shannon_a | Entries tagged with hawaii

I was woken up at about 1.15am by a house-shaking THUMP.

Living in a house with two orangies, my first thought was, "What have the cats done?", followed by, "Are they OK?"

My theory was that Mango had gotten up on the towel rack in the downstairs bathroom to stare through the jalousies (which he's been doing) and what had woken me up was 20 pounds of orange cat ungracefully descending into the tub as the towel rack collapsed under his enormous weight.

So I went downstairs, but there were no cat and no obvious damage in the bathroom.

And I came back upstairs and found Mango on the railing above the stairs, looking very scared, and Elmer under the table, looking very scared.

I did my best to ascertain every one was OK and then I tried to calm them down with treats. Mango was willing to eat treats only if he was in his safe (Cup o' Noodles) box. You could bounce them off of him outside the box without reaction. Ditto for Elmer. Finally I decided I'd done the comforting I could and headed back to bed.

Then at 2.15am I was woken again, this time by a car right out in front of our house that was grinding and grinding as the driver tried to start the engine. I went out to the kitchen and stared out the front window and there was someone parked right in front of our house and they were just getting back into the car, and it finally started up after one more grinding start and then the car drove off, sounding like it was dragging something as it went.

Weird.

As I went back to bed I wondered if there had been an accident an hour previous and it wasn't the cats at all.

So after I got dressed this morning, I wandered outside, and there were no car parts right in front of our house. But then I noticed that there was a hole in the fence around the lot across the street and drag marks all along the street from there to the space in front of our house.

It's a new fence, I should note, and it's right past both a turn in the road that's right at the crest of the hill.

Eventually our neighbors came out, and we all talked and surveyed the damage and it looks like:

A car came up over the crest.
It failed to make the turn.
It hit the chainlink fence and post on one side of what will someway be the driveway to that lot.
It continued through to the chainlink fence on the other side of the some-day driveway.
It continued through about 100 feet of the lot.
It hit the rock wall between the lot and the neighbors across the street from us.
It knocked rocks loose on the far side of the wall.
If that wall hadn't been there, it would have continued another 10 feet forward and taken out the supports for their lanai and/or house.

The funny thing was that when I told our neighbor about thinking it was our cats, she said she'd thought the exact same thing. That it was their cats, not ours, because the orangies are loud and rambunctious but not _that_ loud and rambunctious.

I later realized that the reason neither she nor I thought it might be a car accident when we were both woken at 1.15am was because there was no screeching of tires and thus likely no braking (and indeed there were no marks on the pavement *before* the impact). Whoever it was just sailed straight through the fence and the other fence and the field until they hit the wall.

She, like I, seems to like to conjure narratives to try and figure out what the story is.

Our theory is this:

Someone was out celebrating their high school graduation. It's really a hugely big thing in Hawaii. There are walls and walls all over the island entirely given over to posters congratulating graduates. Celebrating with booze, likely. So they topped that hill drunk or asleep or both and didn't make the turn. Smash! Smash! Thump! High School student then stumbled out of their car and stumbled home, which likely took 20 or 30 minutes (anywhere makai of us is walkable within that time frame). Dad or mom came back, managed to get the car extracted from the rock wall and the field and oddly put the pipes back across the top of both of the destroyed chain link fences, as if that would resolve it. They also dropped a note off at our neighbor's house with their names and numbers, all in a plastic bag to protect against the ever-present rain in Hawaii. However as they pulled out they realized something (likely the bumper) was dragging badly. They got it kind of pulled up in front of our house, so that when they left you could _hear_ it, but it was no longer leaving a livid white scar on the pravement.

So that was the thump in the night. Sorry for blaming you, Mango!

THE STRANGE LOT ACROSS THE STREET. And that's a good excuse to talk about the strange lot across the street. We moved in here four and a half years ago and soon realized that someone was working on building houses in the lot across the street. We wept, for it'll block some or all of our view of the mountains mauka of us, depending on where exactly they build.

Then the pandemic hit, and we said, we'll enjoy this view while we can.

But it's obviously been four and a half year.

The owners regularly expend great effort keeping the greenery down. Every couple of weeks there's a riding mower out there.

Sometimes there's also really big heavy equipment out there.

As the biggest lockdowns over the pandemic were ending we saw a big effort out there putting in what looked like four septic systems. Four houses, sigh. And apparently our view is going away soon, we said.

More years passed.

This year we saw a big effort to put in a storage shed and build in what's probably a retaining wall in the back and that chainlink fence in the front. Apparently our view is going away soon, we said. But they finished the fence on one side of the driveway and not the other. That was months ago.

One of the problems of the fence, I should note, is that it pushed out past an older fence by four or six feet, cutting off peoples' ability to park there. And also putting the fence much closer to the road. I'm pretty sure it's just pushed up to where the property line actually is, but I'm sure the neighborhood wasn't very thrilled with them reclaiming that parking space if it's just going to sit unused for years and decades. We shall see. But this is apparently the second time the fence has been hit. The first time they put up reflectors, which I'd noticed for the first time yesterday, so it must have been pretty recently.

This monring, I talked briefly with the people doing the work there (apparently not the owners) and they were toting up the cost of repairing the fence. $350 was their guess. And I just wondered about the fact that they're trying to build four whole houses there, and $350 is a game-changer.

But my guess has long been that the very (very) slow work over there has been due to cash flow issues. (When it became obvious it wasn't just the pandemic.)

It's a Strange Lot. Across the Street.

CARS GO BOOM. This is actually our second major accident during the night since we moved here. The other was maybe a year ago, and a car ended up sideways, halfway off the road of the street on the other side of us. We'd assumed that was a drunk incident too.

HAUNTED SHOWER. Water flowing into the shower head at our hotel in Berkeley made a weird metallic ringing sound that made me constantly feel like there was a van backing up. Add that to our haunted refrigerator, I guess.

DON'T EAT THE ALLIGATOR. Our ultimate day in Berkeley (yesterday) began with an early lunch with EV. It was at Angeline's, one of our favorite restaurants in Berkeley with its New Orleans cuisine (and something totally unavailable on-island). I had my yearly shrimp po'boy, Kimberly had her yearly voodoo shrimp, and EV opted to try the alligator. Suffice to say, he can now say he's eaten alligator, but it wasn't a big success.

PLANET CASCADIA MYSTERIUM FURNACE. The main event for me for yesterday was gaming with members of the old Endgame crew. (Alas, Endgame, we knew you well!) Ironically, we met at Games of Berkeley. They actually have a gorgeous gaming space, not just a big room in the back, but also three themed side rooms. (We were in the Tavern.) They charge a fee for gaming, without reimbursing it in the store or anything, which would have kept me from gaming there on a regular basis, but being able to rent a quiet private room for the day for $25 when we no longer have any good gaming space in the Bay Area was heaven-sent.

And we had a good day of gaming. PLANET was an interesting tile-drafting game where you placed the magnetic tiles on a globe and were constantly trying to be the best at majority-control tests, some of which required you NOT to have certain sorts of tiles in certain places. I was ready to play it again after a first play, even if it had the annoyance of not being able to see other players' board positions (because they were on these magnetic globes that the other players were holding). CASCADIA came out of my bag and got its fourth (I think) play for the trip. Apparently I didn't need to bring anything else. By the time we got to MYSTERIUM, we were drawing out of Games of Berkeley's excellent gaming library. The co-op is by now a classic, and we did quite well, maxing all players out at three cards for the final clue and then 3/4th of us guessing the right solution. FURNACE was another new offering (again drawn from GoB's library), a fairly traditional convert-the-one-resource-into-another tableau builder with a rather unique auction system where you got "compensation" for losing. It was enjoyable, but if the small-press game had received additional development to highlight its unique elements I think it could have been great.

We all browsed around Games of Berkeley a bit, and it seems to once more be a high-quality game store. I first visited Games of Berkeley in 1989, so I've seen its lows, when gamers all derided it as "Kites of Berkeley", and its highs. It seems to be at a high right now with row after row of carefully curated and organized material and even a few high-quality, great-condition used games. It made me realize that I need to make a point to get into a game store whenever I'm off-island and really take the time to browse it, so that I can see what's new, what's hot, and even what's available in both the board game and roleplaying categories. Seeing things for sale online STILL doesn't provide the same experience as browsing.

LAST DANCE. From GoB I walked out to University with S., him on the way home, me to get a simple lunch at McDonald's before the plane trip. I enjoyed the walk through the UCB campus and talking to S. at more length. (Much as with the talk with EV earlier in the day, I learned so much more about what was going on than I do from a couple of minutes of dialogue here and there during online play.) And then it was back to the hotel for our last tango in Berkeley.

HAUNTED PHONE. Was the whole hotel room haunted? Maybe. On our second day here, our "Messages" light started blinking red on the phone. But if you tried to retrieve it, it just kept repeating the retrieve-your-message menu. I could get into a delete-your-message menu if I hit some buttons in the middle of the message, but that also resulted in nothing. So I had to cover the blinking red light with clothing when we went to bed on our last several nights in Berkeley.

THE BART DEATH SPIRAL. This morning at 7.30 we ordered an Uber to take us to Oakland Airport. As we stood out in front of our hotel we could see the BART station across the street, and it was still locked up. Now I know BART always had horrible Sunday hours, so I don't know if this is business as usual or things have gotten even worse. Good thing we didn't plan on taking BART into the airport, which I would have thought totally reasonable if not for Kimberly's knee.

