2nd Blog Hiatus of the Year

It boggles my mind that I wrote a blog post everyday for over three years, then week days for several months and then had to take my first blog hiatus earlier this year when our kids and granddaughter came for five weeks. 

Some how this year has kept me so busy that I can't keep up with my blogging which I love.  I've decided to take another month off.

Photo taken by Dave and Photoshopped by me

As the Terminator said, "I'll be back."

While I'm gone from cyberspace, have a fabulous time.  I'm sending you lots of aloha and sunny days.

Origami for Your Chopsticks

I was having a great time with my Zumba buddies during our weekly lunch and they showed me how to make a chopstick holder with the chopstick wrapper.  I thought it was such a cute idea that I sent a photo of it to my daughter who asked me to show her how to do it.

I checked online to be sure I had the right instructions and found this Origami Resource Center website.  Their photo directions were so fabulous that I wrote to get their permission to use their photos.  "Orc" very kindly wrote and said I could, but asked that I provide a link back to them.  Here it is!

Origami Resource Center website link:

http://www.origami-resource-center.com/chopstick-wrapper-bird.html

Find the mid-point and fold down on both sides.

3-4:  Fold it like a paper airplane.

Here you'll be folding the tails like an accordian.

And there you have it!  For much more concise directions, you should click on the clink provided above.

We were at Zippy's grabbing a quick lunch the other day and I made this chopstick holder for Art since he was having noodles.

"Hey!" he said.  "You should do a blog post on this."  And so I did.

Hawaiian Micro Climates

Hawaii is known for its micro climates.  There could be a downpour in one part of the island and sunny on another.

The other day I was looking out the window of my office and the skies were bright blue. I had my clothes hanging outside.

Suddenly, the skies above me darkened although it was still bright and sunny when I looked toward the ocean.  Suddenly the skies opened up into a downpour.  Luckily, Mom had taken the clothes in.

Art told me to look outside.  There's that micro climate.  It looked like the clouds were emptying buckets of water in a column right down on a tiny area of town. 

I  should be a weather person.  I would go on every night saying there's a 50% chance of sunny or rainy weather and maybe some wind.  Then again, maybe not. 

Cutting Them Up to Size

I bought two nylon shirts from REI in March to bring to Bangladesh.  I wanted nylon so I could use mosquito repellent with it on.  Mosquito repellent often says you can't use it with polyester or other synthetics.

Art found this shirt online and on SALE.  I couldn't resist the savings and bought them for about $30 a piece (I think).   I bought Mediums.  I checked the sizing and thought they'd be OK.  When they arrived, I knew they were a little big, but thought they'd be OK.

They really weren't, but I wore them anyway as an over shirt and I rolled up the sleeves.

When we got home from overseas I fully intended to work on them, but it took me until now to work up the courage to attempt it.

I'm not a great seamstress, but I was able to shorten the sleeves on the blue shirt first.  I took off 2.25 inches by removing the cuff, cutting off part of the sleeve and then reattaching the cuff.  I also sewed the side seam so it wouldn't be so baggy around the chest.  Once I got the method down, I worked on the fuchsia shirt which was my favorite color.

And there you go!

I'm really quite pleased with it now.   I can't wait to wear it on our next hike or travel.

Next time.... I'll just buy the Small size.

Fun License Plates Around Town

I've been on the look out for fun license plates here in Hawaii, but haven't seen many.  It was either that or I wasn't quick enough with my camera.  There was one by the military base that read BMBSQD.   That raised my eyebrows.

Here's a few I found.

This must be Sea Biscuit.  She must be a horse lover.


















Is this "Oh Bother?"

Why?

This car must belong to a broker, investor, speculator, banker...

Well, they must be rich.  They are driving a Mercedes after all.












And here's a sweet one.  Tutu means "Grandmother" in Hawaiian.  I think it can also mean Grandfather, but it's usually used for Grandmother.

All I know is that Tutu must be well loved.


With that, I bid you all a fond aloha.

Problem/Solution

Coming back to Hawaii in 2008 to live with and care for Mom required some adjustments.  Luckily we've been able to laugh through most of them.

OK... Now the dishwasher.

Like many seniors, mom is forgetful at times.  This is compounded by me being forgetful as well.  We had a little problem we needed to solve.

We run the dishwasher about every three days.  I run it at night.  Sometimes I forget to turn it on.  Mom wakes up at 4:30 and has her breakfast.  She then empties the dishwasher if she thinks I've run it.

Twice now she's put the dishes away when they were still dirty.  I tend to rinse some of the dishes so it's not  obvious that they haven't been  washed.

