Sophie Swims!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been taking Sophie to the dog beach for almost her entire life. She loves to play with the many dogs there and, after the first couple of visits, she was happy to get in the water... up to a point. She has always refused to go in over her head. I knew that she could swim from the occasional times when a wave lifted her up and forced her to swim back to shallower water. But until Christmas Day she never went in far enough to bring back the toys we threw. She always let other dogs win that prize.

And then this week, a Christmas miracle happened! She suddenly decided that it was time to swim in the deep end. And there was no stopping her !

Kitchen Remodel Completion

It took forever, but the kitchen is finally done!

Among other delays, my cabinet guy was out sick for three weeks with Dengue Fever. Yes, you heard right... to date, there have been 180 cases of Dengue Fever on the island since October. They think that one of the many visitors on the island for the Ironman competition was infected, and, almost immediately, the local mosquitoes got busy spreading it around. It might sound like a Dark Ages disease but I now know that 400 million people each year get Dengue. It's practically rare in the United States, but it's happened in the past on Maui and Oahu and even in Florida. Fortunately, it's not often fatal and all descriptions make it sound like a really really bad flu. It seems to be seriously dangerous only the second time you get it. 

But I digress...

Here are some pictures of the new kitchen...

New vented hood, three-dimensional tile wall, gas range


Koa cabinetry above the new refrigerator

Jen and Donna Visit

Jen and Donna were here for a week just before Christmas. We had a busy schedule:

• A Mark Twain Christmas play at the Aloha Theater
• The Kona Christmas parade
• Snorkeling
• A visit to a seahorse farm

Then they drove to the Hilo side to visit with Jane and Kathy (isn't it nice to have friends all over Hawaii?)

It was a high-surf day, but the fish were awesome and they debated over how many dozens of spinner dolphins they saw. Coming back to shore was rough, and Donna's legs were dripping blood from being banged around on the rocks. No, I didn't go out with them - I stayed on shore with Sophie.

The sea was angry that day, my friends...

Sophie's 3rd birthday

Aloha and Mele Kalikimaka !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Farhana and Family Visit

My friend and coworker, Farhana, brought her family to the islands last week. They spent a few days on O'ahu and then a few more here in Kona.

Rayyan, Hasan, Emaan, and Farhana

One day, they took the whole-island bus tour and really loved it. Among other stops, they visited the volcano, 'Akaka Falls, Rainbow Falls, and Black Sands Beach. If any of you come to the island for the first time, I might take that tour with you.

Hasan and a painted eucalyptus tree

On their last night, we drove to the harbor to watch the sunset before having dinner at Bite Me...

Kitchen Remodel -- Phase 1

I finally pulled the trigger and started on my kitchen remodel. It will require many steps and many participants. The first step was hiring the tile installer. Here's a photo journal of that first step.

Before you ask.... that little hole in the middle of the tile is where the vented hood will get power. The next step (the BIGGEST step) will be getting the new appliances purchased/shipped/installed. You might recall that I had the kitchen plumbed for gas when I remodeled the laundry room. Very soon, I will be cooking with GAS!

Aloha y'all!

You think YOU'VE got snails??????????

I've found a few discarded shells in my garden before, but this is the first live (now very dead) one that I've come across.

He's not a native to Hawaii. I think his official name is Big Beautiful African Snail.

His DNA made him beautiful, but my garden plants made him BIG. I had no choice but to put an end to that. Sorry, Mr Snail.

Dana

The Latest Addition to Our Family

Dogs in the tropics don't shed just in the summer. They shed 365 days a year!

99% of my vacuuming is just to stay on top of all the Sophie hair on my floors.

After much hesitation -- and suspicion that it would be more trouble than it was worth -- I got a new pet.

I find that I DO treat it like a pet: I talk to it (and it talks to me), I make sure that it's doing OK and hasn't wandered outside where it could fall to its death, I give it regular potty breaks. The talking is the strangest part -- it tells me when it needs something, and I find I talk back to it a LOT. Sophie is a little jealous.

