shannon_a | Entries tagged with appels

BACK TO THE VET

Kimberly noticed some white fluid on Lucy's stoma the last two nights, and so Lucy was called back to the vet today for an emergency dropoff. She indeed seems to have pus in her wound again, which means infection. (Really, that the infection never fully cleared up, since we saw it the night we gave her her last dose in the morning.)

So Lucy's back on antibiotics, for what we all pretty much agree is one last try. We're going to monitor her eating, which has improved a little bit the last few days (a third of a plate at meals recently, but two-thirds for lunch today), but which we expect to get worse with the antibiotic.

Other than the continually incorrect diagnoses, and the ups and downs, that's the most frustrating thing. We're actively working against ourself, trying to get her eating by giving her meds (chemotherapy, antibiotics) that are likely to mess with her eating.

If the antibiotics fail, or if they succeed but then the infection returns immediately afterward, then we'll have to decide whether to take her tube out and give her a last few days to eat without all of the things that might be discouraging her eating (which includes the tube) ... or not.

And with a week of new antibiotics, that'll put me to just more than a week before my trip, which is horrible timing.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

I've been so caught up with Lucy that I didn't even write about my sister & fam visiting. They showed up a week and a half ago and stayed with my dad and Mary through yesterday.

We got to see them a few times. Melody, Jared, and little Audrey, who is definitely much more active than last year.

We had our normal Sunday visits, and Jared joined us for gaming, which was cool.

We met them at Hanapepe Art Night on Friday and found it much less touristy than last year. I think maybe more locals are out (there were definitely more food trucks!) than was the case in the summer of 2022, and so the feeling has changed. The more food trucks was also great. Kimberly and I both ended up getting a terrific Portuguese bean soup (and OK Mac & Cheese). It made me actually interested in visiting Art Night occasionally when my 2022 experience was the opposite (other than the great company, of course).

We also went out with them to see the Barbie Movie on Sunday. Absolutely amazing. I can't imagine how it got made in the modern Hollywood model, let alone for a licensed product that I would have guessed had hyper-protective owners. But such great societal commentary. Such extensive humor. Such a great 80s Music VIdeo (for "I Am Ken"). Such great music in general. Such great directing and writing. Wow. It had better be winning a lot of awards.

I've been burning both ends in working on the house lately.

THE LANAI. Toward the start of the year, I asked my dad if he could help me fix our lanai. There were a few places were the boards were getting soft out near the edge of the lanai (because: Hawaii), and I'd been wanting to do do something about it for a year or so.

He agreed and we spent a Thursday afternoon carving out bits of the lanai which seemed rotten. (The biggest problem, the screws holding down the boards were entirely rusted, also because: Hawaii.) And then we spent a Wednesday afternoon the next week repeating the process, with bigger gaps coming out as we found more and more rotten wood. And then one more Thursday afternoon and we just fully took out the front five rows of the deck. So, there was apparently quite a bit that needed fixing.

He unfortunately got called away to work on one of his rentals after that, but I primered newly exposed crossbeams, and then Kimberly and I had an exciting morning tying tarps down over the deck as a month solid of rain started coming in.

(The front of the Lanai is now a huge covered-pit trap, which is not ideal, but we're mostly just not going out there at the moment,)

We've since bought some wood to replace what we took out (ten 8' 2x6s I believe) and I've primed the top of all of them. Another two afternoons and I'll have the other sides primed too.

THE GAME SHELVES. Meanwhile, last week the shelving I ordered from BoardGameTables.com a year and a half ago arrived. (It's a year late, and that combined with some really abysmal communication has made it my worst kickstarter experience to date.) It's cool modular shelving and it all needs to be assembled. I've spent a couple of hours on it so far and have about 20% of the cubes assembled, with 80% more to go plus doors and shelves and connecting it all together.

So afternoons lately, when I finish up work, the question has been: is it a priming afternoon or a cube assembly afternoon?

(Tomorrow morning is going to be one or both, as I defer yard work for the week because the cool and rain of the last few months has slightly slowed the verdant Kauian growth.)

THE BOOK SHELVES. I should note that we've also got the ongoing task of finishing up the furnishing of our downstairs. We finally got our shelves built there in December and we have emptied out our book boxes (3 years later!) and filled all the shelves (ALL THE SHELVES!). But we still have furniture to order to finally fill the place out and make it a fully functioning part of the house. That's largely been on hiatus because Kimberly has been sick since December, except I clear a bit of cruft here and there as time allows. (We still have a few non-book boxes from the move which just need to be settled at this point.)

THE FLOORING. And speaking of delayed projects, I still have a little flooring to finish downstairs too: in my closet and in the Harry-Potter closet. But that's been waiting for us to clear out all the books, and more recently I haven't wanted to do it while the deck was in process. As that's finalizing, and because I'm finally going to get to start shelving some games soon too, I'll have enough space to move my comics (trade paperbacks and omnibuses) out of my closet and get to work in there. WHEW!

PAINTING. As a free bonus, I've been helping my dad out at that rental. It's a house up in Wailua Homesteads that's been rented since before my dad and Mary move to Hawaii, 15 years ago. Combine that with the fact that the renters weren't the most responsible and the place has needed A LOT of work. My dad and Mary have been out there two or three times a week for four to five weeks now! Yowza. I've helped out three Saturdays now.

The place was a wreck the first time I saw it, and that was after a week or more of cleanup! Damaged floors, damaged paint, and quite possibly TONS of junk that the renters left behind when they moved back to the Mainland, including not just a household of stuff, but also a yard filled with tables, a car hood, and who knows what else to create privacy barriers(!!). It's starting to look a lot nicer five or so weeks later. For my part I've painted closets, painted doorframes, and painted doors.

Getting better at painting! Roller and brush, at your service!

This 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.

We have shower doors!

Rather, I should say we have shower doors installed in our master bathroom shower. The difference between the two statements is that we actually bought these doors in February, and then they sat in the garage for most of the year.

The reason? COVID and bookshelves. Early in the year I was collecting things for projects at Home Depot, like the screen door we installed on our lanai and everything needed to put doors into our master bathroom shower and wood for bookshelves for my office closet.

And then we spent about six months on those bookshelves, in part because it was a large project, done a few hours at a time a few days a week and in part because we had multiple breaks of between a week and a month, either because there was a lockdown or because either my dad or I was cautious about getting together because of potentially risky COVID behavior (e.g., them going to a 100th birthday party or us going to Oahu for Kimberly's seizure study).

So anyway, most of a year after we bought them, those doors are installed.

(Still loving having a master bathroom after decades of having to wander down the hallway to get to a bathroom and wandering downstairs to get to our acceptable shower.)

It actually took us three afternoons. Maybe 8 hours total. We went about 2.30-5.30 the first two days, and then lounged around and did a little work on the last one.

The first day, our big problem was that my caulk had gone bad. It had never been opened, but it had been bought back in February, and by the time we opened it up, it had partially hardened and was impossible to work with. After that, the afternoon was spent framing out the door. I had not really known if this was a hard or easy task, but once we got to the part where my dad was cutting the metal (alumninum?) frame on his table saw, I realized it was definitely something I wouldn't have been doing on my own.

The second day, our big problem was that the shower isn't level(!). I mean, it wasn't far off, somewhere between .25 degrees and .75 degrees, depending on how we measured it, but the bearings (or wheels or whatever) on the doors were very, very responsive. So after we mounted the doors, they kept rolling down the track to the bottom side of the tub. Which just wasn't useful. We searched my garage and my dad's garage for things to wedge below the top frame and finally decided to cut out a thin piece of oak from the floor trim my dad recently cut. It props up the downward side of the top frame, to keep things more level. It might eventually rot out, but if so I bet the door doesn't move as easily by then.

The third day was just caulking the doors and installing the handles.

So three days or ten months later, depending on how you count it, we have shower doors.

In the process we learned that our downstairs shower doesn't work right. The spout doesn't divert all the water up to the shower head any more. Sigh!

My dad and I looked at it and couldn't figure out how to unscrew it either. Apparently they don't just unthread when you twist them, like they would in California.

