My Summer Vacation: Waiawa Correctional Facility

I started out the day with 1 case from Waiawa Correctional Facility. I was asked to get in touch with the Warden to figure out how we would be able to get the information we needed within the limitations of the telephone use policy for inmates and without violating the case's HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rights of confidentiality. By the end of the day I had found 3 more cases; they are now clipped to each other and I have left 2 messages for the warden and one for the case manager at Waiawa. The last thing I did before I left was call the Warden again; now Dave gets to handle this since I am off the next 3 days. I am assuming the 4 other cases are with the Hawai'i National Guard contact tracers.

I had a hakurei greens proothie this morning. But I had forgotten to prep the greens yesterday so I was washing them up this morning. It's a good thing I get up early enough to be able to do that plus drink my proothie before I go to work. Last Saturday when Dave texted me that same morning asking if I could come in to help, I took the proothie with me; it was difficult to drink there since I am talking & taking notes.

I started out at work today with making call backs to people we could not reach yesterday; I was able to reach 0 out of 5 cases. Then we moved on to the new cases that were identified yesterday. I did a little better with those and reached 3 out of 10 cases. I was glad that none of them were really ill; 2 had actually been in the hospital but were now back at home.

For lunch I went to Down to Earth again; I am using the gift cards that Lori & Jenny gave me a few months ago. Today I tried something from the part of the deli where the staff has to serve you; they use paper containers rather than plastic. All their deli items are either vegetarian or vegan; I tried the vegetarian lasagna & also got a small chocolate chip cookie. The lasagna was pretty good; I also need to try their vegan lasagna to see how that is. This was the layout of that part of the hot bar today; I will have to pay attention to see if it changes.

They also had information about ordering vegetarian or vegan food for Thanksgiving; I think Alexis is vegetarian so I will have to find out what she would like.

After lunch I did follow-up calls; those are calls to people whom we have collected all the initial information on. We are now calling back every day to check in on how they are doing health-wise and answer any other questions they might have. I was able to reach 6 out of 10 cases; none of them were at the end of their isolation period.

When I was done with the follow-up calls, it was still too early to do the call backs for the people we could not reach earlier. I went outside and took a walk around the spacious balcony area outside the ballroom. I heard sirens and went over to the side overlooking the street and discovered that they were responding to a call at the Longs Drugs across the street.

As I was on my way back in I noticed a mural on the side of a building to the west of the JCC. It was of Waiʻanae Mountains; at least, that's what I assumed. I checked it out when I left after we had finished the call backs.

You would have to know it was there to notice it.

As I was walking around to find the best view of the painted mountains, I noticed some of the trees that had been planted around the courtyard. One was an ʻōʻhia lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha), it was planted as part of a sister city commemoration.

Other trees looked like waiawī (strawberry guava, Psidium cattleianum), which is an invasive species! So I hope not; I will have to watch them to see what kind of flowers & fruit they have. Waiawī is also used in landscaping because it is visually appealing. If the fruit are harvested so the non-native birds can't eat them and spread the seeds around, that is one method of control. (Feral pigs also spread the seed, but that isn't a problem in this area of the island.)

Today was the longest day I worked on the contact tracing; 5 hours! I was drained when I got home so I took a nap instead of working out.

For dinner I had a piece of salmon, Roasted Vegetables from Kokua, and a green salad with blue cheese crumbles.

Saw this interesting thing on Facebook today called Spoon TEK; it is a spoon that supposedly improves the taste of your food. Apparently they are marketing it to people who are dieting and eating low-carb, -fat, -whatever food for their diet. The thought is that if their body can be tricked in to thinking it has more flavor they won't go off their diet. It apparently uses the electrical currents generated by the human body. (Yes, you are doing that right now. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to read this.)

I like the first snowfall after a period of no snow; most of the time it creates an amazingly peaceful scene. I miss the beauty of that 1st snowfall but not the chill that comes with it; the damp cold would trigger my fibromyalgia flare-ups.

This was pretty funny!

I wish I had thought to do this for Kai when he was growing up, but Advent was not a part of my holiday tradition. And we always had a lot of books around the house, plus National Geographic (not the kids' version) and Smithsonian magazines arriving each month.

In spite of her thinking she doesn't know much about editing, Paula does beautiful work!

Not sure why some people don't seem to understand this concept.

There were 107 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total up to 16,841. There was 1 new death reported, bringing the death toll up to 223; there were 1527 active cases. The 7-day average for Oʻahu was 71 with a 2.1% positivity rate.