My Summer Vacation: August 2021

Last night The Roommates were unable to unclog their bathtub drain, so all the nephews used my shower. Last night they also left a message via Yelp.com for a plumber to come by today to unclog it; I requested that their message also ask for a fully vaccinated plumber. But the company said it could not ask its employees their vaccination status (which is not true) so they could not guarantee that the person that was going to be in the house was fully vaccinated. I told them since this is a private residence, I do have the right to ask anyone coming in to my residence what their status is & deny them entry if they are unvaccinated. They did not send anyone. The Roommates contacted a plumber who is the uncle of their friend; they know he is fully vaccinated. We are still waiting for a time that he will be able to come by and do the work; it may not be as soon but it will be safer. I don't mind sharing my bathroom if it means we keep our ʻohana bubble safe.

This Delta variant is highly contagious; if anyone outside our ʻohana bubble is coming in to the house, I want them to be fully vaccinated to minimize our exposure. Last year when I was making First Contact Calls it was rare to find a household where most or all of the household was infected. This year about half the people I talk to are in the situation where someone brought it in to the house & now many, if not all, of the members are now infected. On the one hand, when the whole household is infected, it makes our job easier because we don't have to go through all the isolation protocols that they should be following to minimize spread; it also makes it easier for the household since they don't have to isolate from each other. But on the other hand, it does expose household members that have underlying health conditions & that were being cautious about being around others. Since I can control who comes in the house, I choose to be cautious; Delta is too contagious to not be taken seriously. Besides, if other potential customers also say that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed in to their home, businesses will realize that there is a business need to have their staff be fully vaccinated. I have the right to keep myself safe from people who are not fully vaccinated by keeping them out of my living space.

I made a lau ʻuala proothie this morning. Today is the final day for these nā lau; I had to sort out the ones that had started to go bad. I will now start using the lau ʻuala that I blanched & froze before I went to Moku o Keawe.

The blanched & frozen lau ʻuala.

The maiʻa that I brought back from Kohala are fully ripe & mainly eaten. I peeled the last 3, wrapped them in plastic wrap, & put them in a ziploc bag in the freezer. My friend Charlie told me peeling them first then freezing them was the best way to do it; I later experienced how difficult it was to peel a frozen one! I will use them in my Feast Day proothies.

Top: maiʻa from CSA box, bottom: maiʻa from Kohala.

Marjorie sent an email out this morning looking for volunteers to assist the Public Health Nurses with outreach & education regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. I am currently free for all dates & replied that I could do them. All the outreach locations are on the west side where we have been having the bulk of our calls. Doing the outreach & education will allow me to use more of the skills I was trained to do by the UH for the Community Contact Tracer Training program. It is also proactive rather than reactive so better suits my personality.

Since I did not need to wait for the plumber in the morning, I went out to do my errands this morning. I started at Times, then headed to Kokua Market. On my way there I passed the loʻi kalo that I had 1st seen about two months ago. I had noticed about a month ago that the kalo were dying; it now looked to me that perhaps someone was trying to turn that patch of grass in the right-of-way in to a loʻi but there was not enough water. Today I was able to take a better look; it now has no kalo, just grass & dirt. I think that was a waste of ha to try to make a loʻi kalo in a place that did not have enough water to support them.

I needed some cottage cheese from Kokua for my evening snack. I also picked up more tortillas, some cheese, and peanut butter & almond butter. And I also got 2 pieces of teriyaki marinated invasive axis deer meat from Makana Provisions; they now have a small space at the co-op. (They don't have it labeled as 'invasive axis deer meat'; it just says "teriyaki venison".) I also checked out the prices for the dragon fruit & maiʻa.

A fellow shopper?

I had also picked up some Zucchini Pasta Bake & Mushroom & Artichoke Salad. I had some of it for lunch.

For dinner, I sauteed the invasive axis deer meat; I prefer to call it what it really is. I enjoyed it & will happily do my part to reduce the invasive axis deer population by eating them!

The Hawaiʻi Island Humane Society is using a new pet tracking technology to find lost pets. You can now submit a photo of your Lost pet to the Petco LoveLost website & facial recognition technology will search their database of Found pets within a distance you specify for your zip code to look for your lost pet. I tried it with Momo & got about a dozen hits of a whole lot of cats that were not orange tabbies & did not have that Momo look. Personally, I think it might be better with dogs since they have more distinctive facial features that cats.

The Aix weather app forecast it would be partly cloudy here in the morning until mid-afternoon when it would start drizzling; in reality it was partly cloudy all day with no drizzle. It said a similar thing for Kapaʻau except that there would be cloudy skies all day; that did not appear to be true. It looked like skies were partly cloudy there but there was no precipitation registered at the Honomū weather station. It appeared to accurately forecast partly cloudy skies for Marysville.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 9:47 a.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 9:48 a.m.

Marysville looking northerly at 9:48 a.m. HST.

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope looking northwesterly at Kohala Mountains at 9:52 a.m.

Looking northerly at Nā Koʻolau at 11:30 a.m.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 2:38 p.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 2:38 p.m.

Marysville looking northerly at 2:38 p.m. HST.

The surf today on all except the south shore was minimal. On south shores it was 2 to 4 feet.

Chun's Reef (north shore) at 9:53 a.m.

Waikīkī (south shore) at 9:50 a.m.

There was a magnitude 4.2 earthquake about 35 miles southeast of Monterey, CA. It did not generate a tsunami.

There were 553 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 63,502. There were no new deaths reported so the number of fatalities remains at 589; currently 11,045 cases are considered active. There are 437 COVID-19 patients currently in the hospital with 100 in the ICU & 73 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for Oʻahu is 623 with a positivity rate of 8.8%.