The home improvement list never ends: that's something to fix by the time we invite guests here, maybe next fall at this rate.

Oh, the flooring project. I never wrote about that. It was a fun project over at my dad's house.

The problem, you see, is volcanos. They're recent enough in Hawaii's past that we have very red dirt, which stains everything. Yet mysteriously everyone likes to lay down white or beige carpets. So the carpets downstairs at my dad's house had gotten a bit grungy over the years. (They've been here 12 years now!) So Mary requested that my dad replace the carpets in the downstairs hallway and family room with flooring (pseudo-wood). So I joined in and we did.

That was a project that took my dad and me 10 afternoons: 4 afternoons laying floor in the hallway, 3 afternoons laying floor in the family room, 2 afternoons putting down the trim, and 1 afternoon tearing out old trim and nails and cleaning up linoleum. I suspect my dad spent somewhere around the same amount of time himself: doing the rest of the prep (especially in the hallway; I just helped one afternoon in the family room), repairing and repainting the hallway and the family room, cutting all the quarter-round trim, and doing the last bit of trim laying, which ended up being a few hours.

But I helped.

It was actually a good project because I was able to help a lot, and felt pretty competent with most of the work by the time we were done.

The material is all plastic pseudo-wood that's "floating", which means that it's held down by gravity. It all (theoretically) links together if you lay it right.

That makes the laying of the flooring pretty easy ... except for at the edges of the room. We started out in the hallway, and that turned out to be the hardest work, because we constantly had to work around door frames and corners. In contrast, the family room had big spans where we only had to cut the first and last pieces of each row (to vary the spacing) and everything else was clean sailing.

I felt pretty out of my depth on day one, but by our second day of work, I felt increasingly competent. For edges and corners and door frames, I'd take the flooring strips out to the backyard, and do most of the cutting myself: measuring, then marking with a knife, then cutting with a jigsaw (really a multitool, apparently). It was very empowering.

The hardest work was down at the end of the hallway, between the guest room, the water heater closet and the laundry room. Ay. Tons of door frames, none quite the same.

Here's something I learned: you actually don't have to be that neat when cutting edges of flooring, because it should all be under door frames or trim. But still I did some scribing of weird jig-jogs around door frames that I was quite pleased with. I got pretty good at doing the short cuts, though long cuts often ended up not straight (and if we going along the "grain" of the "wood", I just let me dad do that).

So that was the flooring project, and it encouraged me to refloor our carpeted offices downstairs, in part because they'll look nice, in part because they'll be more resistant to cat vomit, and in part because they'll hurt Kimberly's messed up scar less.

For possible future projects here at the house in the near future, I have: a second screen door for the other door on the lanai, rewiring the fence in our front yard (with some fencing that my dad brought back on a plane years ago), and at least flooring Kimberly's office. I also told my dad I'd like to help when he builds some new shelves for the family room / game room that he's been renovating.

And I need to find a carpenter to build us some shelves.

Of course the holidays are pretty much here, so we'll see what gets done between now and the end of the year.

(But we get to put up our artificial tree this coming weekend, for the first time in two years!)

The plan for Saturday was for my dad, Kimberly, and me to drive up to Hanalei to swim, with lunch at Taco Bell and dinner at Monaco's. Alas, Kimberly has been feeling sick for the last few weeks, quite possibly due to her surgery last December, so we had to cancel that at the last minute, which left me and my dad with the day free. So, after lunching at our respective homes, we decided to instead go with Mary on a hike up at Kōkeʻe State Park.

This is something that's been on my TODO list since before the pandemic, but I've been avoiding going up there because of my knee, but it seemed like we could do a gentle walk.

So we headed over to Waimea, then took Highway 550 all the way back to Kōkeʻe. It's a bit of a trek, and since the speed limit along that whole highway is 25, it takes a while. But you get wonderful views of Waimea Canyon as you get up there, and occasionally the island and ocean too.

We stopped at Lookout #1, since we were up there, and it as usual offered gorgeous views of the canyon. But, it was really eerily empty. By which I mean totally empty. There was one truck in the parking lot when we got there, but the observation platform was totally empty. We'll never see that again (unless we return before the 14-day quarantine ends).

We parked at the lodge and museum at Kōkeʻe, which I've been to once before. We have a magnet somewhere from there (but it's not on the fridge, because it's a stainless steel fridge where nothing sticks to the front). I was really struck by how attractive that area is. There's a broad glen, and lots of picnic tables, and lots of shade. It sort of reminded me of the parks I loved in the East Bay, so I'll have to return there for pleasant Saturdays of my own. But only occasionally, it's 53 minutes out there from our house, most of that on 550, so it's not a quick, easy trip (but I'd sometimes BART down to Fremont or something in the East Bay, so that length isn't undoable either).

I needed to pick a pretty simple hike, since my dad has limits on how far he can walk because of his back. So I grabbed the first one in the book that was only 4 miles (and which said it was easy). It turned out to be quite challenging in its own way.

We were supposed to head back down the highway to a side road called Faye, but the real trick there was that the road had no name sign on it. (And there's no cell signal up there and I didn't have the proper Google Map downloaded.) We were only relatively confident that it was the right road based on looking at the angle of the road and measuring the distance we'd walked on my Fitbit. It was a quiet back-country road with the occasional house, some real run down, some very fancy (and thus likely vacation homes).

It was equally challenging finding the Trail, uninspiringly called "No Name Trail". The main problem was that our guide book totally mis-described its origin point. We in fact ended up back at someone's house, and she yelled instructions at us above her insanely barking dog, and then we walked back and found it. Walking back was the theme for the day. The trail then went a half mile or so through foliage, down to a crick, and back. It was pleasant.

We eventually decamped on another country road, running along houses with huge acreage, mostly nicer looking than the ones on the other side of the trail. From here we were supposed to walk to yet another trail, which would take us back through the park and back to the car.

Two problems.

First, the next trail was totally overgrown. I was pretty shocked, because this was an official State Park trail, unlike the No Name Trail, which was, I dunno what. We gamely waded up the trail for a while, through the foliage. My dad said, "You're probably glad there aren't rattlesnakes here", and I said, "I wouldn't walk a trail like this where they were." Which may be true, but I've walked trails with decent ground cover on them in the Bay Area, and I kept my eyes carefully on where my foot went every step. We struggled up the fairly steep trail for a while, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't getting better any time soon.

Second, my dad's back was starting to hurt. He also noted on the map that we'd done about a third of the planned circuit, so we all decided it was better to go back then do the remaining two thirds. A wise choice, I think.

So we made it back to the car in good time, and from there it was down, down, down to civilization. (Except we made a brief detour down a sideroad that my dad knew of, which had magnificent views of a canyon running down to the sea.)

I haven't gone on a hike with my folks since February or March. We got out of the habit when the most stringent shelter-in-place required us not to see anyone. (Are we heading back to that with 200-300 cases a day on Oahu? It depends on whether the upcoming rules just slam Oahu or all of us, but there's going to be a revolt if it's the latter.)

I do really enjoy the peace and tranquility of going out walking on my own, but it was also great to have my folks with me, so we'll have to do that too occasionally, now that we've remembered. (And we're still hoping to do that Hanalei trip sometime, it just needs to be in the summer, when the North Shore is calmer.)

We must be starting to settle in a little bit, because I didn't feel the need to obsessively journal for the 11th day in a row on Friday (or yesterday for that matter).

That might be because we'd come upon the blesséd weekend, which though there were things to do, felt like the first break I'd had since Christmas.

And of course, there are still things to write about:

The Rain in Kauai Falls Mainly on the Lanai. It has been raining since we got here! Every morning, every day, and for the last few days, most of the day. I've walked in the rain. I've driven in the rain. My dad says it's the rainiest winter he remembers (though obviously we're not having the extreme rainfall in a day or two that caused several flooding a few years ago). It's wet, wet, wet.

And it's amazing to watch in our house, because we're at the top of a ridge, so we just see the rain thundering now out of the sky, plunging into the valley behind us and pummeling all of the houses.

(And today it finally cleared up a little, though there's expected to be more rain all next week.)