KEEP THEM TALKING. At Oakland Airport, our checkin agent was exceedingly friendly. We chatted jovially about our last name (always a favorite topic), marriage advice, and other stuff, to the point where I wondered if she was keeping us talking until the police arrived — which I know is very common from any number of TV shows. But no, she eventually saw us off, and I decided it was just the first-class experience. Again, for Kimberly's knee, though the first-class seats were _so_ cheap with miles (just 50% or so more than the miles cost for regular seats) that we would probably have gotten them anyway.

UNATTENDED LUGGAGE IS SUBJECT TO DAMAGE. This is always one of my favorite phrases at the airport, because I imagine the bomb squad blowing up that luggage and then later telling you, "Sorry, your luggage was 'damaged'."

I MUST BE IN THE FRONT ROW. The first-class seats were spacious. But the biggest delight was the actually tasty food as opposed to the muck I've had on my last few flights. Potatoes and an omelette were the highlights. I even game one of my three potatoes to Kimberly because she eyed them longingly, and I love her. (She was forced to get an egg-free meal, and sadly it was potato-free as well.)

BUTTHURT. A bit more than four hours into our flight, my butt was hurting. Could the first-class seats actually be less comfortable than coach? I mean, as I said, they were wonderfully spacious, but I think the cushion was a bit more like a thin rock.

HANDCAP DUDE (NOT HANDICAPPED). Arriving in Lihue, we planted ourselves in front of a handicap parking space so that my dad and Mary can pick us up without Kimberly having to walk any more. Which was a great idea until jeep-dude sped over to the curb and parked himself in the back third of the handicap space. It was like he didn't even really care, he just didn't mind that he was blocking the space. So welcome back to Hawaii. Yes, we love our island, and we love a lot of things about it, but the negligent attitude toward handicaps has never been one of them, sadly.

THE COOL CATS ARE BACK. The cats were a bit freaked when we came in, but pretty soon Elmer was lounging across my shoes, looking like we'd never been gone.

_And now we're back home just in time for a deafening night of illegal fireworks, many of them actually huge explosive bombs. But we didn't want the kitties facing that alone, even before we heard how skittish Elmer was._

THINGS I LEARNED AT THE DENTIST

Just one thing, really. It turns out that Hawaii doesn't have fluoride in its water. I was quite shocked, having lived the majority of my life in the California Bay Area, which does. I assumed it was a national thing, since the fluoridation of our water supply has been touted as one of the biggest health advances of the 20th century. But nope, Hawaii is #51 on the list of the 50 states (and DC) for fluoridation level. Apparently 10% of the water in the state is fluoridated.

(Waiting to see if there are any anti-fluoridation conspiracy fantasists to block after this post.)

The context is unfortunately some small cavities that turned up at my dental appointment on Monday. My dentist had turned them up last year and put "watches" on them, hoping that they'd improve, but they instead got bigger. It turns out this is a somewhat frequent problem when someone moves from California (or somewhere else with properly fluoridated water) to Hawaii.

Things you never knew.

So I annoyingly am going to have to make some return visits to the dentist to deal with cavities. And I'm swapped out my normal toothpaste for one with fluoride and also gotten a high-fluoride prescription toothpaste for use at night.

SLEEPING WITH THE ORANGIES

I slept in the Guest Room last night because Kimberly had some standard medical testing that she needed to get ready for in the middle of the night. This is Kimberly's Office, where we kept the orangies locked up for their first days with us, and where we still locked them every night for months. I used to sleep with them there every other night, to help get them socialized and fond of us.

So last night I washed the sheets and made out the bed, and was surprised the orangies weren't more excited. But then when I went to lay down last night, Elmer suddenly let out two pterodactyl-like mews and RACED into the bed. He was clearly SO thrilled.

Elmer slept with me all night, occasionally waking me by getting in my face and begging me for pets. Mango came to visit from time to time. There was at least once when I woke up and was surprised to find two little cats pressed up against me.

When I woke up and went for a shower way too early this morning, I found poor Lucy sitting on the edge of the bed in the Master Bedroom, clearly still waiting for me to go to sleep.

THE LUCY UPDATE

Speaking of Lucy, she again is eating better.

When last we saw the vet, last Thursday, she acknowledged that the antibiotic was likely not helping, agreeing with the internist's theory that it wasn't a gall bladder infection after all. So last Friday we started her on the next step, which was an increase in her steroid to start trying to deal with any ongoing inflammation.

On Sunday (which was also Lucy's last day of the antibiotic, meaning it was still at full strength), Lucy started eating well again at lunch and dinner. That's continued every day since.

So, we don't know what to make of that, and honestly I'm not sure I have a lot of hope because Lucy keeps pulling the football out from in front of us. (That's metaphorical Lucy, not real Lucy.) This will be the third time Lucy has started eating well during this ordeal, once for a week, once for a week and a half. I mean, we certainly hope this is it, but it's been such a long mess.

Next week we'll start weaning her off anti-nausea meds, and see how that goes. Moving from anti-nausea meds seems to have precipitated each of the previous collapses, but who knows, it's hard to find causality in any of this.

LUCY GROWLS

A funny little tidbit: one evening, Elmer started yowling downstairs, as cats do. So I called out "EL-MER!" to let him know we were upstairs and he should come visit us, as cat owners do.

And Lucy GROWLED.

What's up with that? I thought. And continued on.

But a few minutes later, Elmer cried out again, I called out his name. AND ANOTHER GROWL.

I'm looking at Lucy funny at this point, and I try experimentally, "EL-MER!?"

Growl!

She was genuinely growling every time she heard his name!

Now Lucy doesn't like either orangie, but I think she really doesn't like Elmer, because sometimes he gets aggressive enough not just to *get* her, but to *get* her and make her retreat. But I was astounded that she knew his name and offered her opinion.

(I've repeated the experiment since on other days with no reaction, but not too much because I don't want to upset Lucy by shouting out Elmer's name!)

LAPTOP WOES

Funny situation with my laptop. It stopped charging correctly when connected to my UPS. It was right after a blackout, so I figured something had happened to the UPS.

But I moved it to a counter in the mud room, and it worked fine.

Weird. And then it didn't charge in the mud room one day.

I finally figured out that my MagSafe cord was the problem. I replaced that with a (slow charging) USB-C/Thunderbolt cord and all is well again.

So what happened to the MagSafe cord? It's a braided cord, which makes them hard to destroy, but looking at it carefully I saw that bits of braid were pulled out here and there, like pulls in a sweater.

So I'm pretty sure a little Elmer kitty was getting it, hopefully some time ago when he was smaller and really bad at getting cords.

And I think it didn't work when connected to the UPS because it was hanging vertically and putting weight on the cord, whereas on the counter it was laying horizontally.

But weird to figure out.

New MagSafe cord ordered. And I made sure to get an original from Apple, not a knockoff, so that I know it's well-braided and less likely to electrocute a gnawing cat (though he doesn't seem to do that nearly as much!)

THE ONCOMING STORM

We had a tropical storm whiz by the islands yesterday. It apparently caused some rain on The Big Island. On Kauai we had some deep overcast, but the rain that constantly seemed to be oncoming rarely materialized.

Supposed to be a high hurricane season. We'll see how it goes.

HOSPITAL PARKING

When I dropped Kimberly off for her procedure this morning at the hospital we were somewhat bemused to see that the first few rows of parking nearing same-day surgery are all marked "physician". The patients have to park in the back half of the third row or further. (We'd never noticed before because previously we'd used disabled spaces because of Kimberly's problems walking for several years.)

As K. said, "So the healthy physicians park close and the sick patients park further out?"

THE ONCOMING TRIP

I figured out my itinerary for my trip to Germany in September and sent it off to the workshop folks for approval.

I've been reluctant to pull the trigger on that in part because it's a real pain finding my way to Europe and back. (The way back is the hardest, since I do that in one gulp, so on the way back from The Netherlands I could only find two itineraries that got me back home in a day, this time I could only find one, and it has two layovers.)

But, I've also been reluctant because of Lucy's condition. Yes, that's almost two months away, but we're also two months into this.

In any case, I'm ready to buy my tickets at this point, and then search up housing. Hoping to find a nice Air B&B for the majority of the trip, and then I'll stay at the airport hotel the last night, since the airport is over an hour from the venue, by train.

Busy, busy!

Life continues to be a fast flurry of activity.

Cats. We've thankfully not been to the vet for a week now. It took Callisto about two more days to be fully back to her old self, but now you couldn't even tell she ate a lizard (or whatever). She's wildly meowing for food, clumsily leaping into laps, and happily head butting hands. Lucy also hasn't repeated her really weird behavior, but it was always sporadic.

On the downside, I've been constantly administering meds to both the cats. For a while, each day has been antibiotics for Lucy in the morning, and antibiotics and prednisone for Lucy in the evening plus prednisone for Callisto. This has gotten very old. Callisto, at least, continues to be mostly fooled by the pill in the food trick, but Lucy got wise to that, so I've been pill-shooting her for about a week. She has a spectacular ability to spit the pill out even when it's way back in her throat. She and I are also totally over the liquid prednisone she was prescribed. For a while I could hide that in her food too, but these cats are wily, so now it's liquid syringe, and then she goes and hides. Bleh.

At least, Lucy's pilling is done of this morning, and Callisto is back to every-other-day, also as of today. Finally, Lucy is going back to the vet on Monday for a recheck, and we'll need to see if the prednisone is doing any good and if so we *have* to get it as compounded treats, like we had for Cobweb. Because the daily liquid application and the unhappy cat is killing me.

