Week of 3's, 'Par'ty, Here Comes $anta

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

11/25/23

 

Aloha Ohana ---

 

Happy Thanksgiving!  Hope you had a good one.  Ours was very quiet -- just the two of us and a very large hunk of cow instead of turkey. We cooked a prime rib roast we bought on sale earlier in the year and had frozen for a special occasion.  Very, very tasty.  We enjoyed it very much, but I doubt the cow had the same experience.

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of my season of ambivalence and angst, as you know from my comments during previous holiday seasons.  To kick off this season of love, charity, and compassion, we have the glaringly contradictory phenomenon of Black Friday, a spectacle of consumerism and commercialism that boggles the mind.  Of course, the selling of Christmas began about the time of Halloween, with rather interesting side-by-side displays of ghouls and Santas in the big box stores as early as mid-October!  It's ok.  I'll be alright.  Don't worry....I'll get through it. Maybe.

 

This was a week of 3's, and possibly it was my high-water mark for puzzle solving and golfing.  First, after my Wordle-in-one-guess two weeks ago, this week I had three days in a row of solving it in 2 guesses!  However, that string was followed by 4's and 5's and even a 6.  The other "3" phenomenon happened when Karen and I played golf on Wednesday -- I got three pars in a row!  This represented 11 consecutive good shots, something of a miracle for me. And like what happened with Wordle, the rest of the game was mediocre to lousy.   Consistency is not my strong suit, obviously.

It was a beautiful day on the Makalei course, and we saw about 10 pairs of Nenes, plus the usual resident peacocks.  Normally we also see several flocks of turkeys as well as peacocks, but this time we didn't see a single one. It occurred to me that this was the day before Thanksgiving and their absence may be a sign

Groundskeepers on Break

that they are smarter than they look and were in hiding so as to avoid being the main dish in Thursday's dinners.  On the other hand, it could indicate they are as dumb as they look and had already been axed. Which is the better explanation will be determined by whether we see them next time.  Stay tuned. Another interesting thing at the course was a spot where they were using goats and sheep to mow down the weeds. This area was very rocky and uneven making it impossible to use machines for the work, so they brought in the browsers.  A temporary electric enclosure keeps the crew in place and they happily chow down. Of course, they are also fertilizing the weeds so this may not be quite the benefit it seems.

My cabling project is progressing.  Yesterday I began running the cables (two network cables plus a new coaxial cable) from the garage the the main house.  This went pretty well, considering it required a couple of trips into the garage attic and some hot-yoga positions to feed the cable through the holes I drilled.  The next step is to feed the cables across the breezeway that separates the garage from the main house.  This involves fishing them through a pre-existing conduit under the raised floor of the breezeway to the crawlspace under the main house. The really enjoyable part will be when I have the cables in place and then I will put on the connectors.  This is something I've never done before, but my neighbor down the street has.  Between his coaching and loaning me the tools, and the excellent online videos that are available on how to do it, I should be able to master this new skill.  I'm really looking forward to the challenge.

Today and tomorrow I'll start putting up our Christmas decorations. Maybe this will get me more in the holiday mood....

That's it.  Stay warm and well.  Off to the beach.