Day 19

Today is Day 19 of the Unicorn Challenge (Week 3 Day 5); it is a Low Calorie, Rest Day. The only exercise I did today was exercising my right to vote! I started the day with a hakurei proothie. Then I filled out my ballot & delivered it to the nearest ballot collection box. I documented that in the previous post dedicated solely to voting.

Before I went to drop off my ballot, I weighed myself. The Unicorn Challenge has you only weighing yourself at the very start, in the middle, and at the very end; they do not want you weighing yourself everyday, which is apparently what a lot of women going in to their program do. I have never done that, but since it is Friday and that is when I try to weigh myself; I did.I have lost 0.8 pounds since last Friday, which is close to my goal of losing 0.5#/week. Although the percent body fat is higher than last week, I'm pretty sure I'm losing fat because I can visibly see that I am gaining muscle which is denser than fat.

On the way back from dropping off my ballot I stopped by Longs since I had to pass it anyway; they were still out of Chicken Chips as well as Chicken Poppers. They did have some other interesting chips for people but I didn't get any; the graphics on the packages looked like they were marketing it to kids.

No Chicken Chips.

Or Poppers.

Not really sure about these.

When I got back I walked around the yard checking out the plants. The orange tree has only about a dozen fruit but they are much larger than in the years when it is full of fruit. The papayas are pretty much done; the tall one has run out of flowers & I will have John top it on his next visit. The middle papaya trunk has rotted to the base; I'm not sure if there is anything that will sprout from it. And the most northerly one has another sprout coming up from near the base; maybe that one will be more stable and not break off when it gets a little windy like the others have.

Some of the Potential Most Favorite Roommate's succulents have grown larger and developed some interesting markings. 

And my ʻālula (Brighamia insignis) might not be an ʻālula! It might be pua ʻala (Brighamia rockii); another endangered species that is endemic to Molokaʻi. The ʻalula has yellow flowers and the pua ʻala has white flowers with a hint of green; these are definitely not yellow. I need to find out how to hand pollinate the flowers; it would be cool to grow an endangered species! (It's supposed to be easy to hand pollinate and start seedlings. The problem with the plants in the wild is that the pollinators have been wiped out by humans.)

Not yellow.

The jabon is ready to harvest and it also had flowers, too! I had been unable to find the picker so I texted The Roommates; none of us could remember where we put it when we were picking things up before Hurricane Douglas was due to arrive. The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes said he thought it might be in the garage since that's where he was putting a lot of the things he was cleaning up. So I checked and found it! Now I can pick jabon to give to the Loi's & Kokua Market.

The impatiens are really liking it in the planting trough in the cat run. But they are definitely turning towards the sunlight. I think if it was only one layer of weed cloth in that section they might grow a little more upright.

For lunch I made Air-fried Brussels Sprouts; I used kiawe smoked-salt instead of plain salt. I also sprinkled them with bacon bits in the last minute of air frying. They were excellent! I ate them along with the last piece of chicken from Kim Chee II and some Korean-style pickled daikon.

While I was cleaning & chopping the Brussels sprouts I heard a noise out in the cat run and saw Keala scramble up one of the posts for the west wall of the cat run. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of her on the 2" x 4" but I did get her sitting on the shelf after she jumped down. Later S'mores was hanging out on the same shelf.

What???

I had been searching for the long orange pole we used for picking jabon for a couple weeks. I looked in the free-standing shed in the back patio; not there. I looked in the shed attached to the house in the back yard; not there. I looked on the rack in the garage where the mango picker and other long rods were kept; not there. So I texted The Roommates; we were all sure it got moved when Hurricane Douglas was on its way in. But no one could remember where it might be. The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes did most of the front yard clean up when we were getting ready for the storm; he said he put almost everything he moved in the garage. So I looked again and found it! Not where I was expecting to find it, but since he said look on that side of the garage I looked at even places I did not expect to find it.

For dinner I had the remaining Brussels sprouts; even though I had offered them to The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes and he said yes, he didn't eat them. He snoozed; he lost! I also had the last piece of bbq beef from Kim Chee II and Korean-style pidkled daikon.

Here's more info on the Tesla app that tracks the solar energy generation that is happening at the house on Hawaiʻi Island. When you first open it, the main screen shows the status of the battery and what mode it's in; when the hurricane was approaching it goes in to Storm Watch mode when the FEMA alert goes out.

Clicking on Power Flow gives you this screen. From here you can click on any of the 4 icons to see what is happening with that part of the system.

That's the refrigerator drawing power.

Another cloudy day.

Just took a couple hours to fully recharge.

All the other excess went back to the grid.

When you are in this screen, you can click on any combination of the 4 different icons to see how they are interacting with each other. You can also click all 4 of them to see everything at once but it's kinda busy.

This is what opens up when you click on Performance. I have never seen it where it was at 100% Self-powered. But even when it's like this, the gray portion of energy coming from the grid does not go above 0 kWh. I'm not sure where that phantom power is coming from! The Solar Offset tells me how over-powered the system is for the house in its current use state.

 

The Backup History screen shows how much time the grid was down and the solar PV system was the sole source for the house. This shows that since the system was energized on June 8, 2019, it has been the sole source of power for the house for 17.5 hours over 13 events. FYI The event on January 7th was the longest so far. During the May 19th event I was at the house; it was a wet & windy day & I never noticed that there was any break in power. But that's because my system supplies all the power and I have never had to go over to getting power from the grid or vice versa. I have been told if I had to switch between the two I would not notice anything because of the high caliber of electronics involved in the automatic switching.

And now, humor for the day.

Since the pre-arrival testing program started on the 15th, arrivals have dropped 25%. There might be a lsight uptick on November 6th when a similar program with visitors from Japan goes in to effect. The travel industry experts are predicting it will take a while for numbers to get high enough to begin to help the economy but it will never be the same as it was pre-COVID. Which I think is good, we need to diversify our economy.

There were 94 new COVID-19 cases reported today and 1 new death. That brings our total known cases up to 15,003 with 216 total deaths. The 7-day average for Oʻahu is 51 with a positivity rate of 2.1%. There are 1168 active cases with a 79% recovery rate.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Kai!