Centipede, Leave My Heart Alone. When we were here last April, we learned that the house had centipede problems, to the tune of one a week or something like that, which seriously unthrilled us. Mary told the renters that of course she'd be happy to take care of it, and so they talked about spraying when the renter's children were away ... but the tenant apparently never contacted Mary to make that happen. But for 12 days now, we've been centipede free. I'm guessing that the rain is washing them all away (seriously), but at least it's a respite while we settle in.

When I heard about the centipede problem, I imagined that we'd have to have an expert in, to carefully scour the house for ways they might be getting in. And that may still have to happen. But, while working in my office last week, I was shocked to discover the screen behind the middle louvre window in my office was easily ripped enough to let a centipede in. This was in the very room where our renter had complained about a centipede crawling across his face while sleeping. So, I walked the downstairs and found a similarly ripped window in Kimberly's office, and later when I went outside, I found one more that wasn't as bad, but was probably big enough for a centipede to get in (and a few more that aren't quite there yet). There are also a few screens in the mud room where the seal doesn't look perfect.

So, there are all kinds of obvious things to do as a first step to reducing centipede infestation.

You Make Me Feel Like (A Natural Homeowner). I've been a homeowner since 2000, but I've never felt as much like a homeowner as I have since we moved to Hawaii. That's in part because I'm assembling all of our furniture. (Including great designs from CostCo/Bay Designs and Wayfair, plus a really badly made design from Choo Choo that I bought on Amazon: never again.) But that's really about a house, not a home. I feel like a homeowner primarily because of my dad, who's been over here frequently, teaching me how to do things (supplying expertise and tools and maybe just a little bit of elbow grease here and there.) So last Friday, after work, we he showed me how to fill a huge hole in our bathroom wall and also rebuild screens. (The same screens that were open to centipede infestation.) He rebuilt about half of the first screen, and left me to finish it, and then I rebuilt two more. I mean, it's pretty easy: pull out the spline, pull out the screen, lay the new screen over the frame, lay in the spline using a handy tool, and cut the screen against the spline. But back in Berkeley I would have just bought new screens or had someone build them. Instead, here, I got the extreme satisfaction of seeing these pristine looking screens that I rebuilt. (And perhaps we should have rebuilt a few more, but I was tired after three. Anyhow, I'm hopefully that none of the remaining ones will let in centipedes yet.)

My dad said that we might built some or all of the bookshelves that we're interested getting built-into the house: we'll see if we're really up to the scope of that project.

La Vie Boheme. Moving into this house that my parents had rented out for almost two decades, I've discovered that I just don't understand renters (and I say that having been a renter from 1989-2000). On the one hand, you have mysterious damage. The hole in our bathroom wall was behind where a mirror had literally been ripped off the wall, based on the how all of its holders were broken, but which the renters said "fell down". Similarly, I dunno what was done to the light in my office (which we did finally get working, but it's the one overhead light which just isn't bright enough for the room: we think renters might have changed it out at some point). Meanwhile, we have the things that they just ignored, like those centipede-big holes in windows in a house where they were complaining about centipedes, or the dripping pipe in our master bathroom (which just needed to be tightened or ...). I mean, my parents are the nicest landlords around, so if the tenants had asked for anything to be fixed, it would have been, but it apparently wasn't even worth asking. As I said, I don't understand.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream ... On Saturday, looking for somewhere to drive to, I chose Lappert's ice cream in Koloa. It was my first drive out to Koloa, and it was largely successful (other than the fact that Koloa Road is filled with awful potholes, which my dad says is due to the really bad rainy season). As usual, I had problems parking Julie the Benz, but afterward I watched videos and discovered that my main problem in those 90-degree parking spaces was probably not getting far enough to the other side (and that if I thought about them as left-hand turns they might feel less intimidating).

Kimberly says there are several rites of passage to becoming citizens of Kauai and that getting our Lappert's frequent-customer card was one of them.

Walking on Sunshine. I have long imagined how things might be here in Kauai. Some things have fallen down, like my dream that I'd walk the loop trail every morning before work. But today I did something else I'd long dreamed of: I walked over to my Dad and Mary's house to visit in the afternoon. It's just more than a mile: 25 minutes there (downhill), 30 minutes back (uphill). Both my dad and Mary were surprised that I walked, and tried to give me a ride back, which tells me they don't understand how much I walked everywhere back in Berkeley. But I partook of a bit of their late lunch, and then we talked for a while. It was very nice. Although I haven't done much hiking or biking or swimming yet, this was another one of the advantages I saw from living in Hawaii, and I'm glad to see it taking form.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh Ho. And even with the weekend, it feels like I'm not getting enough time for everything. I haven't had time to do most of my personal writing (though I finally produced a new Mechanics & Meeples article tonight, for publication .. momentarily), and I haven't given a lot of time to Bitmark writing. But that may be because this weekend I mostly relaxed. There was computer game playing (Dresden Files Card Game on my Mac; thanks Eric!), there was reading, there was napping.

So maybe I'm a little more ready now for a new week of work, and the usual busyness (and maybe also catching up on some more of that writing and of course doing more building and unpacking, which were also minor parts of this weekend).

The advemture continues ...

I got my day of rest yesterday.

Well, after the final fixes on our heater, but that was done early enough to get me out of the house by 11am: as I thought, the pilot flame just needed to be tuned down, but I neither had the confidence to do that nor the tools to open up the heater.

In any case, the rain stopped on Saturday, and it was a balmy 58 degrees, the nicest day scheduled until we leave. After a horrendous week and last weekend that were super busy and stressful, I was very happy to go out for a hike.

The hike was one that I've done a half-dozen or a dozen times: up Panoramic Hill, around the Upper Fire Trail above Strawberry Creek, up to the Sidehill Trail to Grizzly Peak Blvd, over onto the ridgeline Trail, into Tilden Park, and then along the ridgeline there until I cut down to the bus stop near Lake Anza. 11 or 12 miles total.

I did my best to be really mindful the whole time, because I'm not going to do that whole hike again before we leave (and I might not be up in the hills at all: I've got lots of my schedule). I enjoyed the paths and the people and their so, so, so cute dogs. I enjoyed the trees and the views. I really saw everything that I could.

I did also play music a bit, which I don't usually do while hiking, but it felt like a part of losing myself to the experience. Mostly I played through Barenaked Ladies and They Might Be Giants, singing along as I went, even when I was passing other people.

It was a great walk, a really pleasant afternoon, only chilly when I stopped for too long.

And I got a last sandwich from Cheese 'n Stuff too, was a surprise, given their frequent Saturday closings (but they had a sign up, a very rare sign!, saying they were closing after Saturday and not open until the new year).

Good day!

But there's still lots of work to be done. My post-it by my desk says: clean; Skotos work; Bitmark work.

So today I dived back in, and it wasn't exactly super stressful work, but it was lots of things to be done.

We have six or so large caches of stuff: one cabinet in the downstairs bathroom; a couple of cabinets in the kitchen; the Harry Potter closet; and a lot of stuff in my office. So I just kept going back and back and back to those today, separating things into piles for Goodwill, to offer out in front of our house, and to trash. Oh, and a very few things get set aside to go to Hawaii or to keep until we're done using them.

None of those caches is close to done yet, but I can now see the backs and floors of all the spaces, so we're a lot closer.

And meanwhile more and more of my life is turning toward Kauai. In the last few days, I ordered a microwave, a printer, and a monitor all to be delivered out there (the first two the day before we arrive, the third just after, all to my dad's house).

Lucy has been very sad since we gave her cat tree away, so we found a new one for her, and we'll order that just after Christmas to make sure it doesn't get to Kauai before we do. (Currently, they say January 3rd, but I want that to go to our house, not my dad's, which is why I'm waiting.)

And we did have a relaxing lunch out at Cancun, a tasty restaurant that we'll miss.

When I was talking to my dad today he asked if things had quieted down now that our stuff is all out of the house, and I said no, but I was too frazzled to remember everything that was going on, so I told him about all the cleaning up I was still doing, but I forgot about the stressful house work that had gone on until Saturday morning.

