'Twas the Week Before Christmas

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

12/23/23

 

Mele Kalikimaka!  ---

 

It's hard to believe that Christmas is just TWO days away!  I guess I'm ready, and I've been trying hard to get into the spirit of things -- we have lights up inside and outside, the tree is decorated and we've been lighting it each night during dinner and throughout the evening, our Christmas cards are mailed, we've been to several festive events and get-togethers with friends, etc.  I've noted that each year we send fewer cards, partly because this tradition has been fading universally, and partly because of the sad fact that fewer on our mailing list are still upright.  Also, we've taken to sending Season's Greetings by email, a convenient, cheap, but less expressive way of keeping in touch. 

On Sunday we attended a presentation by the Kona Choral Society of Handel's Messiah -- well, the part that focuses on the birth.  It was very well done and featured four soloists, three of whom were exceptionally good.  We know a couple of people in the chorus, including the wife of my old fraternity brother who lives here now.  In fact, we had a delightful dinner with them on Wednesday in their new house that replaces the coffee farm they sold this year.  On Monday we went to a holiday party hosted by the women's organization that Karen belongs to -- one of the fun things they did was to stick a famous name on each person's back and the person had to guess the name by asking any of the other attendees three yes/no questions.  I was Tom Cruise..... Last night we hosted dinner for two of our Ohio friends who are here on their yearly visit to their daughter, a teacher at a private school up north in Waimea.  They are now living in Wisconsin, and have shown the wisdom of their years by coming here during the winter.  It was a real treat to catch up with the three of them, and certainly appropriate to the season. Whew! I'm sure that this much socializing is routine for many people, but for us it is way more than normal.

 

Karen and I have decided to forgo personal gifts this year (except for her new Iphone), and instead we've designated a few items for both of us as Christmas presents -- a new kitchen scale, a portable carpet cleaner, and an electric blanket (!).  Jingle bells!

Early in the week we received our Kenya e-visas (we already have them for Ethiopia).  This eliminates one more obstacle to our trip.  Now all I need is for the Circuit Court Judge to let me out of being on the Grand Jury, something I won't find out until January 5th.  Cutting it a little close, I'd say.

On Wednesday Karen and I played nine holes of "aqua-golf" at Makalei.  It started out sunny, but by the

Where's the Hole?!

fourth hole it began misting, and by the seventh it was raining at a pretty good rate.  We slogged through the ninth hole and then aborted.  Too bad, because although I started off poorly, I was doing much better around the time it started to rain, including one bogey and some satisfyingly good shots.  After the rain started the peacocks ran for cover, but before that we saw quite a few, and also saw our first baby Nene of the season.  Cute little guy!  Actually, our Kona weather has been kind of sucky lately -- night temps have dropped to a frigid 62d and it has been cloudy and rainy parts of most days.  This resulted in a rare monthly electric bill that exceeded our maintenance charge because our pv panels just couldn't cover our usage. It was paid from our surplus credit, but it wiped out our reserves.  Because of the lack of sun and the cold nights, our pool temp has fallen below our wimpy geezer threshold, so we haven't been in for several days this past week.  Oh, the hardships of winter!!!!!

 

Our RSV vaccinations gave neither of us hardly any problems at all, much less than our Covid updates and flu shots. I had a *very* slight sore arm for about a day, but otherwise felt fine. It's a bit of a relief for me to have the extra protection, especially prior to an international trip.

 

Ok, we're off for our usual stop at Farmer's Market and then a beach picnic breakfast.  Take care. Stay warm and healthy.  Merry Christmas!

 

Cologuard Results, Fiber Installed, "RSVPlease"

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

12/16/23

 

Aloha Family ---

 

I finally got the results of my Cologuard test this week, and my poop passed with flying colors! In the report's words,  "Cologuard did not find blood or abnormal DNA in your sample...You're unlikely to have colon cancer...The chance that a person with a negative Cologuard test has a colorectal cancer is less than 1 in 1500 (negative predictive value >99.9%) or has an advanced adenoma is less than 5.3% (negative predictive value 94.7%)."  Whoopee!  Next test is recommended in three years.  If anything was missed this time around, two negatives would be very, very unlikely.

