Mahalo e Mitch!

First thing this morning, I spent almost 20 minutes on the phone with Mitch from the VA Pension Intake Center; he's on the east coast. I think we finally got it sorted out about Mom having been deceased since 2017; he put several notes in a couple places so when people get in to those databases it will pop up saying she has been deceased since 2017. He said I should  be getting a letter in about 3 weeks confirming what we did today; he also said there will be an address in the letter of where to send the 4 checks. I told him we will not be applying for the $2000 Burial Allowance, that is due to us, so that no one gets confused about whether it is Mom applying for that allowance; Dad's mortuary plan took care of everything except the flowers, the obituary, the donation to the sensei, & thank you notes so we don't really need the allowance. Besides, it has taken multiple calls to 4 different people to get this straightened out; I don't want to open up this can of worms again!

I was awakened quite early this morning; about 4 o'clock. There was a siren in the distance that sounded like it was coming closer. It was. It stopped at a house across the street about 2 doors up from the Loi's house. The bright flashing lights kept me up for about 15 or 20 minutes while they were taking care of whatever they were called in for.

Bright lights outside.

The glow in my window.

This morning, when I went to prepare my proothie, it looked like 1 hand of bananas was yellower than yesterday, but I thought it was just the color of the yellow bowl reflecting off of it. When I lifted the hand out of the bowl, it was definitely yellower! Later, just before dinner, it seemed like it was even yellower; it was! I think that hand will be ready to eat tomorrow!

8:24 am.

5:16 pm.

 

For lunch I had the other Hibata Bun that I got from Juicy Brew on Friday. Even heated up in the microwave it still tasted pretty good.

During lunch, and later when I was making soy milk, I watched a couple of Caitlin Doughty videos. I especially liked, From Here to Eternity, a talk she gave for the Chicago Humanities Festival. At 47 minutes it is about 3 times longer than her other videos I have been linking to but there are a lot of interesting things she covers.

It's been a while since I made a batch of soymilk; it's too close to dinner time when I get back from the vaccine POD and would interfere with everyone else using the kitchen. So I made a batch today while everyone was at work. I watched the end of From Here to Eternity while I made the 1st portion of soymilk.

After I finished the soymilk, I started drying the okara as well as making dinner; I made Eggplant Curry.  I did not roast the eggplant this time since I was using the oven to dry the okara; I think roasting the eggplant gives the curry a better flavor. I also added a small bit of fresh, homegrown lemongrass; but my lemon grass was not doing well. I moved the 2 pots so they can get more water.

I forgot to get a screen shot of the Aix app again so I don't know what it forecast today. The Tesla app indicated there was cloud cover and/or precipitation.

One of the webcams at the CFH Telescope on Mauna Kea showed a lot less cloud cover than on most days in the past few weeks. The Kohala Mountains were a little more visible than it has been.

Kohala Mountains is in the right portion of the photo.

I made screen shots from 2 of the Kīlauea caldera web cams at about 1 pm and again just before 10 pm. It's hard to see what's going on in the regular color photos since there is a big difference in what you see due to the ambient light level. But the thermal images appear to show that there was not much of a difference in the lava output.

There were 52 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the known cases up to 27,223; there were more new cases reported on Maui than on Oʻahu today. There were no new deaths reported, keeping the death toll at 431; currently 683 cases are considered active. The 7-day new case average is 26 with a positivity rate of 1.1%.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Shannon!