And I realized that we actually have to deal with more than he did. Obviously, he had to (1) get all his stuff moved; (2) do any final stuff in the Bay Area [like my recent dental appointments as an example]; and (3) get stuff ready for them in Kauai. But, we've also had to (4) prepare our house for sale; and (5) finalize things for Skotos, like my closing down our mailbox and changing lots of addresses.

On the bright side, we're going to have family in Kauai, and Mary was just making arrangements to loan us bedsheets and dishes while we're there the first weeks.

So, maybe more stressful until we leave, then less stressful afterward.

Hope so. I've been waiting for that less stressful for a while.

Kimberly and I first came to Kauai in October 2001. We took up residence in a condo in the Waikomo Streams Villa and then spent two weeks lazing around and roving the Poipu area, because of course we didn't have a car. The Sheraton Beach was one of the closest beaches to our condo, but we could walk along that beach, then out to some walkways that alternated between sand and rock. We passed by the husks of a set of condos ripped apart by Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and eventually came alongside Marriott's Waiohai Beach Club before arriving at the Poipu Beach, one of the biggest and prettiest beaches in the area. I have no idea how many times we did that walk, but it was certainly part of our experience for our once-in-a-lifetime vacation.

In 2005, we stayed at the Waikomo Streams again, and I'm sure we did that walk a few times, but we spent a lot of the time going further afield with my dad, Mary, and Melody as part of a Very Appel Christmas.

And since then we've always had a car (or rather my dad and Mary did) so secret pathways connecting beaches were no longer part of our experience.

So today's our last full day in Kauai this time around, and our last full day ever of vacationing in Kauai. I'm still sick, though certainly not as bad as yesterday or Friday. But my throat hurts some and swallowing hurts some and my head is fuzzy some. But I did want to get out and bid farewell to the island at least a bit.

So my dad and I went down to Poipu and we reversed the walk, bookending my experience in Kauai as a tourist.

And it's barely recognizable. Marriott's Waiohai Beach Club now has nice walkways, and the ripped apart husks are long time and they have walkways too. So you walk on stone or boardwalk all the way out to where the land curves out marking the end of Poipu. Then you briefly step out into the sand, walk around the point, and you're at the Sheraton Beach. ("I never realized they were so close," my dad says. "Because when you drive you have to go out, then along, then in." But Kimberly and I of course have different experiences than other people.) Alas, I miss those wet, dangerous stone walkways, the succulents all around them, and the path we took 'lo these two decades ago, now gone entirely. But it was good to see how it had all changed.

Over at the corner of Sheraton Beach, a huge number of kids (and a few adults) were all surfing, in pretty close to the beach. My dad and I watched them for a while, with the waves occasionally lapping over our feet, and it was the highlight of the day. A lot of these kids were impressively skilled, riding the relatively shallow waves almost all the way into the beach. There was one little girl riding a surfboard about twice her size, and although I worried for her on occasion as she got knocked around by that huge board, she was great when she got atop it and surfed.

Afterward, my dad and I walked back to Poipu and saw a sea turtle up on the sand. He looked like he was a regular visitor because stones had been laid to form a large perimeter around him. We then waded out into the keiki side of the beach, about waist high, and I communed with the ocean for a bit, before preparing to return to dryer lands.

Labor Day weekend!

Getting to the Point. On Saturday, I biked up to Point Richmond, mainly because that was the direction of the closest cheap-o shoe store nowadays. But Point Richmond was a great destination in that area because I love the beach out at Ferry Point and the Knox-Miller Shoreline and the hills above them. (I partook of both the hills and the shoreline over the course of the day and did indeed find some shoes in Richmond on the way home.)

He Likes It! Hey, Bikey! Much to my surprise, as I turned onto the western half of the Richmond Greenway (after the regular annoying trip through downtown Richmond, because over a decade later, Richmond still hasn't connected the two halves of the path), I found the Greenway jammed with people. They've created a couple of BMX courses of hills curves and such right next to the Greenway there, and Saturday was its grand opening. It was great seeing kids and adults alike flying through the course, sometimes literally. I stopped for a while and watched, then did the same thing on the way back. I kept expecting to see TJ Lavin. It's lovely to see that western half of the Greenway increasingly used by the community, and it was surprising to see the whole Greenway clean, though that was probably a one-time-only grand-opening thing.

The Quest for the Perfect Chicken Sandwich. For lunch on Saturday I chose a place called Great American Hamburger in Point Richmond, which looked like an old-school hamburger joint. I idly hoped that it might be comparable to our dearly-departed Oscar's ... and I was pleasantly surprised. Oh, it was too small and crowded. (Next time the chicken sandwich goes with me to the park.) And, their fries were totally mediocre. But their chicken sandwich was almost perfect, by Oscar's standards. It was cut just a tiny bit too thick, which made little bits of it too dry, but for the most part it was delicious, and the condiments were a combination of lettuce, tomato, big cuts of onion, and watery mayo that tasted like it came straight from Oscar's. I was in heaven, savoring every bite. I'll definitely be returning.

A Trip to the Middle East. My dad and Mary are in the Bay Area for their annual visit, so on Sunday we got to see them, along with Melody and Jared of course. It was a nice afternoon, and we walked up to La Med for a late lunch. (My dad said they have no similar middle-eastern restaurants on the island which will soon be our problem too.) As usual, it was great seeing everyone.

Foxfoxfox. And then today after lunch with K., I hiked all the way up to the top of the hills behind our house, with the intent of getting some exercise, some (overly cool) sunshine, and some work done on my ongoing Designers & Dragons updates for the German edition. While I was up working on the bench just over the ridgeline, looking down into the Siesta Valley, a grey fox wandered by! I think he hadn't noticed me because I was working quietly, but when he did see me he was more interested than anything. He walked a bit, then watched, then walked a bit more, and stared at me for quite a while as he stood just above the drop that would take him out of sight. I took some pictures, and he only fled when I talked to him. Cute fox! I've never seen one in the wild before.

And tomorrow it's back to work, but the best thing about a three-day weekend is that you start the workweek and it's already Tuesday!

We mix it up today with a bit more wholly physical activity.

In the morning we head to Magic Sands Beach. It's supposed to have more waves than the wussy beaches we've swum at so far, and oh boy does it. Jared and I bring boogie boards, while my dad just bounces about in the waves. And Jared and I get slammed any number of times. We each manage to ride some waves, which is fun, but he eats some sand a few times before he gives up, and I end up beneath any number of waves, come down hard on one leg, and manage to tweak my whole back when a wave is pummeling me down as my board pulls me up. Yup, challenging. More fun than it sounds, but several hours later my shoulders, arms, and back are definitely sore. After I put up my board, I bounce around in the water for a while too. It's amazing what a difference that board makes. When I had it strapped to my arm, I felt like I was totally at the mercy of the next monster wave coming in, but after I put it away, I can navigate every wave with little trouble.

While we're out, we also check out the old Kona airport, which has been turned into a park. The runway is now a huge amount of space for parking, which is otherwise very dear in downtown Kona. There's beach on one side and a nice garden on the other. We check it all out and I appreciate the garden area the most. I appreciate the aggressive homeless guy who wants a ride the least.

After a fish market lunch, which we bring home for Kimberly, we head up to a hiking trail I found 3 or 4 miles from the house. It's amazing how much the environment changes in that little amount. The temperature drops 10 degrees, and the sky clouds over, and when we hop out of the car, it's almost cool.

The hike is a path that goes straight into the jungle. The dominant fauna is ferns, and they are a constant presence on all the sides of the trail. There are a 1-mile loop and a bunch of side trails. We apparently end up on a side trail, because we keep going down and down and down. Eventually my dad goes back (and with him Mary), but Jared, Melody, and I continue until we hit a dirt root that seems to go forever in either direction. The climb back up is more challenging than I expect, mainly because a few bits toward the end are quite steep. It's a good hike to end our presence here on the Big Island.

Just before dinner we get a short deluge of rain, reminding us of the four+ days of constant rainfall that led us off.

And then we have a final meal, of tasty Safeway deli foods.

And our Hawaiian vacation is essentially at an end, other than some conversation, and then a trip to the airport (and home) tomorrow.