 

We got our Hawaiian Tel fiber internet service installed this week in a two-step process.  On Monday a crew showed up to run the cable from the street to the box on the side of our garage where the old land

line used to be.  There were actually three old lines that were legacies from the olden days of wired phones.  They removed those and coiled up a bunch of the new cable in the box.  The fiber optic cable is remarkably thin and light weight.  I had the guys strip back the insulation to reveal the actual information-carrying core -- a tiny hair-thin strand of clear plastic.  Incredible.  On Thursday another guy arrived to install the actual equipment and activate the line.  Because of my advanced planning this took less than an hour and went very, very smoothly.  The main piece of the setup is a small white box about the size of a business letter and as thick as a paperback book.  The fiber light signal goes in and digital info comes out, thanks to many little digi-fairies inside.  From there the signal runs to our router and is distributed throughout the house.  I simply unplugged my Spectrum cable service from the router and plugged in my CAT6 to the new equipment in the garage, and in about 30 seconds I had made the switch, getting 4x the speed for less money.  Very happy at the moment.  Yesterday I called to cancel my Spectrum internet service.  They immediately offered to match the Hawaiian Telcom price and increase my speed, but I told them they were a day late -- I already made the switch.  They did, however, let me keep my mobile phone plan, so I'm I'm definitely a happy camper.

No golf this week but we did manage to go to the driving range and practice putting green on Thursday

Santa's Outrigger Comes to Town

after the cable installation.  These are rather different than at most courses, I'm sure.  The practice areas at Makalei are halfway up the mountain, so you have to have a cart.  The driving range is down slope with a fantastic view of the ocean, framed by tall trees.  In other words, it's a nice outing even if you don't play a round.  We had beautiful clear weather, but honking wind.  Like St. Andrews, but 40 degrees warmer and no rain.  I did pretty good, certainly much better than last week when I couldn't seem to hit the ball.  Hopefully some of this will carry over to the next time I play, probably next week.  

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the latest challenge to fulfilling my bucket list visit to Ethiopia.  The judge rejected my written request to be excused!  I got a call on Wednesday telling me the news, and that I must report on January 5th (7 days before we're scheduled to leave) "for the drawing of names for the upcoming Grand Jury."  I'm hoping that somewhere along the line I'll be able to get excused on the grounds of pre-aranged travel that will be a financial hardship to cancel.  Maybe my name won't even get drawn, which would be great.  One positive to this:  I will get paid $30!!

Finally, later this morning Karen and I will get our RSV vaccinations.  I'm particularly motivated to get this because of my Emphysema, which would make any respiratory problems much worse.  It's likely I'll have a similar reaction to this vaccine as I have to others, hopefully only lasting a few days.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Ok, that's it for this week. Take care.  Beware of false moral equivalencies.  Stay warm.

Switch to Fiber, Golf Jinx, Grand Jury Duty?

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

12/9/23

 

Aloha All ---

 

Well, my timing for getting my cables run to handle fiber optic service turned out to be excellent!  This week Spectrum raised our rate by 25%.  I called to complain and didn't get anywhere -- they wouldn't match the price I can get for a year or more with Hawaiian Telcom's promotional rate, and Spectrum would still be higher than HT even when my fiber service increases after the introductory period. So, I then contacted Hawaiian Telcom and got more details on their fiber optic service, and went ahead and ordered it. The installation is scheduled for next Thursday.  Should be interesting. I'll wait to cancel Spectrum until I'm sure everything is working ok with the fiber service, but this time next week I should have faster internet at a lower cost.  With my new cable set up all it will take for me is to unplug the modem cable from our router and plug in the new cable I ran to where the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) will be located in the garage.  Fingers crossed.

