Lava Changing to Snow, Ho, Ho, Ho

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

12/24/22

Aloha to All!  --

How's that snow shovel holding up?  Back ok?  Any frostbite?  Heh, heh.  Actually, the weather reports from the mainland look rather dire, and I shouldn't  joke too much.  Any complaints I make about the weather here are pretty pathetic compared to conditions in many parts of the country.  "Bomb Cyclone" is a new term for my vocabulary. But of course everyone focuses on their own particular circumstance and I'm no exception, so here goes my whimpering anyway.

Last weekend we had a dandy of a weather front come through, with rain and wind continuing on Sunday

Yes, that's a volcano

and Monday.  This was the storm that caused an Hawaiian Airlines flight coming into Honolulu to have such a hard time, with people bouncing off the ceiling and a number of serious injuries.  The storm came in from the west -- a Kona (leeward) front -- so our side of the island took the brunt.  Here at our house we had some rather scary wind gusts and even some lightning and thunder, a rare thing for us.  It dumped a total of 5" of rain according to our garden rain gauge.  All that moisture fell as snow on our two 13k foot-tall volcanoes, and we have been treated to the sight of both of them with snow caps this week.  Yes, it will be a white Christmas in Kona (sort of).  Note, a couple of weeks ago lava was flowing down the side of Mauna Loa, and this week it was dusted with snow!

My eye exam last Saturday went fine and I skipped having an injection.  I'll take that as a nice Christmas present.  I'll return in 6 weeks, sooner if things go south, but for now both my eyeball and I are happy. 

This week has been high-level socializing for us.  Thursday we had our neighbors over for barbecued ribs, just to contrast with all the usual Christmas fare.  Yesterday we went to an annual get-together sponsored by a women's organization Karen belongs to -- the first time since BC (Before Covid) that it has actually happened. And tomorrow we're going for Christmas dinner at another neighbor's house.  Whew! I'm going to do a covid test today and another one around Tuesday or Wednesday just to see if all that close contact hasn't spread more than Christmas cheer. By the way, the test I did last Saturday was negative, which means covid didn't hitchhike back home from the mainland with us.

We went to Planet Fitness *twice* this week, Sunday and Wednesday. This is partially in lieu of playing golf, which we hope to get back to next week. It didn't seem any more agreeable to my muscles the second time than the first. 

Ok, got to get ready for Santa.  We'll do a day-before-Christmas beach breakfast picnic and then "chill" (pardon the expression) out for the rest of the day.  Take care.  Stay safe. Merry Christmas!!!

In From The Cold, Lava Pau for Now

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

12/15/22

Aloha Everybody  --

We got home on Tuesday from our quick California trip.  Later today I'm going to take a Covid test, but so far I think we're going to be ok, even though we were around a lot of unmasked people.  It was a fun trip, except that for us it was c-o-l-d (highs in the low 60's). Most of the time it was sunny, which helped, but when we went to Santa Barbara it rained 3 inches and turned even colder.  There were "sun breaks" and during those we enjoyed the very pretty area around Santa Barbara, including our friends' house, which sits above the city and has a great view when it's clear.  We really enjoyed staying in downtown LA, which we found safe, clean, and architecturally dazzling, particularly the Biltmore Hotel, where we stayed, the Broad Museum, the new Disney Concert Hall, and many old Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings built during LA's heyday. We spent one night in nearby Pasadena and toured the historic Gamble House (as in Proctor & Gamble), a 1908 gem of Craftsman style.  As much as we enjoyed the trip, it is very good to be home and get warm again.

Now

While we were gone our two erupting volcanoes also decided to take a vacation and have now shut off completely.  Kilauea's lava lake crusted over just a few days after the fissure eruption of Mauna Loa suddenly stopped.  Volcanologists aren't detecting any seismic activity under either one that would indicate a resumption of activity, so for now we're a lava-free zone.  The two volcanoes tap into the same deep magma source, but they have separate plumbing.  The best guess of the volcanologists is that Mauna Loa's

Then

expansion during its eruption somehow pinched off the route of magma rising to the summit of Kilauea.  The good news is that the side vent lava from Mauna Loa stopped about 1.7 miles from Saddle Road, so the commuters and truck traffic can continue.  A nice Christmas present from Pele.

 We're now a little behind in our holiday prep.  Hopefully we'll get some cards and letters out this weekend, and we'd like to put up a few more decorations. Busy, busy, busy.

