My Summer Vacation: Laying Low

I took it easy today. I stayed in bed longer than usual; got a little more sleep than I have been getting. In fact, I skipped the proothie this morning & did brunch instead. I heated up some corn chowder; there was no garlic bread today.

The most active thing I did today was laundry. I decided to get all my MRC scrubs washed up for the latest request sent out this morning for volunteers to assist with water quality testing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam; things will be happening tomorrow & Sunday.

I also spent some time talking to my friend Charlie. He called because he had heard about all the flooding that some of the islands just had. The last time I saw Charlie was in March 2019 when we walked the Ebey Waterfront Trail & did some birding. We used to do the Great Backyard Bird Count together; some years we would count in my backyard, other years in his. He had a much nicer backyard for birds; Allen Creek ran along the edge of his back yard.

Charlie at Ebey Waterfront Trail, March 2019.

A little later Francisco sent out the information about the tour with the representatives from the National Parks Service. They will be coming to Kaimukī about midday to look at the tree wells along Waiʻalae Avenue & the Kaimukī Rain Garden project. After lunch Citizen Foresters will show the reps how we collect information for the tree & potential planting site inventories.

Later in the afternoon Marjorie sent the information about the Department of Health training. MRC volunteers will be trained in water quality sample collection to aid in the investigation of the contaminated water at the Navy wells.

And I got a message from my friend Darla. She had also sent me a photo from around 1993. It was of Kai & me at her house. We had gone there to learn how to make Christmas wreaths. We sent the wreath in the photo to Mom to hang on their front door. The cedar in the wreath was from the hedge in our yard.

I also got an email from Ken today about the projects we discussed back in August. I am really excited to see everything when he is done.

The sample drawer; now it won't fall on your foot if you pull it out too far!

For dinner I heated up the last of the corn chowder. I also made a batch of air fryer Brussels sprouts. I just used olive oil & Hawaiian salt with kiawe smoke flavor for this batch.

Brussels sprouts before air frying.

Keala was spending time this evening in her favorite perch in the cat run; the support pieces over the cat run gate.

You talkin' to me?

I was sad to hear that the monarch butterflies do not seem to be doing well in some other parts of the U.S. I a glad that they seem to be thriving here. There were a lot of crownflower bushes at Liholiho Elementary; one of our science projects was raising caterpillars & watching them move through all of the life stages until they became butterflies.

The eruption at Kīlauea volcano is still going.

At 10:58 p.m.

I forgot to take a screen shot of the Aix weather app first thing in the morning. Honolulu was relatively dry with partly cloudy skies. I did copy the Big Island Now forecast, which said Kapaʻau would have sunny skies with scattered showers & 50% chance of rain. The Honomū weather station did not record any precipitation today. The freeway in the Marysville webcam looked like it was wet though it did not look like it was actively raining at that time.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 6:33 p.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 6:33 p.m.

Marysville looking northerly at 6:33 p.m. HST.

The surf along north facing shores has come down a bit but is still surfable. There does not seem to be much going on elsewhere.

Laniakea (N) at 3 p.m.

Hilo Bay (E) at 12:59 p.m.

Waikīkī at 3:10 p.m.

Banyans (W) at 3:03 p.m.

Those tectonic plates off of Oregon are still at it. There were 2 more earthquakes today, neither generated a tsunami.

At 11:08 a.m.

At 1:32 p.m.

There were 143 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 88,665. There was also 1 new death reported, increasing the death toll to 1040; currently there are 1250 cases considered active. As of today there were 2,396,106 doses of vaccine administered, providing 72.4% of the State population with full vaccination & 77.9% with at least one dose. Currently 43 cases are hospitalized with 9 in the ICU & 6 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for the State is 92 with a positivity rate of 1.4%. The 7-day new case average of Oʻahu is 57 with a positivity rate of 1.5%.