Mountains and Islands

The vog was brutal up at the winery today. I've been home for nearly an hour and still I can feel the sulfur coating my throat. Nasty! I'm pretty sure it was the reason business was relatively slow throughout the afternoon. We never got the late day rush that we usually endure. Cary, the winery's number cruncher, occasionally buys us food. Today, we were treated to breakfast burritos from the golf course just up the road. Their usually decent; loaded with eggs, cheese and Portuguese sausage. Not so good for arterial health, but tasty. They also come accompanied by some garlic laden salsa that, while delicious, is not so great for the breath of folks working in close contact with the public. Today, there was not only garlic, but FIRE. The salsa was so hot, it was painful. My poor coworker, Mandy, was the first to eat her burrito. She did what we all usually do. She slathered on the salsa. Yowza! Thankfully, because of Mandy's sacrifice, I was able to enjoy m

I love the smell of sulfur dioxide in the morning. Shoots, cuz . Da kine vog get plenny pilau . Stinky! Actually, it doesn't smell so bad as it tastes. Once you get it in your mouth, it seems to last all day even after the vog lifts. The gift that keeps on giving! The vog was so bad today that the Park Service closed the crater rim drive inside the park due to volumes of sulfur four times the amount deemed "safe" to breath. Today, I became a brochure photographer. By mid afternoon, the vog lifted and the sunshine was beautiful. So I shot some photos of wine bottles provocatively posed (OK they were really just propped up) on a giant piece of drift wood on the winery grounds. They were complimented by flowers at their bases. The images came out pretty good (or is that pretty well?) if I don't say so myself. I still wouldn't go so far as to characterize myself as a real photographer . I'm just someone who sometimes gets lucky with a shot. And

Yes, I know I've been a slacker. That's what happens to people in the tropics. The rainforest sucks the ambition right out of you. It's looking sunny outside this morning. The tradewinds have died, however, so we may be in for some heavy vog this weekend. Apparently, Pele is in need of some industrial strength breath mints these days. Maybe those folks at Altoids could dump a 747 load of some seriously strong cinnamons onto the latest eruption point to squelch her sulfur dioxide-induced halitosis. No wonder her advances were always rebuffed and she was forced to turn men into stone or trees or whatevahs. That girl has some worrisome anger management issues, not to mention her brutally bad breath. (Now watch. She'll get pissy and take out my house. Some goddesses just can't take a joke.) Business at the winery has picked up a bit. Thank goodness for those crazy Canooks! They're spending loonies and toonies like their going outa style. (Loonies and too

Ron swore he saw several pigs in the yard today. He said they were riding in an ark. Or maybe it was a canoe. I went for a walk with the poochies despite the rain. Actually, I did it to spite the rain. Like the rain cares. No need to give the dogs a bath this month. They got so soaked, they're now squeaky clean after a good drenching and a towel dry. Not all wet dog smell is created equal. Each of mine has his or her own unique odor when dry. Each smells unique when wet, too. Fortunately for me, none of them are particularly funky. They all smell pretty good, wet or dry. Still, there's a bit of a damp-dog aura in the air right now. We'll fire up the wood stove in a little while, when it gets a little cooler, to add some smoldering guava smoke to the aroma mix. Then we'll cook dinner. It'll be a cacophony not of sound, but of smells. There is no mist these days. No light drizzle. No spritzing. Just giant drops falling out of the sky in such great volume an

Today Ron and I are having fun with a new adjective we've added to our vocabulary. It's not really a new adjective. It's just new to us. What is it, you ask? Why, it's dick wad ! Here's how we've used it today: Don't be such a dick wad. Did you hear that guy on T.V. just a minute ago? What a dick wad. That sounds like the dick wad version of that song. With each use, we get a nice, hearty laugh. These are the types of things we do to amuse ourselves in the rain. We also got a good laugh at the civil defense messages on the radio today. The man who delivers those has a slight, local-style Elmer Fudd thing going, so the announcements sound something like this: Hawaii County Civil Defense has issued a fwash fwood warning to da fowwowing communities twoo-out east Hawaii..... incwuding Gwenwood..... pwease, do not twy to dwive twough aweas of wising water. Turn awoun', don't dwown... Dis has been a message fwom your Hawaii County Civil Defense.... OK,

Bugs. Winter gives many people on the mainland a break from them. We have various bug seasons throughout the year here in the rainforest, but we never get a total reprieve. There is gnat season in the fall which corresponds to the waiwi guava trees bearing fruit. We have beetles, which swarm for several days following the gnats, then suddenly disappear. We always have spiders to take advantage of the gnats and the beetles. Then, there are the mutant mosquitoes; huge yet incredibly fragile buggahs that rarely bite. If you blow on them hard or spray them with a spritz of water, they whither and break apart. Mosquitoes on other parts of the island can be voracious. Be sure to carry your Deep Woods Off when you head into Waipio Valley, Lava Tree State Park or the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens. If you're not protected, they'll eat you alive. By contrast, our mosquitoes don't do much of anything. Their primary proclivity is to venture into the house to die. I suc