Last week while we were in Santa Barbara we got some bad news from Ohio. A very good friend died suddenly and unexpectedly.  He was recovering from some minor surgery and had an infection that may have contributed, but no one knows for sure at this time.  His wife died from cancer about a year ago, and although he was devastated from that, he seemed to be upbeat and looking forward to a January trip to Israel.  He had just finished rebuilding his greenhouse and was doing other projects that kept him active and involved.  A real shame, and he will be sorely missed.

Later this morning I will be seeing my eye doctor.  I'm not sure how this will go.  My eyesight in both eyes went downhill while we were on the mainland, which I think is due to the cold weather.  As soon as the temperature drops to about 65d my eyes start watering and my nose runs -- constantly.  It could be that my eyes got really dried out from all that crying.  I'll let you know next week.

Ok, off the market and to our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care.  Stay warm and be good so Santa will be generous.

Living with Lava, Tired of Turkey

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

12/3/22

Aloha All  -- 

Who's Got the Marshmallows?

Well, the big news here this week, of course, has been the eruption of Mauna Loa that began last Sunday night and has continued all week, with some interesting developments along the way.  Another of our volcanoes, Kilauea, has continued its 14-month summit lava lake activity, so at the moment we have the distinction of being an island with two simultaneous eruptions going on. Lotsa lava!  Now, if we can just get Hualalai  to go off also, we'll have a trifecta!  (I shouldn't say that -- it's the volcano we live on and overdue for an eruption...)

Mauna Loa had been rumbling since September, when the usual 10-15 earthquakes per day increased to 40-50.  Even so, the volcanologists didn't think it was about to erupt.  Here's the official update the morning of the eruption last Sunday: "Mauna Loa is not erupting and there are no signs of an imminent eruption at this time. Monitoring data show no significant changes within the past 24 hours. Mauna Loa continues to be in a state of heightened unrest as indicated by increased earthquake activity and inflation of the summit. The current unrest is most likely being driven by renewed input of magma 2–5 miles (3–8 km) beneath Mauna Loa’s summit."  

They were likely embarassed, then, when lava started spewing in the summit caldera about 11:30 p.m, that night. Oops.  However, Mauna Loa is a very active volcano that has erupted over 30 times since 1843, the first well-documented eruption (that's an average of once every 5 years), so nobody was surprised that it did so again.  In fact, the last time was in 1984, so we were kind of overdue.  I'm sure the volcanologists are carefully looking at how they misjudged the timing and what signs they missed.

Pretty Awesome!

The action at the summit was over in just a couple of days, and the eruption has continued from fissures further down slope, along what's called the Northeast Rift Zone. This shift has been common to about half of Mauna Loa's eruptions. Rift zones are a common feature of shield volcanoes and are natural lines of weakness that form as the volcano grows and settles.  The fissure eruptions have produced some spectacular fountains of lava, sometimes reaching 200 ft. They are in a rather remote area, however, and the best views have come from helicopter flyovers and from a web cam the volcanologists quickly set up.  The lava is flowing to the northeast, away from us, and there is almost no chance it will directly impact us.  Nor are there any communities in the path of the lava, unlike when Kilauea's rift zone eruption of a few years ago took out quite a few houses down south. However, it is looking increasingly likely that lava will cut Saddle Road, a major highway connecting Hilo and Kona.  This will be a major disruption, because many people live on the Hilo side and commute to the Kona side.  Also, a unique problem is that the only landfill on our island is on the Kona side, so trucks have been using the Saddle Road to haul all of the Hilo side trash to the landfill.  Commuters and truck traffic will have to use longer and more difficult routes.  The lava is currently about 4 miles from the highway and has slowed as it reached a more level area.  It could take a week before it cuts the road, but it seems inevitable if the eruption keeps going.

Being the lava enthusiasts that we are, on Thursday night we drove up north and went along Saddle Road to several spots where you could see the lava pretty clearly.  With binoculars we could even see lava fountaining from the most active fissure.  Pretty impressive, and we can add to our life achievement lists two firsts: seeing in person an eruption from Mauna Loa, and seeing lava fountaining in person.

Living with lava for the past 20+ years has taught us to take the dire, shrill, and hey-look-at-this -we're-all-going-to-die-isn't-this-terrible news reporting with a very large dose of "ho-hum."  We'll see what the reality is and deal with it -- yes, there will be vog (but none now), and yes, there will be destruction and disruption (but likely less than Kilauea's last rift eruption).  In the meantime, it seems best to just enjoy the educational entertainment it is providing, the recreational opportunities (lava tube hiking), and the money it's bringing to the island (thousands of tourists spending lots of it). 