Doors. Because Kimberly has been recovering from her surgery, we haven't been over to my dad and Mary's house for Sunday gaming for the last two weeks, so those Sundays, my dad came over to help me with the spray painting of the doors for Kimberly's closet (the remaining two doors that is, we got the first two, which Kimberly and I had painstakingly painted up the first time he was over). We thought we had them done after last Sunday, but when I reviewed them in the light of day when they were dry, one not only still had streaks, and still had dust.

The dust has been a constant problem with these doors and the *)(@#$*)(#@ Rustoleum 2x paint we're using. My dad was able to diagnose it as something wrong with the nozzles, and so sometimes they spray dust instead of paint. Which requires much brushing off of the doors and sometimes sanding and starting over. So we thought all of our spraying was clean last time, but I found some of the darker dust on one of the doors.

My dad is *great* when he's working with me: he does some of the work and shows me how to do it and then has me do some of the work. So after working on those two Sundays, I feel confident about using his technique to put another coat on the remaining door. I just haven't had *time* to do so since Tuesday when I noticed the problem.

Why not? Well Wednesday was gaming (New Frontiers now on BGA!), and then the other two days had other commitments.

Oahu. Thursday was take-Kimberly-to-Oahu day. Or take her to the airport at least. So I got up early, took her to the airport, came home, worked a little bit, ate lunch, napped, worked a little bit, and then went and picked her up from the airport. I'm sure my day felt very short and hers felt very long.

She was over on Oahu for the follow-up with her doctor on the surgery. All good so far, but the ultimate test will be when she's able to try some walking, and that probably won't really be until after her follow-up appointment, in six weeks.

Water Heaters. Friday I got to help my dad at his house, which we hadn't done since before they had their trip out to California. (I too remember being places other than these islands!) It was a pretty small task, getting a water heater into place and then connecting it and wrapping it. But the getting it into place was tricky because it was about a hundred pounds and we had to get it into a not-quite-big-enough pan without crushing our fingers. Fortunately, he had two pallets and we had our ingenuity. So, we rolled it up on a pallet, and then up on the stand, and then up on a stacked pair of pallets and then from there could maneuver it down into the pan on the stand. Whew. My dad did the connecting, and then we were able to get the wrapping done.

Taxes. Meanwhile, the idiot-tax-demands continue, as Hawaii continues to try and hold us up for a large sum of money that's not theirs because we paid it to California. Last week I got two letters the same day, one from the hospital asking for the second time for a bill that's been paid and one from the Hawaii Tax idiots, saying that the third(!) amended return that I sent them wasn't valid because we hadn't signed the form. Which we had. I told Kimberly that the message for the day was that Hawaiian organizations were really crappy at bureaucracy.

As far as I could tell, the problem was that we'd done what our accountants advised us to, which was sign the new N-11 form that we'd sent in, but Hawaii was upset that the original N-15 which the N-11 replaced, was unsigned. It was a copy of the original form, not an official ammended form! Whatever. Our accountants said: just do what they want. So we gave them some electronic signatures. (This is the whole, replace not-full-year-residents with full-year-residents change that was required because their tax computers couldn't deal with us not being full-year residents last year, since we were only off by a third of a day or so.)

We'll see if that works, but meanwhile yesterday we received the newest missive from Hawaii and it was a threat: they let us know that they were going to start confiscating our federal refunds if we didn't send them their money. That's not theirs. Ugh. )(*@#ing Hawaii.

Biking. But in the beautiful Hawaii category: I had a nice bike ride up at the Kauai Path today and got some nice writing done.

Writing. I again chose some smaller topics this month, to again try to get my work (and my stress) back on track. It's working better this month than it did last month, with our constant trips to Oahu. I finished up the last big chunk of my intended history writing today out at the beach (with editing still needed). That means that if I want I can spend the rest of the month on the elf book for Chaosium (along with my tech writing, of course), and maybe get that close to done. I've already talked with the folks at Chaosium and got a month delay and the ability to go over in word count if I want. So, that's all looking pretty good. (I just have to resist the urge to write a second history for the month, as there's another that would go very well with the first. But If I finish the Elf Pack, I'll again have more time for everything else again.)

Hawaii's vaccination rollout has literally been horrific, in large part because the state has decided to throw vulnerable populations under the bus to fill the ever-gluttonous maw of the tourism industry. So, in callous disregard for CDC guidelines, they opted to name non-essential groups like bartenders and concierges and timeshare salesman (and for that matter architects, IT professionals, and who-knows-what-else) as essential and let them cut in the vaccine line ahead of people with serious health conditions. In fact, Hawaii only identified three super dangerous conditions for early vaccines, and left the vast majority of people with kidney disease, HIV, asthma, and other conditions more likely to cause them to die out in the cold.

Which literally means that Hawaii chose for vulnerable people to die to get tourism going faster.

But, that's kind of been the trend throughout the pandemic. Hawaii has made it very clear that there's a deep cancer in the state that leads them to put tourists above residents. That's not something I'd really realized in my own 20 years of visiting here, not even in the previous 13 years, when I was family, not a tourist per se. But you live here and it becomes as obvious as the palm trees and the turquoise ocean.

It's pretty easy to see in the state's quarantine procedures.

Our island, Kauai, has a mayor who's been very uneven in his plague proclamations, varying between too strict, too dumb, and too lax, but he's the one mayor who has generally fallen on the side of protecting the population, and that shows. Except for 6 or so scary weeks in October and November, when Mayor Kawakami bent over for the tourism industry to let plague-carriers back on the island in a limited (but it turns out not sufficiently limited) way, anyone coming to Kauai has had to do a little bit of work. For the last three or four months we've had a good compromise: a 3 day quarantine and a second test after arrival. Not torturous, but enough to halt the community spread that began when Mayor Kawakami foolishly opened the island up more last fall.

The other islands? Not so much. They have their 14-day quarantine, but you can opt out with a pre-arrival test which is totally inadequate, and so they've all had pretty high quantities of COVID at various times, and it remains in the community on at least Oahu and Maui.

The result is really horrible when you consider the numbers.

Kauai has a population of 70,000, compared to 1.4M for the islands overall. So we've got almost exactly 5% of the overall population.

We've also had 1 COVID death. (My dad says one of his doctors said 2, but if so that other one has never been officially reported). Extrapolating that, there should be 20 deaths on the islands overall (or 40). The actual number? 460.

Now those other islands don't have some of the natural advantages that Kauai does, like being a smaller and more rural community, and thus having people who actually care about the community, unlike the sociopathy that naturally grows in larger cities (such as Honolulu).

But still, that's at least a few hundred citizens that those other islands sacrificed to keep their tourism open.

Unfortunately, our inconstant Mayor has once again wavered over to the side of the tourism industry. At the start of March he announced that as of April 5th the islands would be open with just the pre-testing that we already know is inadequate, that let something like 20 false negatives onto the island last Fall and quickly led to community spread, to our island's one death, and to a threat to our extremely limited (9) ICU beds.

Now there were doubtless some political reasons for this. Some representatives in the State House who were even deeper into the pockets of the tourism industry were advancing a new law that would disallow mayors (and even the Governor) from adjusting access to the islands based on COVID concerns. It would have been a disaster that would have led to the tourism industry killing even more residents. And, that seemed to get dropped as soon as Mayor Kawakami announced his return to "Safe" Travels. And, doubtless, Mayor Kawakami has been getting pressured the whole time by people who care more about bucks than lives.

But the result, that Mayor Kawakami stopped running with the finish line in sight, is deeply frustrating. Even moreso when you consider we were on the verge of new money coming in to help people and businesses and states impacted by economic losses.

Scientists have been very clear that there isn't yet enough vaccine in arms to actually slow the spread of COVID. So, we're now likely to get a repeat of last Winter, where COVID escapes into the community again and threatens the at-risk people who Hawaii has refused to give vaccination priority.

And all we had to do was wait a few months more.

Here's the one bright spot: Kauai is the one island that is getting more progressive in its vaccinations.

Kimberly and I noticed on Monday when the County started posting kind of weird announcements that you should sign up for for a vaccine as an essential worker, and if you didn't qualify, you'd be placed on their waitlist. Because it wasn't like the whole essential-workers thing was new.

I told Kimberly that she should sign up immediately, and I did the same. I hadn't quite twigged to what was going on yet, I just figured that we could drop everything and be in Lihue in 30 minutes at the drop of a hat if they suddenly had an unexpected opening.

But the next morning I found waiting in my email box a token to sign up for vaccinations, and after Kimberly filled out their quickly changing form a few more times, she did too.

When I looked at the vaccination signups, it became obvious to me that Kauai was constrained by the state's guidelines, and thus had been wasting vaccinations slots, so they were trying to find a technically allowed solution for that. Because the day I got my OK back, on Tuesday, I looked at the signups and there were slots that had gotten wasted that day (because I noticed my email too late to do anything), and there were about 100 slots available on Wednesday and over 150 on Thursday. So, Kauai was pretending to make a waitlist, but was also moving people off of it immediately.

So Kimberly and I signed up for the same slot on Thursday morning, and we were off ...

Cut to the vaccination clinic on Thursday morning.

There were quite a few people out there getting their shots yesterday, but it was well-administered.

It all happened at the War Memorial Convention Hall in Lihue, which I'd never been to, but seems like a medium-sized community center with an auditorium for a few hundred people.

