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Thanksgiving in Hawaii
Nov. 26th, 2020 10:16 pmThis year was our first Thanksgiving in Hawaii, and it was largely unaffected by COVID. That's because my dad and Mary are largely the only people that we interact with, since we see them on Sundays, so there was no concern about getting together with them for dinner.
It was a nice dinner. Salad, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes (we brought that, from Costco), crescent rolls, gravy, Martinelli's sparkling apple cranberry (we brought that too, also from Costco). It was a good meal, and good getting together with family, even in this crazy, crazy year.
After dinner we did some game playing. I purchased a copy of a trick-taking co-op called The Crew after enjoying it online (a sale thanks to BGA!). Each round of play certain players have to collect certain cards for everyone to succeed. We played through the first six missions in the book (which get progressively harder as they go) and won each one on our first try!
That was even with my dad being somewhat mystified about the idea of co-op games when we started. I told him I'd written a whole book about them!
So, 44 missions to go!
We also had a Zoom with more family: Melody, Jared, and Audrey. Audrey is three and a half weeks old, so early days for them!
It was nice talking to everyone. I think we saw Melody and Jared last early in 2019, and then figured we'd see them after we moved when they visited ... but not so much.
After Kimberly and I got home, we kicked back a bit, then watched a movie. Since we've got Disney+ for the moment, we settled on Avengers: Infinity Wars, which is the next movie that we hadn't seen in the MCU.
Good stuff! Now we have to see the next few soon, after that cliffhanger! (I've successfully avoided spoilers about the recent movies, but I knew that cliffhanger was coming, because it's straight from Jim Starlin's undercredited comics.)
It was actually a media-full day, because in the morning, before we visited with my dad and Mary, I finished reading aloud the newest Dresden book, Battle Ground, to Kimberly. It was a disappointing book, because it was so heavily padded, to help fill out one book of content into what became two books, but once Butcher finally got the plot, for the last 150 or so pages, it was great, so the 40-page or so final megachapter that we read this morning was enjoyable (I kept choking up, reading it).
Friday is a no-work day too, so I'm going to hike. L. and I were planning on considering the North Powerline, but I'd started to get a bit concerned about all the community spread on Kauai, and thought it wasn't the best time to get together with someone outside of the family. And as L. mentioned, we were also having flash flood warnings on the north side yesterday and today, so things are probably really muddy.
We'll see for the future. L. is probably in my "pod" anyway. Kimberly and I only get together with my dad and Mary, but my dad gets together with L. So L. and I are likely in the same community already for spread.
(Actually, I'm likely to cheat on the no-work thing and do some writing or editing while out at the beach, but that's half the fun of hiking.)
As for the community spread on Hawaii: yeah. Our politicians are still being stupid.
Basically, Kauai got about six weeks of very limited tourist money on the island. As the price of that, we've had something like 40 cases on the island of travelers who had tested negative on the pre-testing program and positive when they got here. And that's gone into the community. We've had one or two young victims, so that means it's in the schools.
We're literally having the worst community spread ever, and we've had our first death too.
My theory was that if the mayor didn't close down the island again about two weeks ago, we were going to be totally f***ed when Thanksgiving came around. Well, after dragging his feet for those two weeks, the mayor asked for that shutdown a day or two ago, and only to take place on next Tuesday. (The governor has said that any island can opt out of his half-assed Safe Travels program, but he's now one the one dragging his feet on responding to the mayor, so I guess we're about to find out if he was actually lying.)
Anyway, we had community spread already, and when we went over to my dad and Mary's house we saw two or three houses with at least half-a-dozen cars parked in front of them, so we know there were HUGE Thanksgiving dinners going on. So I find it very likely that by the second week of December, this island is going to be in terrible state, and we may well never get it under control again (until there's a vaccine).
All for six weeks of limited lucre. Or two weeks, if you consider that shutting down two weeks before Thanksgiving might have made all the difference.
Yes, the island is really hurting economically, but those four or six weeks aren't going to have done anything compared to the huge damage if we go on a hard shutdown again. And it seems pretty likely.
But I'm thankful for living in Hawaii. I'm thankful that from April to October our island was almost entirely safe, and we didn't have to deal with the stress and anxiety experienced by the rest of the United States (and most of the world). I'm thankful that we have family a mile away. I'm thankful that I have beautiful hiking and swimming. I'm thankful that Kimberly has found the environment less anxiety provoking. I'm thankful that economic changes wrapped up in the move have allowed me to work on my own projects two or three days a week.
