Mountains and Islands

Happy New Year! I must say, I kinda like walking the dogs in the morning wearing shorts and a t-shirt during the holidays! I especially appreciate it after seeing the snow storms that have been hammering Denver in recent weeks. I shot these pictures the other day on my visit to Volcanoes National Park. The flag, with Mauna Loa in the background, flies on the beautifully manicured grounds of Kilauea Military Camp. It flies at half staff in honor of Gerald Ford. The little fenced square with smoke coming out of it is a steam vent. I can only assume the fencing is a form of INS for the Park Service. INS, as I understand it, stands for Interfering with Natural Selection. In this case, it's to protect humans too stupid not to know that jumping into a steam vent near active volcanoes is a bad idea. Today, I discovered that our coffee trees have a condition called Cercospora. It's a fungus, common in areas with lots of rain. Looks like we'll have to spring for some copper fungicid...

It's Christmas! Yay ! It's a beautiful, partly sunny day here on the windward side of Hawaii Island. The turkey is cooking and all is right with the world. With our world, anyway. I've seen two of my favorite Christmas movies; It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story. My third favorite is a vintage 1958 version of Dickens' Christmas Carol called Scrooged . Ebineezer is played by fabulous actor named Alistair Sim. He's absolutely the best scrooge ever. George C. Scott runs a close second, but Sim is the winner, hands down. I have a copy of Scrooged on DVD but no longer have a DVD player and left the disks in Colorado anyway. I usually catch it at least once a season on TV. Not this year. Oh well. I'll see it again soon enough. Next week, I will resume my job quest and gym workouts with gusto. Today, I'll just hang and enjoy life. I have prohibited Ron from using any power tools outside today. I'm just sure the neighbors don't want to hear the...

Mele kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright, Hawaiian Christmas day...... This santa fish is a humuhumunukunukuapua . That's right. It's the state fish of Hawaii. Cool, huh? I stole this image from the net, so it's the least I can do to give credit to it's painter, Debbie Houter . Actually, she gives permission on her site to download the picture, so I'm in the clear. No copywrite infringements on this blog. No siree ! We're loaded down at our house with oodles of Christmas pupus . Ono kine grinds to da max! W got all kine cheeses and salami and crackers and pate'. We also got all kine poke and edamame and mochi . Between our own self indulgences at the market and the stuff coming as gifts in the mail, it will take more will power than I've got - not to mention some serious time on the treadmill - to keep from piling on the pounds. I'm now officially a Friend of KMC (Kilauea Military Camp) . It's pretty easy to become a friend. Just ha...

I discovered these ginger flowers in my very own jungle today. I'm not usually one for cut flowers, but these were just so cool I had to bring them out of the dark forest and into the light to be enjoyed. Mr. Sox brought a baby rat into the house tonight. The poor little creature was still alive but badly wounded. I had planned to take the struggling critter away from the fat cat and gently replace him back outside to either survive miraculously or crawl off to die in peace. I turned to grab a container to put him in and when I turned back, he was gone. Mr. Sox was scurrying out the door. So I hope the cat was scurrying after the rat. If not, the rat is probably hiding somewhere in a nook or cranny inside the house. Great. He'll get along well with the cockroach that escaped from my grocery bag a couple of weeks ago. The pair are probably setting up house behind the fridge as I type this. I finally put up my tiny, fake Christmas tree last night. With lights and decorations,...

Ua mau , ka ea o ka aina i ka pono That is the Hawaii state motto. The official translation is this: The life (sovereignty) of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. While they are definitely referring to the land here ( aina ) the words life and sovereignty are very different. Sovereignty implies independence and strength. That is probably the correct translation and conveys what the Hawaiian's meant with they saying. I'm guessing that to avoid any confusion back in the days of the overthrow and with the coming of statehood some decades later, officials (who were not Hawaiian) opted to used 'life' instead. 'Sovereignty' was likely added back in parentheses to appease the Hawaiians who found the previous translation inaccurate and insulting. But to state officials, to put 'sovereignty' into the state motto might have fueled some flames the officials were still trying to dowse. Of course, this is all really just conjecture on my part. So don...