My bragging about doing so well at golf has come back to bite me.  This week Karen, our friend, and I

Grrrrr!

played on Tuesday.  It was a gorgeous day.  The course was beautiful.  We saw lots of peacocks and nesting Nenes.  I played really, really, badly.  For some reason I just couldn't seem to hit the ball!!  After 11 holes of exhausting frustration we called it a day.  Karen and our friend were also having a bad day, possibly due my negative influence.  I hope it was just a matter of sore muscles and stiffness from being a troll in our crawl space for a good part of the previous couple of days.  Anyway, I'll certainly give it another try next week.  If I do well, though, I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Speaking of jinxes, the latest obstacle to my bucket list attempt to finally visit Ethiopia came this week in the mail -- a letter from the Circuit Court appointing me to the Grand Jury for 2024.  I would ordinarily be interested in this duty -- it involves deciding whether cases have enough evidence to go to court.  However, it entails being on call the entire year, including, of course, the time we are scheduled to be in Ethiopia and Kenya.  In the fine print of the letter it says that you can be excused on the basis of previously arranged and paid travel plans.  So I've crafted a letter explaining our arrangements, and enclosed a copy of our flight itinerary.  Hopefully this will get me out of  it.  I'll certainly let you know.!

Ok, we're off to market and our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care.  Be nice to your AI -- hopefully it will then be nice to you.

Wordle in 8, Kona Low, Cable Guy

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

12/2/23

 

Aloha Everybody ---

 

Well, I jinxed myself with all that talk about solving Wordle in 1 or 2 guesses.  This week I went to the other extreme and after my 6th guess there were still at least 2 possible words, so on the basis of my lousy luck up to that point I gave myself a score of 8!  My strategy was good -- identify the obvious possibilities and then make a guess that eliminates as many as possible.  For example, a bunch of words might end in "-ly" and another large group might end in "-te," making your best strategic guess one would remove one or the other set of words and also eliminate as many other letters as possible.  Right.  Good strategy. Except it didn't work this time.  The letters and their positions in my guesses just didn't help narrow down the list enough.  Oh well, I expect my memory will follow the Las Vegas model and dim the losses more than the gains and I'll still keep trying to win.....

Karen and I played golf on Tuesday with our friend and the weather was gorgeous.  No turkeys, by the way, but we did see lots of peacocks and nenes.  I got one par and a couple of bogeys, and this time my overall playing was more consistent from hole to hole -- not great but not overwhelmingly frustrating, either.  I hope I'm not jinxing things again.

Mauna Kea

It was a good thing we chose Tuesday for our golf outing, because overnight we experienced a weather pattern called a "Kona Low," something that in winter is caused by a dip in the jet stream that picks up moisture from the tropics and carries it westward across the islands, continuing on to the west coast of North America. This shifts our wind from the usual trade wind direction of northeast to southwest and makes our side of island suddenly the target of weather patterns rather than the Hilo side.  In this case the Kona Low brought up a huge amount of moisture and some strong winds.  Wednesday and Thursday were rainy all day with occasional scary wind blasts, and over those two days my rain gauge recorded 3".  Also, Mauna Kea got its first snow of the season. Things were a bit better yesterday and today is close to normal.  Imagine -- 3 days of crappy weather!!  We hunkered down and whimpered.

Despite the bad weather (or maybe because of it) I made good progress on my cabling project.  I got all the cables tacked up under the house and brought up through the walls to their proper location.  The coaxial connectors were the easiest to put on, and they work!!  The cat6 connectors, on the other hand are a different story.  They require the precise positioning of 8 fine wires into the connector at the same time.  It took some practice, a lot of patience, my extra strong pair of reading glasses, and a few botched attempts to finally get them on.  If the tester shows one or more wires isn't carrying a signal, then you have to cut off one or more of the connectors and start over.  Needless to say I was *very* happy when all the lights on the tester turned green!  The new cat6 capability means I accomplished the project's goal of making us fiber-ready in case I have a falling out with Spectrum Cable. All I have left now is to do some cleaning and tidying up, though I may decide to run a few more cat6 cables to replace my older cat5.  I've got plenty of leftover cable and now that putting on the connectors is part of my cable guy skill set, why not?