In non-volcano news, Karen and I worked out at Planet Fitness on Sunday, trying to do penance for our Thanksgiving over-indulgence.  We had planned to also play golf on Thursday, but the course had to close for the day because their new liability insurance hadn't become effective.  They thought the change would be seamless, but some unexpected legal snafu came up that couldn't be quickly fixed.  Since we're leaving for CA next week, it may be awhile before I can chase a little white ball again. Darn.  We may miss the Nene babies when they make their debut.  We could have played somewhere else, but I'm kind of committed to Makalei and other courses don't interest me much. (Note, that should make clear my lack of seriousness about the game.)

We also managed to finally finish off our turkey.  Even though we bought a small 13-pounder, it has taken a week of lunches and dinners, plus a plate to take to our bachelor next door neighbor, plus freezing a fair amount, to do it justice.  Talk about bang for your buck!  I confess that about mid-week we took a break and barbecued a steak.  I think I've had enough turkey to last another year.  Not sure about steak, however,

We managed to get up more Christmas decorations than I thought we would before our trip, including setting up our (artificial) Christmas tree.  I have a few lights on the outside, and all in all it looks credibly festive.  

Ok, off one more time before our trip to run some errands and to enjoy our beach picnic breakfast.  Bundle up, keep smiling, stay healthy.

Lung Results, Turkey Day, Spring Travel Plans

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

11/26/22

Aloha Everybody  --

Thanksgiving Snow

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.  Ours was quiet but very nice.  We decided to go traditional and have a turkey, though this time it was a fresh one rather than frozen.  Despite the dire predictions of shortages and high prices, turkeys were actually fairly plentiful here and not all that expensive.  Our guests were technically "homeless" -- earlier in the week my old fraternity brother and his wife had closed on the sale of their coffee farm.  They're now looking for a more physically friendly place that will require much less work.  Right now there isn't a lot for sale, so this may take some time.  Fortunately, their deal with the buyer allows them to stay until spring.

I got the results of my chest ct and it is mostly good news.  The nodules that were spotted 5 years ago haven't changed in size, so they are almost certainly not cancerous.  Nor were there any new nodules. That was the information I wanted, a comparison to the earlier results.  All isn't perfect, however. My emphysema has progressed nicely, from "mild-to-moderate" to "moderate-to-severe."  No oxygen tank just yet -- it's a matter of how fast and far it will progress from here on.  When I was trying to quit smoking 28 years ago after being addicted for 40+ years, the main emphasis of the campaign to get people to quit was that your cancer risk will drop.  There were also other points, like the irresponsibility of second hand smoke, and the overall health benefits of stopping.  All correct.  However, not mentioned was that for a large number of smokers (about 15-20%, rising to about 50% after age 45) the non-cancerous damage already done to your lungs would continue to grow over time in the form of emphysema, which is relentlessly progressive. -- it might be slowed by quitting but not stopped or reversed.  Although there's no cure, there are a number of ways of managing the condition, from breathing exercises to inhalers.  Something more to look forward to....

On a more pleasant note, this week I finished making hotel reservations for our spring trip to France and Italy.  They can all be canceled in case our plans change.  In making them I came across a number of hotels that have a new twist on their cancellation deadlines.  The best deal is if you pay in advance, like always, and this isn't refundable for any reason.  For a higher room rate you can maintain flexibility with the ability to cancel up to a few days in advance, that's also been common in the past.  But this time I found that in some cases the cancellation deadline was a week to a month ahead of time, and a few hotels had options of rates for a couple of different deadlines.  I'm sympathetic to smaller hotels that suffer from late cancellations, but in some cases their requirement was a month out to get a refund.  I booked somewhere else.

I'm going to try to get some Christmas decorations up this weekend, but we may wait for the heavy-duty stuff until we get back from California.  It will depend on how much spare time we have. Getting ready for this short trip isn't as demanding as preparing for longer ones, so we'll see how it goes. 

Ok, off to market and beach breakfast.  Take care, keep smiling, and bundle up.

 

Fixing Solar Leaks, Getting Nuked & Shot, Pumping & Putting

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

11/19/22

Aloha All  --

This is the week before Thanksgiving and the beginning of the season of my discombobulation.  Actually it started for me before Halloween when the Christmas decorations were first displayed in the big box stores and with the arrival at Lowe's of the first mainland Christmas trees yesterday. The holidays are a mixed bag for me -- I like the warm fuzzies and all, but there's always been something unsettling and a little depressing about this time of year for me, also.  Regardless of my party-pooper attitude, I do hope you have a good Thanksgiving next week.

