking for contact tracing jobs in the state. I attended their hoʻike this afternoon; they had some really different final presentations than our cohort. One was a PSA specifically for radio; here is a video done by one of the teams.

This is Day 5 of the Unicorn Challenge; it is a Low Cal, Rest & Recovery Day. I should be taking in about 1730 calories with 174g carbs, 150g protein, and 48g fat. By contrast for Monday through Thursday, my eating plan is to take in about 2300 calories per day; the macros vary depending on whether it is a Regular Calorie or a Low Carb day.

My weight this morning was 119.2 pounds with 31.4% body fat. This is 2.2 pounds less than on Monday when I started the Unicorn Challenge. And when my weight was 3 pounds more than the previous Friday! I think it was because last Sunday was a Feast Day (about 3450 calories), so I did! For the Unicorn Challenge they only require you to weigh yourself at the start, at the end, and at the midway point of the Challenge.  In fact, they tell you not to weigh yourself every day. Which I have never done anyway.

For lunch today I had another piece of flavor-free pizza; I added bacon bits which improved it a small bit. I also finished off the Vegan Poke. I only had 1 slice of the pizza since it was a Low Cal day.

For dinner I used a very old As-Seen-On-TV-type of gadget that Mom had bought, a while ago judging by the discoloration of the tape she used to keep the box closed. The pictures on the side looked like they created vegetable spirals; I decided to use it on the zucchini and see if that was true. It turned out to work quite nicely! It made really nice thin zoodles (=zucchini+noodles) in a fraction of the time it took me to make wider strips with a vegetable peeler. And I didn't have to worry about adding bits of my hand or fingertips to my dinner! I heated up the no-cook marinara sauce again. And tonight I finished off the bag of fajita meat that I had defrosted a couple days ago. 

Looks promising!

Took me a fraction of the time to make the noodles on the left vs the right.

Tomorrow is our CSA pick up day. The email I got tonight says we will have sassy salad greens, arugula, beets, radishes, hakurie or daikon, curly kale, eggplant, Italian parsely, leeks, purplette onions, and lemons. I have been enjoying the variety of things we have been receiving, though I must say, I was hoping for more fennel this week! We still have these things left from the previous CSA box: cilantro, kohlrabi, a couple of baby pac choi, a mango, & some fennel greens. I will use the mango in my proothie on Saturday which is a Feast Day when I can have more carbs, then I will most likely finish the fennel greens by Sunday, might eat the kohrabi or some baby pac choi at lunch tomorrow and may be also dinner. Except for the salad, I seem to be the only one eating the rest of the vegetables; good thing MA'O Organic Farms had the option to get a box every other week!

I received a very interesting email this evening. It was from the Social Security Administration about my replacement social security card. They thanked me for my application. And said I should receive my new card in 5 to 7 business days. Which surprised me since I have not sent them my drivers license or anything else, except for the application fee; I haven't even turned in the hard copy of the paperwork. I guess I will wait to see what really arrives in the mail.

I found this for you, just in time for Halloween! These are from the Little Passports website. Here's how to make pumpkin slime and carve a watermelon brain!

Oh, oh. I found a website that has a very strong potential to cause me to waste a lot of time online; it's called Atlas Obscura. Here's what I stumbled across today, an article about an archaeological dig at an old slave cabin that determined what the slaves were eating. The cabin is also believed to have been part of the Underground Railroad.

Another place where I will likely waste a lot of time is the Quanta Magazine website. The article that caught my attention today was about how biodiversity is maintained.

I also read a fascinating article about a teacher who went back to school and what the epidemiologists that reviewed her activities discovered. A project called COVID Audit, run by the Boston University School of Public Health, is asking everyday people to keep a diary of what they are doing to avoid COVID-19, then providing feedback. I found some helpful information reading the article.

I also found a great article from Medium.com about dressing for a Zoom meeting. For my contact tracing class I wore a scrub top; for the UH Hawaiian class I just wear a clean t-shirt because they can't see me. I have considered wearing more Hawaiian-themed clothing for the other classes where they can see me but I use Grandma's anthurium garden as the background so I think that should be enough.

The final count of incoming travelers yesterday was a little over 10,000, which is 65% lower than a normal day in previous years but was higher than anticipated for the 1st day of the program. Of those, 68% were visitors and 32% were returning residents. About 84% got pre-travel tests and about 1600 (16%) opted for quarantine; on Oʻahu about 10% of those that did the pre-travel test have been randomly selected for a 2nd test on Monday to see how effective the pre-travel test protocol is. I still have not seen information from Hawaiʻi Island where everyone who came in yesterday was tested before they left the airport. I think the 2 data points together will give a really good idea of how many people will slip through the pre-travel test protocol.

There were 89 new COVID-19 cases reported today for a total of 13,853 known cases. There was also 1 new death today, bringing the death toll up to 185. Oʻahu appears to be on track for moving to Tier 2 next week with a 7-day average of 61 and a positivity rate of 3.1%. There are 2721 active cases with a 79% recovery rate.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e David!