There are 4 new albums on my Picasa page:
~ February's Studio Progress
~ The Great Outdoors
~ Chinese New Year Festival
~ An Inside Look into Our Everyday Life (which is really just whatever didn't fit in the other ones)
Let me know what ya think.
Oh, and by the way, you may have heard about Kilauea's latest excitement, but I want to tell you that the newly flowing lava is not headed our way... so far, so good. I would like to drive out to the Kaimu/Kalapana area at night to watch it flowing down the pali - supposed to be quite a sight!
Friday, February 29, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Sheetrock and Flooring and Vog, Oh My!
The rains finally stopped just a couple days after our visitors left. We've been enjoying warm, sunny days for a week now! It's lovely to dry out. Gorgeous pink and orange sunrises every morning, starry skies at night - perfect. The big ol' Hawaiian moon has been glowing down on us all night. Didn't get to see any part of the lunar eclipse on Wednesday though: there was a cloud bank just above the horizon blocking our view. By the time it was high enough, of course it was all over. Oh well, maybe next time - in December 2010!
Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa have both been beautifully snow-capped and showing themselves every day. Today the vog is so thick we can't see either of them. Usually the vog - the volcanic haze - goes over to the Kona side of the island. When the tradewinds stop, like today, it'll come over the eastside and settle in the Hilo Bay area, but kinda stay overhead of us here in Pahoa. Not today though; today we can see it, smell it, and even kinda taste it - and it's bad, sulphur-y. Yuck. We need a little wind to clear it away, and some is due to blow in this weekend.
Work on the studio progresses apace. Mike is having fun with taping and mudding the sheetrock these days. No really, he's having a blast! He's built his own scaffolding from some of the extra pieces of wood laying about, the better to reach the high ceiling. Yesterday was another Hilo day for us; we bought our 2 ceiling fans, a toilet, and went to several more flooring shops until we finally found what we were looking for at a price that wasn't exorbitant. We'll have a light-colored bamboo snaplock 'engineered' floor for the whole studio, except the bathroom, which will be Tarkett fiberfloor. It's all coming together! And it looks like we're still pretty much on schedule for moving in by the end of March. I'm so amazed at how fast it's going!
We started carving into the jungle to create a driveway on our next-door lot. The land is level, not too many big rocks or pukas (holes in the ground; this is an older lava flow, after all) so we may be able to do all the clearing by hand - our preference if at all possible. Our goal is to keep all the ohia trees growing, and just take out the 'weed trees' and some of the guava, etc. It'll take a few more days of work to hack our way back as far as we want the driveway to go. Then we'll go over it all again, cutting off the stobs and pulling out a couple old rotten trunks, add a load of gravel to smooth it out for driving on, cut into the fencing surrounding this yard, and put in a gate to connect the two properties. That'll be the studio's entrance as well as a start for our 'real' house, as we call it.
I'll post some more photos soon. We had fun at the Chinese New Year festival in Hilo, and there'll be some pics of the studio, too. Until next time, aloha.
Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa have both been beautifully snow-capped and showing themselves every day. Today the vog is so thick we can't see either of them. Usually the vog - the volcanic haze - goes over to the Kona side of the island. When the tradewinds stop, like today, it'll come over the eastside and settle in the Hilo Bay area, but kinda stay overhead of us here in Pahoa. Not today though; today we can see it, smell it, and even kinda taste it - and it's bad, sulphur-y. Yuck. We need a little wind to clear it away, and some is due to blow in this weekend.
Work on the studio progresses apace. Mike is having fun with taping and mudding the sheetrock these days. No really, he's having a blast! He's built his own scaffolding from some of the extra pieces of wood laying about, the better to reach the high ceiling. Yesterday was another Hilo day for us; we bought our 2 ceiling fans, a toilet, and went to several more flooring shops until we finally found what we were looking for at a price that wasn't exorbitant. We'll have a light-colored bamboo snaplock 'engineered' floor for the whole studio, except the bathroom, which will be Tarkett fiberfloor. It's all coming together! And it looks like we're still pretty much on schedule for moving in by the end of March. I'm so amazed at how fast it's going!