I started and ended the week with medical procedures, something that seems to be happening more and more these days.  Last Saturday was my visit to the eye doctor, and although I did have an injection, my right retina is doing much better and this was more to head off a relapse.  My doc is really good at jabbing needles in people's eyeballs, and it went very well, with only a brief and moderate discomfort from the injection and little aftereffects later.  This should hold me for at least a couple of months, maybe longer.  Then on Thursday I got a call from the hacked radiology clinic saying they were back online and were able to schedule my chest ct for Friday! Wow, this was much sooner that I expected given the backlog they must have had.  So I was nuked yesterday morning and I will pick up the report later today. I'll let you know the outcome next week.

Badbadbad

My big house project this week was repairing a couple of leaks that I discovered in our solar system that produces hot water for our pool.  As is often the case when you do your own house repairs, you discover that the original installation was -- to put it charitably -- not exactly the best job.  I've already had to work on this system to replace pipe and fittings that were the wrong kind and failed prematurely.  The panels themselves are ok, it's the stuff the installers added that was the problem.  I think it was either a matter of trying to save money, or that the right materials weren't available.  Anyway,  fixing the latest problems required cutting out two

Much mo' betta!

sections and replacing them with more durable parts that should have been used in the first place.  There are several more spots where this might have to been done also, but I'll wait.  The job required getting up on the roof several times, and re-learning how to glue ABS pipe and fittings.  So far it looks like I succeeded, kind of a Geezer macho high.

I mentioned last week my recent tendency to either play golf once a week or go to the gym, but not both.  Well, on Sunday Karen wanted to go the the gym and then on Thursday I also played golf with her.  Whew!  Note, this is in the context of my physical exertion of fixing the solar system.  I'm paying for this wanton exhibition of the geezer syndrome "brain-is-willing-but-the-body-says-WTF?!" with sore muscles, stiff joints, and extra naps.

Ok.  Off to market and beach.  Note -- no snow shoveling. Stay well.

The "C" Word, Spring Travel Plans, Long Johns

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

11/12/22

Aloha Guys  --

Neighbor's Tree Bling

Well, I see the mainland is getting a teensy preview of winter and that four letter word that begins with "s" and ends with "w.'  Here it got down to a frigid 65 degrees on Thursday night.  To avoid frostbite, I got out my sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt for the first few hours after I got up Friday morning.  How about you?   

On Wednesday I got the results of the biopsies on the skin growths I had cut off.  The one on my arm is just some kind of pre-cancer, but the one on my leg is a squamous cell carcinoma.  Fortunately we caught it early and the initial treatment is exactly what we did -- removal plus cauterization and scraping. If it comes back again I'll have Mohs surgery to get all the nasty cancer cells.  Gee, this getting older is such fun!  On a more positive medical note, today I'll see my retina doctor, and even if I have to have a shot, this has been a long time (3 months!) since the last one.  I don't think my vision in the bad eye has changed all that much, but the real indicator is the laser scan and it will be interesting to find out what it shows in the way of oozing.  Maybe I can go one more month, another new record!

I mentioned last week that we have made plans for a short trip to LA in early December.  This week we also made flight arrangements for a trip next spring to southern France and northern/central Italy.  These are two of our favorite countries and we've visited both of them a number of times over the years.  But it has been a long time since we were in either one and we're eager to return. Our plan is to fly into Marseilles and return from Rome.  Most of the time will be in northern and central Italy, but the first week will be in Provence and the area of France known as the Haut Var. We have spent a fair amount of time there, as well as along the French Riviera, but it is such a fabulous place we don't mind seeing (and tasting) it again.  Also, we know an expat living in Nimes that we may be able to get together with, and another in Menton, near Monte Carlo.  In Italy we'll start in the northwest area called Piemonte, around Turin and to the west where the Alps separate France and Italy.  We'll spend a few days  in Genoa,  then return to Tuscany and Umbria, staying in the towns of Voltara, Assisi, and Orvieto.  One goal near the end of the trip is to visit the festival of  Le Infiorate in the village of Spello, where each year the main street is carpeted with flowers arranged by local artists.  This is a trip entirely on our own and our plan is to travel mostly by car.  I'm making the reservations at hotels and mapping out the exact itinerary, and Karen has researched and made the flight arrangements and the car rental.  Both of us spend a lot of time doing this, but as I've said before, the effort is very educational and enjoyable.  In my case, I read guidebooks and research the internet to find out where we might want to go and what the attractions are, and within a specific town, what the accommodations are like, where they are located, and what other people have thought of them, including guidebook authors.  These days important issues have become things like parking, nearby transportation, and whether the hotel has an elevator.  By the time I'm done, I have really learned a lot, not only about the places on our itinerary, but also about the places I've rejected. You'll note I haven't mentioned destinations like Milan, Florence, Venice, Siena, Cinque Terre, etc.  This is because we've stayed in all of them on previous trips, so we've opted to focus on other places this time.

