My Summer Vacation: I'm Not Alone

Wow! Nearly 20,000 people signed up for the Hawaiʻi SMART Health Card yesterday. And like me about 6000 other people were not able to sign up. The article did say that some people tried multiple times and were able to get in.

So I tried again. I did 6 variations on the "Name of Provider" and "Location" & also tried submitting a jpg file instead of a pdf like I did originally. Nothing worked. I might have to make some calls next week to see how those 2 fields are entered in the data base being used to generate the QR codes.

I think this is where my problem is.

I got this message 6 times!

Today is a Feast Day so I used 2 maiʻa ʻāpala in my proothie this morning. I should have used them earlier, their skins had turned black for more than half of each one; they were difficult to peel. When they were just starting to show brown spots on the skin I should have peeled them & froze them; but I wanted to leave them for The Roommates to eat. Oh, well.

I got another text about Kai's prescription. This time there was a note saying they could deliver! I got online & set it up; it will delivered on Monday.

I watched one of Dr. Mike Hansen's videos this morning. He was interviewing a doctor friend of his who contracted COVID-19 in the early part of the pandemic, then got vaccinated, then got stupid (my words, not his). Thinking he was young, strong, vaccinated, & invincible (my words, not his), he went to a very packed concert where no one was wearing masks. Guess what, he contracted the Delta variant (presumed). He also shared an anecdotal comparison showing that the vaccine, as well as other recommended actions, really does help. In this 15 minute video Dr. Hansen also explains what you should look for about your blood oxygen levels during a COVID-19 infection.

For lunch I heated up the corn tortilla first for 10 seconds on high. Then I added the cheese slices & heated for another 10 seconds on high. And finally rolled it up & heated for a final 10 seconds on high. It came out looking much better, with less cracking, & nice & melty cheese. The next refinement will be using vegan cheese since I am lactose intolerant. (I am using a sharp cheddar which usually has less lactose than a cheese that is not aged as long.)

The 2nd Saturday of each month is the Diversity Diner, an event I went to in Washington nearly every month from about 1999 until mid-2016. The specific topic each month is different but the underlying thread is human diversity & inclusion. This month was a little different, Michael was showing slides of his recent diving trip to Indonesia. But, with the Zoom crowd in attendance, there were inquiries about the local people & their living situation. My laptop was glitchy whenever someone was talking & would freeze up so I had to reboot. I found if I turned off both my microphone & my video feed (of myself), I was able to see the slides & stay for most of the event. But during the discussion after the slide show, the multiple people talking really strained my laptop & I had to leave the event multiple times so I finally signed off.

A large boat being built entirely with hand tools.

Another kind of diversity.

I kept getting this error message.

For dinner I had the rest of the Turkey Chili with another piece of mango bread. The turkey chili is not as tasty as the venison chili.

Keala has been catching cockroaches in the cat run. I saw her with one this morning and another just after dinner. No one else seems to find them; I think she is the best hunter out of the 3 cats. That might be because she spent a short while as an abandoned stray.

The morning victim.

The evening victim.

The Aix weather app forecast rain through the morning until midafternoon here in Honolulu followed by partly cloudy skies then drizzles in the evening. Instead we had partly cloudy skies in the daylight hours but we did have some light drizzle later in the evening. For Kapaʻau, Aix forecast varying degrees of rain throughout the day; the local paper said scattered showers with a 50% chance of rain. By about 10 a.m. the Honomū weather station recorded 0.08 inches of rain but that was it for the day. For Marysville, Aix forecast partly cloudy skies, becoming rain in the evening. The traffic cam showed partly cloudy skies at midday; I did not check later so don't know what was happening then.

The south shore remains the best place for surf, though there was some seen on the east facing shores. Today there are a handful of surfers in the live cam shot of the north facing shore.

Some surfers at Chun's Reef (N) at 9:54 a.m.

Hilo Bay (E) at 9:55 a.m.

Waikīkī at 9:55 a.m.

Waikoloa (W) at 9:56 a.m.

Here we go again! There were 836 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, raising the total known cases to 71,156. There were also 12 new deaths reported, increasing the death toll to 653; currently 10,218 cases are considered active. As of yesterday 1,914,345 doses of vaccine were administered making 64.9% of the population fully vaccinated with 73.1% having received at least one dose. There are 404 patients that have been hospitalized with 84 in the ICU and 71 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for Oʻahu is 410 with a positivity rate of 8.3%.