Aloha!

Dana

Bathroom Remodel

From Day One in this house, I've had a wish list of things I want to replace or remodel.
Last year, I redid the pantry / laundry room and had the laundry and kitchen plumbed for gas.

Now, I've started on the guest bath and VERY SOON my kitchen. Replacing the bathroom tile backsplash was a test to see if this tile guy was capable of doing the tile in the kitchen. HE PASSED.

Here's the transition from an odd, unmatching, green backsplash to a new, multicolored three-dimensional natural stone...

The next step for the bathroom is new paint and fixtures. I'll be doing that myself while the hired gun tiles an entire wall in my kitchen.

Stay tuned for the kitchen transformation...

We Caught Our First Mongoose!

For those of you unfamiliar with the mammal situation in Hawaii, here's the scoop.

There are only two indigenous mammals in the islands - the Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Hoary Bat. We have no squirrels or rabbits or raccoons or any of those little creatures. But we have the mongoose. Way back when, someone brought mongooses here to control the rats in the cane fields. It didn't work. And now we have as many mongooses as rats. (I swear, that's the correct pluralization of mongoose.)

I don't mind the mongooses at all. Mongooses are lovely little critters... until they start eating my ripening tomatoes.

So... this weekend, we caught our first mongoose. He was SO cute, even when he tried to act threatening by showing his tiny little teeth. Unfortunately for him, all I could see was how those tiny teeth were the exact shape of the bite marks in my tomatoes.

Sophie and I drove him up the hill and introduced him to a new neighborhood. 

Aloha, Mr Mongoose!

Hawaii Five-O Gets Blessed

Each year before filming for the new season begins, the cast and crew of Hawaii Five-O gather for an early-morning blessing. They bless EVERYTHING here - shopping mall openings, ground-breaking ceremonies, and the first day of ANYTHING, even the first day of shooting for a TV show...

On Hawaii Five-O's Blessing Day, this is the number one news story on all the local channels. Cute, huh?

Elaine, Matthew, and Jenny Visit!

As you already knew, Jenny Richardson Bone is here on the island doing a work/study program for the summer. (Re: Megan and Jeff Visit)

Her parents, Elaine and Matthew, came to check up on her and celebrate her 25th birthday... and on Friday night, they all came for dinner!

A good time was had by all -- especially Miss Sophie!

Aloha!

Fun with Fireworks ! NOT !!!

You've heard me talk about how fireworks are legal here - even the big stuff that you'd NEVER see for sale anywhere in California. Here's a perfect example of why there is a push to ban the big stuff here in Hawaii.

Around noon on the 4th of July, I smelled smoke and very soon saw this plume of smoke down the hill from my house. It seemed VERY close, and I now know that it was only half a mile away.

You can hear the honks of the firetrucks in the distance. After a while, helicopters arrived and dumped water continuously until dark. At one point, the wind was blowing the smoke up the hill right into my house. We were choking on the smoke, and Sophie had the good sense to know that smoke = fire = bad. With the smoke enveloping us, it seemed much closer than it was and I was VERY concerned! I calmed down when the wind shifted and the smoke was no longer on top of us. 

About the time that the nerve-wracking noise from the helicopters stopped, the sound of my neighbors' fireworks started. Sophie was a wreck! I spent much of the night with the TV turned up loud and Sophie's head in my lap, with my hands covering and stroking her ears. !!!!!!!!!!! The poor little thing doesn't bark at the noise or overtly freak out. She just starts to shiver like she's freezing. 

When the helicopters left, I hoped that meant they'd put out the fire, but I checked several times in the night and could clearly see the smoke cloud still growing. At dawn on Sunday, the helicopters came back and worked until late in the afternoon.

Fortunately it was "only" a grass fire. My personal forensic investigation tells me that it was "kids" shooting off fireworks in the open field behind their houses. Here's where it was in relation to my house:

I'll end this story on a happy note: no houses were burned and we had a gorgeous sunset on Saturday night. These are smoke clouds coloring the sky:

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Sunrise...Sunset...

