Driveway Paint, Thick Air Golf

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

5/6/23

 

Aloha Everyone!

 

I can't believe it's May already.  What happened to April?  And last year?  And the last several decades?

 

This was a fairly productive week here.  On Tuesday my handyman and I repainted our driveway starting

Paint Job!

at 8 am to get it done early so that it could dry before any rain could ruin it.  It turned out to be a mostly sunny day, so our timing was perfect.  Monday was rainy for part of the day and I was getting worried.  But Tuesday morning was clear and the forecast (usually wrong) was for dry conditions.  I quickly mopped up the bird poop that had accumulated since I did the power-washing last week, and used my leaf blower to sweep off leaves and other debris.  The bird poop is particularly annoying -- we have a power line that runs right above the driveway all the way to the garage and birds love to sit on it and do their business.  Also, there is a nest of Mynah birds in one of our palm trees at top

Poop on the Paint Job

of the driveway, and Tuesday morning mom and pop must have been suffering from eating some bad berries, because they had left a fairly sizeable area of disgusting poop that I had to clean up before the painting.  Anyway, all went well and it looks really nice.  Of course, within hours new splattos of poop appeared.  Sigh....

 

I also managed to get some heavy monthly pruning done.  Some of this is great exercise using a long pole-pruner horizontally from our lanai.  Talk about a core workout!  The target was a vigorous bush/tree called podocarpus.  It looks a little like an evergreen tree, and it will grow to 40-50 ft. if not pruned back.  It is a very good tree for screening views of neighbors and other than pruning it requires almost no care.  It is drought resistant and insects don't like it.  It does shed needles like pine needles, but other than that it is a very useful and attractive tree.  And gives me a good workout.

 

On Thursday we played golf at Makalei and I did pretty good this time, including *two* pars and one bogey. All three of us noticed that our drives didn't go as far this week, which we attributed to the face-saving explanation that the air was extra thick because of all the rain lately.  Indeed, we skipped one hole because it started raining pretty hard, but the next one was ok so we kept playing for a total of 15 holes. There are two natural stopping points on the Makalei course.  The 11th hole is back down by the parking lot and the club house, so it would be easy to stop there and call it a day.  Our fellow player did just that but Karen and I kept going.  The twelfth hole starts back up the mountain again but after the 16th there is a junction on the cart path.  One way continues up to #17 and 18, and the other is a fast track down to the parking lot.  We are usually pooped by that time and choose the "down" direction.  Given how many times I have to hit that #@$#%% ball, I don't feel bad at all to call it quits early.

Speaking of rain, late Thursday afternoon after we got home from golf, there was a brief downpour that was so heavy it was almost scary.  Our over-sized gutters overflowed, as did the pool and the drain across the front of our garage door.  In about 20-30 minutes we received 2.2," an amount we've gotten before but over a much longer period.  As is often the case here, this was a very local phenomenon -- a few miles north or south of us got much less.  In the last two weeks we have had about 6.5" of rain, way more than our normal amount.

Karen started Physical Therapy this week for her hip pain. The therapist's assessment concurred with the doctor's -- not a bone problem but rather irritation of the muscles and ligaments.  She'll go twice a week until we leave on our trip, and she has exercises to do at home that should help. The therapist also advised against using a couple of the machines at Planet Fitness, which she thinks might make matters worse because of the specific ways they put pressure on the joints and muscles.  Interesting.  Note, this advice only applies to people with a problem to begin with --- she wasn't saying that the machines caused the problem in the first place.

Our pre-cleaning for our trip got a boost this week because Karen hosted a book discussion group at our house.  Naturally this called for a flurry of dusting, vacuuming, washing, polishing, etc.  I hope the women attending were suitably awed by my driveway efforts, but Karen didn't report any compliments.  

Ok, that's about it for this week.  Stay safe, dry, and healthy.