A Present From Pele, More Vaccine, Cutting Phone Cord Report

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

12/26/20

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Ours was very quiet this year.  On Christmas Eve we went to Planet Fitness, had an Ultimate Burger picnic afterwards, and did some last minute grocery shopping at our new mega-Safeway store.  The mainland visitors have suddenly arrived in numbers we haven’t seen in nearly a year. This is great for our economy, but has come at a cost of choked traffic, stripped store shelves, and many high-energy lost and bewildered folks everywhere.  Hmmmmmm.
                                            
On Christmas day we had a peaceful day around the house, and then had a distanced dinner at our neighbor’s house.  Just the four of us, their dog Zoe and parrots Chico and Sweat Pea. Very nice traditional fare of turkey for the main dish.  

Of course the big excitement here is the waking up last Sunday of our Kilauea volcano after a two-year snooze.  Close-up photos provided by the volcanologists are spectacular, with fountains of lava and big streams of it flowing down into a growing lava lake.  Photos that show the real scale are much less impressive. All of this is taking place at the very summit, in the 1500-foot deep crater within the summit caldera.  The lake is now about 600 feet deep, fed by two fissures on the sides of the crater. This may keep going for a while, but the built-up supply of magma isn’t as great as it was before 2018's big eruption, so it might also be a short event.  The most negative impact for us is the sudden return of Vog that spoils the view of our coastline.  It also complicates treatment of Covid 19 patients who have respitory issues – the prediction is that it could lead to many more severe cases, We’ll see.

More vaccine arrived on island this week – a shipment of the new Moderna vaccine.  Since this can be stored more easily, it is being held while the Pfitzer is used up first.  Many front line health workers here have received their 1st shot, and now other essential workers can get it. Both vaccines have common reactions that are short-lived, with the Moderna being even more likely to produce them.  However, the Moderna is apparently also slightly more effective in preventing severe cases and more effective in geezers. I’ll take whichever is offered as soon as it is available to me. Good luck to those of you on the mainland, but I’m pleased that so far this, just like our mail-in voting procedure, is going very well. The anti-vaxers are unfortunately revving up their misinformation campaign, but I’m hoping most people will ignore it. I’ve looked into every claim they have made and I am confident it is all bunk.

After a period of frustration and disappointment with my new phone arrangement, I’ve now gotten the problems worked out. Although the call quality of the new phone is very good, the link to the cordless house phones was very poor at first. This turned out to be solved by just re-linking the cell phone to the base unit for the cordless phones.  The call quality through the cordless phones is now good – not as clear as the old land line, but very acceptable.  The other problem I had at first was that the cordless handset downstairs where Karen spends a lot of time didn’t have a very good connection to the upstairs base unit.  This was solved by just moving the base unit to a better location where the signal didn’t have to go through as many walls. Now the connection is very good.  All in all I’m satisfied and pleased to be saving $200 per year.

Ok, off to the beach for our usual picnic.  Not as clear as last week, but still very nice.

Merry Christmas, and next we will say goodbye and good riddance to 2020.