Saturday, November 14, 2020

Mainland MIssive: Return of The Two-Legged Roof Rat, Termite Treatment Saga Continues

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

 

11/14/20

Aloha Everyone –

Hope your weather is as boringly beautiful as ours, but somehow I doubt that it is (snark, snark).  We did have about .5" of rain last night starting about 2:30, hard enough I had to get up and shut our skylights. It is still raining lightly here at our house, so we may have to adjust our morning plans a bit.

On the political mayhem front, I’m still waiting.... On the pandemic front, we are averaging about 20 new cases per day on our island, which seems to be leveling off, unlike the skyrocketing numbers on the mainland.  The new cases aren’t related to the 1k or so visitors per day we are getting, and I admit I was wrong in my earlier assessment that letting them in too fast would be a major problem.  However, this shows the effectiveness of the pre-test requirement and our masking/distancing requirements.  The on-arrival second test is being reduced to a random sample of 25% of the travelers because out of 12k tests only a handful were true positives.  Businesses are still struggling of course, but it is definitely more hopeful.  On Thursday Karen and I did our part by driving north to Waikaloa, a resort area that is showing signs of stirring again, and ate lunch at Macaroni Grill in one of the shopping areas there.  The restaurant was taking very careful measures to spread people out and reduce exposure to wait-staff.
                                                
My handyman delivered the new screen frame early this week and I have repainted it and I’ll re-screen it today.  Hopefully I can get it back up today, then take a break from my roof rat impersonations for a while. Also got the repainted fan up in the bedroom and it looks great, if I do say so myself.

I forgot to update you last week on the termite tenting efforts.  The first company that came turned out to be the one that did the job 20 years ago.  The owner is retiring soon and has been reducing the size of his crew so that he turned down the job this time because it was just too big (!).  I still have an estimate scheduled from a 2nd company for Nov. 23rd, and I called a 3rd who will come next week.  Notice the delay in just getting the estimates.  Scheduling the actual job will probably put this project into May or June next year.  This is the kind of thing that you have to get used to as part of living on a remote island.  If you don’t have patience you won’t survive.  Those of us who are still here after 20 years feel the trade-off is very much worth it.  BTW, it also illustrates how some businesses are thriving right now, supporting people who don’t have don’t have megabuck stock portfolios (they, of course, are doing great as well) and don’t need cash income to make it day-to-day.

Ok, that’s all to report for this week, other than the usual – Karen played golf on Tuesday, and we had a good workout yesterday at PF followed by a lemon grass chicken sandwich and home-made cole slaw at the shore. Gotta keep rewarding the physical effort!

Take everyone.  Hang in there – sanity and reality may yet prevail, but it will be a bumpy road.

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