Weapons Rack Installed!

I spent about 1&1/2 hours this afternoon installing the jo & bokken rack. It is near the center of the house & visible when you enter the front door. Now I need to find my jo bag; I thought I put it in the box with the weapons but it was not in there. 

Outermost pieces of blue tape mark doorway limits.

Top blue tape marks height of rack, other blue tape is width of rack.

I was too impatient to wait until rack was hung to see what it would look like.

All pau!

It kinda got my endorphins going to see the weapons up on the rack. It has been a while since I trained; I think watching these Chinese TV series with weapons & martial arts is making me want to return to training. Well, I don't "think"; I "know". But I also feel like I would be unfaithful to my senseis if I trained under another sensei; so I have chosen to only train in my mind. 

I hope training in my mind will be OK for me; I've done it temporarily before when I had a work injury, but I've never done it fully in place of physical training. When I was physically training, during the last 2 weeks or so before I was testing I would have a heightened sense of awareness, faster reflexes, & automatic movements. 

I think it was when I was in the last week before my ikkyu test (1st level brown belt) that my co-worker Liz was rear-ended as we were running an errand for a work retirement party. The guy that rear-ended her motioned for us to pull over in to the parking lot of the convenience store that was right there. I gathered what little information I could from him; he said he forgot his license, registration, & insurance info, so I just got his name & home address. Then I went to Liz (who had whiplash & was sitting in her car) & asked her to call the police because I knew it was a false address! (I sent a lot of stuff out for work & knew the zip code he gave me for the particular city he gave as his address was way wrong.) 

While Liz went in & called, I stood behind his car taking down the license plate number, make, model, & color as well as writing down a description of him; I was sure he had given me a fake name, too. While I was still standing behind his car, he started it up & slowly began to back up! I beat on the glass of his hatchback & was doing my best to cave it in! (I was still on the adrenaline high from the accident.) It startled him but he continued to slowly back up until he was clear enough to pull forward. As he shifted in to drive, I ran to the passenger door to get in, but he saw me & reached over to lock the door. (If I had gotten in & he left he could have been charged with kidnapping.) The brief moment he stopped to reach for the door allowed me to race to the front of the car & begin beating on the hood, again with the intention of caving in the hood. I forced him to back up in to the parking spot next to Liz & he came out of the car. I went up to him, got in his face, & told him he needed to stay & take responsibility for the accident because Liz was hurt; he said he needed to leave because he had to go to work. When I would not back down, he stepped back then turned & walked away & went behind a building on the adjacent property & disappeared. When the police officer arrived I gave him all the information I got, we told him what happened, & they towed the guy's car away. FYI It turns out both the name & address given were false (they got the real info from the car) & he was also charged with hit-&-run since he left the site. His insurance had to pay for Liz's whiplash & a muscle I tweaked in my shoulder. (My doctor was unsure if it was from the accident or beating on the car. 🙄)

According to Liz, both she & the cashier at the convenience store were amazed that I started pounding on the car & went up to confront the guy when he stepped out of the car. The thought never entered my mind that he might try to do something, I was in a different state & would have automatically neutralized him if he took a swing due to the level of training I was at for the couple of weeks leading up to that day. I normally trained 5 days a week, but when I was preparing for a test I trained 7 days a week & did a lot of solo work at home. FYI I passed my ikkyu test with flying colors! (This is also when I was at 100 pounds with 12% body fat. I was at my strongest at this weight & conditioning.)

Here is a You Tube video a little over 8 minutes long that shows practitioners of Aikido (the martial art I studied) sparring with karate & MMA fighters. The best parts are at about 3:30 where a karate fighter challenges an Aikido sensei at his dojo & also Tissier sparring with Pinna at about 5:10. There is a short section at the end that explains more about Aikido philosophy & techniques. The part of Aikido that resonates the most with me is blending with the attacker's energy & redirecting it (à la Tissier); brute strength is not a part of being a practitioner so Aikido is a good martial art for me. I had many occasions where larger, stronger, beginner male practice partners would attack too fast or too strongly & end up hitting the mat really hard; they basically threw themselves, I just redirected their energy to the mat in as safe a manner as I could. Most of these happened after I had advanced to shodan & was assisting the sensei at our school's dojo near a naval air station where egos seemed to be a little larger. More experienced students know to only attack as fast as you want to be thrown. (The video is apparently dubbed via AI so the pronunciation of the non-English words are sometimes really bad.)