I managed to get a few decorations up but no lights yet.  Barring interference from the weather, I should be able to get more stuff up this weekend and next week we might even get out our artificial tree.  In other words, I'm inching closer to the Holiday spirit. It sure is hard to get the warm and fuzzies, though, when you look at the domestic and international news.  Is it possible to resign from the human race?

Off to market and our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care.  Careful with that snow shovel!

 

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.

Leis, Eye Shot, PT Reject

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

11/18/23

 

Aloha Everyone ---

 

Last week I wrote that we were going to drop by the Kona Coffee Festival Lei Contest later in the

Pound 'em!

morning.  We did, and it turned out to be a much bigger treat than we anticipated.  It was held at a community center where the morning's events included not only the leis but also a performance by the local Daikufuji Taiko Drummers (kids from a nearby Buddhist Temple), followed by a group of Irish Dancers, then by Miss Kona Coffee '24

Lots of work!

doing her Tahitian hula performance that helped her win the pageant.  Outside, the food booths offered everything from Poi to Mochi balls to Malasadas. All of this was absolutely delightful and the diversity captures the character of Kona perfectly.  Great fun!

On Tuesday I had a double dose of medical attention.  First was my eye exam, and as I expected I needed a shot.  The edema wasn't too bad, particularly considering it had been a little over 3 months since my last injection.  I'll go back right before we leave on our Ethiopia trip, but I may hold off getting another shot until we get back.  

 

The second medical appointment was with the Physical Therapist to assess my back. This was my first session and, after completing the usual 200 pages of medical history and signing promises to pay my bill, not be late, and allow them to turn me into a pretzel, I spent about 45 minutes with a therapist.  He was very knowledgeable and thorough, and he seemed to be very careful to identify my specific problem.  He first did an assessment of my flexibility, strength, symmetry, and balance. This was a similar exam to the one the orthopedic guy had done, but I thought it was even more thorough.  He wanted to know what exercises I do routinely, had me demonstrate them, and then suggested just a few others that were simple, quick, and portable. I was very impressed that the exercises he recommended were complimentary to what I am routinely doing now rather than replacements or add-ons. Whereas I was expecting a regime of strengthening exercises, he indicated that his exam showed I really don't need those.  His suggestions focused on stretching the lower back in ways I'm not doing now, and on increasing my hip extension and range of motion. I also appreciated the simplicity of his suggestions very much, because I told him up front that I am a minimalist -- I don't want exercise to become a major focus of my daily life.  And get this -- his overall assessment is that I don't need any more formal sessions and he advised me to cancel the ones I have scheduled!! I definitely agree with him -- this problem began about six months ago and at that time it was a serious concern to me, but it has gotten better and better and at the moment is really not much of an issue.  Wow! I'm a PT reject! I will certainly return, though, if things get bad again -- I'm a strong believer in PT.

Speaking of exercise, Karen played 16 holes with our mutual golfing friend on Monday.  She did pretty well, including 1 par and she saw quite a few Nenes that have returned for the season.  She also saw all three of the white peacocks.  The male is getting quite big and this year might be his time to debut a white fan tail. It will be interesting and we'll see if we can get a photo or two.  I didn't play golf this week but on Monday I went to Planet Fitness instead of playing golf -- not as much fun but much faster.  A full workout on the various machines takes about 1 hour, in keeping with my minimalist philosophy. Then, in a blazing burst of energy, we both went to PF yesterday!  This certainly is a high water mark for the time since we returned from our Balkans trip, and it hopefully means we're recovered from our double vaccinations.

