August Already? Abnormal Normality?

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

8/7/21

Aloha Everyone –

Well, August caught me by surprise.  What happened to June & July? I swear, since last year it is difficult to keep track of time.  In many respects it is like we skipped last year altogether.  Then I start to think back to the sh*t storm of events that happened. Maybe it’s because I’d like to forget that time and I have blocked it out.  Anyway, our return to “normal” seems to be an uneven lurch into the future.  On the one hand, we now have travel plans, we’ve returned to some of our usual routine (golf, Planet Fitness, Saturday mornings at the beach), and tourists have returned bringing much need revenue to businesses and providing jobs. On the other our Covid cases have now reached and exceeded last year’s record levels, tourists are overwhelming our infrastructure, and we’re spending time worrying about who is vaccinated and who is not – hardly “normal.”  Oh, and our travel plans now include arranging to have a Covid test in order to get back into the U.S.

One high for the week was last Sunday, when we had friends over for dinner – the first dinner guests (aside from our Ohio visitors) in 1 ½ years.  It was a real treat to chat, joke, and share a meal with someone.  Of course even that had a tinge of crapola because it was necessary to agree on some pandemic precautions for the evening.  Sheesh.  Anyway, it was still very pleasant. This is the couple I've mentioned before who own a coffee farm up above us.  He was fraternity brother back in the dark ages, and his wife is an expat Japanese who has been trying unsuccessfully to get back to Tokyo to honor her mother, who died last year. Tough. On the other hand, their house has one section that is a family vacation rental, and the return of tourists has been a great financial relief to them. As I said, abnormal normal.

Such Excitement!

My big house project of the week (!) was to apply some anti-algae spray to parts of the roof.  I routinely do this about once a year to combat dark discoloration of our asphalt shingles, but the online sellers of the product I used to buy from now no longer ship to Hawai’i.  I could do the old trick of sending it to a friend on the mainland and then having them reship it to us, but I recently discovered a different product that is available here at Lowe’s and Home Depot that may do the same thing.  Whoopie! (My threshold for excitement has lowered considerably lately.) My biggest challenge has been to find a 12-hour period without rain so that it has time to work.  We’re still getting almost daily showers – Tuesday it rained all day starting about 11 am, for a total of just over 1 inch.  Anyway, we’ll see if it works as well as the old stuff. Getting up on the roof will also allow me to fix another problem that is common in Hawai’i – we’ve got some nice foliage growing in one of the gutters and it’s time to do some weeding.

Since I haven’t mentioned it in a long time, I should give a brief update on our volcano that caused so much havoc a couple of years ago.  Not a speck of surface lava has been observed since May, and the lava lake that was in Kilauea caldera is completely crusted over. The volcanologists know that this is just a nap, though, because seismic measurements and other sensor data indicate a slow but continuous resupply of lava deep in the plumbing.  It could be years without any significant activity, or it could be only a few weeks.  The best bet, though, is that it *will* happen.  Kilauea volcano has been erupting more or less continuously (in geological time) for over 10k years, and there is no reason to expect it won’t continue for at least that same number into the future.

Well, on that semi-happy note I’ll end and get ready for our usual “normal” Saturday morning activities.  

Stay cool, unburnt, and uncontaminated.