Today I also had to repair the cat door. Not sure exactly what happened but when I walked in to the cat room this morning the door was totally off its hinges. Fortunately all I needed to do was bend it slightly & pop the pegs back in to the holes in the frame to get it back in place.

Broken door lying inside house.

From the outside.

Door back in place. But still "broken". 

I also squeezed the oranges I picked the other day. They made about 1&1/2 quarts of orange juice. There are a lot more oranges ripening on the tree; I will have Kai help with picking & juicing when he arrives next week. 

My ears appear to have become more accustomed to hearing the Mandarin sounds! My pronunciation is getting better! (See the 2nd post for 07/04 called Canto to Mando for a really cool video I found that I think will help me a lot with learning Mandarin!)

I have also recognized that "ma" at end denotes a question.

The window for Episode 51 of the eruption of Kīlauea has narrowed slightly to be somewhere between the 9th & the 14th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Rebecca! A me ka Hauʻoli lā Hoʻomanaʻo makahiki 28 e Laurel & Bill!

Canned Foods Storage

Chris came by to take a look at the closet at the top of the back stairs, opposite the kitchen door. My intention is to clean it out & have him install shelves for storing the shelf-stable canned foods I will be working on with the Kohala 'Ono Food Hui next year. I will also have him put in 2 vents & a fan with a thermostat so that there can be good air flow to keep the storage space from overheating & shortening the life of the canned foods. He will also be insulating the ceiling & the east wall that gets full sun in the morning. He only took measurements today; the actual construction will likely start in September or so.

Shelves at back will be for storing canning pots & supplies. 

Shelves on this side will be sized for quart jars, fan will be at top left.

Shelves on this side will be sized for pint jars, intake vent will be at floor.

Floor space will be mainly clear for access.

When I fed Moʻo this morning, I noticed some movement in her water bowl. I looked closer & saw a bunch of mosquito larvae! I will have to empty her bowl out every couple days or so to keep them from maturing. Fortunately I can identify their pupal stage so I will know I had better empty her bowl or risk being bitten by the adult females!

The visitor profile at Lapakahi State Historical Park this morning was unusual. Up until about 10 am it was only swimmers! I saw Mia, Marona & Renee, Graham, Robert, & an unknown woman I had never seen before. Mia usually comes several times a week. Marona & Renee usually swim down from Māhukona but today wanted to explore the area south of Lapahaki so started from here. Graham & his wife Sherry come about twice a week & usually swim from Lapakahi to Māhukona, pick up their car there & drive back to Lapakahi to pick up their other car that is parked here. Robert comes to Hawaiʻi Island several times a year from San Francisco to volunteer at a soup kitchen & tries to swim somewhere every day while he is here. And I don't know anything about the unknown woman. 

Renee & Marona head to the water.

On Fridays, on my way home from Lapakahi, I stop at Our Founding Farmers & have ice cream for lunch! Mark uses fresh local fruit & does not use artificial sweeteners or food coloring. And its not a boiled vegetable so it is an allowed food for my diet... Besides, I only do it once a week.

Chocolate chocolate chocolate.

  

On Friday afternoons Marian & I get together so her dog Poppy & Moʻo can have a puppy play date! Marian has 4 acres, lots of fruit trees, & a large vegetable garden. Right now their ulu is starting to ripen so she gave me one to try. Ulu is a staple starch for many Pacific Islanders; since it is a carb I have not really sought it ought for my diet. But I always try things once; it should be ripe in a few days. FYI My standard carb is not rice, it is poi. I think that is due to spending a year in Kohala as a child & living in a place where kalo was grown by my grandfather & turned in to poi by a Hawaiian neighbor.

Young ulu fruit next to flowering bract.

Half-grown ulu fruit & flowering bract.

Mature ulu fruit near half-grown fruit & flowering bract.

Even though Guardians of the Ancient Oath does not have simplified Chinese subtitles, I can still recognize some Mandarin words & phrases. Today I heard "How about you?" & "Why?" in the conversations. 

你呢 （nǐ ne).

为什么（wèi shén me）.

Episode 51 of the eruption at Kīlauea is forecast to  begin some time  between the 9th & the 15th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Marvetta & Michael!

It's Here!