It's been an awful year globally, and stressful and unpleasant for the vast majority of people in the world, and so I sometimes feel a little guilty to say, we've found our bit of paradise amidst it.
It was a nice dinner. Salad, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes (we brought that, from Costco), crescent rolls, gravy, Martinelli's sparkling apple cranberry (we brought that too, also from Costco). It was a good meal, and good getting together with family, even in this crazy, crazy year.
After dinner we did some game playing. I purchased a copy of a trick-taking co-op called The Crew after enjoying it online (a sale thanks to BGA!). Each round of play certain players have to collect certain cards for everyone to succeed. We played through the first six missions in the book (which get progressively harder as they go) and won each one on our first try!
That was even with my dad being somewhat mystified about the idea of co-op games when we started. I told him I'd written a whole book about them!
So, 44 missions to go!
We also had a Zoom with more family: Melody, Jared, and Audrey. Audrey is three and a half weeks old, so early days for them!
It was nice talking to everyone. I think we saw Melody and Jared last early in 2019, and then figured we'd see them after we moved when they visited ... but not so much.
After Kimberly and I got home, we kicked back a bit, then watched a movie. Since we've got Disney+ for the moment, we settled on Avengers: Infinity Wars, which is the next movie that we hadn't seen in the MCU.
Good stuff! Now we have to see the next few soon, after that cliffhanger! (I've successfully avoided spoilers about the recent movies, but I knew that cliffhanger was coming, because it's straight from Jim Starlin's undercredited comics.)
It was actually a media-full day, because in the morning, before we visited with my dad and Mary, I finished reading aloud the newest Dresden book, Battle Ground, to Kimberly. It was a disappointing book, because it was so heavily padded, to help fill out one book of content into what became two books, but once Butcher finally got the plot, for the last 150 or so pages, it was great, so the 40-page or so final megachapter that we read this morning was enjoyable (I kept choking up, reading it).
Friday is a no-work day too, so I'm going to hike. L. and I were planning on considering the North Powerline, but I'd started to get a bit concerned about all the community spread on Kauai, and thought it wasn't the best time to get together with someone outside of the family. And as L. mentioned, we were also having flash flood warnings on the north side yesterday and today, so things are probably really muddy.
We'll see for the future. L. is probably in my "pod" anyway. Kimberly and I only get together with my dad and Mary, but my dad gets together with L. So L. and I are likely in the same community already for spread.
(Actually, I'm likely to cheat on the no-work thing and do some writing or editing while out at the beach, but that's half the fun of hiking.)
As for the community spread on Hawaii: yeah. Our politicians are still being stupid.
Basically, Kauai got about six weeks of very limited tourist money on the island. As the price of that, we've had something like 40 cases on the island of travelers who had tested negative on the pre-testing program and positive when they got here. And that's gone into the community. We've had one or two young victims, so that means it's in the schools.
We're literally having the worst community spread ever, and we've had our first death too.
My theory was that if the mayor didn't close down the island again about two weeks ago, we were going to be totally f***ed when Thanksgiving came around. Well, after dragging his feet for those two weeks, the mayor asked for that shutdown a day or two ago, and only to take place on next Tuesday. (The governor has said that any island can opt out of his half-assed Safe Travels program, but he's now one the one dragging his feet on responding to the mayor, so I guess we're about to find out if he was actually lying.)
Anyway, we had community spread already, and when we went over to my dad and Mary's house we saw two or three houses with at least half-a-dozen cars parked in front of them, so we know there were HUGE Thanksgiving dinners going on. So I find it very likely that by the second week of December, this island is going to be in terrible state, and we may well never get it under control again (until there's a vaccine).
All for six weeks of limited lucre. Or two weeks, if you consider that shutting down two weeks before Thanksgiving might have made all the difference.
Yes, the island is really hurting economically, but those four or six weeks aren't going to have done anything compared to the huge damage if we go on a hard shutdown again. And it seems pretty likely.
But I'm thankful for living in Hawaii. I'm thankful that from April to October our island was almost entirely safe, and we didn't have to deal with the stress and anxiety experienced by the rest of the United States (and most of the world). I'm thankful that we have family a mile away. I'm thankful that I have beautiful hiking and swimming. I'm thankful that Kimberly has found the environment less anxiety provoking. I'm thankful that economic changes wrapped up in the move have allowed me to work on my own projects two or three days a week.
It's been an awful year globally, and stressful and unpleasant for the vast majority of people in the world, and so I sometimes feel a little guilty to say, we've found our bit of paradise amidst it.