Painting Pau, Back to Splashing & Ball Whacking

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

2/11/23

Aloha Everyone!

As your mainland winter lurches on with its Atmospheric Rivers, Cyclone Bombs, and Polar Vortex's, the weather here has been sunnier and drier, so the pool solar heating system has been able to get the water back up to a reasonable temperature.  We've been able to do our daily workouts several times this week, and after the initial shock when you first get in, it hasn't been too bad. The vog has been much better, too.  The volcano is still spewing, but the trade winds have returned and strengthened enough so that the volcanic gasses are blown farther eastward before the wind turns to the north, and this extra distance keeps it from getting trapped along our coast.  If you want to see the peculiar pattern of our winds, here's a link to an interesting website: https://www.windy.com/19.642/-155.997?19.051,-155.997,8 . 

I finished re-staining the lanai around our upper guest quarters.  It looks much better, though it's one of those projects where the successful outcome is just the disappearance of a problem -- if you didn't see it before you wouldn't notice anything.  Anyway, the project is done and now I'm going to move on to some other painting that is due -- house maintenance never ends.  Oh, one problem that may have taken care of itself is the solar lighting on the umbrella that blew into the pool.  I thought I was going to have to buy a replacement solar panel/battery for it, but it suddenly has begun working again. This isn't a sure thing, though, because after an initial return the lights futzed out for a day, but then came back and so far have stayed ok.  I'm hoping it was simply a matter of drying out slowly and now it is back to normal. I sure like it when things fix themselves.

I may have mentioned that our house is adjacent on one side to an undeveloped strip of land.  This attracts a number of animals and birds, including the endangered Hawaiian owl (the Pueo), and

Picking Breakfast

the endangered Hawaiian Hawk (the Io).  Both are endemic to Hawai'i, and it is quite a treat to see them flying over our neighborhood.  There aren't too many small mammals for them to prey on (remember, there were no mice or rats here until humans arrived), and their primary source of food is other birds.  They've both become rather fond of the introduced doves that are abundant in the area.  The other morning we saw an Io perched on the street power line as we went on our daily walk around the neighborhood.  He was surveying a grand buffet of doves in a driveway where a woman feeds them.  She's managed to attract at least 100 daily freeloaders, much to the delight of the hawk, I'm sure.  In other environments there are natural controls on the numbers of doves, but not here.  The native hawk is actually serving to help control an introduced species in this case.

On Wednesday we attended a memorial service for the husband of a woman who is a member of a women's club that Karen also belongs to.  He was quite a guy, and we both liked him very much.  He was quiet and unassuming, yet he had a remarkable history.  He was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War until his plane crashed and he spent a year in the hospital recovering from burns and other injuries. His flying career was over, of course, but he continued in the Navy as an intelligence officer in the NCIS.  Although he suffered from dementia at the end, he remained pleasant and upbeat.  Sure seems to be a lot of this dying stuff going on lately.......

Karen and I played 18 holes at Makalei on Thursday.  I did ok again, getting a couple of bogeys and a par, and once again I had some rather nice shots, though rarely on the same hole. We did manage to finish all 18 holes, but the last few were a real challenge --when you're a duffer, you work much harder and it takes longer.  My reward afterward was a dip in the pool, a nap, and a beer. We saw only peacocks this time.  The Nenes have migrated to someplace else on the island.  They don't do any long distance migrating like the mainland variety of geese -- they know a good thing when they see it. 

Ok, that's it for this week.  Take care.  Stay warm. Stay safe. Stay happy.