We started carving into the jungle to create a driveway on our next-door lot. The land is level, not too many big rocks or pukas (holes in the ground; this is an older lava flow, after all) so we may be able to do all the clearing by hand - our preference if at all possible. Our goal is to keep all the ohia trees growing, and just take out the 'weed trees' and some of the guava, etc. It'll take a few more days of work to hack our way back as far as we want the driveway to go. Then we'll go over it all again, cutting off the stobs and pulling out a couple old rotten trunks, add a load of gravel to smooth it out for driving on, cut into the fencing surrounding this yard, and put in a gate to connect the two properties. That'll be the studio's entrance as well as a start for our 'real' house, as we call it.
I'll post some more photos soon. We had fun at the Chinese New Year festival in Hilo, and there'll be some pics of the studio, too. Until next time, aloha.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Studio Update
Yay! All the windows are in, thanks to Dad's help. And the electrical inspector finally showed up! AND the building inspector gave us the go-ahead, too! At last, we can get going on this project again. :-)
We've got 2 bookings confirmed for April so there's a deadline coming up for completion. Shouldn't be a problem, says Mike. We can always 'camp in' for a few days, says me. ;-)
We've got 2 bookings confirmed for April so there's a deadline coming up for completion. Shouldn't be a problem, says Mike. We can always 'camp in' for a few days, says me. ;-)
Monday, February 4, 2008
Flash Floods!
We've had rain for 4 days and nights with about a 15 minute break a couple days ago. And again right now, it's finally let up for the past 25-30 minutes. We're not talking comforting pitter-patter of rain on the roof here: this is monsoon-like deluges! Someone up there has turned all the firehoses on full blast and walked away and totally forgot about 'em. The kind where you actually hear the silence when it stops.
On Saturday we drove in to Hilo - in the downpour - and noticed on the way all the ditches beginning to overflow, people's yards flooding, a few fire engines pumping out a couple homes. Once in Hilo itself, we saw the big drain canal gushing with muddy brown water creating standing waves! Many of the streets downtown were closed, even the highway. These are still closed too, with 3 feet of water slowly receding, and high surf crashing in to take its place. We went above Hilo to Rainbow Falls, a picturesque waterfall usually, but this time it was a torrential monster. We could actually hear it from the parking lot, still inside the car! And it was enormous and scary! Such raw power of Nature!
There has been much damage over the weekend from this storm, and it's not done with us yet! They say this stalled storm will linger over the islands through Thursday at least. That's as far as the forecast goes, so who knows what'll come next? But we are all safe and sound in our neighborhood. Only one little drip in the studio that Mike managed to fix by rescrewing one screw so the plastic seal connected properly. And lots of extra soil being washed into our driveway that I'll probably scrape off and add to my garden beds. Hey, I'll take what I can get! :-)
Oops, here comes the rain again. Excuse me, I need to run around closing up windows again!
Sure beats shoveling snow and scraping ice!! ;-)
On Saturday we drove in to Hilo - in the downpour - and noticed on the way all the ditches beginning to overflow, people's yards flooding, a few fire engines pumping out a couple homes. Once in Hilo itself, we saw the big drain canal gushing with muddy brown water creating standing waves! Many of the streets downtown were closed, even the highway. These are still closed too, with 3 feet of water slowly receding, and high surf crashing in to take its place. We went above Hilo to Rainbow Falls, a picturesque waterfall usually, but this time it was a torrential monster. We could actually hear it from the parking lot, still inside the car! And it was enormous and scary! Such raw power of Nature!
There has been much damage over the weekend from this storm, and it's not done with us yet! They say this stalled storm will linger over the islands through Thursday at least. That's as far as the forecast goes, so who knows what'll come next? But we are all safe and sound in our neighborhood. Only one little drip in the studio that Mike managed to fix by rescrewing one screw so the plastic seal connected properly. And lots of extra soil being washed into our driveway that I'll probably scrape off and add to my garden beds. Hey, I'll take what I can get! :-)
Oops, here comes the rain again. Excuse me, I need to run around closing up windows again!
Sure beats shoveling snow and scraping ice!! ;-)
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Happy January!
Aloha one and all! I'm back at last and ready to get y'all updated. First I want to let you know that I've added 2 new albums of photos which will almost get you caught up with our building progress. Just use the address on the sidebar here to get you to my Picasa page; the newest albums are called 'Building the Studio-3' and 'Pahoa Christmas Parade'.