Need I say more?

Megan and Jeff Visit!

Megan and her uncle Jeff were here for a week. The previous week, they were both on Oahu for separate vacations - Megan with friends celebrating their high school graduation and Jeff doing his own thing. AND a couple of days before they arrived, I got an email from my friend Elaine saying that her daughter Jenny would be arriving soon and spending much of the summer working here on the Big I. All roads lead to Hawaii!

Jeff and Megan kept me busy! Here's a summary of things we did:

• Went downtown to the King Kamehameha Day parade
• Hiked all the way to the Green Sands beach
• Saw a local theater production of Thoroughly Modern Millie
• Saw Jurassic World
• Took Sophie to the dog beach (Jeff snorkeled while Megan and I played with dogs)
• Ate at Bite Me, Lava Java, The Canoe Club, Sansei, Sam Choy's (Jenny joined us)
• Megan and Jeff drove to Hilo and circled the entire island
• Another day, they drove up to Hawi - the northern tip of the Big Island

And here's the Proof in Pictures:

King Kamehameha Day Parade

Green Sands Beach

Dinner at Sansei at Queen's Marketplace

Dinner with Jenny at Sam Choy's

Lantern Floating Ceremony

Each Memorial Day, there is a lantern floating event at Ala Moana Beach on O'ahu. Thousands of people come to inscribe a lantern with memories of loved ones who have passed and float the lantern into the ocean. This year, there were 47,000 people at the event and about 6000 lanterns were released.

The entire event is broadcast live, and it's now my tradition to watch every minute of it. One year, I made lanterns for several of my favorite fur friends and floated them in my backyard pond. I didn't have time to do that this year.

There is much formality at the beginning with a blessing and musicians and a Buddhist priestess performing all sorts of rituals. And then they release the lanterns...

I took these pictures from my TV screen. I'm sure there are better pictures and videos and such online. The official video isn't available yet, but it will be here soon - Lantern Floating.

I guess this is the official beginning of Summer 2015. If you haven't already booked up your entire summer, I'd love to see you here! Megan and Jeff will be here for a week in June, but the ohana is empty the rest of the summer. 

Aloha y'all!

Not to be Confused with the Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight

I've heard that the hugely hyped fight turned out to be more of a "dance."

This is Sophie and her friend Chloe dancing at the beach on Sunday.
They are NOT fighting!

It began like a normal romp in the sand.

Then words were exchanged.

And the dance began!

There was never a bark or growl, and we saw no reason to stop them. This dance continued for several minutes. And then they went back to their normal play. Dogs be crazy.

Aloha y'all!

Banana Nana Fofana

About twice a year, one of my dozen banana trees presents me with a lifetime supply of bananas. There were over 90 bananas on this one bunch. I removed all the ripe ones and left the rest here on the lanai to finish ripening. I’ll be delivering bananas all over the neighborhood later this week, and I’ll still have many to bake with and/or freeze.

I've learned that the rule for picking bananas is to cut down the whole bunch as soon as you see the first bit of yellow. If you wait until most of the bananas are starting to turn, it's too late. I let a couple of bunches "spoil" before I figured this out. 

Aloha y'all!

Sophie at the Beach

It used to make me nervous to turn my little girl loose at the dog beach. I worried that she'd get so engrossed with the dogs and people and beach and water that she might not come when I called her.

But my little girl is all grown up now. She had the BEST beach day on Saturday. She wandered far and wide, but when she heard me whistle or call, she'd stop dead in her tracks and turn and run FULL BLAST right to me.

She hears her mother's whistle and here she comes!!!!!

My iPhone was on full zoom when I took these. She was much farther away than these pictures might imply.

Meanwhile back on the mainland...

Her California cousin, Walter, was shopping with Megan at Stanford:

AND

Her California Cat Cousins were contemplating lunch:

Aloha y'all!