Well... the other morning when we came down to breakfast, a frowning Mom said, "Your dishwasher is terrible!  It left so much food on the bowls that I had to wash them before putting them away."

Thing is... I forgot to turn the dishwasher on the previous evening.  What to do... what to do....

Aha!  Here's our solution.

We told mom that when this particular dishtowel is hanging on the dishwasher it means I've turned it on the night before.

So far so good.

Now I just have to remember to turn it on.

Keeping Track of the Days

When I'm not paying attention, a whole week can go by and I don't know where the time went.  It's rather disconcerting.  I can hardly remember what I did yesterday. Two days before?  Forget it!

I have a smaller 2 year pocket calendar that I love and couldn't find the 2015-16 version until recently.

I also keep a larger 2 year calendar for my desk with more detailed information.  I would be LOST without them.  We have so many different doctors appointments to keep track of, not to mention meetings with friends, Zumba, tai-chi, etc.




Art records everything we do on an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.  I'm always amazed at how much minutia he can jot down, but it really helps!

He says he can't access his desktop when he's on travel so he records everything on a little sheet of paper which he transfers to his spreadsheet when he gets home.

How do you keep track of everything?

Boo Boos X 3 = Lesson Achieved

Art and I were working madly on some photobooks that we wanted printed at Costco.  The first book we worked really hard on was Art's birthday trip.  Our children and their families were with us for 5 weeks this summer.  We documented the happy time from the point of view of our granddaughter, KC.

After that, we worked on our photobook of our trip to Hokkaido in June.  Again, that was a lot of work.  Many of you must have noticed how haphazard my blogging has been.

My daughter's birthday is this fall and we couldn't figure out what to get her until I remembered her telling me that she'd never had the chance to make a scrapbook of our memorable trip to Yellowstone, Glacier, Rushmore, Waterton, etc.  That entailed more sleepless nights of concentration because the book I'd made earlier for us was vertical, while Costco's format is horizontal.

It's my job to format and create the book pages.  Art edits, adds his comments and then creates the PDF and jpeg files of each page.  He then loads it onto the Costco website and creates the book.

When the books came in, the summer birthday celebration photobook was wonderful and the whole family was very pleased.

We were looking forward to seeing the Hokkaido Tour and Yellowstone/Glacier books; especially the Yellowstone book because it would be our daughter's birthday gift.

When we went to the Waipio Costco to pick it up, they said they didn't have it.  Why???  We'd gotten the notice that it had come in.

They told us that Art had mistakenly sent it to Kapolei which is quite a distance away (by Hawaii standards).  Art could not believe he'd made that error!

Unfortunately.... That was not all, as we discovered when we picked up the books.

On the National Parks book (Yellowstone, Glacier, Rushmore, Devil's Tower, Waterton), Art had goofed and put a page in twice.  It's the first time he's done that!

On the Hokkaido book, he'd made another boo boo and put the wrong color on the back and spine.

Needless to say, we were pretty depressed for an evening.

Still, it's taught us a lesson.  # 1:  We need to slow down and double check projects before sending them out.  #2:  I need to learn how to create the books too so I can double check what Art has done.

We hope Tif won't mind.  We'd rather not redo the book because it costs about $44 to print a book. 

"Ah well..." said Art sheepishly.   "There is a consolation."

"What?"  I asked.

"You now have something to blog about."

New Glasses for a Different Look

The time came when I needed both distance and near vision correction.  However, bifocals wouldn't be enough.  I had to get trifocal glasses.  Progressive lens were recommended so that there wouldn't be two lines going across the lens.   When I first tried them on, I nearly got motion sickness and just couldn't get used to it.

When I went shopping, I couldn't find the sweet middle vision spot to see what was on the shelves.  I usually ended up not using the glasses because it didn't feel good and I put cheap reading glasses around the house.

After a couple of years my near vision got worse so I needed a change in prescription.  This time I opted for trifocals with the line.  I thought it would help me know where to look.  Now the lines bothered me.  Arrrgghh!  It seemed worse than the progressive.

Now, a year later my wonderful, patient optometrist recommended that I just get two glasses, one for reading and one for distance.  She said I could keep the distance glasses in the car just for driving since my distance viewing had improved so much.

My reading glasses could stay in my bag for whenever I needed it.

OK... that's what I did.  I changed my trifocals frame to distance and got a new frame for my reading glasses.

However, I did goof and put the wrong glasses in my bag and couldn't figure out at first why things were even blurrier.

Art says he's never had any problem with his glasses and can't understand why I can't seem to adjust.

OK, I'll try.

