Mountains and Islands

Ron tried to tell me the other night that, because we live on this island, we should be safe from swine flu.  Right.  I passed this jewel of wisdom onto my mom, who added, "And it's not like you have any pigs there."  I laughed so hard I almost soiled myself.  That mom.  When she's on, she's on. Speaking of pigs, I saw a woman on the side of the road the other day, almost to Hilo .  She was leaning against the door of her car, photographing three young, black pigs as they browsed through the foliage that grows thick and lush along the meridian between the north and southbound directions of the highway.  I've seen these little guys several times.  They won't stay little for long.  Anyway, this gal had one bodacious lens.  It was wildlife photography, Hawaiian style. I ventured up into the vog to the gym today, unsure of how much energy I might have after my recent bout with whatever it's been.  Not bad.  Half and hour on the elliptical , half an hour o...

Last night, Ron was kind enough to make a quick run to the market to pick up some more ginger ale.  Ours was nearly gone and what we had left in the big bottle had lost its bubbles.  Flat ginger ale just doesn't cut it.  It was about eight minutes 'til six, so he busted on down to Hirano Store, near the end of our road,  plenty of time to make it before they close at 6:00 p.m.  He got there.  No ginger ale.  In fact, when he asked, they looked at him like he'd just sprouted a horn in the middle of his forehead.  Guess there's not much call for ginger ale here.  So, he headed on down the road, not to the next store at Mt. View (their prices are extortion) but the next, J. Hara .  Again, he couldn't find it, so he asked.   "Just a second," said the clerk, who disappeared behind the beverage storage door for a moment.  A different clerk appeared.  "I can help you," she said.  "Right over here." She proceeds to lead him to the freezer se...

The latest developments in Hoppsy's health are good and not so good.  The good is that she can now negotiate the back lanai stairs by herself to go potty.  She still slips easily on the hardwood and has trouble orienting the feet on her left side, but her mobility has improved.  The not so good is that Friday night she had a massive seizure.  Right.  Not so good at all.  She had two on Saturday night.  So a quick call to the vet on Sunday got us a prescription for Diazepam (aka Valium) which is used to both stop and prevent seizures.  You wouldn't believe the hoops you have to go through to pick up that prescription, it being a controlled substance and all.  Sign in blood, names of nearest kin, physical address... OK, I'm exaggerating a little.  But it's more than picking up a scrip for Advair , I can tell you that. Long term, there are probably better anti-seizure meds out there, but in a pinch, this works well. I'll just give it to her at night, since that...

OK, so you know how I was bragging about the beautiful day in my last blog entry?  Well I'm afraid I must retract that.  It was nice that morning until about 10:00, then it started pouring.  It's been raining ever since.  In fact, it's been since January.  December maybe.  Who knows.  It's been raining forever. I took Hoppsy to an orthopedic dude over in Kona on Wednesday.  Coincidentally, he once worked at the clinic in Englewood, Colo. where Doc the Doctor Dog had his shoulder fixed.  Besides the trauma of a three-hour car ride, she did pretty well.  I was fully prepared for her to undergo what's called a myelogram , a procedure that requires general anesthesia, in which die is injected into the spinal chord, then X- rayed to see where there might be a blockage of neural transmission.  After examining her, however, the vet decided that the procedure would not likely show us anything definitive.  What we really need is a CT scan.  He's trying to get one of t...

Great news!  The sun is out, shining like the burning ball of radiation that it is.  Harley, for one, is loving it! Terrible news.  A home highlighting project attempted Friday morning has gone horribly wrong.  I've got this Bozo the Clown meets Bride of Frankenstein thing going on there.  Not good. Hats.  Now that's an invention I can get behind.  Where do I send my money?  My poor little Hoppsy is struggling these days.  She's had shaky back legs for months.  Years even.  They've never bothered her.  Vet couldn't find anything wrong.  Now, her back legs are stiff when she walks.  Worse is what's happened in the past few days to her front legs.  About a month ago, she developed a stutter step.  We thought she was doing this to adjust to the weird gait of her back legs.  Now, however, her front left paw is dragging slightly on the ground and occasionally knuckling over, tripping her.  This just started.  We were at the vet last Wednesday hoping for a definitive...