I picked up the jo & bokken rack today! I'm not sure exactly when it arrived since the USPS Informed Delivery service that I signed up for so I could know exactly when it came in, did not tell me I had a package! Auē! 

I have unboxed it & held it up against the wall it will be mounted on. Since this is an old plantation era house it is single-wall construction with a board running horizontally along the halfway point of the wall. The particular wall I will be hanging the rack on also has battens. (There are no battens on the walls of the other half of the house.) I will have to add spacers to keep the hanging rack evenly on the wall; so that's the task for tomorrow before I can mount the rack on the wall.

I started moving things away from in front of the door to the closet at the top of the stairs. Chris is coming tomorrow to look at it & help me with designing shelves to store the produce I will be canning. I want the closet to be vented with an intake vent located low on the wall on the inside of the garage & a vent high on the outside wall on the north side of the closet. I think I found a reasonable fan to install in the high vent so that room does not get too hot in the summer. Now I need to make calculations to be sure I get the right size fan.

This morning I picked about 7 pounds each of tangerines & navel oranges. The tangerines are for hoa hānau Fran & Billy. I will make juice with the navel oranges; I will mix it with Pedialyte for my electrolyte replacement drink.

I realized today that I may have to do some boiled vegetables in August. Kai is coming in a week; when he is here we usually go out to eat at new places that he wants to try. We also try the desserts! I will try to be mindful of what I eat & look for good proteins with vegetables & fewer carbs. And try to keep my eating limited to around 10 hours. We shall see what happens. 

There was a weird rain this afternoon. It was very sunny but I could hear what sounded like raindrops on the metal roof. I looked out & saw rain! 

The window for the next episode of the eruption at Kilauea shifted. It is now expected to be some time between the 8th & the 15th. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e  Becky & Melia! 

Last ʻOno Food Hui Class for the Year

Today was the last food preservation class that the Kohala ʻOno Food Hui is holding for the year. Sandra has now spent all the grant money for supplies. Michelle & I came on part way through the year to assist with the classes; we had both been in earlier classes. Today Sandra told us, when she writes the grants for next year, she will include a small stipend for each of us along with the amount she requests for supplies. She said if the supplies end up costing less than what was expected, they use the rest of the money to continue buying supplies but there are no stipends for the instructors. Next year she hopes to be able to do a couple classes in Honokaʻa as well as a freeze drying class at the Kohala Food Hub. Today was another Fermentation & Pickling class; these have been so popular we did 3 of them.

Sandra (center) demonstrates how to cut cabbage for sauerkraut.

My team watches demonstration; (L to R) Sandra, Cindy, Marian, Matt, & Candice.

I got a surprise today as class was starting; cousin Candice from Waimea was in the class! She & her husband Matt were the last ones to sign up. Apparently Matt has been wanting to learn how to make kim chee & other fermented foods; this class was her birthday present to him. They ended up on my team. FYI Candice is Leilani's daughter.

Matt & Candice (center) prepare to salt won bok for kim chee, while Cindy (L) & Marian watch.

I was supposed to meet up with Chris after class to talk about turning the closet at the top of the back stairs in to a canned good storage area. But I was too tired. Hopefully, we can set up another time to do it so the storage area can be finished before the canning classes start up again next year. 

I had originally thought that these numbers were for cumulative views over the previous 7 days. However, that might not be the case. The US has gone down by about 700 & Brazil has gone up by about 200, with Singapore dropping about 600 & Bangladesh remaining about the same. Oh well, more confusion for me. I think I will stop looking at these.

The next episode  of the eruption at Kīlauea is imminent! There was precursory spattering today & they thought fountaining would start today. Since it has not yet started, it makes tomorrow the more likely day for it to start.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Erin, Val, & Mariah! 

Last Bunch of Things

I started the final clean up for this visit this morning. I needed to move the last of the things in the computer room in to my room or the hallway. The bulkiest thing was the filing cabinet; even though I could not figure out how to separate the drawers from the cabinet it turned out to be easier to move than I anticipated. I stacked Mom's printer, monitor & keyboard on it; the CPU was placed on the floor so it couldn't fall off of anything. 

Moved things from lighter square; rest is for Roommates to figure out.

New location of items to be kept. My room is at end of hallway.

