Hawai'i Snow! Cutting More Cords, Drive-Through Doctoring

[Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

11/21/20

Aloha All –

Well, we’re definitely heading into winter here.  More mainland refugees are arriving for the season, and Christmas decorations are prominent in the big box stores (actually, stuff appeared at Lowe’s well before Halloween).  Our neighbors across the street put up an artificial tree a week ago, and live-but-soon-to-be-dead trees are now on sale at several places (ours come in refrigerated shipping containers from the mainland and some sellers, like Costco, only put out a few to choose from at a time).  We saw the first poinsettias for sale today and quickly bought three.  We’ve learned here not to dilly-dally – things sell quickly and won’t be restocked. Not sure what happened to Halloween and Thanksgiving this year – oh, that’s right, Thanksgiving is next week, isn’t it.....  One thing missing this year is the arrival of cruise ship repositioning cruises, for obvious and very good reasons, of course.

Another seasonal sign is that last Saturday we had a big influx of moist air and “cold” temperatures that deposited the first snow on our two 13k foot volcanoes, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  It wasn’t much, but it certainly looked nice, and it was a bit unusual to see it on both at the same time. Even though it didn’t last long, it was a diversion from the news these days.

Got my landline telephone bill early this week and noticed they have increased the amount for standard service...again.  I’ve been considering dropping it altogether for about a year now like many other people have done – seems like a lot of money for nothing.  We can’t make long distance calls without extra charges, it doesn’t have caller id, call blocking or any other features that a cell phone does. We kept it because it seemed like a good idea to have a backup to cell service, and the number is one that we’ve given out as our primary contact in all kinds of places. This includes the many cases where we didn’t want to be called on our cell phones.  But the latest price increase can’t justify that anymore.  My plan is to buy a cheapo cell phone and assign it the old number, then link it to our current cordless phones that are arrayed around the house.  The new cell phone would remain near the cordless base unit and be dedicated just to receiving house calls, the same as our landline is now.  I can get an additional cell plan for $15 per month, and a decent phone for $70. In the first year alone this will save me nearly $200, including the cost of adding a few new cordless handsets. Plus, I get a new techno-toy to play with.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Karen and I go to the same internist here.  A few months ago I had a video conference with him to go over my routine bloodwork.  Doing this remotely was a response to the pandemic, of course.  Yesterday Karen needed to have him examine a cut on her leg that isn’t healing properly.  In her case she had the "interesting" experience of drive-through-doctoring.  She arrived in the parking lot and called the office.  The doctor came out in full hazmat gear and made her stay in the car while he took a look and did a quick swab of the wound.  I’ll leave it to your imagination as to how he could do this from outside the car. Anyway, she got an antibiotic prescription and was on her way.

I won’t comment on our current political scene nor our mainland health crisis, other than to say that reality always wins in the end, no matter how much someone says it isn’t true. But the cost of denial in this case is terrible.

Hang in there.  Stay safe, sane, and warm.