King Kameha was looking particularly regal today, don't you think? I saw a great bumper sticker out and about this morning.  It said, "Don't believe everything you think." Something to ponder, eh? Hoppsy and I returned to the vet for some X-rays and hope for some definitive answers to why she is walking so oddly.  Her gait is all out 'o wack .  It's as though her back legs have only one slow, stiff speed and her front legs must stutter to maintain the pace.  It also seems that her hips or lower back are sore, since she now hates when I try to feel anything back there or massage her.  X-rays were, unfortunately, inconclusive.  She has an arthritic spur on one of her vertebrae which could be the cause, but only slight signs of any arthritis anywhere else.  So, we're trying some prednisone (yuck!) for a few days to see if she responds.  It's a powerful drug, not to be taken lightly with nasty side effects if taken long term.  I took it for four days to...

Yesterday at the winery, I made the mistake of telling a woman how cute her granddaughter was, how adorably precocious, what a great kid.  The youngster was a delight.  She and I enjoyed talking about Hanna Montana and singing B-I-N-G-O.  The grandmother was understandably proud, but once the topic of the youngster was exhausted, she launched into her own diatribe.  Now I'll admit she was a very nice lady.  But the moment I opened the door to conversation, she burst through it like a levy break, her life story gushing forth, a torrent unleashed.  She relived a tragic injury of years ago, elaborated on the gory details of a long and painful recovery, told me how her children coped, enunciated specifics about each and every family member, how often she visits them and for exactly how long, the divorce, she's a writer(isn't everybody?), loves where she lives, doesn't need much money but has all she needs to visit her children and grandchildren whenever she wants, yada yada...

Sometimes, after doing so many tastings and answering so many good, bad and stupid questions from tourists, I blurt.  Stuff just comes out, like a burst of hot steam from Old Faithful.  Yesterday, a man was looking at our cigars.  We sell Kauai Cigars.  It was a wet, gloomy day, as has been the case most of the last three months, with emphasis on the wet.  So he asked, "How do you keep them humid?" I couldn't help myself.  I replied, "You're kidding, right? It's like 80-100 percent humidity here all the time." It sounded glib and maybe even a little condescending. I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it.  His wife laughed.  He did not. Instead, he looked at me like I'd just stepped on his toe.  He cleared his throat. "How do you keep them the proper 70 percent humidity?" he rephrased.  Now he was the one condescending.  I mumbled something about selling them so fast we don't have to worry about that, they're fresh and probab...

They're worried in Fargo that the river will top out over the dikes.  Forty one feet.  Now those are some tall lesbians!  What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who lives in Fargo? Bob.  Oh come on.  You're laughing.  Seriously though, doesn't that water look cold?  My heart goes out to those folks.   Ron and I hit our favorite sushi place last night to celebrate me hitting the half century mark. It's been over a year since we've been there.  Same surly sushi chef, same ono food.  They carry a beer from Okinawa called Orion.  Good suds. I've just turned 50 while living in the 50th state in it's 50th aniversary year.  I will travel to Alaska this summer which is the 49th state, but which became a state the same year as Hawaii, so is also celebrating it's 50 anniversary as a member of the union.  Is that some kind of karmic convergence or what? At work Thursday, my co-worker brought in a batch of her soon-to-be-famous butter mochi.  It's made ...

It still raining. Really, this sucks.   Hmmmm.... What's new?  Right now, I'm sipping a nice Spanish tempranillo which I opened with, of all things, a twist of the wrist.  Yes, screw tops are growing in popularity and are no longer for the cheapest, crappiest of wines.  This one's a 2005 Riscal.  It's light, as tempranillos are want to be, fruit up front but not over-the-top, a touch of pepper and a smooth, slightly tannic finish.  I'm enjoying it.  Perfect with Spaghetti.   Lucy is curled up in the corner of the couch.  Mr. Sox just came in, soaked, water beading up on his back.  Now, he's washing his face.  The little ones are off somewhere, napping, or snacking.  Hoppsy is here, in a ball on her favorite, cushy living room bed, licking her paw.  Doc is outside, where it's cooler, listening for evil invaders.  Ron is in the tub.  Abner ran into the bathroom when he heard the water running, thinking the tub occupant was me.  He likes Ron alright, but he l-o...