In one of the boxes I looked through while consolidating boxes today there was some of my old schoolwork; someone wrote my name on it so that's how I could tell it was mine. Not sure why Mom kept them. Especially the report on China; I got a D+ on that one! I also apparently had to do reports on Bolivia (llamas on the cover), Australia (platypus), Albert Einstein (himself), & a bunch of other things. I did not look at the grades on any of the others. I think I turned out OK in spite of the D+. But I might be a bit biased ...

No idea what grade this was but it was written in cursive.

While cleaning up, I lost another small piece off of my laptop case. I did not think I was that hard on them since I have only had to replace 1 case in about 20 years. Phones, on the other hand, I know I am really hard on them. For my 1st phone, I destroyed 3 cases before I bought a Body Glove case. The sales guy was trying to talk me out of it because they cost $89 at that time; I told him I had already bought 3 of the cheaper cases he was wanting me to buy at a cost of $30 each so it was actually a better deal to get a more expensive case if it really protected my phone. I have stuck with Body Glove, then Otterbox that bought out Body Glove, & have not had problems with them except for the charging port flap falling off since I don't buy a new phone every year or so like a lot of other people do; I prefer to work them until the battery dies.  For the record, I have not killed any of my personal phones, though I did shatter the touch screen on my pre-cell phone era metal-cased personal data assistant; I dropped it on the metal deck of a ferry but I could still work it with key strokes. I have, however, drowned 3 work phones; that's what happens when you issue a non-ruggedized phone without a waterproof case to a field person who works in wetlands & streams all day. Just sayin'. I had a ruggedized phone for about 3 months, then they changed the service provider contract & the phone was taken away; I killed another phone before the end of the fiscal year. 

I packed my bags after I had finished moving things out of the computer room. I am taking back a bunch of cooking utensils, including 3 knives so I have real knives to use in the canning classes I am helping with. I also packed the muffin tins, a round cake pan & a baking sheet. 

Because of all the moving & packing I was doing today, I did not get a chance to watch another Episode of Chief of War. I will have to write myself a note so I can remember that I need to start at Episode 4. 

Bokuto says my jo & bokken wall stand has been shipped! Now comes the wait. 

 

Curtis picked me up around 4. We went to dinner at Paniolos in Kahala Mall. The woman making my bowl could not believe I said I would order the extra guacamole because Curtis was paying! We thought it was hilarious! I did not see the Jarritos sodas until after we paid; next time I will have to remember they have it. Jarritos is one of the few sodas I will drink; specifically their tamarind flavor. 

Curtis starts his order.

I think all management should support having this sign posted!

Directions for ordering. I did the Bowl.

They have tamarindo!

My bowl with extra guacamole! 😂  It reminds me of a cicada's face.

While we were eating, we were commenting on the signage on the dessert shop near us. The words on their awning indicated the broad categories of what they sold; it included "panini". I told Curtis until I had moved to Washington, I had not known that panini was anything other than Hawaiian for the fruit of the Opuntia cactus! He, on the other hand, only knew of the sandwiches & had never heard of the cactus fruit! Hard to believe we grew up in the same house! If you Google "panini fruit" it tells you, "'panini fruit' typically refers to the use of sweet fruits as ingredients in pressed sandwiches, offering a blend of sweet and savory flavors. The fruit caramelizes slightly in the heat, pairing well with melted cheeses and meats." In order to find the panini I am familiar with you have to Google "Opuntia panini" to get to the plant one.

Panini?

Panini!

I finally figured out how to turn the microphone on! I had to go in to the Apps setting on my phone. Then choose Duolingo. Then go to Permissions. Then to Microphone. Once there, I changed it to "Allow only while using the app." Now I can check how terrible my pronunciation is!  

Click on "All Apps".

Click on "Duolingo".

Click on "Permissions".

Click on "Microphone".

I am at Curtis' house as I write this. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 7 am; since he lives 15 minutes from the airport & does not have to fight rush hour traffic this is the best option for both of us. We will leave the house around 5 am. Why am I flying so early? I have an agroforestry class that is at a farm south of Kona that starts at 9 am. Going straight from the airport tomorrow morning & driving 30 minutes to the farm is a lot easier than flying in tonight & driving 1 hour home, then turning around & leaving at 7 am to drive 1 & 1/2 hours from home to the farm! 

Episode 49 of the eruption of Kīlauea is anticipated to start between the 13th & 15th.