The holidays seem like a long time ago already, and it doesn't even feel like how we think of wintertime at all. So now that I'm feeling well again (after a horrendous cold that lasted over a week) I'm just charging right ahead with Spring! Planting seeds, transplanting, weeding and watering when it goes too long between rains ~ not often, but it happens occasionally even on this wet side of the island. There are baby squashes setting on the vines. The chayote has climbed w-a-y up the ohia in the frontyard but has yet to set any fruit. The second crop of green beans is coming up nicely. Everything's growing so well and the flowers are blooming like mad now that the days are getting a little longer again. We had rain for 5 weeks straight, every day and night. Didn't like that so much, but since then it's been lovely, really a nice mix of weather: some rain, some downpours, some sunshine, some clouds, rainbows.... yeah, like that :-) So if that's our wintertime weather here, we can certainly handle it.
The studio-ohana is coming along nicely. Bob Dakujaku is a great guy who did the plumbing and wiring for us. He's been so nice and great fun to talk story with. The plumbing inspector was all smiles when he came out, even gave us a bagful of rambutan, a spiky red fruit - delicious! Now we're waiting on the electric inspector to get here, do his thing, and give us a pass so we can proceed with putting up sheetrock. Mike's still keeping busy with all the fiddly bits that need doing. He created some great skylights in the livingroom, so we don't have a dark cave in here anymore! Yay!! Right now, he's working on finishing off the doorway between the existing house and the studio, and the new doorway into the Lagoon Room. Oh, he just walked in to inform me that he got the sliding glass door installed just now! Yes, he keeps busy :-)
The Shanghai Circus came to Hilo and we were excited to be able to see them in real life! With balancing acts, Chinese acrobatics, jugglers, contortionists, kung fu demonstrations, wire acts, and so much more... they were totally fantastic! I highly recommend them if they ever come your way! Then yesterday, we all spent the day in Hilo again, ordering kitchen cabinets, comparing flooring options and countertops, choosing fertilizer for the fruit trees and palms, discovering a cute little lunch place (Millie's), getting our library cards, and finally, picking up groceries on the way home. What a long day. I sure slept well last night!
The holidays seem like a long time ago already, and it doesn't even feel like how we think of wintertime at all. So now that I'm feeling well again (after a horrendous cold that lasted over a week) I'm just charging right ahead with Spring! Planting seeds, transplanting, weeding and watering when it goes too long between rains ~ not often, but it happens occasionally even on this wet side of the island. There are baby squashes setting on the vines. The chayote has climbed w-a-y up the ohia in the frontyard but has yet to set any fruit. The second crop of green beans is coming up nicely. Everything's growing so well and the flowers are blooming like mad now that the days are getting a little longer again. We had rain for 5 weeks straight, every day and night. Didn't like that so much, but since then it's been lovely, really a nice mix of weather: some rain, some downpours, some sunshine, some clouds, rainbows.... yeah, like that :-) So if that's our wintertime weather here, we can certainly handle it.
The studio-ohana is coming along nicely. Bob Dakujaku is a great guy who did the plumbing and wiring for us. He's been so nice and great fun to talk story with. The plumbing inspector was all smiles when he came out, even gave us a bagful of rambutan, a spiky red fruit - delicious! Now we're waiting on the electric inspector to get here, do his thing, and give us a pass so we can proceed with putting up sheetrock. Mike's still keeping busy with all the fiddly bits that need doing. He created some great skylights in the livingroom, so we don't have a dark cave in here anymore! Yay!! Right now, he's working on finishing off the doorway between the existing house and the studio, and the new doorway into the Lagoon Room. Oh, he just walked in to inform me that he got the sliding glass door installed just now! Yes, he keeps busy :-)
The Shanghai Circus came to Hilo and we were excited to be able to see them in real life! With balancing acts, Chinese acrobatics, jugglers, contortionists, kung fu demonstrations, wire acts, and so much more... they were totally fantastic! I highly recommend them if they ever come your way! Then yesterday, we all spent the day in Hilo again, ordering kitchen cabinets, comparing flooring options and countertops, choosing fertilizer for the fruit trees and palms, discovering a cute little lunch place (Millie's), getting our library cards, and finally, picking up groceries on the way home. What a long day. I sure slept well last night!
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