I'm home! The trip to California was quick but fruitful. My teeth have been repaired beautifully thanks to the amazing Dr. Daniel. I spent short but quality time with friends, including my pal Bailey here. I got a haircut. I got a big-city California fix. I inhaled some smog for old times' sake. I bought some stuff I can't get here, like silicone ice cube trays and Trader Joe's munchies. It was a good trip. When I returned, I learned that our veggie garden, as small as it is, has produced some fine results. The bean plants are flowering. Some are even sporting tiny baby beans. This cabbage is the only one we got, but it's a beauty, don't you think? We're going to cut it up for stir fry tonight. I also bought some kim chee mix. I know it's really not the right kind of cabbage for that, but what the hey. On my way back from the mainland, I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone Magazine and learned why the populace has so little confidence in the current eco...

When I was a young and restless ski bum back in the day, I found myself in a precarious position at a doctor's office. I had had a little accident on the hill. So there I sat, sans shirt, with an excruciatingly stiff neck. I had just been x- rayed . The Doctor had subsequently informed me it was (gulp) broken. Yikes. I think he said something like, "Congratulations. You broke your neck." It was just what my parents said would happen. ("Get down from there! Stop that! You'll break your neck! You'll shoot your eye out!") "That sounds kinda bad," I said. "Let's just say you should avoid diving into any shallow pools for awhile," he said. What a guy. So anyway, there I was, sporting my JC Penney special, when the doctor excused himself from the exam, then returned with a guy wearing a tool belt and carrying a wrench and a screwdriver. He was also holding a metal contraption with straps. "Do you like that bra?" asked the doc...

Right back where I started from.... OK not quite where I started, but almost. Why? Chipped a tooth. I hate it when that happens. So I called my local dentist and busted a move all the way up to Waimea Town where he drills. He said my best option was a crown and he recommended a gold one because they are strong and hold up well. Yikes! Since I have no metal in my mouth at all, the prospect of a gold tooth was devastating to my fragile psyche. I asked about porcelain. He said he could do that too, but would have to file more of my tooth away. I asked about an overlay and he said he didn't think that would work as well, given the nature of the break. He also made no guarantees if I chose to simply fill it. It's just a small chip; one of the corner tips broke off. It's not like I cracked the thing in half or anything. So, I called my old (young actually) trustworthy dentist in Encino . When I told him my story, he said that he was confident he could fix it with an overlay and ...

It only cost $1200 to recover all my photos. A bargain at twice the price. Not! I also found my resume among the data saved from our crashed computer. That's something. It's nice not to have to rewrite it, although with my track record of late, maybe I should make a few revisions anyway. We also found a few of Ron's important client files on the recovery disk along with plenty of junk. Oh well. Live and learn. Turns out we had a little earthquake impact at our house after all. The other day, I went to add some chlorine to our water tank and noticed that it was less than a fifth full. Yikes. It hadn't rained hard in awhile, but it seemed unimaginable that we could have used up all that water so fast. We're talking 10,000 gallons! After some careful examination, we found the cause. The overflow pipe had moved out of alignment with the main input line, causing a leak at the joint where the two pipes meet. None of the rain had been making it's way to the tank. Inst...

Aloha! Yes, I'm trying to be cheery. I live in Hawai'i , after all. Still, I'm finding that paradise is not exempt from the headaches of the modern world. We got our hard drive and recovered data back late last week. That's both good news and bad news. I put everything back together and booted up the machine. Yay ! It works. Sort of. The hard drive has been returned to it's out-of-the-box state. That means that with the exception of Windows for some reason, all the software has to be set up anew. I found Microsoft Office asking me for a product key. Unfortunately, I no longer have it. Seems we lost our certificate of authenticity in the shuffle of moving. So I spent most of yesterday on the phone back and forth between Hewlett Packard, who built the machine and installed the software, and Microsoft, who made the software and issued the product key. Each insisted only the other could help. I learned that at HP, the sales/customer service folks are not connected to th...

I saw Jesus today. He was wearing a tie-die t-shirt and driving a Chevy Lumina van. He had lots of riders with him. Apostles, perhaps? Yes, this guy was definitely Jesus. He looked just like the photo my grandparents had hanging on their bedroom wall. The weather was beautiful. Most of the day, anyway. I spent several hours mowing the lawn. This afternoon, Hopps and I went to town. She had an appointment with vet for shots and a checkup. There were plenty of nice people at the vet clinic, not to mention a litter of cute puppies in for shots and a checkup too. Of course, Hopps is no puppy. At least, not chronologically. She still acts like a puppy, which is good for what the vet called a "geriatric girl." After our visit with Dr. Julie, we went to Queen Liluokalani Park for a nice stroll and plenty of good sniffies . On our way home, it began to dump buckets of rain. Now we're settled in, nice and dry for the night. Happy Thanksgiving! A hui hou. Aloha.

