More Wildife Ubering

I picked up a Brown Booby (Sula leucogastger) from Feather & Fur this morning. I took it to Hawaiian Air Cargo to send it on its way to the Hawai'i Wildlife Center where it will spend some time in rehabilitation before it is released back to the wild.

I stopped at Office Max on the way back to pick up a wall calendar for the house & a small pocket calendar for me. I will be transferring all my appointments for 2022 to it; I find it easier to thumb thru a pocket calendar to find what I have going on for the long term. I will be using it to help me plan my appointments on Oʻahu; I am going to try to set up several during a one week period every 2 or 3 months.

I also made a quick stop at Kōkua Market to pick up more cottage cheese. They were out, I had to settle for goat yogurt. I also picked up some Herb Baked Cauliflower in Balsamic Dressing; I only had one container with a lid with me today. 

Sometimes I get up really early in the morning & can't get back to sleep. I have decided that when that happens I will exercise my brain; I do various puzzles on my phone through the New York Times email links to their puzzle page. I start with The Mini for the day, then move on to Spelling Bee where you have to make words with the 7 letters given, & then Sudoku. Finally, I finish by going to the free crossword puzzles from the NYT archives. Today I got all the way through everything except one last crossword puzzle. 

Mondays are easiest, Sundays are the most difficult.

While I was in the middle of doing the puzzles, I got a Neighborhood Security Watch email about the house on 11th. Our coordinator Sue has asked people to take photos to document the move. Here's what it looked like yesterday.

I had a plain proothie for lunch when I got back from dropping the bird off at the airport & running errands.

This afternoon I got a couple of texts from some of the people I sent things to; the packages arrived 2 days earlier than the post office said they would! And both of them live in western Washington which is covered in snow right now which makes it even more impressive that the packages got there early! Here's Mim's place. 

Mim's place during the day. (Photo by Mim)

Here's what she's dealing with this week.

I also got a text from Tomiko; she was responding to an earlier text I sent telling her about the package coming her way. She was not at home to receive it.

For dinner I had the chicken frittata that I picked up at Kokua Market. It was kinda big; I should have only eaten half. I will know better next time.

Early this morning I got an email from Grey's fundraising platform; since he is in a time zone a day ahead of us it came in at about 2 this morning! It included this video about,"Spearfishing & Sashimi Aboard Arka Kinari: A Pilot for a Cooking Show We Have No Interest in Making."

Kīlauea seems to be back in a more active phase this week.

At 7:30 a.m.

At 4:03 p.m.

At 7:30 a.m.

At 4:03 p.m.

At 7:30 a.m.

At 4:03 p.m.

There was no new snow on Mauna Kea overnight. There wasn't any during the day either; it was kinda sunny.

Clouds are coming in! Is it going to snow?

Nope. No new snow.

How about now?

Nope. Still no new snow.

Up in western Washington it looks like there has been snow from the Oregon border up to the Canadian border! There apparently was more new snow in the afternoon at least in the Marysville area.

At the Oregon border on the Columbia River Bridge.

At the Canadian border.

Marysville looking northerly at 7:18 a.m. HST. No new snow.

Marysville looking southerly at 3:56 p.m. HST, a little new snow visible on the road.

Janice sent me some info about the airports. We are keeping our fingers crossed that her plane next week is not canceled due to snow or lack of a flight crew.

Here's what happens in the Seattle area when there is snow. Since it does not snow often in Seattle (less than once a year) they don't have many snow plows or sanding trucks so snow stays on the roads longer than in other places where it snows a lot more. The 1st video is about 2 minutes long. The 2nd one is about 30 minutes long of a guy on a quest for coffee; it's Seattle! It shows what happens when hills in Seattle are covered with snow; he briefly talks about why there are so many Subarus in the Puget Sound area. I drove a Subaru for about 3/4 of the time I lived there; about a 1/4 of the time I drove an older Volkswagen with an engine in the rear (which gives it better traction), & a few months in between I had a regular rear-wheel drive car but it was during the summer.

The Aix weather app forecast rain in the early morning followed by drizzle for the rest of the day in Honolulu; it was overcast but there was no morning rain or drizzles all day. For Kapaʻau, Aix forecast rain all day; Big Island Now forecast mostly cloudy skies with scattered showers & a 40% chance of rain. The Honomū weather station recorded 0.13 inches by 7:20 a.m.; it remained at that level all day. For Marysville, Aix forecast freezing temperatures all day with partly cloudy skies. The traffic cams seen earlier showed some new snow fell in the afternoon.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 7:22 a.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 7:22 a.m.

Waikīkī looking easterly at 7:29 a.m.

Kaimukī looking northerly at 7:50 a.m.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 3:58 p.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 3:59 p.m.

Waikīkī looking easterly at 4:03 p.m.

The biggest surf was along the north facing & east facing shores; in fact, water was splashing on to Bayview Highway in Hilo this morning. There were still some decent swells on the other shores.

Laniakea (N) at 7:24 a.m.

Waves crashing against bulkhead at Hilo Bay (E) at 7:26 a.m.

Waikīkī (S) at 7:25 a.m.

Banyans (W) at 7:32 a.m.

Laniakea (N) at 4:01 p.m.

Hilo Bay (E) camera AWOL at 4:01 p.m.

Waikīkī (S) at 4:01 p.m.

Banyans (W) at 4:02 p.m.

When it comes to COVID-19 & some other things, we need to be more like these dogs & police ourselves & our loved ones around us!

I did a quick check on the COVID-19 stats for Snohomish County where Kai lives; he avoids looking at the information in order to avoid getting stressed out. Snohomish County is about 59% the population of the State of Hawaiʻi & about 81% the population of Oʻahu. The summary statistics are not presented quite the same as ours, but it is clear that they had less known cases last week than we did. Snohomish County had 2719 new cases last week & Oʻahu had 7282; to be equivalent, we should have had a total of only 3356 new cases but we had about twice as many. I think the big difference is population density; for Snohomish County it is 377 people per square mile, for Oʻahu it is 1461, almost 4 times as much. An easier comparison is number of cases per 100,000 population which some jurisdictions provide; I had to do the math. Last week Snohomish County had 328 cases per 100,000, Oʻahu had 717; Kai is safer where he is. The difference is explained best in terms of aerial transmission, it is easier to transmit a pathogen when there is a higher density of people in a given area. In some areas of Oʻahu, like Kaimukī, the density is in the order of 9600 people per square mile, while North Kohala only has 53; which is why I went to Hawaiʻi Island at the start of the pandemic when there was less known about treatment & no vaccines.

There were 824 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 104,597. This new case number is artificially low due to the limited testing available on Sundays plus being the day after the holiday; it is expected to go back up tomorrow. There were no new deaths reported so the death toll remains at 1082; currently 14,514 cases are considered active. As of today there have been 2,521,418 vaccines administered providing 74.1% of the State population with full vaccination & 79.5% with at least one dose. LG Green tweeted that there are currently 112 cases that have been hospitalized with 47% being fully vaccinated. The 7-day new case average for the State is 1417 with a positivity rate of 12.2%. The 7-day new case average for Oʻahu is 1216 with a positivity rate of 14.3%.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Jennifer!