The line out front was maybe 15-20 people deep. One volunteer moved up and down the line to make sure everyone had their pre-vaccination questionnaire filled out. We moved up and got checked in. A short time later, after a second short line, we met a second administrator just outside the hall, who double-checked our ID and gave us our vaccination card. Then it was inside, to a third line, and finally to the vaccinator.

My vaccinator told me that they didn't have cookies like they did out at the Veterans Hospital, but they could offer blue bandaids instead of clear/white ones. I was deeply disappointed over the lack of cookies, but did my best not to show it, and told her the vaccine and the blue bandaid were more than enough.

The vaccine was perhaps the most painless shot I'd ever had. My vaccinator wasn't as good with distracting me with meaningless conversation while sneaking up to stab me as most people giving me shots (or taking blood) are, but I literally didn't feel the needle.

Afterward it was on to line #4, which led into the auditorium, where Kimberly and I sat far from anyone else for 15 minutes to make sure we didn't keel over dead from the vaccine. (Because when you're giving vaccines to 70k people or 1.4M or 350M or 7.5B or whatever, some *will* have side effects. It's normal and expected, because statistics are real assholes.)

Administrator #3 wrote on a piece of paper when we could leave. I think mine said 9.47 or 9.49.

So Kimberly and I got in line at 9.10 for our 9.20 appointment, and we were back in Julie the Benz before 10.00. Not bad!

Side effects?

My arm has somewhat hurt ever since. Not bad, but noticeable, especially if I do something stupid like lean on a wall with that arm.

I was a little tired yesterday afternoon, and so did work that I could do while listening to music. When my dad came over and we worked on transitions for Kimberly's closet, that perked me up.

I was a little achey this morning from where I'd been sleeping.

So, stronger side effects than any vaccines I've had in years, but not particularly notable in the scheme of things. My only concern is that shot #2 might be worse, but so it goes. (COVID would be a lot worse, and could potentially lead to very long-term side effects.)

I am *thrilled* to be vaccinated, but also aware that it's about five weeks too late for what our mayor has done to our island. Because when we get tourists back in larger numbers on Monday, this first vaccination won't even have taken effect. Another week after that I'll have some immunity, but it'll still be another few weeks before I can get my second shot and two weeks beyond that that I should have my 94.5%.

And, we've clearly been seeing increased tourists already: selfish assholes who think that it's their right to have a fun vacation in the middle of a pandemic. I was out on the trails above Waimea Canyon last weekend and met at least half-a-dozen people who were clearly tourists (including flying-his-drone-in-the-canyon man and literally-dangling-out-over-the-canyon-for-a-selfie-holding-on-only-with-her-hands lady, who I was certain I was about to see plunge to her death). It made me nervous being anywhere close to them (and also made me aware that I should have walked those particular trails more while the tourists were gone, alas!).

On the bright side, Kauai has now been able to announce that they are opening vaccines to everyone 16+. That news came in a few hours after Kimberly and I got our vaccines yesterday. They must have been able to convince the state that their excess capacity was not going away.

The irony? That starts on April 5th, which is the exact same day that the tourists start flooding back on a swell of disease. So, that'd be vaccinations that are generally being made available six weeks too late.

Like I said, our mayor saw the finish line in the distance, and thought he'd won the race without getting there.

Might be some hard months ahead for our island.

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.

I awoke this morning to someone screaming, really yelling at the top of their lungs.

Once I woke, I realized it was one of the myna birds who have invaded our lanai. We suspect they're trying to make a nest in a vent hole up above the lanai that got opened up at some point. I've got a 3" circular vent cover coming in from Amazon next Monday that I hope will do the trick.

The mynas are actually somewhat attractive. They're mostly brownish-black, but they have these little yellowish lines on and around their eyes and some white racing stripes on their wings, which makes them distinctive.

The problem is their volume. K. doesn't do well with loud, unexpected sounds, and we're now getting frequent loud and unexpected sounds from our backyard.

So, I chase the mynas off whenever I see them on the lanai, but they don't seem to care: they come right back.

Yesterday I did some googling on the internet and found "shiny things" as a way to chose off birds. So I put some aluminum foil on the railing of the deck. The next time I looked out, a myna was sitting on it.

I've now ordered a plastic owl with a head that swivels in the wind. (A review says, "If you are expecting a real owl, you will be disappointed.") I'm hoping it'll do the trick, and as I've told folks: "If not, we'll have a cool plastic owl."

But being in Hawaii, it'll take us a few weeks to receive it.

In the meantime, the mynas scream.

The birds in are front yard are more welcome. They're some new chickens that showed up: Carlito, Danielle, and their seven chickens.

We are currently happy to host chickens in our yard, due to the hope that they will eat centipedes, five or six of which have invaded our house since we moved in.

We regret not keeping Alberto and Bessie closer, both of whom have now entirely disappeared, so we're doing our best to seduce the new ones with occasionally tasty foods left in our yard. Thus far, it seems to have been a win, and the family seems to now be sheltering in the bushes north of our house, rather than on the other side of our fence, right on Papalina.

Well, family sort of.

One of the first times we went to feed the chickens, Carlito took off like the road runner in those old cartoons, totally leaving him family to be eaten by wolves. (There were no wolves: just us.) He hasn't been seen since.

And, I made the mistake of naming the chicks while I was out hiking on Saturday: Aphrodite, Hermes, Gaea, Ares, Zeus, Chronos, and Poseidon. Then, the next time I saw them, on Sunday, Poseidon was gone.

It was perhaps no surprise: 1 or 2 of the chicks had often strayed far from mom, and when I saw them on Sunday, they were all sticking much closer, with just one occasional stray. (But I wouldn't be surprised if Chronos disappears in the near future; if so, someone should have a talk with Zeus.)

Oh, and those darned chickens made it harder to mow the lawn. I had to shoo them from area to area and keep vigilant watch to make sure no chicks ended up under the blades. (I'm always having to watch more carefully whenever Julie goes in and out of the garage.)

At lunchtime today, I went out to see how the chickens were doing, since I heard them in the yard, and wanted to see if Danielle still had her surviving six.

I walked out onto the patio, and Danielle came right up the stairs, with chicks hopping up all around her!

Yikes! We've apparently got them used to humans.

(I went back in, got half a stale hamburger bun, and gave it to them. But, we want them out eating centipedes, not our cast-off food.)

Not only were the myna birds back today, but they brought friends ... and they went to war. This late afternoon, while I was working on edging away all of our encroaching greenery, four myna birds were assaulting each other. Flying at each other, throwing each other off of roofs, and squawking lots.

This is apparently some sort of territorial dominance.

Curiously, the four of them moved on to ... other ... activities after their big fight. Dunno what to make of that other than the fact that it's spring.

Hopefully at least two of the mynas will be gone after this afternoon. Hopefully it'll be the two who think they own our lanai.

Hawaii is full of beasties.

There is a lizard living in our closet.

Some bug bit me while I was mowing the yard yesterday.

There's a gecko in the garage.

Another gecko was hanging out in my office today, on a window sill a foot or two from a cat, and Callisto just found another lizard to chase around the Living Room this evening.

Ah yes, cats, the last of the Animals of Maka Road.

And Callisto in particular is being a weird beast, and not just because she's chasing lizards.

At least three times now she's gotten trapped under our new bed.

Now, she must squeeze under to get there. But then she just yowls and yowls and won't come out until I move my nightstand, creating a larger passage out, at the back of the bed.

Last night I tried for quite a while to lure her out with treats, but all she'd do is extend her paw as far as possible to grab it.

Animals are weird.

The best thing about Salt Pond Beach is how the waves crest over the rocks to the south, and then flow in a strong current northward. Going southward, that's a struggle, but a good one. But when you start heading back north, you're swimming very strongly, because the current is pushing you along.

It feels like you're Mark Spitz.

Obviously, I got to swim again today. After what feels like two weeks of rain, which boosted our humidity to the 80-90% range so that I was despairing for our books, and during which my straw hat was unable to dry because the bandana around it kept sweating, we finally got some sun today.

So, shortly after I ended my work day, my dad called and asked if I wanted to go swimming.

(Definitely!)

It was just my second swim day since we've arrived, and it was just as I'd always imagined: an early work day that allows me to swim in the afternoon.

And the rest of life goes on. We're not settled, not even close to settled. We have no bed, we have no coffee table, we have piles of boxes that requires shelves and cabinets and cubbies and drawers and armoires. We have a cavernous "family room" that we don't know what to do with. My office is still too bright. We have several pieces of furniture that I haven't put together.

But, we're growing ever more comfortable with living in our new home.

Day by day, I try to build one more piece of furniture, unbox something, and/or cut up more boxes in the garage.

(And I should note, we had our first furniture failure: a coffee table from Wayfair that arrived incorrectly made, with some latches for holding it together misaligned sufficiently that they wouldn't latch. Kimberly shared some photos with Wayfair, and they immediately agreed to send us a new one, and then we gave away the failed one to a local, who thinks he can drill the table out to make those latches work. So everyone did OK, even if it set us back a week or two in the quest for a completed living room.)

I continue driving every day or two, and am no longer tensing up just from being in the car. I'm getting more comfortable, but as I told my dad, I don't want to get too comfortable. I had more successful parking in the last few days at places that make me nervous.

I have a library card. But no (Hawaii) driver's license. I've finished the driver's guide book, but I'm not happy that I'm still running between 80-90% in every sample test I take, because that feels like it's one or two tough questions away from failure.

This is going to be a busy year too, but as I've said, hopefully not as stressful and tense as last year's was.

