Welcome, Vivi!

Yesterday afternoon Valerie Vivian-Dee arrived; congratulations to her parents Jess & Justin! She weighed in at 8 lbs 3 ozs & is 20 inches long. Grandma Margaret is delighted with little Vivi!

(Photo by Margaret)

I started the morning with reorganizing my kitchen office space. I moved the toaster oven over so it is next to the microwave. And put the office stuff next to the built-in mini-safe where the frequently used non-perishable items are kept. This way the active food preparation is all on one side of the counter & not at both ends with my laptop in the middle!

Before.

After.

While cleaning up this area I found some pamphlets that I had hastily piled here during one of my other visits when I was cleaning out old cabinets. I found the pamphlet that was given to Grandpa when he became a naturalized citizen in the 1960's. It will be kept & cherished.

My next morning task was setting up a temporary under-cabinet light for the counter where I will be making my proothies in the morning. There has been a power strip attached under that cabinet; today I zip-tied a florescent light fixture to the power strip. It will be my light source while I research various options for what to install there on a more permanent basis; in the meanwhile I will have better light while making my proothies. And for whatever else I prepare on that counter.

Before.

After.

For breakfast I pulled out one of the frozen items & defrosted it; I had an Okinawa Brown Sugar Baked Wheat Cake that Sarah had bought back in July last year. (My freezer is still full of things she bought while she was experiencing her mental health crisis.) I also discovered we do not have a real butter dish here; I thought there was one, but apparently not. I know I have one in a box somewhere so in the meanwhile I am using one of Baban's Golden Wheat dinnerware plates & inverting a plastic storage container over it.

The frozen Baked Wheat Cake.

After heating.

The temporary butter dish.

Getting the butsudan set up again was also a priority today; I'm glad I took photos before I packed everything up. I had taken everything down so that Ken could easily move it when he finished the cabinet to replace the freestanding shelves that were under it. But he was unable to get to that before I returned. He is building a separate unit that will be slid in to place, then faced to match the surrounding area. 

Before.

The empty butsudan.

Almost back to normal again.

Butsudan with candle & senko.

I have never dusted in this house before; when I'm only here for 1 or 2 weeks it seemed like a waste of time to dust. So I would only vacuum & mop. Today I started by dusting from the top down; I think it's weird how some places collect more dust than others. The spider webs & bugs I can understand; the spider chooses the location for its web based on factors that will cause more prey items to move in that direction. But the dust, it did not seem to correspond to anything; it was just all over the place. And because these are 9 foot high ceilings I can't do a good job on the highest couple of inches; Kai will have to do those on his next visit. 

Dusting the top of the door sill.

Before I started dusting, I had put out some cat food, hoping to entice Mom Cat & her kitten back again. Although I called, she did not come; I think the sharp sound of the dry cat food hitting the bowl carries farther so they responded quicker. About an hour later I checked again & the food was gone! Sneaky kitties!

At 10:31 a.m.

At 11:30 a.m.

The hallway took about 10 minutes of dusting & 3 minutes of vacuuming. The bathroom was about 17 minutes of dusting & 6 minutes of vacuuming; that included moving the cabinet next to the sink which is on wheels. Although I only did a total of 9 minutes vacuuming my back was already going in to spasms; I guess it also did not like the reaching & bending that I was doing for the dusting.

So I switched gears & mopped the bathroom & hallway. I purposefully mopped myself in to my bedroom so I could lie down & rest my back while the floor was drying. I propped my knees up & lay without a pillow under my head to relieve the pressure on my back. I ended up taking a short nap. 

Bathroom floor has been mopped to threshold.

Bathroom & hallway now both mopped.

When I got up it was about 1 pm; I checked on the window fan in the front bedroom. Normally this room would start heating up around that time, but it was relatively cool today. I checked again later in the afternoon, closer to 3 when it would be really hot; it was relatively pleasant! Hulō! Glad I had that fan shipped here.

It's got a thermostat.

Still need to block the window gap on the right side.

Just before lunch, I got a text from The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes; Keala had peed on my chair. She has frequently shown her displeasure with my leaving before.  

For lunch I had Parm Crisps with peanut butter & a glass of almond milk. After lunch I switched from dusting, vacuuming, & mopping to putting away yesterday's laundry.

After lunch I also worked on the bathroom sink. It is the sink that was in the house when it was moved here in the mid-1960's but I do not know if it is the sink that was initially installed when the house was built in the 1920's. But I like it; it has character. So I cleaned it up & it looks pretty good.

Can you tell which half is cleaned? (Answer: right side)

I had noticed yesterday when I was doing laundry that the end that holds the bar the lines are attached to is missing a bolt. Because of this the set of lines twists when one side has more laundry on it than the other. I will need to find the right sized bolt to secure it.