Then again, I could try going back to the progressives.... naaahhh...

Guilty But Reasonable Pleasure

I don't know if they do this in other countries, but have you heard of Big Mac Mondays at McDonalds?  Art goes walking every week with his classmate, Morris who told him about this fun deal.  I understand they do this throughout (American) football season.

Since Art walked with Morris for 7 miles which burned 700 calories and I went to Zumba and burned about 400 calories (maybe), we thought we'd indulge since it was Monday.

I almost felt guilty when we looked over at another table of seniors and saw that they were all eating kids meals.  It looked a lot healthier than what we were eating.

Since I didn't burn as many calories I had Art finish a quarter of my burger.

Ah well... Mom is making a lot of veggies for dinner.

Links on Blog Posts

I wrote earlier about links causing the loading of blog pages to slow down.  I'd read this a while ago somewhere and have been trying to cut down on links. 

However, Blogger friend, Mun said,

"Just by having links in a post will not slow down the loading time but having large photos and embedded videos in a post will slow down the loading time."

Then I went onto Blogger Help Forum and got this reply (of which I don't understand all of):

"If the reader uses a look ahead browser, caching massive amounts of content could slow things down.  Though look ahead design is supposed to cache the linked pages, after the current page has been loaded.

But in general, no, links do not drain bandwidth, they are just text."

I also read that adding too many widgets or page design can also slow down page loading time.   The orchid above is 117 kb and seems to be OK.  One advice I saw said to keep photos at 50 kb.  I keep my photos at 100-200 kb. 

I hope this isn't adding more misinformation.  If you have more advice, I'd love to hear it.

Crosswalk Scare

We were driving home today on a two lane road when we came to a crosswalk across from a school.  There were two young boys about 7 and 10 years old trying to cross.  It's a rather big road with two lanes going up and two lanes going down so it was hard for the boys to find an opening.  It was well after school so there were no crossing guards.  In fact, I don't know if there are ever crossing guards there.   There are no traffic lights so the boys probably should have gone farther down to find a crosswalk with a traffic light to help them.

photo from Wikipedia

Art saw them and stopped to let them go.  They gratefully started to cross, but the younger child started darting across and the driver in the lane next to us was speeding.  She didn't see what was happening and just barely, barely managed to stop before hitting the child.  My heart froze!

Art says if the boy had been hit, he would have always felt guilty.  He'd have felt that if he hadn't stopped, the boys would not have attempted to cross and the younger boy wouldn't have tried to run across and he wouldn't have been hit.

We were really shaken up the rest of the way home.  Would you have stopped to let the children cross?

I wonder what Art will do the next time.

POSTSCRIPT:  I forgot to mention that my daughter told me it was World Smile Day today.

I just wanted to tell you that you all make me smile every day!

Loving My Charging Station

My son-in-law is a fabulous techie.  He bought this 5 port charger for us from Amazon.com.  Here's the address, if you'd like to copy and paste it on your browzer.  (I'm not adding the link because I read some place that you're supposed to limit the amount of links you put on your blog.  It may slow down the ability for people to upload your blog. I don't know if it's true, but I'm just being careful.)

http://www.amazon.com/Volmate%C2%AE-ETL-Certified-Family-Sized-Smartphones/dp/B00LIBU3MU

I was a little skeptical whether we really needed it at first, but I'm now loving the fact that we can also bring it on travels.

You can charge an iPad, iPhone,  Samsung tablet, and Android at the same time.

It's costing under $13 right now which is amazing to me. 

Now I've discovered that I can also charge our Kindle Fire or Kindle Paper White at the same time on the Android station.

This way you can use just one wall socket to charge up multiple technology stuff.

Isn't it great?

Another Costco Flub

I was really loving Costco because of the photobooks and I still love those.

However, then I learned that the edamame I thought was grown in the U.S. was actually only packaged in California but grown in China.

Then I found these DKNY Jeans shorts that I could use for Zumba. I bought it and brought it home. They seemed to fit perfectly.  I was happy with Costco again.

When I bought it, one side was buttoned up to show you that you could have a choice of leg heights.

At home, I looked at it closely and discovered that the button on one side was about 3/4 of an inch (about 2 cm.) higher.   I could have tried resewing the button, but the tab to hold up the folded leg material was also at a different level.

Sigh...

We'll have to make a trip back to Costco to return it for a hopefully non-defective one.

I still like their photobooks though.



POSTSCRIPT:  I went to Costco, returned the shorts and got two more in different colors after checking to make sure the buttons were at the same height.

I can't wait to show them to my Zumba buddies.