Meanwhile, back in Berkeley, work on our house continues. Gosh it's wonderful not being there and not even having to coordinate it at this point. All I have to do is send occasional checks or wires.

(I could do without that bit, but so goes.)

I got pictures of the painting a few days ago, and it looks very nice. I don't think we'll ever understand the scope of that work and how much it benefits the house, but the pictures look nice and hopefully we'll see the results in offers. And the landscaping work has finished and looks very nice too.

We're now less than a week away from the painting being done, and then some final cleaning and we're done. Our house is supposed to go on the market in two weeks.

And hopefully within a month or two we'll be free of California entirely.

And today, we moved.

The Disappointing Sleep.. I managed to get to sleep at 11.30pm last night, which was a great victory for me ... and then I was woken by explosions outside thirty minutes later. Sigh. After that my sleep was much more fitful, until I got out of bed a minute or two before my alarm went off at 3.30am.

(That may be the only time in my adult life that I wasn't awake at midnight for the New Year.)

The Final Goodbye. Jay showed up a little earlier than planned to drive us to the airport, around 4am, but we were pretty much ready to go. Ostensibly to make sure that we hadn't forgotten anything, Kimberly and I walked the house one last time, looking at all our rooms. As Kimberly says, it's weird to think that we're never going to walk the halls of that house again.

The Oakland Marathon. It was still dark when we arrived at the Oakland airport. (In fact, it would still be dark when we took off.) And that's when the marathon began: I needed to haul all of our luggage, mainly on my own, because Kimberly is not OKed for lifting and carrying. Jay suggested renting one of the little carts outside, and that got us up to the Alaska counter: a very short line, I should note, because we were traveling with pets. Afterward we sat down to await Kimberly's wheelchair, because between her foot and her recent surgery she didn't want to walk the airport. But that plan quickly changed when the wheelchair concierge came by to say we'd need to wait for a while, then told a couple who'd been there before us that they were down to 30 minutes. So at that point we decided to walk, because we had no idea how long it would take to get through TSA with cats. (And before we left, I told the woman we'd checked in with at Alaska that we wouldn't need our wheelchair afterward, and she was aghast at the fact that the wait was more than 30 minutes.)

Fortunately, our TSA-Pre work paid off. We pretty much walked up to the metal detector (no naked body scans!) and didn't have to take anything off but our metal and electronics. Kimberly and I both went through, and meanwhile we requested a private screening to deal with the cats. So off we went to a room (that I was displeased to see had a curtain rather than a door, but at least we were out of the walkway). I took the cats out of their carriers one at a time, leashed them, passed off the carrier to a TSA agent, and they took it away to x-ray. The cats were both perfectly calm (likely thanks in part to Gabapentin), though Lucy was trying to explore everything — not for the last time over the day.

We were done and to our gate an hour before boarding.

The Early Departure. We started boarding at 6.10am, and at 6.30am the Alaska Airlines crew was saying that everyone was boarded. The plane was empty, like about a third full, with most people and couples having a row to ourselves. Kimberly and I were moved a row back at the last minute, and we not only had a row to ourselves, but also the row in front of us! I hadn't seen a plane so empty since the '80s. That was apparently our other good reason for flying on January 1st. The flight took off 10 or 15 minutes early, which is just about unheard of, and we had plenty of space on a pretty quiet flight, which decreased the stress for us and the cats.

The Stressful Flight. There was one bit of stress on the flight: the length proved to be too long for our beloved middle-aged Lucy, especially since we weren't able to communicate beforehand that she should use the facilities. So about six hours after we left the house she started madly scrabbling to get out of her cat carrier, then had an accident. Poor kitty! I took her to the bathroom and got her and the carrier as clean as I could. (She was climbing all over trying to explore once more! I think we might have left a lot of fur behind! But that seems fair for the extra $100 Alaska charges for us to carry a cat in our normal carry-on luggage space.) And then I was worried for the next two hours because I knew her cat carrier didn't smell great and I wasn't sure if she might have more problems. (No more problems! And I was able to open some of the additional flaps in her super-carrier to get her some fresher air. I even let her poke her head out from time to time, while keeping good control over her.)

And then I had some more stress when I got off the plane, because I was so focused on getting Kimberly and the cats and our too much carry-on luggage (for one person to carry) out that I left behind my laptop and iPad. I actually didn't realize until we were driving away from the airport, but I did key in then, and Alaska was able to easily recover it for me, albeit with some stressful waiting.

(Other than that, the Alaska flight was quite good. The crew and staff were all really friendly and even helped me carry cats while I was struggling on and off the plane; and was also genuinely concerned when I went back to the bathroom with Lucy.)

The Human Society Interlude. Oh, I should mention that before we left the airport, we did take care of officially importing the cats. It was just a little bit of nothing, because all the hard work was the paperwork with Hawaii that I completed months ago. Our Humane Society contact was waiting at the gate (they let someone meet you at the gate!) and took the cats and me out to a van, where she slipped inside to scan their chips. After that she collected my precious, precious paperwork, and then was the next person to help me carry our cats around. I had no shame today!

The New House. And then my dad drove us to our new house. We've been here a few times before; I even helped him do a teeny bit of work some years ago, when they were between renters. But it was different landing here to ... live. It felt really alien at first, the idea of living in Kauai now that we're here and the idea that this house is our new home. But as the sun has set and the crickets have started chirping outside, and we've put out toiletries out in our en suite bathroom (a real luxury for us!) and starting hanging some clothes (because we have no dressers!) it started to feel a bit more like home to me.

There are certainly some blemishes in the house. Renters redid the floors both upstairs and downstairs and they both need work; and there are cabinet doors and blinds that are somewhat mechanically deficient. But it's the sort of thing you kind of expect in a rental house: because renters just tend to turn a blind eye unless it really bugs them. We also need to figure out if there are ways to keep the upstairs cooler during the day, because it gets a little warm, at least until you turn on fans (but screen doors for the front door and two lanais are a top priority and they should help). And I certainly remember all the problems in our Berkeley house when we landed there 19 years ago, from crazy piping to a rickety water heater and a house full of windows that didn't keep the heat either in or out. So, we'll have some new challenges and I hope they'll allow us to make this house truly our own too. (We actually have several things we want to do to make the house our own, including not just those screen doors, but also lots of built-in shelvings and solar panels, but the rest of that will probably await until we sell our Berkeley house, because we've stretched our finances with all the work we did to help sell it.)

The Cats Roam. The cats both continue to shock me with their adventurousness. We started them off in the bedroom with our mattress (the only piece of furniture we had waiting, though my dad and Mary have since supplied us with a small hodgepodge of chairs, and we also have a few appliances: a microwave and a printer and for that matter a new computer screen for my Mini), but they were soon exploring the whole house. Lucy's smelly airplane trauma was entirely forgotten, and though they were obviously a little bit nervous, they were also fearless. Within a few hours they seemed relatively comfortable with their new territory. They're also being entirely friendly with each other, which I'd always dreamed might happen when they got new territory that hadn't originally belonged to Lucy alone ... but I sadly doubt it will last.

Meanwhile, Back in Berkeley. We heard word from one of our neighbors that a large group of men were in our house! And using power tools on New Year's Day! And throwing stuff on the sidewalk!

So apparently our schedule of stuff in Berkeley is getting done, as the haulers were #1 on the list. I assume the stuff was removed from the sidewalk afterward (and likely I'll start hearing statuses from our realtor at some point.)

Our New Life Begins. After staying at the house for a while with the cats, my dad, Mary, Kimberly, and I had lunch at Keoki's, one of the first places I remember eating in Kauai, on October 31, 2001. (They had a costume contest, which is why it was memorable.) Then we went to Walmart, one of the few places open today, to get some first sundries and food. (And our mattress now has our own sheets!) Then my dad and Mary dropped us off, and we had our first evening alone in Kauai. OK, that involved napping through the late afternoon, but then I cooked up some pasta, sauce, and broccoli for dinner. (There will be many changes in Kauai, and one is that we're going to try and start cooking for ourselves, rather than just eating frozen food and canned goods.) And I discovered that unlike in our Berkeley house, I can actually get a cell phone signal in the house (should that have been in the disclosures? I mean Kimberly and I racked our brains for everything that we could think of, and perhaps I would have mentioned poor cell phone signals and wifi challenges if I'd thought of it, but there are ultimately only so many things you can think to put down.), which allowed us to stream a TV show. It was like our life was continuing on.

But a new life, with not just new challenges, but also new adventures, and hopefully new relaxation and new opportunities alike.

It begins here, on the first day of the 2020s.

In Kalaheo, I wake up at 2am coughing, for the second night in a row. I work through warm water, Tussin Severe, and cough drops, and the coughing is still going around 2.30, when Mary wanders downstairs. She offers to make me some hot water with lemon and honey, and since nothing else works, I accept. It takes me a good, long time to down the lemon-y concoction, but by the time I do, the coughing has pretty thoroughly stopped. I head back to bed at 3am.

I wake maybe half-a-dozen times in the next four hours, but nonetheless manage to sleep until nearly 7am.

When I get up I'm feeling really ... worn out. Like I haven't been sleeping for four days. But I've just got a shadow of the sore throat and swallowing problems. Still, I'm dreading the idea of having a coughing attack on the plane. Kimberly and I have talked about one or the other of us getting stuck in Hawaii, but I really want to get home, where my bed is and where the cats are, and where I can go to my doctor tomorrow if I want to. So I continue pushing forward as if I'm going to catch a plane.