Today we ranged up and down the west coast of the Big Island, from Kona to about 25 miles north.

Stop One: Hapuna Beach. Our first stop for the day is a beautiful white sand beach. It doesn't have the character of the neat lagoon-beach in Hilo or the black sand beach down in the south, but it nonetheless is a gorgeous expanse of sand in front of a sand-filled bay. The water is also a bit warmer than any of our other swimming. It was very nice.

Stop Two: Lunch! We have lunch at a tasty taco and burger place! With super-friendly staff. Chicken verde tacos! (I am surprised to discover the chicken is breaded and fried, which makes it more tasty, but not something I'd usually order.)

Stop Three: Pu'ukohola Heiau. In trying to get back on the highway, we accidentally turn into Pu'ukohola Heiau, which is a historic site. In fact, it's a pretty notable historic site, because it was the home of King Kamehameha I. He built his temple to the war god here, assassinated his cousin here, took control of Hawaii from here, and then went on to take control of all the Hawaiian islands.

Anyway, his lava-stone temple to the war good, on the Hill of the Whale, is still standing there, and so is an older temple from the 1500s. We get to hike around in the hot sun and see them. I find it amazing that they're still standing, despite the fact that they're unmortared, and despite the fact that Hawaii has earthquakes, but there they are.

There used to be a temple to the shark god too, in the bay, but it's lost now, last seen in the '50s. Apparently, lots of sharks swim into that bay, and the king used to give them goodies there.

Stop Four: Puako Petroglyphs Field. A bit further south, we hit the petroglyph field we were actually aiming for. Just a little bit along the path there are a bunch of recently cut petroglyphs, and my theory is that they're their to dissuade tourists from going on to the actual petroglyphs. We continue on, though the path becomes a bit faint at that point, and soon we're heading through a super-cool forest that looks all dead at ground level, but has some greenery above us. The petroglyphs themselves are about .7 miles from the start of the path. We see maybe half-a-dozen though there are apparently thousands more if we continue on. We're content with a few men and sea turtles and such though. They're all pretty hard to see today, as they're mostly faded. But it's more cool history.

Stop Five: Kaloko-Honokohau Park. This is another historic park, though it's mostly big fields of lava stone. Melody loves the lava stone, but I'm pretty done with it by now. There are some paths up and around and through the lava stone and eventually going over to the beach. But we just spend 15 minutes here or so, and when our first path loops back to the parking lot, we decide we've had enough.

Stop Six: Shave Ice. A Hawaiian vacation isn't complete without shave ice. I have chocolate and strawberry from a place called Ululani's, and the chocolate in particular is quite good.

Today we were "re-accommodated" from Hilo to Kona. Not in a United-Airlines-likes-to-beat-their-passengers way, just the transition from our second planned accommodation to our third. This was a seven-hour trip, with stops that swung us all the way around the south of the island.

We pass by the volcano again as we swing south, and as we get past it we notice a plume of smoke coming up. This is the closest we've come to evidence of the volcano the whole trip. We get out and we take some pictures and smell the sulphur in the air. Afterward I have a headache and several of us have sore throats. Cough drops are passed around.

As we continue the swing south we stop at a black sand beach (where the sand is hot and occasionally sharp) to swim, then at a bake shop to eat. We have sandwiches there, plus malasadas, which are Hawaiian (actually Portuguese) donuts. Mine is chocolate filled and is OK, but I dunno what people who say "like donuts but better" mean.

The ultimate goal of our journey south is South Point, which is down a long increasingly rickety road. It's the southern most point on Hawaii and thus in the United States (excluding our territories). Kind of cool being there, but the most notable thing is the gorgeous blue water. There's a green sand beach nearby, but we aren't interested in paying $15 each to be transported there, nor do we have time for the few-mile walk. But we enjoy the beautiful views for a while.

The journey north is more of a marathon. We were going to stop at a coffee plantation, but it's closed, so mostly we just travel north for about two hours. We do make a quick stop to see an impressive field of lava rock (all block or brown rock, totally surrounding us, some as recent as 1907, some dating back to the middle ages).

Our third house is the smallest of the three, but it shows what a difference a good house can make. The owner leaves us all kinds of goodies like macadamia nuts and tennis balls and pancake mix and there's plenty of toilet paper and other necessities, whereas the second house was stingy about "consumables". And the locale is so much nicer: our second, big house was nice enough (other than some maintenance issues and the show-stopping sound problems), but in a kind of run-down area, while this one is up in the hills and once more feels like Hawaiian paradise instead of suburban living.

Today is our restful day, because our volcano-related plans are no longer applicable. So we spend it rushing from place to place.

Oh hey, the sun's out. It's bright, it's sunny, it's nice. That's good.

We make many stops and it's not raining at all.

Stop #1: Kaūmana Caves County Park. We walk into a park and there's a stairway down to a tropical grotto. A nearby sign tells us that the caves are big, and we're not allowed to go past the edge of the park, but there are no boundary markers. Not sure how that's supposed to work, but I'm psyched. Unfortunately, the actual cave experience isn't as amazing.

First up, it's wet when we get down into the cave, with water dripping everywhere. Second, it's dark, duh, with our subpar flashlights and iPhones providing the only illumination. However, the thing that keeps me from really loving the caves is the floor, which is mostly a constant mess of rocks, with just occasional lengths of smooth (and shockingly non-slippery) rock. Not only was the uneven, sometimes unstable rock really exhausting to walk on, but I also manage to scrape myself up when I step off a shelf onto ground below that I thought was even. (It wasn't.) Still, I go back until the caves squeezes down a bit and I decide I've had enough.

Meanwhile, a team of 17 or college-age kids swarm past us and disappear into the hole leading deeper into the cave, and are never seen again.

By the by, this is a lava tube. There's only one known limestone cave in Hawaii, and it's collapsed. Which I suppose means there are now zero.

Stop #2: Boilings Pots. This is a spot about a mile and a half up river from Rainbow Falls, which we visited two days ago. If there's heavy rainfall (and there has been), then the rapids are supposed to look like boiling water.

Not so much.

But just upriver from the Pots are the Pe'ePe'e Falls (that's pay-ay-pay-ay, not something to do with Donald Trump), and they're gorgeous. There are a couple of main falls and some side falls, and we just stand staring in awe at them for a while.

I'm jealous of the locals who have snuck down to the river to swim, but not only is it down forbidden paths, but you also don't swim in Hawaii rivers with open wounds (cf., scrapes sustained in the caverns, one of which is a gouge of the flesh at the tip of my middle finger).

Stop #3: Carlsmith Beach. A Hawaiian vacation never begins before I swim. And the wet, gray wether prevented that to date. But, after the beautiful waterfall, we head down to Carlsmith Beach, which is at the end of a long road of beaches running east from Hilo. It's an extremely cool beach with grassy knolls running up to lava stone entries to the water and beautiful inlets looking like Hawaiian movie stills and little islands dotting the lagoon-like ocean area.

My dad, Melody, and I swim for quite a while. We go west, then east. We visit a little island. There's one shocking thing about the lagoon: there are little spots of freezing cold water. We're not the only ones to notice. We frequently hear people talking about them, and we also hear screams every once in a while.

Stop #4: Ken's House of Pancakes. We have lunch at a little Hawaiian diner that has every type of food. It's surprisingly tasty. I have a FLT sandwich (that's facon, lettus and tomato, but it also has guacamole and sprouts and is tasty). My dad has chill that looks like it comes straight from Steak and Shake, and just about everyone enjoys a little bit of it.

Stop #5: Two Ladies Kitchen. At Kimberly's request, we run back to Two Ladies Kitchen to get more mochi. There's a shockingly long line this time, and I think it takes us 40 minutes total between waiting to order and then waiting for the order. Kimberly says it's Hilo's Ici.

Stop #6: Target. To finish off our "restful" day, we go to Target to buy numerous necessities including Neosporin (cf. cave wounds) and toilet paper (cf. AirB&Bs that don't provide sufficient necessities).

And then we're home for dinner (kulua pork tacos!!!) and movie (Lilo & Stitch! to follow Muana a few notes ago!)