Here's a picture of the hibiscus I promised. It occurred to me just tonight that there's a camera card slot right on my printer that allows me to import photos to the PC. Duh! As I trudged up the road with the poochies at about 7:30 this morning, I became acutely aware that I was wearing only shorts, sneakers and a t-shirt. I was actually perspiring just a little. No long johns. No snow boots. No gloves. No fleece hat. No parka. Just shorts and a t-shirt. It's November. November is typically the rainiest month in these parts. It's been an unusually dry one this year, even though we've gotten enough drizzle to keep our water tank full and our grass soggy. The experts are attributing our "dry" weather to El Nino . I suspect that's what's caused all the flooding and nastiness in the Pacific Northwest recently. The past few days have been beautiful here, with plenty of sunshine, no vog and a few big puffy white clouds. Yes, this is the paradise I...

We had a tsunami warning this morning here in the islands. An 8.1 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning System to sound. We didn't actually hear the sirens, of course, since we are 2500 feet above sea level and a half an hour's drive from the coast. We heard it via the Emergency Alert System on TV. Within a short time, the warning was rescinded as officials realized the diminutive size of the wave, but they still urged caution pending the arrival of some trouble making ripples. There were several high water surges that washed boats up the Hanalei River on Kauai and caused some shoreline and harbor mayhem. Thankfully, nobody was injured. The wave/surge took 2-4 hours to reach Hawaii and about 11 hours to reach the west coast of North America. News reports said that the Crescent City California harbor sustained minor damage. That's really pretty amazing when you think about it. The wave took just 11 hours to cross the entire Pacifi...

On Sunday afternoons, the two local all-Hawaiian, all-the-time radio stations on the island broadcast an entire show in the Hawaiian language. It's very cool, despite the fact that I have no idea what they're talking about. Oh I pick up the occasion place name or common word. But mostly, it's all Greek to me. Still, it's a lovely sounding language. This past Sunday, the Hawaiian word for the day on one station was actually three words: aue ka nani . It means, "How beautiful!" Aue is a wonderful, universal P olynesian expression that works really well in plenty of situations. You might say, " Aue ka nani !" at the ocean or a blooming flower, or you might say, " Aue ! Da kine line at da buffet ees long, brah !" It's a great word. After the vog , we had several lovely days with a little sun and refreshing tradewinds . Aue ka nani ! Today, the trades died down, bringing back the humidity. Hopefully, we'll escape the vog this...

On Saturday morning, as I sat here checking my email and lamenting the nasty vog outside, I received a nice surprise. The phone rang. No, that's not the surprise. Although I did jump a little. The surprise was the voice on the other end. It was familiar, yet distant. A voice from the past. It was my college roommate Colleen. "I'm here. On the Big Island," she said. She was visiting with her son and an old friend who now lives on Maui. I met them in Volcano Village that night. We had a lovely dinner and talked story well past my usual bedtime. It was really great to see her after so many years. She looked pretty much the same. Mostly, I found it was good to hear her laugh. She has a great, infectious laugh. Sometimes it bursts. Sometimes it's a little ornery and lecherous. Amazingly, there was not one nanosecond of awkwardness between us. We just seemed to hit it off where we left off. The vog is now gone. It was brutal. For three days it lingered, frying leaves on...

I have a theory about computers. I believe that they are built to go belly up within two to three years of the date of purchase. So even if you don't need or want to buy a new system or upgrade your old one, you have no choice. The system forces that upon you. It's planned obsolescence. That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it. It was very early yesterday morning when Ron began to have trouble with the computer. The crazy thing started some sort of scan on its own. When the scan was complete, the computer rebooted, only to again launch the scan. This happened over and over. At one point, we were able to abort the scan, only to have Windows display a black screen with white script asking how we wanted to restart the computer. We first selected the "recommended" mode. This did nothing but bring the black and white screen back up. We subsequently tried all the start up modes offered, with no luck. The stupid machine was fritzed. It would not respond to anythin...