Ron had a physical several weeks ago and was given a piece of paper to submit to a lab for a blood test.  We went together yesterday, with plans for him to have blood drawn and for us to then go pig out at Ken's Pancake House.  He gets up at 3:30 a.m. to work, so to stay awake, he drank a cup of coffee.  The rules said that was OK.  BLACK coffee.  Unfortunately, he added creamer.  Even non-dairy creamer, they say, will screw up the results.  So, they turned him away to try again another day.  Not drinking any beer at all after 8:00 p.m. was so hard for him this time that I don't know when I'll get him to do it again any time soon.  Plus, I think he's worried about the cholesterol results, figuring he will be forced to give up his woeful eating habits.  So, in his mind, no results means no problem.  I'll keep on it.  It's gotta be done. We ate at Ken's anyway, a place that's always pretty OK and from which nobody ever leaves hungry.  It was the first time...

This afternoon, a group of agriculture students from UH Hilo came in to tour the winery, after which those who were over 21 lined up to taste the wine.  These were fun kids, interested, funny, charming.  The tall one at the end asked me if I'd seen the movie Sideways .  "Sure," I said. "And I've eaten at The Hitching Post several times." "No way!" he said, laughing. "Really?" "And," I added, "sometimes I even drink Merlot." "Ah hahahahahahahahhahahaha ...."  He thought that was hilarious.  It's nice to know I'm still hip enough to relate to the early 20s set.  This group was the most attentive I'd had in weeks.  They asked lots of questions, and laughed at all my jokes.  College students are a blast. Our 2007 Pinot Noir is brewing.  OK, it's aging, out of the oak already and into the bottle. My humble opinion is that it should go back into the barrel for several months more.  Today, I ...

Top o' the marnin ' to ya, lads and lassies.  Happy St. Patrick's day.  St. Patrick.  It's a bit odd really, that St. Paddy , the patron saint of Ireland, was actually a Welshman.  Odd, but not so weird, as we're all Irish in spirit, especially on March 17, and the Irish are such a welcoming lot.   Don't you just love W ikipedia?   Wiki, as in wikiwiki , the Hawaiian word for hurry up, or fast.  Not to be confused with hele on, which means let's go. Wiki wiki wacky woo! I don't know what that means.  I just like saying it. I've gotta dig up something green to wear to work tomorrow.  Even in Hawaii, everyone's Irish. Places actually serve corn beef, cabbage and green beer.  I actually am Irish.  Authentically and unapologetically.  Of course, I'm more Irish on St. Paddy's day.  I'm also Scottish, which is almost Irish.  Scotch Irish, or Scots Irish, which is really Scottish.  They were Scots who emigrated to America from Ireland. ...

For those of you who have not seen the uncut version of the Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer feud, it's enlightening.  My only contention with Stewart is his support of the "loser" homeowners who got themselves into this pickle.  I agree that most are not losers, as Rick Santelli if CNBC claimed, but hard working Americans who got caught up in the scam of the century.  They're victims.  Still, plenty of people submitted fraudulent loan applications.  Some lied about their incomes.  Others went so far as to lie about having a job.  Of course, in the good old days, a person couldn't get away with that.  The financial institutions actually checked up on you, contacting your employer and requiring that you provide a W2 statement.  Still, it doesn't take a PhD in finance to know that if you make $50k/year, you cannot afford a half a million dollar house.  Even so, Stewart is 99.9 percent right here.  It's not really about Cramer.  He's just representative of th...

There's big controversy over Hawaii this week, and the focus of these verbal fisticuffs is, of all places, New York City. Saturday Night Live aired a hilarious skit last weekend that hit a little too close to home for our oh-so politically correct lieutenant governor, Duke Aiona . He found it insulting to the Hawaiian people and culture and plans to spend his time writing a letter to Lauren Michaels telling him so. Guess there's not really much for a lieutenant governor to do around here. Sounds like my kind of job. Most people here thought it was funny. As Bruddah Brad pointed out on KHBC Radio yesterday morning, it was no different than much of the sarcastic, self-deprecating humor of local comedians making fun of locals and tourists alike. Sure, it was over-the-top, but there were several grains of truth there, about the struggles and frustrations of working in the tourist industry in a place where the cost of living is through the roof. Duke's planning to run...