Mary very kindly makes me another cup of lemon and honey for breakfast, but I can only stomach a quarter of it this time. In fact, I can't stomach much at breakfast. Still, I'm pretty sure it's helping the coughing.

We leave about two and a half hours before our flight. Plenty of time, even with a stop to get some non-sugar-free cough drops (because chain sucking the crappy sugar-free CVS brand is making me nauseous) and a nasal decongestant (so that I don't rupture my ear drums), as Lihue is a teeny airport, and it's never crowded.

(That's foreshadowing.)

We get to Lihue about an hour and a half before our flight and oh-my-gosh I've never seen the TSA lines so crazy. I tell Kimberly, "It's going to be that sort of day." All I need to do is get a luggage tag and toss our baggage at the drop-off, so I tell Kimberly to get in the TSA line while I'm waiting, which is bad sportsmanship, but I'm out of patience on this vay-cay.

The kiosk-to-luggage-dropoff path is an absolute madhouse, but at least there's one guy controlling traffic. I get a little annoyed at him at first, because he's just being really curt as I try and figure out what's going on. But once I realize how helpful he's being for the actual situation, I make sure to thank him kindly and smile as he points me to a kiosk. I adopt the smile-and-thanks facade for the rest of the airport entry, and it makes the experience much happier.

I find Kimberly several yards up the TSA line, which doesn't seem bad, then a mass of people suddenly peels off the line and heads in the opposite direction. When he dropped us off, my dad had been saying that they sometimes had two other TSA checkpoints open at Lihue, and though they didn't appear to be when we got here, we surmise that one of them has opened up. This is verified when the loudspeaker comes on to verify that "TSA Checkpoint 3" is now open, to the north of the terminal. I ask Kimberly if she wants to go in that direction, but she says no, she doesn't want to rush around with her broken foot and all (though she is riding Scootie, who we brought mainly for the airport terminals).

But then some guy from the airport comes through "strongly advising" all of us still out on the sidewalk, as opposed to in the actual TSA line, to go to the other checkpoint. So we rush about, with Kimberly's broken foot (and Scootie). And there's mass chaos over at that other entry too, as the line is wrapping in front of some benches (way out on the sidewalk) and we all have to rearrange.

So we're now standing in another TSA line, and it looks just as long (but maybe it isn't inside) and this one isn't moving at all.

Then Kimberly spots a sign over the entry, which says no wheelchairs.

Now, obviously Kimberly doesn't have a wheelchair, but no one ever has any signs about knee scooters. So I go over and ask Information, and they say, no, they don't think that scooters can be taken through there, followed by a somewhat incredulous, "They told you to come over here??" (Yes, they did, but they were neither discriminating, nor giving additional information like, "For our customers without mobility impairments.")

I think she sees my heart drop at going back to the first line, and my imagining that our 90 minutes doesn't look like much at this point. So she eagerly points to a TSA agent going by and says, "He can tell you." He does, saying the same thing, but follows up with, "But you can just go through the wheelchair access at the main checkpoint." Which makes sense: if we can't go through this checkpoint that we've been pointed to because a scooter is a wheelchair then we certainly should get the fast track into the other check point because of the same. (And I actually thought this back in Oakland, as I watched Kimberly wheel Scootie back and forth through all the TSA aisles, but she was already doing that when I was considering whether there might be a special entry for her.)

So we go up the wheel chair entry, and the agent there immediately waves us in, bypassing I don't know how much line. I give explanations of being sent back and forth, and she's confused at first, but finally groks what happened. I doubt it was even necessary, because the special entry is for disabilities like Kimberly's. And in another few minutes we're filling bins with stuff to go through security.

There's new trauma here.

Kimberly and I get separated because they need to give her a hand pat-down after getting her and her scooter through, but I'm just going to go through the millimeter machine so that I can grab our stuff that's already going through the x-ray machine. I must have sensed how frazzled she was because I ask if she's OK before I go through, but she says yes.

And a moment later I'm getting a full pat-down too, because of my boarding pass in my back pocket. And afterward I look back and see she's still on the other side, and in tears. I step up to the TSA agents who have just let me through, and I point through the millimeter wave machine, and I say, "I'm worried about my wife." I point to her, sitting on her scooter on the other side of the machine, crying. "It looks like she doesn't know where she's going." And one of the TSA agents is through the machine like a rocket, and I believe she's the one that brings Kimberly though a minute later. She's trying to explain that she's one who's going to give Kimberly her search, and I ask something in confusion, and she gives me a curt and annoyed response: "I'M the one HELPING your wife." And I say "Thank you very much" and smile and her whole demeanor changes (and Kimberly says she was wonderful).

I then collect our stuff and discover my water bottle has gone missing. I go back and look for it, and a TSA agent is holding it up saying, "This is full of water!" And I realize exactly what has happened: (1) I'd filled it up before airport, which I don't usually do, because I'm worried about my throat drying out and setting me back; (2) then we're running all around; and (3) we don't pass by the water dump at the regular entrance to the checkpoint. I'm very apologetic for wasting his time, but he just smiles and takes it off to dump, then brings it back to me.

I then sit down just outside the checkpoint to get everything back together. and Kimberly is on the other side of a big plastic wall, and she's getting the most extensive search I've ever seen. Most of it concerns Scootie, who is swabbed like a dozen times. In case any individual part of her is a bomb, apparently. It probably takes Kimberly ten minutes to get out of there, but the TSA agent is clearly being very friendly about it all.

In fact, every single TSA agent we met at Lihue was extremely friendly.

By this time I've decided that the whole airport is a trainwreck because they're on some type of super high security alert. My best guess is that it's due to the horrible massacre in Sir Lanka on Sunday and/or terrorists claiming responsibility for it this morning. Because TSA management is always great at solving yesterday's problems with tomorrow's procedures.

While Kimberly is getting her stuff together, I refill our water bottles, and then we're walking to our gate, which turns out to be on the entire other side of the airport, as it happens really near security checkpoint 3. It's not a big airport, but still we're walking for several minutes.

We slide into the gate just as they announce they're about to start preboarding and we skim around to the front of the line, and then we're the first to board when they ask for people with mobility problems and children. Whew!

We realize that we don't have a tag for Scootie, but the guy checking boarding passes already has one in his hand. Kimberly slides it on as we go, but neglects to collect the claim part of the tag.

(That looks like foreshadowing, but turns out not to be.)

And that's the end of the morning for what one must admit was our least successful trip to Hawaii, now compounded with our most crazy departure (though as I recall the departure from the Big Island was pretty chaotic too, though not at this level).

Did I mention it was our lucky 13th trip to Hawaii? I think it is. 2001, 2005, and 2009-2019 if I've put it all together right. I earlier told my dad, "We can just call this our 12th visit to Kauai, since we went to the Big Island last year, then when we return it'll be our 14th visit to the islands." I thought, like an office building, we could skip unlucky 13, but apparently not.

I was sick on one other visit. Something I'd picked up at Endgame (much to my annoyance) just before leaving. And I've gotten sick on the plane ride back at least once. But I think this was the only time I got sick on the plane ride in, leaving me ill for the entire trip, and this has certainly been the sickest I've been on the islands (and in fact one of my worst sicks ever).

On these new 3x3 planes, we play Russian Roulette for our seat mate. He's a boat renovator from Kauai, who just finished with two boats and promised himself a vacation the second he did, so now he's off to Lake Tahoe. He's a little loud and boisterous but quiets down when we get going.

Then he starts playing his iPad videos without headphones.

ARRRGH!

I grin and bear it for maybe ten minutes and by then the noise is driving me to frenzied rage. I'm pretty polite when I ask "Excuse me, could you please put on headphones", but a little snarkier as we go a little further. Anywho, it turns out that he's needing to buy earphones from the scam cart, but in the meantime of course realizes that it's perfectly acceptable to blast his audio in this enclosed, claustrophobic little tube of metal that we're all stuck in for the next five hours. I grit my teeth and watch the scam cart slowly approaching.

Then it goes by with him ignoring it.

!)*(#.

A minute later he realizes he's missed it and starts gesturing and the scam cart comes back. He buy his headphones and a water. Because it is the scam cart, put out there a few minutes before Hawaiian Air will give away water. And shortly thereafter, there's blessed quiet.

He seemed a nice enough guy; we talked more when we were waiting to deplane. But I can never fathom the mindset that it's OK to bother everyone else on the plane with your audio. It's been happening at least once on most planes I've been on lately.

We land on time, Lyft gets us home quickly, we have Taco Bell to celebrate, something I've been craving in my days of feeling crappy.

And my cold has receded to the point where I've clearly on post-cold symptoms at this point ... though the coughing is still pretty horrible, and I worry I might have a fifth day in a row of bad sleep. Perfect timing; welcome home.

(The cats are thrilled to see us.)

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.

I had a horrible night last night. I feel like I was waking up every 15-30 minutes. And I had constant fevered dreams about X-O Manowar (a comic that I'm reading right now). I was trying to look at the later issues, but I kept finding that the creators had just put together ads or notes. I kept going back to them again and again, even as I knew it was pointless, and so the whole night felt like a battle without end and without victory.

On the bright side, I was feeling somewhat better when I woke up. My head was mostly back to normal, and though my throat was still in considerable pain, it actually felt better today when I took pain meds. So, progress.

