Freezer Clean-up

*I had written most of this post with brief notations for the remainder; no photos had been inserted although they were all downloaded to the laptop. Then on 10/09 the laptop decided it had enough with my ignoring its warnings about not enough memory & quit working. I got it back up & running on 10/14 but discovered I had lost the photos from September & October, hence the limited visual stimulation in this post. (And I had some really good freezer "before" & "after" photos, too!)

I started out the morning by cleaning up the freezer. My main goal was to find the rest of the lau ʻuala that I had blanched then frozen. I was unsuccessful in finding more, so I guess I used it all. I did find that I had more meat as well as non-meat protein meals; I won't be picking up entrees from the Kokua deli for a little bit. I will restrict my deli purchases to salad items. I had a handful of vegetarian protein items; but since I have so much other protein options I will be using things from the freezer until I reduce the amount there.

Since I could not find any lau ʻuala for my proothie, I had to improvise. I used 2 scoops of okara as my protein source and 2 squares of 90% cacao chocolate. The chocolate did not blend as finely as I would have liked; cacao powder works much better but I have none right now. I also added 2 large spoonfuls of sour cream to provide more fats plus some protein. It's a work in progress; tomorrow's Feast Day proothie should be more tasty! I found I have several options in the freezer: banana, avocado, mango, or blueberries.

I weighed myself this morning; I want to get back to my weekly weigh-in. Today I was 125.6 pounds, a pound lighter than I was last Friday. It's too early to tell whether this is due to the additional walking I have done so far this week or the change in my diet; but it is most likely both working together.

I got another call from Louise from Staffing Solutions this morning while I was in the middle of cleaning out the freezer. She said she had another data entry position available; I asked her to email me the information since I was in the middle of something & couldn't talk with her. She did. It is less data entry & more clerical. I think my time is better spent volunteering for the vaccine education & outreach events; I declined the job.

It is not that I think helping with testing is beneath me; I will be volunteering with MRC on Sunday at the Honolulu Fire Department's drive-through testing site at Aloha Stadium. This is the same thing I did last Sunday; I got the details from Marjorie today. I would rather keep myself available to do more pro-active measures (like outreach & education) than work full time doing reactive measures like testing; if I got calls to do both on the same day I would choose the outreach & education. I already have a reactive job doing First Contact Calls; which I feel is more beneficial than just registering people for tests. 

Today's outreach & education event with the Public Health Nurses was at the Kaupeʻa subdivision of the Kapolei Hawaiian Homestead. I was on a team led by Mohamed along with Pastor Kevin, Sean, & Celeste. We were responsible for knocking on the doors of about 45 houses. Pastor Kevin was my partner this evening; we knocked on 18 doors & made contact with 11 households, 4 people declined to talk to us. Of the 7 households we talked to, 6 had all eligible people vaccinated. We did have a really nice, long conversation with the 1 unvaccinated household; I think we may have moved him closer to vaccination by the time we were done.

I met Tellie in person! She is one of my classmates from the UH Community Contact Tracer Training that I was in last year. Tellie is one of the few people from any of the 4 classes that was hired by DOH; she is coordinating all the outreach & education events in the Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander communities. I had mentioned to her that I applied for the case manager positions through Remedy but was not having a good experience with them calling back after the 1st interview; she said that was par for the course, they found Remedy very difficult to work with.  

My dinner was quite late tonight. I sauteed the last venison sausage and ate it along with some kim chee from Kokua Market. I had erroneously bought the kim chee; I was actually looking for sauerkraut which is on the same shelf. I usually get the Sonoma Brinery sauerkraut which they were out of; I didn't pay attention & thought it was a different brand of sauerkraut.

The storm that started brewing southeast of us is still here. But it is getting weaker; it will probably dissipate before tomorrow's post.

Last month an Illinois woman tried to get in to the state with a fake vaccine card. Even though she gave officials a fake hotel address, they found her, she was apprehended, & spent 5 days at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC). In her arraignment from OCCC, she swore up & down that if she was allowed to return home she would appear at her Zoom hearing. That was on Wednesday. She was a no show. There is now a bench warrant for her arrest. Not sure what her thought process is on all this; it seems to me that she is just digging a deeper hole.

There were 403 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 77,369. There were also 9 new deaths reported, increasing the number of fatalities to 747; in this group were two 20-somethings & a 30-something, the rest were in the age groups that victims more commonly occur in. Currently there are 6777 cases that are considered active. As of yesterday, there were 1,984,074 doses administered providing full vaccination for 67.2% of the population; 75.6% of the population has received at least one dose. The 7-day new case average on Oʻahu is 262 with a positivity rate of 5.4%. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Alan & Kathy!