Your Favorite Kind of Day

Keola asked us while we were in Pennsylvania to describe what our favorite day would be like.

That was really hard for me to answer. My favorite day would be something pretty ordinary.

I'd like to have breakfast at Koa Pancake House with Art and mom. It's our favorite go-to place after we get our blood tested every so many months.

Then I'd want to go to Zumba and meet up with all my wonderful friends to exercise. I also love going out to lunch with them. It's such a happy time. Eating saimin noodles and having shave ice for dessert would be awesome.

In the afternoon, I would love to see a botanic garden or go for a walk in some beautiful park.

Dinner would be misoyaki butterfish at Maguroya in Kaimuki. Yum.

And how about a movie in the evening? I'd like to watch it at home with a big bowl of popcorn.

And that's it.

What would your perfect day be like?

Fixing the Fridge

When we returned from Pennsylvania we discovered that the ice maker in the refrigerator had stopped working. With the hot, humid weather that we've been sweltering in, I really need my ice.

We've had the refrigerator for 8 years and I thought it was maybe almost time to get a new one. We looked at several refrigerators at Home Depot and I fell in love with a model that looked like this one.

I love the idea of being able to open the door so you can take out things you need more often and keep everything else cold.

Sigh...

I was picturing how it would look in our kitchen.

Then Art looked online and learned that you can replace the ice maker on your own.

What? Seriously?

Yes, I know we could have called the refrigerator repairman,  but Art wanted to try fixing it on his own.

He ordered the new ice maker online and it arrived within a few days.

He installed it while I was taking a nap. Does that man never rest?

And there it is! (You can see ice in the pan because I was filling it manually from ice trays.)

Will it work? I don't know. It will be a day before we find out.

This reminded me of Art's aunt who told us how her late husband would keep fixing their range when she had wanted a newer model. She finally ended up almost crying after another unwanted fix.

Now that Art's favorite uncle is gone, the memories of how he would fix everything is a dearly held remembrance.

Our ice maker? We'll see.

I may still get a new fridge yet.

POSTSCRIPT: 
Nope, no new fridge. The new ice maker works. Mr. Fixit has done it again.

Genius Bar?

Let's face it. We are PC people. All my go-to techies are PC people.

I do have an Apple iPhone and iPad that I love so I thought it wouldn't be too difficult if we got an Apple MacBook Air for our travels. I'd heard such great things about it from bloggers and friends. However, for PC people like myself who are not that technologically inclined, it's a steep learning curve. So much of how you do things on the MacBook is different from my PC desktop or laptop.

While we were in Pennsylvania, the MacBook screen suddenly went black! What the heck! That never happened with our other PC laptops. We looked online and discovered that it's been known to happen.

We tried several recommendations and the final one which is a PRAM reset worked.

• Reboot a Mac and then immediately hold down the Command+Option+P+R keys

You will then hear the Mac reboot sound again, signifying that the Macs PRAM or NVRAM has been reset successfully.
You must hit the key combination before the grey screen appears otherwise it won’t work, you may need to try it once or twice until you get the timing right during restart, but once it works you can let the Mac system start as usual.

On the plane ride home we were able to watch three movies on the iPad and there was still power left, but the MacBook Air was out of battery power even though it's touted as having 12 hours.

We took the MacBook Air to Apple store's Genius Bar and it was checked by the technician. He said it was working fine and that movies take more power to watch on the MacBook Air than the iPad.

It was very obvious that we were neophytes at the OS operating system and they encouraged us to attend their workshops. We were very pleased that we could be trained on how to use our new Apple computer. This is something we don't get with our PCs. Then again, since I have my own customer support from my son-in-law and brother, I'm very grateful that I don't need to take a class for that.

A Gift

Art volunteers for Meals on Wheels once a week, bringing hot meals to people who are unable to prepare food for themselves. He does not accept any compensation for this but his clients sometimes insist that he accept a small gift that they might have made.

One kind lady asked if he set up a Christmas tree. When Art said he did, she smiled and gave him these handmade ornaments that she made for him. She said it was to put photographs of our two grandchildren in them.

It's so adorable. I'm going to have to find the perfect photos to put in them.

I wonder if the hot, humid temperatures we've been having is making her wish for the cooler weather of December.

I certainly hope the weather is cooler by then.

