Big Swell, Digital Coquis, Covid Neighbors, Four $eason$

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

7/23/22

Aloha Everyone!

Hope you're surviving the heat.  This summer has certainly been "interesting," both on the mainland and here in Kona.  Our latest tweak from nature occurred last weekend, when a very large swell from storms far to our south (*not* the remnants of Darby, which only gave us a small amount of rain), combined with a

A Wet Wedding Crasher

higher than usual tide, produced some huge surf and great photo ops, which you may have seen on national news.  One was a wave that crashed over the top of a two story condo, and the other was of a wave crashing through a seaside wedding venue.  Spectacular! Dramatic! Awesome! Stunning! And very unrepresentative of what was in fact a rather limited event up and down our coast.  I drove along the shore the next day, expecting to see widespread devastation and destruction and saw...nada, bumpkiss, zilch.  Even at the house of our friends from Oregon which is 20 feet from the ocean there was no evidence that anything had happened.  So, boooorrrringggg.  Other than that, we've had pretty good weather, though it has definitely gotten warmer.  A few nights warranted our bedroom ac, but a few nights were actually quite chilly, getting down to our winter levels (high 60's).

One of my life's poignant moments happened this week when I cleared out about 125 of my 225 frozen coquis. It speaks to my pack-rat nature that I have kept every one of my hand catches over the past 4 years

Bye Bye!

in our freezer -- labeled with the date, location, and description of conquest.  The motivation was a mix of trophy-touting ego and compulsiveness about keeping data -- no doubt left over from my research years. Coquis are quite small, but hundreds of them start to take up a bit too much space.  Before letting them go I tried to see if anybody at the University of Hawai'i might be interested in the collection but I had no luck.  However, I have created a spreadsheet that contains information about each frog so I at least have a digital memory of each one.  In the long run this might be even better, because once I get all the data entered I can easily track things like the number of females and males over time, where the density has been highest, and how the number of catches has changed over the years, etc.  Fascinating, right?

On Thursday Karen and I had dinner at the Four Seasons Resort up north. We used a gift card that our friend gave me for taking care of the cats and for my birthday.  The restaurant was one I hadn't eaten at before called The Beach Tree.  Open air but covered, view of the ocean at sunset, beautiful decor.  Everything you'd expect in a $1700 minimum per night resort.  The food was excellent but absurdly expensive.  We've had meals at least as good for 1/3 the cost during our travels, with service and ambiance to match.  Honestly, without the gift card I wouldn't go there anymore.  Lots of people obviously have the money, though, including a number of families with 2-3 kids, because it was fully booked and the hotel has near 100% occupancy year round. Sigh......

The wife of my coqui-catching partner 2 doors down the street got Covid about a week ago.  She was fully vaxed and boosted, and so far has had a fairly intense but short-lived case.  He has self-tested every few days but so far remains clear.  This ba.5 strain is very contagious, no doubt, but note that although she is somewhat ill, he is not, which is likely due to their vaccination status that has given them protection.  We're still taking precautions, but it's hard to keep it up when few other people are doing so.  Given the odds that we would have mild cases, living semi-normally seems justified to us, thus leading us to go to restaurants, retail stores and even a movie theater last week when we saw "Elvis." We also worked out yesterday at Planet Fitness -- masked, of course.  The facility has very good ventilation and there weren't very many people, so we didn't come at all close to anyone else.  We'll see what happens in a few days. I've stockpiled a fair number of tests and will use them whenever it seems appropriate.  For instance, we had talked with our Covid neighbor last week so I waited a few days then did a test that was fortunately negative.

Our friend who broke her leg was transferred Thursday afternoon to a rehab facility in Hawi, way on the north end of the island.  She'll be doing physical and occupational therapy for at least a couple of weeks before facing the next challenge --- living in her house alone.  She'll definitely need help.  Her plight has been a real wake-up call, not only for her but also for us.

Ok, that's most of what's going on here.  Keep cool and stay away from crazies.