Every AirB&B has its challenges, some minor, some very problematic. Our problem for the house these three days is sound pollution. At about 3am I am woken by a constant drum beat, which I later learned is due to the plastic coverings over the patio area out back. Water would overflow off the roof and drop from one plastic covering to another while it was raining (and it's constantly rained since we arrived on Hawaii), creating a drumming. Huge flocks of roosters also started crowing at 3am. Because roosters are really dumb. So when I woke up at 3, it was really hard to get back to sleep.

Tonight we'll have all the windows closed, but the fan on, which should help the problem in two ways. (Fingers crossed.)

The big plan for today is to see the volcano. Spoiler: we are not successful.

It's gray and raining (of course) when we head out and I suggest it might not be the best day to see the volcano, but we head up anyway. And, that turns out to be pretty prudent. Because the lava in the volcano is dropping due to the eruption, and when it hits the groundwater level it might cause an explosion throwing multi-ton rocks up to five miles. So they're going to be closing Volcano National Park tomorrow for an indefinite time. Which means that today is our only chance.

But it's no chance. I had hoped we might get above the cloud level in the park, but at first it's still raining, but then the clouds settle down to us and we're in then. We really can't see anything in either case. The best we get out is when we go out to the edge of the caldera and we can occasionally make out bits of ground, but not much, and definitely no lava. (Though it's possible that the lava has dropped far enough that it's no longer visible anyway.)

So, we see a little movie-let in the visitor center that doesn't actually have a lot about the volcano, but is a kind of nice history-of-Hawaii in 20 minutes. It increases my desire to read Mitchener's Hawaii and we later go to the full museum, whose highpoint is some artwork of Pele and other Hawaiian gods. And we try to see the volcano from a few spots. And we get wet a lot.

And we also experience a slight bit of the volcano at the steam vents, which are really amazingly hot. That's the coolest actual geologic thing.

But the highpoint is the Volcano Art Center where they sell a lot of local art. I expect it to be overpriced, but it's all totally reasonable. And there's quite a lot of attractive art: jewelery (Kimberly buys a piece), ceramics, photographs, paintings. I'm quite won over by an artist named Elizabeth Miller, who lives in Volcano, which is just down the road from the park. She has several pieces called Field Notes which seem focused on 19th century scientific discover. Each one has a mildly three-dimensional book in the foreground, which is an artistic rendering of a field journal, and then more painting in the back. Kimberly and I talk it over for a while (and go see the movie and come back) and eventually decide to buy one.

And here's where we really commit to our move to Hawaii: we ship it to my Dad's house, where they'll store it in their dehumidifier room, so we don't have to ship it to the US and then back to Hawaii and chance damaging it each way. So we've now got our first thing waiting for us in Hawaii, and also our first piece by a Hawaiian local for our walls.

Most of the park is closed. There are no paths to walk (except from the visitor center to the museum, and we don't walk that anyway due to the constant rain and mist and due to Kimberly's broken food), even the lava tubes are closed. We wander around for a while, and do spend a few hours in the park, but eventually head back out.

In some ways, this is grossly disappointing, because the volcano is really the big tourist spot on the island. But we continue to have great company. The rides to and from are nice, the lunch in Volcano is nice, the hanging out in the afternoon is nice, and even after dinner we just sit around and talk until bedtime closes in.

So, despite the touristy disappointment, it's a good day.

Today is our first transit day. We move from our Bamboo House in the rainforest in the north of the island to a more normative (but huge) family house down south of Hilo on the East Coast.

It's a somewhat exhausting day, because we're on the road for I don't even know how many hours. Six? Eight? Because we have a check-out of 10.30 and then a check-in of 4.00. (And we leave early.)

We start the day returning to the Waipio Lookout and are delighted that the sun's come out. We can see the valley and the beach and the mountains (but not the river) quite clearly. It's nice that it cleared up just in time.

Most of the day is spent hunting waterfalls on the road down to Hilo.

There are quite a few visible from the highway. Every mile or two we hit a bridge and when we do, we look inland and as often as not there's a beautiful waterfall.

We stop at some muddy little park between the 20 and 19 mile marks. I'm not sure of its name, and it was mostly neglected, but nonetheless we enjoy seeing the river there.

The highlight is the Akaka Falls State Park. There's someone standing at the entrance, showing you how to use a machine to pay a fee of $1/person, which feels pretty scammy. But I guess state parks are different here. Then we're walking on a big loop.

I've loved being in rain forest rooms, like the one in the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. But this is the first time I've ever been in a huge outside rain forest area that just keeps going and going. It was awesome to see a lot of the same flora, but in its natural environment.

There are again countless falls, two big and lots small. The big Akaka Falls is the highlight. It's 440+ feet and absolutely awe-inspiring.

(Sadly Kimberly of the broken foot and hand isn't able to join us on this walk, which includes lots of steps, including 15 stories of rise, but I bore her with pictures. Which don't really translate the awe.)

We're in Hilo by noon, for lunch. We eat at an excellent Italian place there. Then Jared has learned of a mochi bakery, which we visit. It has an impressive selection and we taste some samples that are good. I get a "brownie" mochi, a marshmellow mochi, and a white-chocolate-and-something mochi. Haven't eaten them yet.

There's one more waterfall to see, the Rainbow Waterfall. There are no rainbows to be seen because it's once again gray and wet, but it's impressive, and we get pretty up close and personal to this one, which is cool.

Bonus Stop! We suddenly turn into the Mauna Loa macadamia factory.

But it's a bit disappointing: pretty much a tourist trap.

There's a "self-guided" factory tour, which is just three video screens, only two of which are working. And part of the catwork is taped off. And there's no one in the chocolate making area. But we do at least get to see people playing with nuts in the main factory.

The main thing at the site is a store where there's everything from actual macadamia nut bags to nut jewelry. There are samples, but they're offered stingily and listlessly. Nonetheless, I discover they have Maui Onion macadamias which are quite good. (The dark chocolate isn't bad either, but why not just have the nuts or just the dark chocolate?)

We arrive at our newest residence at 3.30 or so. It's half-an-hour early, but Mary verifies we can go in.

Kimberly and I get the master bedroom again, as the room most likely to be easily accessible given her foot. This one has a shower, thankfully (our Bamboo House bathroom didn't!) and the shower even has a seat which will make it possible for Kimberly to use without problem.

Meanwhile, we have a dream of watching Muana on Netflix tonight, but the house's HDMI connector is broken. After half-an-hour of struggle with a knife, Jared manages to get it straightened out. So there will probably be Hawaiian singing tonight after dinner.

The Bamboo House looks like it's made of bamboo. Much of that is probably a facade, but the entire outside is bamboo and there's bamboo floors and ceilings and bamboo against all of the walls inside. The stairs are bamboo, as are the walls in the stairwell.

It's also huge, at about 2600 square feet. Some of our bedrooms look like apartments and some of our bathrooms look like flats. There are beautiful lanias, overlooking tropical trees running alongside a creek, troubled only by the mosquitos of the area.

And it hasn't stopped raining at the house since we got here over 24 hours ago. But that just makes it more of a beautiful sanctuary.

Mary's plan for today was to explore the Waipio Valley, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy. When we go up to the Waipio Valley Lookout it's still raining. We look down through the mist and fog and we can barely make out a beach with surf maybe 1000 feet below and a mountain on the other side. Every once in a while we can barely make out a strip of green that is the valley.

We opt not to walk the Valley through the rain.

So we drive out to a nearby town for some emergency coffee for Melody and others. Afterward we loop up through the hills to head to Hawi, the town in the north of the island. We get some beautiful views of the island south of us as we climb up to ~3500 FEET.

In Hawi we stop at the visitor's center (it's still raining) and find that its main attraction is a bathroom. We also learn that the road up north to see the Waipio Valley from the other side had been blocked by a landside. So we have lunch at an OK Mexican restaurant and then take a different route back down south, via the coast. And we see more nice views. And there is no rain along that coast. My dad's theory is that we're seeing so much rain because we're north of the mountains that run near the top of the island.