Another Musing Thought:

I just saw this in the New York Times:

"Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, was criticized online and in person on Thursday for writing in a German newspaper that it was important to secure his nation’s borders from mainly Muslim migrants “to keep Europe Christian.”

I was wondering why Hungary was being so cruel about blocking its borders so fleeing refugees from war torn countries (mostly Syria) could not go through Hungary to go to other countries. Now I see he was trying to be what he thought was a good Christian. 

 

Crazy Weather!

We have been having the craziest weather in Hawaii lately. The heat and humidity have been absolutely unbearable... for me anyway. Art doesn't seem quite as upset about it as I am.

Students in some schools on the island are trying to learn in ridiculously hot classrooms. Parents have wanted to donate air conditioners to the classrooms, but outdated wiring has made it unworkable. I feel so awful for those young children and their teachers.

Air conditioning companies are not able to provide estimates or installation of cooling units fast enough to meet demand. The latest I heard is that it would take until the winter months before you could get a unit installed.

When we were in Pennsylvania we saw several hurricanes narrowly miss Hawaii. We didn't get the destruction but the storms have pulled up the humidity and heat to the islands from the south.

Now we're getting the rainstorms with numerous flash flood warnings.

Mom used to always tells us, "Aren't you glad you live here in Hawaii now?"

I told her Pennsylvania in August was a whole lot more comfortable than it is in Hawaii right now.

On the other hand, when you drive around Oahu you'll see that everything is very green and some people are complaining about having to mow their lawn more often.

I will concede to mom though that January in Hawaii is more pleasant than in Illinois.

Hershey Gardens

The day before we left Hershey, our son said we should go to the Hershey Gardens since he knew I wanted to see it. Art and I would have gone on our own, but Keola said it would be good for all of us to go.

Hershey Gardens was created by Milton S. Hershey. If you click on this link you'll see what an amazing man he was. He was a confectioner who became a very generous philanthropist. He was supposed to have put the quality of his product and well being of his workers ahead of profit.

One thing he insisted on when he began the project was to have this Rose Garden. I was surprised to see staff encouraging people to walk on the grass.

Notice the Kisses fountain?

It was fun to see the caterpillar in the Butterfly House.

There were a LOT of beautiful butterflies!

This Weeping Beech tree was almost like a teepee under its branches.

And here is the Hershey rose, named after the man who started it all.

It was a happy day, but a little bittersweet since we knew we'd be leaving very early the following morning.

More than ever, I wished we didn't all live so very far away from each other.

Sigh...

Hershey's Chocolate World

I'm afraid we didn't get a whole lot of time to go sight seeing around Hershey, Pennsylvania on this trip. Our time was spent almost exclusively with our new grandson.

We did take a couple of hours to experience Hershey's Chocolate World.

We were surprised to see the building packed with tourists buying all sorts of Hershey chocolates and chocolate themed merchandise. Art did find a t-shirt.

And although I said I wouldn't buy another mug because I just didn't have any more room on my kitchen shelf, I couldn't help myself and bought one.

We then took the Hershey tour to see how chocolate is made.

Although we bought some chocolate Kisses, etc. we found later that you could get all of the chocolatey candies at the grocery store. The fruity Twizzlers were the only unusual thing we could find that wasn't available at outside stores.

After buying a few things to thank the friends, neighbors and relatives who were keeping an eye on mom at home, we returned to our grandson. That was the sweetest thing to do.

Bringing the Enemy Into Your Home

My daughter, Tiffany and granddaughter, KC were at the beach in Chicago while we were in Pennsylvania. KC found a tiny weed that she wanted to bring home. Tif thought it would be OK for KC to learn how to care for a plant so they pulled out the weed and brought it home where it was carefully potted.

The plant immediately grew under KC's loving care. It soon sprouted flowers, much to KC's excitement. She named her plant Fluffy.

Meanwhile Tiffany, who is undergoing allergy shots began to experience congestion and headaches. She was concerned that the allergy shots must be provoking some kind of negative reaction.

One day, she looked at Fluffy and had a strange feeling KC's pet plant might not be such a benign guest in their home. Tif googled her suspicions and found that sure enough, Fluffy was a ragweed.

When she went for her weekly allergy shot, Tif showed the doctor this photo.

He burst out laughing and between his gasps of hilarity asked if he could share her Fluffy experience with his colleagues if he promised not to give her name.