My latest techno/house project involves investigating the possibility of switching to fiber internet instead of the cable service we have now.  Hawaiian Telcom has now strung fiber lines all around town (a logistically huge and expensive project) and has begun offering service to home subscribers.  This is really good news because it breaks Spectrum's near-monopoly as an internet service provider and the competition will hopefully keep prices down.  One problem for us, though, is that it would require running a new network cable from the spot in the garage where the fiber line would be installed to the main house in a way that would hide the cable and not be hideous.  Our house isn't the typical mainland setup where the cable could just be run through the attic. We have no attic.  In fact we have no ceiling per se -- the wood we see above is in fact the roof.  No drywall, no dropped ceiling of any kind except in the garage. Anyway, I think I've figured a way to use our crawl space and an existing conduit that will work.  If so, then if Spectrum raises my rate too high, I can use the possibility of switching to Hawaiian Telcom as a bargaining chip.  And running the new cable might be a challenging and fun project!  I'll keep you posted.

Ok, that's all for this week. Hang in there.  I don't know about you, but it seems like I'm in the center lane of a highway and the drivers to the right and to the left are going berserk, even bouncing up and over the guard rails.  Anyway, try to stay warm and healthy!

Wordle In 1, Coffee Festival, Snoozerama

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

11/11/23

 

Aloha Everybody ---

 

I started this week on a real high note -- solving the Wordle word puzzle in one try!  Karen and I usually give this a go as a way of exercising a few grey cells and of neutralizing some of the toxicity of the

Yippee!

morning's news. If you play this game you know that the starting guess is a key ingredient in successfully guessing the solution in less than six tries.  Up until Monday I've had pretty good results by alternating between two words, one of them generated by an AI bot that has apparently studied the game.  For some reason, on Monday I decided to try a different start word, and damn if it didn't turn out to be the day's solution!  This was obviously accomplished with a huge dose of pure luck, so I can't take much credit.  Still, human egos being what they are, I'll boast a teensy bit anyway.

 

This week is our annual Kona Coffee Festival, a celebration of the island's signature industry (aside from tourism, of course).  The festival isn't really geared to tourists but rather to the community itself -- particularly those of Japanese heritage because of their success in running small coffee farms in the late 1800's and early 1900's when a world-wide crash of coffee prices led the owners of large coffee estates in Kona to divide their holdings as a way to survive.  All week long there have been events and activities,

The Winner

including a parade, coffee picking contests, crowning Miss Kona Coffee, a Kona Coffee Cupping contest with international judges, a cooking recipe contest, and a lei-making competition.  The vibe here is very positive and supportive, even with all the "contests."  I have to confess that I no longer drink Kona because it has become VERY expensive -- $40-60 per pound.  The growers have succeeded in making the name Kona a legal appellation, and blends have to have at least 10% beans grown in the official region and be labeled as blends.  The blends are considerably cheaper, of course, but hardly the real thing.

 

As I mentioned last time, we had appointments a week ago today to have our flu/covid shots.  We have our vaccinations usually at the pharmacy where we also buy some of our groceries (Safeway) because we get 10% coupons for shopping. The pharmacies here are short-staffed, so you really have to schedule this in advance.  All went well.  Until it didn't.  Nothing catastrophic,  and certainly better than the alternative of getting the viruses, but both of us had "vigorous" reactions.  For about 6 hours I had achy joints and itchy crawly skin but that was gone by Sunday morning.  Karen had a very sore arm for about 3 days, but I didn't.  Both of us, though, have been Zombies all week -- sleepy and lethargic much of each day. This is all probably a good sign that our immune systems kicked into high gear and will be much better at recognizing and fighting the real thing.  We're feeling better, and in fact we managed to spend some time at the Makalei driving range on Thursday and did fairly well.  Maybe a round next week....

Ok, off to farmer's market, a beach breakfast picnic, and to the lei-making contest.  Take care, try to ignore the crazies if you can.....