I am fighting a cold and while I don't feel great, I think I'm winning the battle, keeping the crud at bay.  It's still raining.  Twenty-seven straight days or something like that.   Did you know Bargie is 50?  All my friends had them, but not me.  I had a Tammy doll.  She was bigger, with flatter feet to fit into sneakers (not molded to fit a miniature version of a 4" pump) and a more athletic build.  I also had a blue Tonka Truck (Tammy's ride) and Lincoln Logs (her house), an Etch-a-Sketch (not for Tammy at all) and lots of games and piles of stuffed animals, but no Barbie.  Never wanted one.  Wasn't the least bit interested.  A fuzzy, talking, gay lion (his name was Larry) seemed more real to me.  I always wanted Operation - "take out wrenched ankle" - but never got it.  Friends had it though, so I got to play a lot. Alrighty then.  Did I mention that it's been raining?  A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Right arm.  Farm out.  Dig it.  Peac...

Yesterday my friend/co-worker Kathie and I went to the Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo.  We saw the production Mauna Kea, Between Earth to Sky .  Pretty cool.  Imiloa is good fun and always educational.  The planetarium is small but cozy, with chairs that recline all the way back so you can see the entire sky.  Right now, their doing a laser light show of some sort on Friday nights, featuring U2 as the soundtrack.  I'd like to check that out.  The grounds at Imiloa are beautiful, a botanical garden featuring native and canoe plants, all labeled.  We opted out of a cruise through the foliage, since we were almost entirely drenched just running from the front door to the car.  Hilo had received over eight inches of rain as of 10:30 last night.  That total was the accumulation since midnight the night before.  Lunch got us wet again, from the car to the restaurant.  Funny.  We both own big umbrellas and raincoats, tucked safely away at home or in other vehicles.  Reuben's Mexican...

Ah, so much fun to watch our net worth shrink daily.  It is satisfying to know that AIG will live another day to lose more of our money.  I don't think anyone currently serving in national government ever took a basic accounting class.  There's this concept called a sunk cost.  As humans, we have this natural tendency, once we've put a lot of money or time or effort into something, to want to stick with it even if it's a losing proposition.  Accountants would say that's counterproductive.  Any time or money you've already put into something is sunk.  It's gone - adios, bye bye - and therefore should not be considered in decisions about the future of the project or investment.  So, in situations when the benefit or profitability from an expense is unlikely to materialize, the prudent thing to do is to cut your losses, let whatever it is go and start from scratch.  Obviously, neither our Secretary of the Treasury nor our Federal Reserve Chairman have taken Ac...

I just have one word.  Metabolism.  I know that with mine, when the great famine comes, I will survive.  In the words of that interminably skinny Forrest Gump , that's all I have to say about that. Allergy doc says that all the things I'm allergic to - the local grasses, mold, etc - are just swirling around everywhere outside and that's why I'm perpetually reactive, loaded with junk and trying to clear it.  Sounds pleasant, doesn't it?  That's another trouble with  endless summer.  Everything just keeps growing.  They gave me some new, heavy duty, turbocharged nasal spray.   Yowza .  Harsh. Tastes nasty.  Bores through like a diamond head drill bit in a coal mine.  Stuff works, though.   Checked out a new sandwich joint downtown yesterday called, "The Planet Cafe."  I had a grilled portobello -provolone sandwich.  Pretty good.  Small, not too busy.  Don't know if they'll make it. There's also a new steakhouse in Kea'au .  It's the t...

Friday afternoon had us making a road drip to Honoka'a , which I always enjoy.  Road trips are limited here, as you might imagine.  You can circumnavigate the island, of course, which takes about six, maybe seven hours.  Or you can go in a single direction and back, the longest stretch for about three hours.  Once you've done that a few times, you've done it and that's that. Except for the occasion mongoose crossing the road, there's not much variation. The island doesn't change much either, from season to season.  Oh sure, it's lush and green on the east side, dry and barren except where humans have planted palm trees on the west.  I used to love the drive from Gunnison to Denver along Highway 50, then 285.  There was always wildlife: elk in a pasture, deer, maybe even some antelope, red tail hawks, eagles,  and a variety of other varmints.  It's the same road every time, but in winter, it's white.  In spring, the gradual transformation to green se...