Tiffany said the only good thing that came out of this was that she gave some doctors a good chuckle and me a story for my blog.

As for Fluffy... Alas! It was taken out with the trash and that evening, KC showed me via Facetime the pretty plant that Tiffany had bought her from the nursery to keep in her room.

I wonder what she'll name it.

Back From Pennsylvania

I've just returned from Pennsylvania where we were visiting our son, his partner and our new grandson. I'm still recovering from jet lag and just being busy helping to take care of the newest member of our family.

Our loooong flights to Harrisburg Airport with a short stop in Chicago was exhausting. It was made even more upsetting because United Airlines somehow managed to goof up our seating. We had selected seats next to each other way in advance, but United had changed it so that we sat across the aisle from each other. It made it impossible for us to watch our videos on our laptop that we had planned on using. We decided to watch one of United's movies, but then discovered that the monitor on the back of the seat in front also didn't work!

After all the hassle of travel it was good to finally arrive in Harrisburg, find our rental car and go to meet our grandson.

He was every bit as precious as we knew he would be. Nearly a month old, we loved carrying him and watching his fleeting smiles. Seeing our son carrying his son was priceless.

The hardest thing was leaving them when we returned to Hawaii. I'll be doing a few posts about our experiences in the land of Hershey chocolate in the coming days.

Corpse Flower

My daughter sent me a photo from the Chicago Botanic Garden. She says they're members so they get daily updates on the blooming of the corpse flower. I remember seeing the corpse flower on TV last year in Hawaii. We were thinking of going to see it, but never got a chance. My daughter tells me it blooms every 8 years.

Here's a link to Wikipedia about the Corpse Flower.

They apparently went to see it because Tiffany wanted KC to see the flower before it bloomed in order to get a comparison.


I don't know if they'll get to see it bloom because there are long waiting times expected since it blooms for only 48 hours.

If not, here's a photo (below) I got from Wikipedia.

POSTSCRIPT:
Tiffany emailed me to say that unfortunately the corpse flower which the Chicago Botanic Garden had named Spike never bloomed. They ended up taking the petals apart to try to find some pollen they might be able to save.

Fixing a Leaning Mailbox Pole

It was two days before our trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania to visit our son when a problem arose... a big problem!

We'd noticed that our mailbox pole had been leaning the last week, but we kept thinking the new mailperson was just a little forceful closing the flap on the mailbox. Art just pushed the mailbox back to straighten it.

The entire area under the pole was covered with ground cover so we didn't even realize the pole was embedded in a huge clunk of concrete.

When we looked at the bottom where the pole met the concrete, we saw the problem. The galvanized pole was rusted!!!

Aggravation!

We could see that the mailbox was installed on October 2, 1982.

Art called me out and we tried to dig out the concrete block to install a new pole. After several HOT, sweaty, tiring minutes, I told Art this was futile. Even IF we could dig out the concrete, where would we dispose of it? How could we even carry it?

I had an idea. Why not create a concrete base to hold up the pole with a hollow tile?  As we talked the idea through, we expanded on the idea. How about drilling an anchor into the concrete? Art also drilled a hole in the pole to stick the anchor into.  He also bought some super strong glue to secure the anchors.

 After the anchors were done, the hollow tile was glued onto the existing concrete block.

We let the pole dry for the night.

The following day, we poured the Quikrete (concrete) and mounded the top so water wouldn't pool and cause more rust.

All in all, we're quite pleased with ourselves and hope it works and doesn't topple over.  It's quite stressful when things like this happen just before we're about to leave on a trip!

More House Renovation Work

When we moved back to Hawaii and renovated the house, Art kludged together the very old existing plastic vertical blinds to fit the new windows. We figured we'd change them later. Hunter Douglas blinds and roller shades were on a 20% off sale at Home Depot so we went with that.

The problem with these vertical blinds was that it didn't let in any light when closed which darkened the room.

The windows are single hung, and in order to open the windows you have to also draw the blinds back completely so there was no privacy.

We opted for roller shades which we really like upstairs.

When our shades arrived, Art carefully measured where they would be hung.

It's perfect! It took some tweaking on Art's part, but we love it. It affords us just enough privacy from the neighbor's second floor windows and allows us to open the windows for cross ventilation.

We're now waiting for Bali Blinds and Shades to go on sale at Home Depot so we can buy those for the family room. We can wait. After all, it took us 7 years to change these.