I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood movies, especially the films he directs. I always go see them, even though I know the movie will not have a happy ending. I thought he might depart from that with Flags of Our Fathers. It is about World War II after all, "The Good War" as Studs Turkel called it, a war we fought for all the right reasons. No such luck. While the ending wasn't as devastating as Mystic River or as sad as Million Dollar Baby, it was still not the warm, fuzzy finale we've come to expect from WWII flicks. As usual with a Eastwood film, "Flags" is a reflection of both the best and the worst in human nature. Flags of our Fathers is about the guys who raised the flag on a mountaintop at Iwo Jima. They were just young soldiers, doing their job, following orders, under extraordinary circumstances. The photo of their efforts to raise the flag became instantly famous and the guys were dubbed heroes, against their own wishes. "Flags" tells the...

A little shi shi, then Waikiki! I flew to O'ahu yesterday for a little checkup. Since nobody had high recommendations for a clinic or OBGYN near Hilo, I opted to schedule an appointment for my overdue exam in Honolulu. Dr. Vo was great. She was young, smart, cute and very personable. I'll go back to her. The exam, as unpleasant as it always is, was relatively painless and quick. I was out of there in an hour. That meant I had the entire day to kill before my flight home. As it turned out, the clinic was within about a mile of Waikiki. Since Waikiki is the only part of Honolulu I know, and since I had already blown my wad on cab fare from the airport to the clinic, I decided to hoof it. Waikiki is overdeveloped, kitsch, corny and an undeniable tourist trap. It is a Disneyland version of Hawaii. That said, I love it. Oh I wouldn't want to live there, but it is a nice diversion. There are some beautiful hotels there and some great places to grab a bite. There's an ABC Sto...

It was back to the gym today with gusto. I actually returned last week, but gently. Today's workout was back up to a full roar; running, lifting, crunching, stretching. I should be pretty well hobbled tomorrow. If you are a 40 or 50 something woman who believes everything she reads these days, you'd be convinced by the press that, if you don't run your ogle off and engage in strenuous, daily weight-bearing exercises, your bones will rapidly become riddled with holes and eventually turn to powder, after which your limp body will fall to the ground like a soggy load of laundry. Or like the wicked witch of the west. "I'm me-e-e-lting! I'm me-e-e-elting!" You'll break a hip! Yes you will! It's like the middle aged version of "A Christmas Story," (my favorite holiday flick), where poor Ralphy, whenever he tells someone he wants a bb gun for Christmas, hears, "You'll shoot your eye out." While I think much of what's written is...

Ding dong the coqui's dead, citric acid on his head, ding dong the coqui frog is dead (two, three, four) Not much bigger than a dime, douse him with hydrated lime, ding dong the coqui frog is dead..... Yes, he's dead. Actually, there were two of the little buggahs on our neighbor's property, chirping up a storm, having us all wondering when the two would transform into 30, then 60 then on and on until we were just like lower Puna district, listening to 10s of thousands of them all night long. I am being credited by the neighbor across the street for the frogs' demise, since I am the one who called the coqui police and they, in turn, contacted the other neighbor to lend them a hand in the eradication effort. Ta da! I do feel a little sorry for the cute little guys. It's not their fault some stupid human neglected to inspect a shipment of plants from Puerto Rico years ago and let their ancestors stow away enroute to Hawaii. Of course, I still, for the life of me, do n...

Here we were, feeling so smug about having made it through the earthquake yesterday, no worse for the wear, when bang! Boom! Down came the bottles from the top shelf of the closet. I was reminded of the flight attendants' intercom message on every commercial airplane ride I've ever taken. "Please take care when opening the overhead bins as contents may have shifted during the flight." Indeed. Replace the words "overhead bins" with closet, "contents" with wine bottles and "flight" with earthquake and you've got the picture. Three bottles narrowly missed Ron's noggin and came crashing to the floor. Actually, six bottles fell; only three broke.Ron yelled out a few expletives. I did too, as I ran to the house from the yard, hearing his cries intermixed with "The wine!" Upon seeing the purple mess of glass and grape, the #%*&@ was followed by a Tim the Toolman Taylor-esque "Oh no...." Needless to say, my closet ...