(That is our main sightseeing for the day, some pretty literal sightseeing, via car as we toured the northern corner of the island. And fun conversation and joking in the car as we go.)

Actually, before we go to Hawi, we do make a stop at the Parker Ranch. It's the remnants of an old cattle ranch that was vastly large and profitable and important in the early days of white settlers on the island. It's actually extremely historic given its size and age (the largest ranch on the islands and one of the oldest in the US). But the historic buildings we look at are just OK. We do get to tour the original house and to see some nice impressionist-inspired paintings and I read some historic timelines that make me want to read more about the history of the islands.

But, Mary and I have a plan. When we get back, if it's not raining too hard we're going to walk back to the Lookout and then walk into the valley. And it's definitely not pouring when we get back, so off we go. Jared and Melody walk us as far as the top of the Valley, and then Mary and I descend.

We only make it 15 minutes or so, and we're a bit more than halfway down, but the road is super-steep and it's starting to really pressure my left knee. Mary suggests we should head back, so I don't hurt myself, but I want to walk just to the edge of the next super-steep area.

So we do, and we're rewarded with a view of the actual river valley maybe 500 feet below now. There's still a lot of mist, but we can see the river and the greenery and even the whole shape of the mountain on the other side. It's a beautiful vista.

Afterward we walk back up and this is pretty grueling because it's 500 feet ascent in half a mile or three quarters of a mile. And it's still raining. But we manage it, give a bit of cheer at the top, and then hike back to the house.

I am not exactly soaked, but definitely pretty wet.

It's a fun adventure.

I knew that Jared has begun playing board games, and so I brought a few for this vacation. We can't talk any one else into a game, but we play Lost Cities after dinner. So, there's value in dragging at least one of these games to Hawaii. Lost Cities is actually a frequent flier at this point.

Up at 5am. We're running a bit earlier than usual because our normal 9am flight to Honolulu got bumped back to 8am several months ago. Fortunately, I slept well last night, with no anxiety about the trip. So I got in maybe five and a half hours of actual sleep.

We get our last things together, and I bid a sad farewell to our cats. There's a 10-minute wait on Lyft cars, and so I call before we're quite ready, and then we end up rushed at the last minute. I think I locked the outer door in my stumble down the stairs with 48 pounds of suitcase, a backpack, and a water bottle.

One of the suitcase's front wheels sheers off as I tug it down the stairs. Guess we're done with that, wish it had happened at the end of the trip, not the start. But it still rolls on its back two wheels, at least.

There's a Lyft car and a ride to the airport that I can barely remember. Kimberly and I and (sometimes) the Lyft drive talked during it, but I think it was mostly babble.

Hawaiian at Oakland always seems to have terrible lines. However, they finally seem to almost have their process going with the electronic check-ins (something that almost every airport I've been too lately has figured out, with the exception of the west's worst airport, in Berlin), but we opt not use it because we want to make sure there's going to be no problem with Kimberly's scooter.

Twenty-five minutes later, we verify there's no problem, though the staff is confused and trepidatious enough about it that they call ahead to the gate to warn, "Scooter's Coming!"

Our suitcase goes in without problem because I'd measured it at 48-49 pounds before we left home.

At TSA, we get to walk up the "medical" line, which saves us all of a minute or two. Then it's the normal crush. They now insist on taking our iPads out of our special TSA-approved backpacks that aren't supposed to require that because of "new regulations", to which I say, F*** Donald Trump, who was trying to ban laptops to Europe when I was out there last year. (It's actually the fear-mongering TSA's fault, not the worst president in the United State's history.)

When we get up to the front of the security lines, they call me as a male opt-out, and deal with it quickly, as usual (or at least, as usual at Oakland). There's a new guy being trained, but I've done this so many times by now that it's a total non-issue. In fact the trainer says that'll be the case for most opt-outs because they tend to have done it before. (Unlike the sheep, who keep supporting the invasive x-ray and millimeter wave machines by their pathological compliance.) Kimberly gets called out with some other code for the fact that she's mobility impaired and on a scooter, and they take much longer to get to her. (She's still done right when I am, because of New Guy.)

For once we don't have time to eat our Overpriced Starbucks Bagels after we get them. That's in part because we're running maybe 30 minutes later than usual, because I was very precise at getting us to the Hawaiian line exactly two hours before our flight, but also because we pre-board, again due to Kimberly's mobility issues.

When we pre-board we go amidst a huge mob of strollers. "This'll be fun", I think of the flight. Oh, and about half of those strollers are just sitting around, blocking things. We practically have to push our way through a mob to pre-board.

Once we get aboard, I see how useful it actually is, because it gives me time and space to stand around while Kimberly settles.

It's weird standing around, looking at an almost empty plane. Planes are never empty nowadays, especially not this flight to Honolulu.

There's one very unhappy baby early on the flight, but generally it's not worse than usual. Except for the one or two babies who seem able to squeal at a frequency that would shatter glasses.

Nonetheless, the flight reminds me how much I come to hate other human beings when squished into an airplane with them.

The people behind us should die. From the first two hours of the flight, they literally do not shut up.

The people ahead ahead of are just annoying ignoramuses. The guy of the couple seems unable to figure out how to pull his seat up when we're served a breakfast of almost entirely sweet food, a Hawaiian speciality. Finally he puts his hand back and managed to flip up my whole tray table, knocking everything on the ground. I'm absolutely astounded as it's one of the rudest or stupidest things I've ever seen on an airplace. I gather my stuff and am thankful we haven't gotten our food yet.

There are also a couple of different people who feel like they get to blast their iPads without earphones, and who cares about anyone else. One of this is a toddler, who perhaps really doesn't know better, but his parents should know enough to moderate that volume.

Really, annoying or not, I don't care. I've got pretty used to flights in the last two years, and this one is pretty short compared to last October's flights.

After a transfer in Honolulu we come in to the big island around 2.30. We see lots of black ground, like a post-apocalyptic landscape, from old lava.

We meet up with my dad, Mary, Melody, and Jared, since this is our big family vacation.

And then it's off driving northward.

There are lots of beautiful landscapes on the west coast as we drive northward. But it's getting grayer and grayer and and by the time we slide through Waimea, a town in the north of the island, it's definitely raining.

By the time we get to our house in Honokaa, we're literally in a rain forest. And it's pouring.

We send Mary out to scout the house and make sure it's the right one. She returns with an umbrella and we use it briefly but pretty soon we're unloading in the pouring rain.

It's actually pretty hilarious.

Our accommodation is "The Bamboo House". It's a huge 2,600 or so square foot house either fronted in bamboo or made of bamboo. It's pretty beautiful (and huge). But the coolest thing is the rain pouring down and the rain forest and creek just outside the lanai. And the crickets and frogs and what not constantly chirping outside. It's like we're in our little protected home, straight in the middle of the jungle. I could live here.

We spend a pleasant evening in the house, eating a Costco/home dinner then talking some, but soon communicating via our devices, sending pictures back and forth.

Ah, the modern family vacation.

It's been a few weeks now that we've been having wonderfully spring-like weather. Warm-ish weather, clear skies. Some of my friends have been hating the wrongness of it, but my impending departure from the area has helped me to get beyond the weather fear-mongering of the media and to disconnect my feelings of self-being with that of the Bay Area environment. So I've been basking in it instead.

In Which Christmas Ends. For spring to begin, Christmas must end, and it did, just barely. Last Saturday, K. and I got together with my sister Melody and her husband Jared. We never manage to do Christmas with them at Christmas time because they're out of town and I'm busy going out and about. But we finally connected up. We had good talk and a great lunch out of Chevy's. It's one of the furthest trips that we've been able to make since K. discovered her broken foot. On the way back we were sitting in horrible bumper-to-bumper traffic in Emeryville, watching a Baskin n' Robbins taunting us from the nearby strip mall. Eventually, after not passing it for long moments, we pulled in and had bonus ice cream to end the day. It's always great getting together with them. Maybe we'll be able to spend a bit more time with them next year, when BART extends to just pass their house.

In Which I Enjoy A Beautiful Hike. So last Sunday I hiked up to Tilden, making it all the way out to Jewel Lake. It was a gorgeous hike in very nice weather that was warm and pleasant.