The radiology clinic that I mentioned last week is still closed down.  They've now admitted they were hacked but still haven't given any details about the nature of the problems nor when they might be resolved.  Seriously frustrating.  I suspect a ransomware attack, but if the clinic had been following best-practices regarding security and back-up, they would be recovered by now.  Given that ransom attacks aren't new, and that measures exist to both prevent them and mitigate their damage, it is simply no excuse to just blame the bad guys. 

On Thursday I went to Planet Fitness and Karen played golf.  Note that I'm on the alternate-week plan as far as the gym and golf are concerned.  No reason to overdo it, I figure.

I won't say anything about the election results, other than the observation that the overall outcome was mixed enough to make it a Rorschach test -- you can pretty much spin the outcome any way you want.  I have my preferred spin, of course, as I'm sure you do.

Off to market, beach breakfast, then to my eyeball exam.  Take care, stay safe, well, and warm.

Coffee Festival, A Golf Par"ish," Travel Plans, Clinic Problems

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

11/5/22

Aloha Everyone  --

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

No big house projects this week, just the usual whacking, trimming, and pest control chores.  Living in a sub-tropical climate is very pleasant for humans, but it also is ideal for other critters, too.  Co-existence requires routine control measures to keep the less desirable ones in check.  For instance, once a month or so I use an insecticide around the outside perimeter of the house to reduce the ant/cockroach/centipede/termite/mosquito problem that would otherwise develop.  We try to be reasonably environmentally conscious about this, but doing nothing would be a very bad idea.

This week is the annual Kona Coffee festival, which goes back to 1970.  It's a pretty big deal, with parades, a beauty contest, and a coffee cupping competition.  One event we've gone to in the past is held in the little artist's village near us named Holualoa.  Different coffee growers pair up with art shops and you can walk the main street tasting coffee and admiring the art.  We haven't gone for a few years, so we may stop by.  I've learned to go easy on the coffee, though.

Karen and I dropped off our ballots this week.  For us this a pretty easy task -- Hawai'i allows mail-in voting, as well as a few secure drop-boxes.  One of the boxes is at the Civic Center, right on the way to Costco, so it was a quick stop.  There aren't any big controversial issues this time, and the integrity of the voting procedure is very tight.  One of the candidates for governor, Josh Green, is a physician from our island and did a good job during the pandemic as Lieutenant Governor, so he's our favorite. He's also a rarity these days -- someone near the center. Otherwise the races are very local and thankfully focus more on competence and values that on identity politics.

I played golf this week with Karen and her usual golf buddy.  After my stellar performance on my last outing I was concerned I'd really blow it this time.  Actually, all three of us did pretty well, though my main moment of glory was a par on one hole -- actually it was par"ish" because I redid one stroke, which is legal under our group's rules.  I also got a couple of bogies, and most of the time played reasonably well.  The weather was gorgeous until the very end -- sunny and clear, pleasantly cool at that elevation.  Karen got a real par, and her friend got a birdie.  We finished all 18 holes and that effort made my usual afternoon beer taste extra good.

This week we finalized arrangements for a short trip to Los Angeles in December.  We're going to stay most of the time in downtown LA, something we've never done before.  It has a lot to offer there in terms of art deco architecture, museums, and some highly rated restaurants.  We'll then spend a couple of days visiting an old grad school friend who lives in Santa Barbara before returning home.  This is a whirlwind trip for us -- only about 10 days.  Besides being fun, we're going in part to kick up our airline miles to put us into a higher perk category for next year.  And these days you need all the perks you can get to make flying tolerable.

Finally, an illustration of the somewhat iffy state of our health care here is the sudden shutdown of one of the major clinics that does CTs, X-Rays, etc. About two weeks ago their computer systems that hold patient records and coordinate appointments crashed and still hasn't been restored.  I was supposed to have a chest CT as you may recall, but that is on hold for now.  I could go to the local hospital for the scan, but one of the main reasons for doing it is to compare the current results to the past scans I've had to track any changes, like the progression of my emphysema.  All those past records are with the closed clinic.  The organization has been suspiciously tight-lipped about what exactly happened and why it is taking so long to get the system restored.  Surely a medical facility with health information about thousands of people would have had a backup that would allow them to get back online almost immediately.  My geeky background leads me to suspect the organization was negligent either in securing the information or safeguarding it and they're scrambling to cover their asses from the legal fallout.  I'll keep you posted on this one.

Ok, off to market and the beach for breakfast.  Take care, vote while it still counts.