We're going to let Home Depot do the measuring and installation for that because they said they would do it all for $118!

Keeping our fingers crossed that they do a good job.

Myrtle's Cooking Hints

My dear friend, Myrtle sends me little helpful hints quite often which I love passing on to you. Here are some cooking hints she sent me recently. I am not a good cook, Myrtle is.

I did learn this first cooking hint from my mother though.

I do always heat my pan first before adding the oil so that food won't stick as much.











Pancakes? Art always makes the pancakes and I think he just drops a teeny bit of batter on the pan to test it first.

Pepper on strawberries is a new one for me.

My family used to put salt on watermelon to make it taste sweeter.

Ummm.... we don't do that anymore since blood pressure problems are a concern for our family.

But pepper? Hmmm... I'll have to try it.

Then again, I've heard that strawberries carry a TON of pesticides on them. What to do? What to do?

Oh yes, GARLIC! We use a lot of garlic. I put a lot of it into my teriyaki sauce.

Sulfates? Why do you need to draw them out? Are they that bad for you?


I'll have to remember this about potatoes. Art says I sometimes over salt food when I'm cooking.

I used to always cut the fat off of pork chops before. We never eat it anymore.







I've heard this many times before and I can easily see why. However I've managed to cut myself on sharp and dull knives.

I guess I'm klutzy that way.






I rarely taste my food. Mom does. My problem is that my taste buds are no longer working very well. Both my sense of taste and smell have deteriorated...

...except for ice cream. I can still taste ice cream and chocolate.

I think.

One of Our Typical Dinners

After we retired while living in Illinois we began leaning toward making lunch our big meal of the day and having a lighter dinner with fruits, salad or whatever.

Now that we're living in Hawaii, we've adapted to mom's eating schedule. She likes dinner to be the main meal at 5:00 on the dot so that's what we do.

Because she wears dentures, food has to be soft so most of our meals don't have a whole lot of crunch to it.

Mom cooks 75% of the time. For this meal we shared the duty. Mom makes miso soup for almost every dinner. Here she added daikon (Japanese radish) and wakame (seaweed). There was left over coleslaw she made on the previous day along with some multigrain rice that was left over from lunch. We all love the rather strong flavor of ume (pickled plum) and it's supposed to be healthy for you. We avoid the ones with ajinomoto (msg) or chemicals.

I steamed the beet leaves and served it with a little bit of mayo. We'll have the boiled beets tomorrow. Art prepared sardines and sweet onions with teriyaki seasoning and roasted some Okinawan sweet purple potatoes. Mom loves Art's sardine and onion dish! We also had some cranberry juice mixed with carbonated water from our Sodastream machine.

Dessert was Bing cherries. I was totally stuffed, but not uncomfortably so.

Mom says she's going to make nishime (Japanese stew) tomorrow. And that is Art's favorite dish!

Carry-On Luggage Hassle

We saw an article in the paper recently about how airlines are going to soon shrink the size of what they will allow as carry-ons. They do already often ask people at the gate to check in their carry-ons for free.

Well... I'm not thrilled about letting them do that since Hawaiian lost our luggage (with all our chargers, night clothes, etc.) going to Vegas a couple of years ago. It somehow ended up in Texas with American Airlines. I still can't figure out how they managed to do that. We didn't get our carry-on back until the week after we returned to Hawaii.

That incident made me decide to get a smaller carry-on. I still wanted roller carry-ons because I'm not as strong as I used to be.

I looked in our attic and realized that I should donate or give away the carry-ons that we no longer use.

#1 was a rather expensive retirement gift that Art received from his buddies at work. We bought #2 because we wanted a smaller luggage. When we brought it home we discovered it was actually the same size. Why didn't we return it? I don't know. Whatever the case, we used them both only a handful of times. #3 is a two wheeler that was given to us by our daughter and it was used quite a bit until the airlines made the aisles narrower so the bag could no longer be rolled once you entered the plane. #4 was bought in Vegas when Hawaiian Airlines lost our carry-on.

We looked everywhere for an even smaller luggage and found #5 at Ross. It's probably about the size of a backpack.

It was very, very difficult to find a smaller carry-on, but I'm thinking they'll start going on the market once the airlines change their rules again. Do you bring carry-ons when you travel?

