Ginger's Cats

I've been feeding Ginger's cats for about a week or so; she is taking a well-deserved vacation from work. Over the last couple of years I had fed her cats before when she was off-island for work. With everything going on yesterday, I forgot to feed them! 😧 So this morning I went over as soon as I finished feeding Moʻo; 3 of them were so happy to see me! One kept brushing up against my leg, soon another did the same thing. Number 3, however, just watched. Monday is the last day I feed them, then Vicky takes over for the last week that Ginger is off-island. 

Not sure where No. 3 disappeared to.

Because I have been so busy since I returned from Oʻahu, I have sort of been neglecting the blog. Today I decided to dedicate a bunch of time to update the blog so that those of you who use it as a way to quietly check in on me do not get anxious that I have not posted something in a while. Each day I generally start writing the post for the day but may not get around to adding the photos & proofreading before something comes along & knocks the particular post out of the "most important thing to do right now" position in my life.

When I am working on the blog, I go to the Stats tab to get to the place where I tell Blogspot not to count my views as I do the previews to make sure it looks right before I post it. The Stats page is somewhat surprising to me; this morning it showed that this blog has had 13.4K views in the past 7 days! The highest number of views was from the US; not surprising though last week (when the total was much lower) Singapore had twice as many views as the US. I guess what is most surprising to me is the different countries that have people viewing this blog. And here I was, thinking it was only family & friends viewing it! Although I do have friends in other countries that know about this blog, I do not have friends in all the countries that the Stats page says are viewing this blog. I wonder what they find so interesting about my rambling on about inconsequential things?

What is so interesting about these top 10 posts?

 

When I went to bring Moʻo in for the evening, she was at the back fence barking at her cow buddies. I tossed the oranges that had fallen over the fence towards one of the yearling steers. He really liked the oranges! Though I was initially concerned that he might swallow it whole & choke on one!

Happy navel orange tree.

Happy steer!

I learned how to say "four" in Mandarin, which is "sì" & also how to write it in Hanzi. Sort of. I already knew how to write it in Kanji, where it also means "four" but is pronounced "shi". And apparently in Mandarin it is also not a favorable word because, like in Japanese, it sounds like the word "death". I also learned the Mandarin word for "really", which is "zhēn de ma". "Really" in English can be said with several different inflections, each conveying something different. I need to find out if I use those same inflections in Mandarin will it change the meaning? Will I get in to trouble saying something I should not be saying? 😳

Volcano Watch had a great article about the difference between an episode & an eruption. Basically, when magma moves from subsurface to the surface, that is an eruption. When there are breaks in surface activity, even though the magma is still present underground, it is considered an episode.

The window for the next episode at Kilauea is between the 24th & the 27th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Tracy, AJ, & Tristen!