Kimberly and I mostly hung around in our room between breakfast and lunch, alternatively dozing and reading. No reading aloud, though, as even then my voice wasn't up to it. We'd planned for a big day today, going up to the north shore, having the brunch buffet at the St. Regis and then swimming in the gorgeous Hanalei Bay, but after getting up, I quickly recognized that it would be irresponsible for me to go to a buffet in my condition, let alone I probably wouldn't have tasted the food. So, as I said, we lazed around. (And as I said: no biggie: we'll do it when we move here next year, though probably not right away as the north shore can be quite stormy in winter.)

But with my only particular symptom being a painful throat (and painful swallowing) by afternoon I wanted to go swimming. My choice was the Sheraton Beach (technically the Kiahuna Beach, but I've never heard it called that). You see, the Sheraton is a beach with pretty big waves, so I knew we'd mostly head out and bob in the waves, not actually do any swimming that might tire me out. Perfect for recovering from illness.

When I got out to the Sheraton though, a beach that I pretty regularly swam during our 2001 and 2005 visits to the island, when we were at the nearby Waikomo Stream Villas, I was somewhat shocked to find that I was intimidated by the big, constant waves. I mean, not that big or constant, but you had to time things to easily get out into the water.

And then I realized that I was intimidated because of trying to boogie board at Magic Sands Beach on our last day on the Big Island last year, and getting absolutely pummeled by the waves. I actually swam in the Magic Sands waves after I decided the boogie boarding was beyond my experience level and I was likely to hurt myself, but it was the pummeling that I remembered. (And I did hurt myself. My right thigh bone was bruised and sore for almost 10 months after the trip, which is to say until a month or two ago.)

Anywho, I dived into the waves at the Sheraton and over the course of 30 minutes or so remembered how you can go through or over waves when you're not at the mercy of a boogie board, and enjoyed myself consierably, and it was indeed a perfect bit of time out in the sun for a day when I'm recovering from a cold.

And other than the sore throat and pain swallowing I do feel like I'm recovering.

But then I went to talk to Kimberly tonight after we'd settled down into some quiet time in the downstairs, on our own, before bed ... and found my voice had almost entirely deserted me.

Sigh.

(Hydrating it is helping, but painful due to the swallowing problem.)

Sigh. Very sick in Hawaii.

Honestly, wasting my time in Hawaii isn't a big deal, because we're going to be here full-time in another eight and a half months. I'm mostly annoyed because I'm feeling worse than I have in years and years. OK, there were maybe 10 or so hours of unbreakable kidney stone pain last year that were worse but before that it's back to my last flu, which is probably 5+ years ago.

Bu I have a horrible headache and a horrible throatache, and I'm thinking slowly, my arms ache, and I'm either warm or cold (though not grossly so). I've gone through "probably not allergies" (thankfully; I don't want Hawaiian allergies!) to "quite possibly not a cold" to "maybe the flu". And that's entirely possible. I got my flu shot in August, to predate my Toronto trip, so it's probably entirely worn off by now. And it looks like flu is still widespread in California, where we originated.

I blame Hawaiian. Their new Airbuses only have three bathrooms, and there was frequently a line back to the fourth or fifth row in front of the bathrooms, and we were in the third row there. So I had any number of children hacking and coughing while standing for long minutes next to my aisle seat, right at the level of my face. I hand sanitized before I ever touched food. I leaned in toward Kimberly after the first couple of coughing children, but it apparently wasn't enough.

In retrospect, I was coming down with symptoms yesterday morning, before my dad and I went for our hike. I had a headache and throatache then, but some Advil cleared it up. Not today. Advil and later Dayquil might have helped a little, but not much. Sigh.

Today we did go and see our house. The new renters are very nice and the house looks much nicer the way they have it arranged and with the drapes largely open. I refused to shake lots of hands (warning everyone away) and think I managed not to touch anything or cough while I was there. I definitely hope I didn't get anyone sick.

During the day I mostly laid around and rested. Finished Tiamat's Wrath, the penultimate Expanse book. It was superb, and about the only thing I've been able to easily read despite my illness. Sadly, it's gone now.

In the evening we went out to the Hanapepe Art Walk, though I only did a little bit of walking. I stayed on touch-nothing protocol and ate two tacos that my dad got for me, though I barely had the appetite for the last. Then I unsuccessfully looked for a book at the westernmost bookstore in the United State and Kimberly successfully got some earrings.

Fortunately, I have some books on my laptop Kindle from various free Tor giveaways. I can probably read one of those on my way home, assuming my attention gets better by then.

So, I'm miserable, but at least I'm not stressed, and stress reduction is always one of the main points of these vacations.

This morning, my dad and I decided to walk the Maha'ulepu Heritage Trail. This is a trail that runs east from Poipu along the undeveloped shoreline. I've actually walked the start of it before. It begins along some bluffs. Actually, they're bluffs that you can see in Six Days, Seven Nights where two of the stars (or likely their stunt doubles) jump from the cliffs into the ocean, a popular sport that sometimes leads to death". My dad and I did not jump.

I've walked this as far back as 2001, when Kimberly and I first came to Kauai for a "once in a lifetime vacation", but it was so far from our condo that by the time we'd walked out there, we didn't do much more than look down from the cliffs. We also tried to walk it a few years ago, but Kimberly found the cliffs unnerving.

Anywho, dad and I walked much more of it this time. We mostly walked out via the coastline, seeing absolutely beautiful views all up and down the south shore. But, that's not really where the proper trail is. So several times we had to assess how to get around cliffsides that were too narrow and/or looked too unsupported. (Which is what Kimberly found unnerving.) At one time we went way down to the beach and that had to climb up a steep hill of sand. It was exhausting! (And that's when sand got in one of my pockets. I had to empty it out to protect my phone.)

Eventually we turned a corner to a pretty shallow bay and came along the golf course that's just inland and there was a big impressive black rock wall holding up the side of the golf course. (A retaining wall, I think? There was another name for it at the park we saw in Spain.) There were also some ancient Hawaiian ruins here, but it was hard to tell which things were ruins. We turned around about there, which looks like it might have been just more than halfway up the trail.

For the way back, we did a better job of walking the proper trail, which is away from the cliffs and seaside and didn't involve climbing up any huge sand dunes. We later compared some step-tracker apps and it looks like we walked out about 2 miles, winding back and forth along the coast, then back about a mile, in a much straighter line. Both were a lot of fun, and I definitely want to go to the end of that trail ... which is something I can certainly do next year.

After lunch and hanging about a bit in the afternoon, my dad and I went out to Salt Pond Beach, the other closest beach to the house, to the west, past Hanapepe.

It's more of a "locals" beach without either bells or whistles, but a good swimming beach, because there's a long space to swim north to south along the beach.

The south is marked by a wall of rocks, which waves constantly crash over, causing a really notable current along the shoreline from the rocks in the south northward. My dad and I swam out to the rocks, which was exhausting. (I'm looking forward to improving my swimming physique when we move here.) Then for the first hundred or two hundred feet back, in the area marked by the rocks, it was practically like riding a water slide. After that we had to actually swim to go north, but not with much effort.

It's a fun swim in part for its strong flow patterns.

And that was pretty much full day #2. Well, other than the delicious lobster dinner that Mary fixed. I always put on weight when I'm in Hawaii, and this time I've tried to fight that by minimizing the amount of extra food I brought. But we still get endless delicious meals, with food followed by nuts and fruits and desserts and ...

We certainly don't feel the need to rush about and do too much stuff in Kauai these days. And we both love the relaxation of just sitting, reading, listening to the wind in the trees.

Bits & Bobs from Yesterday.

There were roving pray-ers at Costco, and KImberly on her knee scooter was apparently a high-value target. A group of three apparently nice people started asking about her foot when we were near the cold room, and then asked to pray for her, and did. And we found that a little odd, but it's Hawaii. Then, a few rows over another guy asked if he could pray for her foot. Kimberly said, "It's already been prayed for."

(But it became obvious they weren't nice people, but more like a roving band of predators.)

My dad and Mary apparently stopped eating dinner sometime in the two years since we've last been on Kauai. I guess my imagination of coming over here once a week for dinner, like he used to with his mom, are for nought. Mary kindly prepared us some very tasty quesadillas, using more of the taco fixings we got at Costco.

Today.

Today was our Fine Dining Day. This is where students in the Culinary Arts program at the local community college serve up a three-course meal. My folks have been going there for a decade (though less recently, because the price has climbed up), but we'd never gone before.

I was entirely charmed and found it a great experience.

All of the first-year students do the service, and they were nervous and a number of times forgot to bring us utensils, but were so clearly really trying to do a great job. The food meanwhile is designed and cooked by the second-year students. And it was quite good. (I had a lobster bisque, then some chicken stuffed with artichokes and cheese then a creamy chocolate dish.)

But, what I really loved was feel like I was part of these kids' learning experience and their becoming adults. It literally felt like a community.

The meals were between $35-40 dollars, but without any tipping, so around the price of a good quality meal in Hawaii. The quality and quantity were probably both in excess of that. I'm pretty certain that we'll attend at least sometimes after we move. (But not all the time at that price.)

Our other major plan for the day was a visit to Lydgate. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to go because it had been cloudy in the morning and at some times during our meal absolutely pouring. (We could see the rain from the big glass windows by our table, which was great.) But, I kept telling folks that Wunderground said it'd stop raining between 1 and 2. We got to Lydgate at 2 and it was kind of gray and chilly, but definitely not raining.

So Lydgate is a protected lagoon. Waves splash over the rocks in the back, and there are some fish, so it's almost but not quite ocean. The point of coming here was to get Kimberly out into the water, which she hasn't been in since the near-drowning incident many years ago (though she's been attending swimming lessons in a salt-water pool down in Castro Valley).