Lighting Up My Life

We're all for saving energy so when the country moved to fluorescent (CFL) from incandescent we followed suit. However, there were some problems with CFLs that we weren't thrilled with. For one thing CFL bulbs contain mercury which is harmful to us and the environment.

They also do get hot and when they get hot, they die.

The overhead light (left) by our sink was a problem. Even though the CFL bulbs are supposed to last longer than incandescent bulbs this one kept dying after a few months.

We discovered that because the fixture was facing downwards, heat was being trapped in the glass shade and killing the bulb. Art had to turn the fixture upside down in order to make the bulb last longer. We don't get as much light but at least the bulb doesn't die after a couple of months.

The pendant lights (right) are also in the kitchen and for the same reason keeps dying. Unfortunately we can't turn them upside down. They are dimmable, but they often flicker and buzz and you have to adjust the dimming switch.

We've wanted to switch to LEDs for a while but they were too expensive. Prices are going down now so we decided to try them out. The LED lights in the dining room which we got last year is working out very well, but they were expensive.

We were at Home Depot and Lowes having a hard time figuring out the wattage. We looked it up on line and found this helpful chart on Earth Easy, Solutions for Sustainable Living.

Since I still think in terms of incandescent lights I now know that to get 100 watts of brightness I should look for LEDs listed at 16-20 watts.

I found this chart to be interesting too. I see right away where CFLs are sensitive to high and low temperatures as well as humidity. And of course, there's that mercury problem.

This last chart shows the cost comparison. It would vary state by state. Electricity in Hawaii is more expensive than other states.

We will gradually be switching to LEDs, but now we have another problem. What the heck do we do with all our extra CFL bulbs that we have in storage?

Something Fun to Try on Your Cellphone

My daughter sent me photos of  herself as Princess Leia and our granddaughter as Luke Skywalker that we thought were hilarious.

The app is free for your cellphone.

It's called Disney Side.  This is the link.

I had to try Art first as Jafar from Aladdin.

Of course he wouldn't strike a serious pose.

Can you guess which characters I chose?

The app is easy to use and fun.

Try it out and be sure to send the photo to your grandchildren. They should get a chuckle out of it. I know mine did.

Date Day at Chili's

Art and I had a little money left on our Chili's gift card so we thought we'd grab lunch at Chili's while we were out shopping.

Art had a soft shell taco and chicken burrito which came with rice and beans.

I had a half rack of baby back ribs. I substituted the fries for spinach and roasted tomatoes. (Woo hoo! Pretty much carb free.)

It was all fabulous!

Adding in the 20% tip, we were able to use up the entire card perfectly.

Everybody there were so friendly and the place was crowded. Service was great!

We're going to go back, with or without a gift card.

From Rail and Traffic to Photoshop

Art and I were on the off ramp going from Farrington Highway to Kamehameha Highway when we passed the rail overpass being built on the island of Oahu.

It was amazing to see these long, heavy concrete structures that seem poised over the highway ready to break and fall.

I took these photos out of our car window and couldn't get a good perspective to show how massive it is. You can see how bad the traffic is these days with the controversial rail project that is costing more and more than what was originally planned.

People are warned on the news not to look up while you're driving, but to pay attention to what is in front of you.

Since it's hard to get the full feel of this project, I thought I'd throw these two photos into my Photoshop program and see if I could get a more panoramic view.

What I got made us laugh uproariously.

If you really did see something like this, I imagine it would have made you look up for sure!

"Fixing" My Reading Glasses

I've always had a problem with reading too long. My eyes quickly get tired and I end up closing one eye to read. I don't know why I don't have the same problem when I'm reading things on the computer.

There was one optometrist in Chicago who finally addressed my problem saying I needed prisms. She was particularly sensitive to this because she had the same problem.

When I came to Hawaii, my new optometrist didn't think I had a problem with reading. I told her I often had to shut one eye to read. I think she thought it was all in my head... the brain part, not the eye. Hmmm... Maybe it's both.

The other day I was reading and put my hand over one eye and then looked through my fingers just to test it out for the heck of it. It seemed to make a difference. I could read for a longer period of time using both eyes.

I decided to experiment.

I got some Post-It tape and covered most of my reading glasses except for a slit on both sides.

By golly, it was more comfortable to read.

I do believe I'll be asking for prisms when I go for my annual eye exam in September.

Meanwhile, this will have to do.

Then again, maybe it IS all in my head.