When I was 3 1/2 years old, I experienced a tempest known as the Columbus Day Storm. It was what they call an extratropical cyclone (according to Wikipedia), and is considered the strongest storm to have hit the Pacific Northwest in modern history. I don't really remember much about it, other than what fun I thought it was that the lights all went out and we had to make our way with candles for days. I also remember lots of fallen trees across the road and one that squished the neighbor's house. And my tricycle blew away. My dad found it a few days later way up the block. In 1980, I was living in Portland, Oregon when Mount St. Helens blew it's top. Initially, the explosion had little effect on the city. A couple of days after the eruption, however, the wind shifted and Portland was covered with a 6 inch blanket of ash. City residents all donned surgical masks to go about their daily lives. People tracked the whitish grit everywhere they walked. The stuff was extremely abra...

There are two fashion trends that, in my humble opinion, have been around way too long. It's time for them to go away... NOW! One is the skull cap. I might get the appeal of a knit ski hat as trendy in places like Minneapolis or Bar Harbor or Anchorage. It worked well in my old hometown of Gunnison, Colorado. But Miami? Atlanta? L.A? Hawaii? It's just silly. It's mostly boys and young men, but I occasionally see girls sporting woollies on their noggins, too. Board shorts, no shirt, slippahs and a ski hat. It's hot. It's humid. I must really be getting old. I just don't get it. Even worse are the hip hugger jeans the girls are wearing these days, paired with a cropped, navel-bearing tank top. But wait. It's not just the girls wearing this outfit. It's women. Very mature women. Middle-aged, pudgy women. Now don't get me wrong. I actually like the look. It's great if you're built like Janet Jackson. But trust me ladies. This ensemble is not for...

I chose to deliver a resume in person on Monday to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens at Onomea Bay just north of Hilo Town. It's located along a scenic four-mile drive that takes drivers along a narrow winding road makai (toward the ocean) from the highway. The road is covered with a canopy of foliage along many stretches. There's a short trail that leads from the cliffs above down to the shoreline of the bay. I have always wanted to take that little trek. So after dropping off my application, I did just that. It's short and not too steep with beautiful views of the crashing Pacific along the way. Hawaii Botanical Gardens is beautiful. It's meandering trails skirt Onomea Bay. Along the way, you'll pass through the most beautiful flora and fauna found anywhere. It's separated into designated areas, like orchids and bromeliads. Before the current owners found the land, it had been used as an illegal dump. The transformation is spectacular. It's a place I ...

To get a sense of the real Puna, particularly the area near the village of Pahoa, a great place to check out is the Maku'u Farmers' Market. While tourists do happen upon it, it is truly a locals venue. There, you'll find people selling everything from professionally grown and displayed produce and plants to the junk from their houses. You can buy a tropical plant or fresh herbs. You can also get a massage, acupuncture or a tarrot reading. Food vendors schlepp crepes, loco mocos and tamales. I sampled a killer green papaya salad, with a side of bbq banana sticky rice. Yes, you can pick up a couple of tomatoes there, just like any farmers' market. But if fruits, veggies and plants aren't your bag, you can ogle a used blender, flip through dog eared paperbacks, purchase hand strung jewelry, try on a pair of draw-string pants made from hemp and a tie-dye t-shirt to match. It's a hodgepodge, for sure. And if the goods aren't interesting enough for you, the peopl...

It was a pretty uneventful day. I was hell-bent on releasing endorphins so as to squelch the depression I'm feeling over my new hair color. To quote another person prone to big-time blunders, "Mission accomplished!" I cruised four miles in 46:27 on the treadmill today. That's a steady trudge for me. All in all, including the two miles logged with the dogs this morning, I propelled myself 6.8 miles today, all on foot. Not bad for a peri-menopausal chick. No sore knees. No swollen ankles. Only a battered toe. It's the same toe that I injured more than two years ago and which, because it is sensitive, just keeps getting re-smooshed. If Doc accidentally steps on me, it's always on that toe. If I drop a can out of the pantry, it lands on that toe. Poor toe. It rained a little today. OK, that's not entirely accurate. It rained a lot today. There was a little sunshine too. That combination made for a lovely rainbow just before dusk. Lucy spent most of the day cu...