That went great. Kimberly waded into the water and seemed quite comfortable, and then even floated on her back several times, punctuated by occasional short-lived paroxysms of panic when a wave washed over her face. We had a lot of fun, and eventually she headed back to shore and I swum a lap back and forth in the lagoon before heading back myself.

Otherwise, it was a pretty typical vacation day in Kauai. My dad and I went for a walk around the golf course in the morning. Kimberly and I spent the rest of the morning (and some of the later afternoon) hanging out in our little hobbit hole in the downstairs Family Room. I managed to bring some great books with me and have been reading Tiamat's Wrath and Uncanny X-Men: Disassembled. We got pie from The Right Slice on the way home from Lydgate to celebrate Kimberly's success.

Overall, a restful and enjoyable day.

I roll out of bed about 5.30, fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off. It gives me enough time to take a shower before we leave, which is nice. These trips out to the airport have become entirely normal in recent years, so I'm feeling scant stress.

The only hard part is saying goodbye to the kitties, not because I'll miss them (though I will), but because I always feel bad leaving them all alone in the house. I think I was maybe more nonchalant before the year that Munchkin locked herself in a room, and before the year that we left Lucy on her own and she was so obviously terribly lonely when we got back. (It was the mew heard around the world.) This year I worry because Callisto is limping around and doesn't seem to have gotten better, but likely that won't change in the week we're gone, as it hasn't changed in the last two months. And Julia will be in to see them every day.

We're through the airport to our gate in thirty minutes or so. The only slight catch is at security where an idiot TSA agent neglects to ask Kimberly if she has any sensitive spots, then pokes her right in the scar.

Our plane is one of Hawaiian's new Airbuses. They're what have allowed for the new direct flight from Oakland to Lihue, but they're smaller than I'm used to. Just one aisle, and it's clear that even the staff isn't used to that, because they're constantly making announcements about how we can't get up out of our seats at all when the cart is moving through the plane's single aisle, and did they mention ... it's a single aisle. Also, just three lavs for all the proletariat, which seems skimpy. (Indeed, there were intermittently long lines, often streaming up to the fourth or so row in front of the lavs; unfortunately, our seats were in the third such row.)

We have one other slight catch on the plane. Their breakfast is (remarkably) hot food, rather than the diabetic breakfast of sweet rolls and cookies that we've gotten before on Hawaiian. But it's an egg sandwich, which Kimberly can't eat. So, we get her something packaged off of the scam cart, alas.

As is typical for my flying experience, the person in front of me is one of the sociopaths on the plane, so he puts his seat back the second he can. And doesn't even put it up for breakfast. Or landing. But these new Airbuses at least seem to have a little more leg room, and he doesn't make my knees bash into my jaw when he pushes back, as is the case nowadays on most of the long-haul trips I take. (Remarkably, Hawaii is now one of my shorter plane trips, and just under six hours going to the islands.)

A seat behind me and across the aisle, a guy spends the first thirty or forty minutes braying about how he needs to get on the internet so that he can do work. He tries again and again to go through Hawaiian's entertainment wifi system to find the internet, and keeps proclaiming to everyone who cares (well, actually to everyone around him, because no one cares) that he can't find it. Finally, he corners a flight attendant who explains to him that they don't have internet on the flight. He throws considerably less of a fit than I expected given all the whining beforehand.

Meanwhile, the other woman in our row keeps practically climbing over the back of her seat to get at her boyfriend. And then late in the flight she starts writing something on her computer, but apparently can only write if she speaks all the words out loud. Kimberly later tells me that she's applying for a teaching job, which we both find ironic.

Ah, humanity, and all your sniffling, coughing, sneezing disease. I'm glad I'm not usually in this close of quarters with you.

Did I mention this is our last vacation to Kauai? Because next time we come out here, it's the big move. But as my dad points out, we might still vacation on Hawaii, just on other islands.

So we arrived in Lihue before noon. This is shockingly early, and was thanks to the non-stop flight, which is amazing. Usually this is just our travel day, but we actually ended up with a good chunk of the day in Kauai!

So we went to Costco and then home and had a (slightly late) lunch. Then hung out for a while before swimming.

Yep, first swim on the first day, haven't done that for a while!

In any case, we're now safely at home at my dad and Mary's house, and this is presumably also the last time we'll be house guests here.

Times are a'changing.

We usually run our vacations at 7-8 days, so though we've loved spending time with family, we are well ready to return home.

We are up at 5.30am. This has actually been my typical waking time in Hawaii. Down at 9.30pm each night, and up at 5.30am. Which sounds a lot less ridiculous when you realize that I managed to not move my waking time at all from California time.

There's bagels and cream cheese and avocado, and then we're ready to go to the airport not long after 7am.

The airport is a bit chaotic, mainly because there's almost no infrastructure and no structure at the Kona airport. We wander around and are eventually helped by the staff to find the right lines. It actually all goes quite quickly, and we're sitting at the terminal within half-an-hour of our arrival. Or at least as much terminal as there is. The Kona airport is mostly a big open plaza with slightly covered seating around the edges.

I read to Kimberly while we wait for our flight, which is entirely typical. But non-typically, in fact for the first time that I can remember, I'm asked to read more quietly.

This is no problem, I'm always very aware that I could disturb people while reading aloud, so I don't do so in particularly close quarters, and I've even been known to ask nearby people if they mind. So, I'm starting to tell this Australian lady, "No problem!", but then she continues on, saying, "ESPECIALLY THOSE **BAD** WORDS."

There have been a few fucks in the text. But the lady's puritanical nature makes me give far fewer fucks than I usually would. I finish up telling her "No problem!", but as she continues with her tirade about foul language, I lose my cool just a bit and tell her, "You really shouldn't be out in public if you can't deal with swear words."

She decides that's a cue to repeat her original demand that we read aloud quietly, and I again tell her sure, but then I point out that she did choose to sit down (in this large plaza, full of empty seats) right across from the people who were already reading aloud, which is all true. She says, "Well, we just sat down", and I say, "Where we were already reading aloud."

She decides that's a cue to repeat her original demand that we read aloud quietly, and I again tell her sure, and this time I point out that I'd already said that we'd be quieter two times previously and that she needs to stop talking to me. Somewhat remarkably she does.

Later, when we're pre-boarding the plane, I realize her problem is likely that she's vastly overprivileged and expects everyone to kowtow before her, meeting her every demand. This assessment is based not just on the fact that she's the only person I remember asking us to read-aloud more quietly in the last twenty years, but more notably on the fact that she and her family have about two each of the 20" over-head carry-on bags, plus a huge painting. It's almost exactly twice what they're allowed to have, but the airplane staff don't exactly complain, they just express shock as no-swearing-lady and family board the plane, pushing a whole platoon of luggage ahead of them, keeping everything in motion like modern-day plate spinners.

"WELL," she says, "We don't have a house on HAWAII." Apparently this explains why they get to fill multiple overhead bins with their crap. And perhaps also why their divine right demands that their environment be reading-quiet and swear-word free. (And of course everyone else on that plane obviously has a house on Hawaii ... or else they just don't have the excessively stroked privilege that makes them think, apparently correctly, that they can flaunt the airline's rules.)

After that, I didn't feel bad about back-talking her in the terminal (while I acceded to her demand about quieter reading).

On our second flight, from Honolulu to Oakland, we have a rather shocking surprise.

We come upon our seats, and across the back is emblazoned the words "Extra Comfort Premium Seating". I look up at the seat numbers, look forward and back, and slowly it dawns that those are indeed the right seats. Even though there was definitely no purchase of "Extra Comfort Premium Seating", because I am totally not on board with modern-day airlines trying to nickel and dime their customers to death (meanwhile, giving people like no-swearing lady, the idea that they should actually be treated better than everyone else).

As we sit down in our seats with actual leg room, we just revel in the luxury. It continues to be great all flight.

The best I can figure is that it's thanks to us literally making our reservations the first day we could, last June or July, due to the demands of making sure the whole family was on the same page for this vacation. It looks to me like Hawaiian Air changed from using a 767 to an Airbus sometime after that reservation, which switched where the premium seats were. And, Hawaiian just let us keep our original seats (which was definitely the most proper thing to do in this situation). So, Hawaiian gained a little respect back, after their fiasco of a few years ago where they gouged us for several hundred dollars when we had to change our flights because I was very sick from an antibiotic at the time.

There is always such a cacophony of screaming children on Hawaiian trips, but the most exciting event on this flight is probably Kimberly dumping a glass of Ginger Ale on top of both of us. Oops!

I suppose it could have been worse: I could have dumped my tomato juice.

Hawaiian is getting increasingly manipulative in its attempts to sell people on its credit card, which makes me increasingly wary about having their credit card.

They've been hard-selling on all four of our flights this vacation, but this time they're jaw-droppingly scummy when they say, "We only have 30 applications onboard, and there are about 220 of you, so get your credit card application while you can."

That's pure psychological manipulation, but it doesn't quite offset them maintaining our premium seats rather than reassigning us.

So, Hawaiian's score for the trip is perhaps: +++--.

It takes Hawaiian forever to unload all the strollers and more importantly Scooty, Kimberly's scooter. The flight attendant keeps apologizing. I just try and stay out of the way. When we eventually receive her, we walk down to the baggage check, spot our broken suitcase as one of the half-dozen still circling around.

Then it's out to a Lyft and home.

Whew.

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.