While out there I noticed that there was a Common Mynah sitting in the persimmon tree! It was going after the ripe persimmons! When I went around back I saw that the birds had already gotten to the ones that were higher up in the tree (that I could not reach anyway). But now they were coming for the lower ones that I can reach with the ladder. Auē!

I chased it away.

As I was in the garage checking out the retractable laundry line, I noticed the cats in Jessie's back yard. It looked like Mom Cat & her latest litter of kittens. And Meyer Kitty Lemon! I think the kitten I saw yesterday & thought was a tortoiseshell is actually the dark calico that I saw today.

L to R: Mom Cat, white & orange tabby, Meyer Kitty Lemon?, & dark calico.

Today I could tell the kitten was a calico & not a tortoiseshell.

Mom Cat heads for the wild area beyond the tall grass.

The kittens follow Mom Cat.

Meyer Kitty Lemon stays behind.

I checked out the macadamia tree while I was outside. Although it has dropped a lot of leaves it also has a lot of flowers & fruits in various stages of ripening; since I've never been here at this time of the season I don't know if this is its usual pattern. It looks like there will be a big crop this year! I had better order that nut raker so I am ready for harvest season!

It's lost most of its leaves.

But has lots of flowers.

And a lot of young nuts.

Here's one on the ground.

The old kitchen drawers are sitting on the lanai table; they reminded me that I still needed to finish refilling the other new drawers.

The old drawers.

Before.

After.

In spite of seeing the cats this afternoon, they did not come in for the food I left out for them. They are not yet used to finding food here. A couple more days should do the trick & get them habituated to finding food here. I took the bowl in after dark since it had canned food in it & I did not want to attract ants.

At 5:28 p.m.

At 7:22 p.m.

At 8:42 p.m.

Duolingo thinks I am doing good because I did not fall back down to the lower level. I think I need to be doing more than just hanging on.

One of the things I will have to pay attention to is the list of upcoming road closures; they post it in Big Island Now on a weekly basis. This is important information since some roads have no easy detours & are then operated as a one lane road with flaggers; a trip can take a lot longer if that happens. Being aware of closures will allow me to more efficiently plan any errands I might need to run outside of the immediate area. None of the closures listed this week will affect me; mainly because I am not planning on going anywhere.

Oh Navy, what are you doing now? Not enough it seems ... until some of the people controlling the purse strings become more adamant about you doing something! Oh Navy, just step up & do the right thing!

Kīlauea's on again, off again eruptive phases are continuing. Madame Pele is keeping everyone guessing.  There is still some snow on Mauna Kea.

At 10:12 a.m.

At 4:19 p.m.

At 10:12 a.m.

At 4:19 p.m.

At 10:12 a.m.

At 4:19 p.m.

 

The semi-wonky Aix weather app forecast drizzles after dark for Honolulu; the webcams showed partly cloudy skies but no rain. Aix is getting wonkier for Kapaʻau; there is no data after 2 p.m.! We seem to have dropped out of the weather world; Big Island Now forecast partly sunny with showers likely in the morning, becoming mostly sunny with scattered showers & a 60% chance of rain. Big Island Now was fairly accurate for Kapaʻau; the Honomū weather station recorded 0.01 inches of precipitation by 10:15 a.m. For Marysville, Aix was working well & forecast cloudy skies all day becoming rain in the late evening; the traffic cam in the morning showed fairly sunny skies. I did not get a screen shot of the evening.

The north facing & west facing shorelines seemed to have the best surf conditions today. The other shorelines were rather flat.

Apparently there is an app that a bunch of people here had on their phones that recorded the explosion of the Hunga Tonga - Hunga Haʻapai volcano eruption about a month ago. Smartphones with the RedVox App were able to detect the explosion; pretty cool!

There was a magnitude 6.2 earthquake south of Guam; it did not generate a tsunami.

Kaiser Permanente is offering scholarships to students wishing to pursue careers in health. One thing that this pandemic has highlighted is the lack of enough people to fulfill all the necessary positions in the health care profession here in the State. Kauaʻi, Maui, & Hawaiʻi counties are in the top 15 counties in the nation with the highest primary health care worker shortage. Hopefully this will help get more high school students intersted in the health care field.

There were 532 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 231,510. There were also 4 new deaths reported, increasing the death toll to 1262; currently there are 12,838 cases considered active. The 7-day new case average for the State is 652 with a test positivity rate of 7.0%. The 7-day new case average for Hawaiʻi Island is 91 with a test positivity rate of 9.7%.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Timna!