In Which My Mood Improves. Mid-last week I realized that I was feeling quite good. In a good mood and generally happy. I've long known that the dark, cold, and gray winter months get me down, here in the Bay Area. But I'd never seen quite as sharp of a reversal as this, where a couple of weeks of spring weather in winter notably changed my outlook.

In Which I Conquer Briones Reservoir. Yesterday my gaming got cancelled. We've actually had a rough time lately, only managing one session since September, and that with only three of us, which I usually pass on. So that happened again on Saturday (for understandable reasons). As is usually the case, I got out in the sun instead, and rather delightfully so thanks to that nice weather.

I've been seeing Briones Reservoir a lot lately, from Kennedy and Tilden, so I planned to head out there. This was my second trip, following a cold hike through a small portion of it in December the year before last. My plan this time was to bike out to the corner of San Pablo Reservoir; rather than exhausting myself biking up to Briones, I was going to hike it instead along a short little 1 mile connector trail, then I'd hike the west and north third of the reservoir, out to the Hampton Staging Area, and back. Because I'd previously learned that the Reservoir was too big to hike in a day.

Surprise! I made it to the Hampton Trail around 1pm, after about two hours of hiking, and I decided it was silly to walk back my path, for two-thirds of the Reservoir total, but going over the same ground twice, when I could just go a little further, be at the halfway point, and then complete the whole Reservoir, so I did. The only catch was that the EBMUD maps (unshockingly) measure one of their mileages wrong. They mark the south side as 3 miles and it's 4. Which I should have guessed because when I walked part of the Reservoir 14 months ago, I couldn't make it that whole leg in the time I had allotted.

Total trip was a mile to the Reservoir, then 4 + 5.4 + 4 + .3 around (unless EMBUD also shorted other distances), then a mile back for a total hike of about 16 miles. Also a bit more than 250 flights of stair in elevation change, as there was lots of up and down. I was out walking about 6.5 hours, from 11am to 5.30pm, without much in the way of stopping, as there are only 3.5 benches on the whole loop, and those were all in the last few miles.

I was tired by the end, and I was a bit sore today, but neither horribly so.

The hike is beautiful and has very distinct characters on the Reservoir's different sides. The west side is not beautiful, as it's along a road and is the business side of the reservoir with all kinds of measuring stuff and buildings and some construction. The north side rises up into the hills along the Oursan Ridge and has great views in all directions, even to San Pablo Bay at one point; it reminded me of the hills above the nearby Lafayette Reservoir. The east side runs the closest to the water and struck me as similar to Chabot Lake. The south side, which is what I'd walked before, has heavy tree cover and as noted the only benches.

I think I liked the north the best.

There are never many people on the EBMUD trails, as they do their best to discourage usage. But I saw around a dozen people over the 6.5 hours. The most notable occurred along the east shore. First there was an older couple, then there was a jogging British lady, then there was jacket man. Jacket man had lost his jacket somewhere on the trail and was searching for it. I was about 6 miles into my walk around the reservoir and told him I hadn't seen it. He continued on past me. 3.5 miles on, I saw his jacket, hanging across from the sign-in board at the next staging area. It was exactly where I'd been thinking I would have put it if I'd found it on the trail. Some miles further on, the British lady jogged by me a second time. Then, when I was close to my exit, I saw the older couple again, clearly going a little bit faster than me (but not a lot). I hoped to see jacket man next, but I never did. Hopefully he turned back instead, and found his jacket.

My previous best hiking day, since getting my Fitbit, was 40,000 steps, one memorable day in New York when I walked from Brooklyn to the garment district in Manhattan (and then a few other places too). I've never been able to equal that, as when I hike out here I start too late, end too early, and usually find places to write along the way. Well, there was no writing on Saturday because I needed to keep going to make it all the way around the Reservoir. Much to my delight, I hit my 40k mark again, for the second time, and then even managed 45k before I made it home.

Yay for a beautiful and strenuous day of walking in Contra Costa County.

At Poipu, my dad and I lose Mary. We wait for her, and when she doesn't turn up, we wander around, but don't see her on the beach. It's a huge and busy beach. Finally, we dive into the water and scope out the snorkelers, but there's still no Mary. We finally decide that she must be on the opposite side of the tumbolo (which is actually gone again, but there's still an underwater rocky division between the two beaches).

We cease worrying.

(Something I need to learn to do in life generally.)

The water is quite nice, thanks to a beautiful, warm day. There's good swimming, and I spot no less than three picasso triggerfish — although perhaps it's just one, and it's really quick on its fins.

Less wonderfully, I spot the tail of an eel rapidly disappearing into a hole in a rock. Afterward, I find all rocks at Poipu very suspicious.

(This is not the first time I've seen an eel in the relatively shallow waters of that beach.)

When we shower after the swimming, Mary magically reappears and offers to hold my towel. We'd been waiting at different places, and indeed she'd gone to swim on the opposite beach.

The other particular event of the day was McDonalds followed by church. The McDonalds is because my dad goes early to teach Sunday school. The church is fine. It's a nice community. The preacher talks about being aware of what we have in life and being thankful for it, which is a nice message if you include God or not.

And now we're mostly packed and ready to hop on an airplane in the morning. Two airplanes, actually.

And so goes another trip to Hawaii.

Saturday evening, after dinner, we drive up to the Kukuiolono golf course, to walk around the entire greens. It's a beautiful walk, first through a wooded area, then around the perimeter of the course.

We also have a fun goal: we keep an eye out for lost golf balls on the way. Most are in the roughage around the perimeter. Mary is even willing to climb down into ravines to rescue a few balls. The greatest bounty comes on the far side of a particular hole, where you hit the ball over a big valley. We actually glance around the (heavily wooded) valley a bit, but most turn up just past the valley, in the roughage before the green.

By the end of the attractive evening walk I have eight balls, six white and two yellow. All told, my dad, Mary, and I have come up with 29, five of them yellow.

Kimberly will take them back to the golf course tomorrow to give away, mostly to tourists. (Locals have plenty of balls.)

Speaking of looking for balls, I'm highly amused by all the Republicans reportedly fleeing meetings with their constituents in recent days, since said constituents started figuring out that their elected representatives are conspiring to take away their health insurance as part of their Republican Death Care system.

The politician most in need of our 29 balls seems to be Mitch McConnell, who was loaded straight into a SUV on the tarmac to avoid protesters at the airport ... only to find more at his home, reading the words of Coretta Scott King.

Anywho ...

Our other big event of the day was bike riding. It rained throughout the morning, but the weather reports called for the rain fading away around noon, then the overcast dispersing over the next few hours. So after lunch we headed east to the Kauai Path.

Mary didn't join us, but my dad did, and Kimberly was able to use Mary's bike. So I was the only one who needed to rent. I did, and we then headed north up the path.

It's a beautiful path, running alongside the ocean. Kimberly and I rode it some years ago, and we greatly enjoyed it despite (perhaps in part because of) our getting soaked by a sudden rain storm. But today, the weather was indeed clearing.

The evidence of the earlier rain was still there in the form of several huge puddles, some mostly blocking the path, some deep red due to the red dirt of Kauai. I rode the deep red ones very slowly, to not splash indelible red water everywhere. Eventually we made it to trail's end. I mostly had to keep in first gear to keep my speed down so I could ride with everyone else.

As we came back we started getting very intermittent drizzle, but not much, and Kimberly commented that the ride though beautiful wasn't as much fun as when we got soaked years ago. At which time the rain started pouring down. And Kimberly started laughing. (My dad loved it less.)

When we got back to the bike store, we then travelled the south part of the trail, which we'd missed previously due to the pouring rain. (Today's rain had by then mostly stoppeagaind .)

We noticed some scruffy and dangerous looking homeless people pretty much camped out right at the bathrooms on the south side of the path, which was the only such problem I've ever seen in Kauai.

But they didn't run out into the path or anything, so we made it to the southern trailhead and back.

It was a fun ride. My dad and Mary do it most Saturdays, and probably Kimberly and I will sometimes do it when we live out here.