[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.
3/25/26
Aloha Ohana!
We don't have big changes of seasons in Hawai'i. Some people who move here from the mainland
miss this. Not me. That's not to say everything is perfectly constant. For example, there are several signs that it's time to say it's "Spring." One sign is that the Plumeria trees, which lose their leaves during the "Winter," begin to bloom again while the branches are still bare. This produces what I call "snowball bloom," though some of the trees have blossoms that are shades of red and yellow. It is a spectacular, fragrant treat when we do our morning walks in the neighborhood. Branches that overhang the street are fair game for collecting blossoms for small flower arrangements that we deploy in our house.
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| Gotta Love It |
Another sign is the exodus of our winter visitors from the North West -- Humpback Whales and Snowbirds. The whales go back to their summer home waters off Alaska, and the snowbirds migrate back to various home destinations along the west coast, with a few returning to the Midwest and East. This makes the next few months a sweet spot for living in Hawai'i -- the lull between summer and winter tourist seasons, when we enjoy less traffic and better stocked shelves in the grocery stores.
Besides enjoying "Spring" this week, we also went to a performance by Jim Brickman, a fabulous piantist/vocalist who is one of our favorites. He was touring the islands and our theater in Waimea booked him for a couple of shows last Sunday. A real treat. Tomorrow the same theater is presenting a traveling circus troupe from Australia called Human 2.0 that is kind of like a mini-Cirque du Soleil. Waimea is a 40-mile drive from home, and normally we don't like to do that at night. However. both of these are/were during the afternoon, so we jumped at the chance to attend.
We are now returning to our travel plans for late summer. You may recall that we booked an Alaskan cruise in August on a small ship (80 passenger) operated by the same company that does the Mississippi River cruise that we enjoyed last year. Now we're booking airline tickets, hotels, etc. We've decided to extend this trip by flying to Denver at the end of the cruise and taking the scenic train from there to Glenwood Springs, about a 5-hour trip through the Rockies. Glenwood Springs is an historic hot springs resort town that should be fun to visit. And of course, I'm a real train fan, particularly one that goes through mountains. We'll spend some time before and after the train trip in Denver to see friends and relatives.
Not much to report in Geezer Gazette news. I saw my retina doc on Tuesday -- same old same old. Yesterday I saw my cardiologist for the first time since he referred me for an ablation. All good at the moment. My ECG was, in his words, "about as normal as it gets." The plan is to wait until June, 5 months out from the ablation, and then do a 2-week monitoring session with a paste-on device that measures heart activity 24/7 and produces a very detailed report, much more thorough than my FitBit can do. If that looks good, then I might be able to stop my blood-thinner medication. That would be very welcome. Even though I'm on a very low dose, my forearms look like the hide of a pinto horse and I bleed if I touch my skin with a feather.
Ok folks. It seems like we're living at a time when insanity, narcissism and sociopathy are running amok, but surely there will be a day of reckoning, right? Take care. Carpe Vitam.
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