Today was the monthly street market and concert at the Palace. The band (as in marching) music at the Palace is not very good. But, there are always 3 or 4 pretty good bands (as in old time rock and roll or Hawaiian) playing on the street. One of the best groups has a space right next to our hotel deck.
The distinguished gentleman on the right is “Fred”. He is one of the homeless oldtimers. He has been around for at least 15 years. He still looks the same. No one knows much about him. The more “normal” homeless folk call him “Fred” and firmly believe that he is one of Fred MacMurray’s sons. They say he gets a monthly check from his trust fund which keeps him in Starbucks and tobacco cigarettes.
Yes, I am guilty. Guilty of computing while ignoring a lovely ocean view. This morning I was enjoying the return of internet to my side of the hotel on the deck whilst my room was being cleaned. Used the computer to capture me in the act.
Read the New York Times review of Sarah Palin’s … reality tv, infomercial, campaign ad miniseries. According to the Times “… it’s like “The Sound of Music” but without the romance, the Nazis or the music.”
Carlton watched it for about 5 minutes in an attempt to annoy me. (That is why I keep my iPod handy). Carlton decided that the fun he would derive from annoying me was trumped by having to watch it himself.
My Gimp project is almost done. The Gimp does almost everything that Photoshop does and it does it for free. Now, it is a little quirky. But Free is Good. And, if someone asks you to set up stuff that goes to a printer – the press kind not inkjet thing on the desk – you can say Gee I’d love to help but I can not do CMYK images. Sorry.
Back to the project. My Hospital coworkers wanted a group picture. But, we were never able to get everyone together in the same place at the same time. So, I “Gimped” us together.
There was a ship in the bay today on its way to Tahiti. I wanted to go along. Googled the ship. Its main attraction is its library. Sounds very attractive. I am such a vagabond. If I need “assisted living” some day – just stick me on a cruise ship.
I am walking south on Ali’i Drive enjoying the view of the ocean. I look across the road to see if there is anyone I know at Lava Java. Don’t see anyone I know. But I see this young couple huddled over matching Macs. Oblivious to the view. I hope they at least enjoyed the coffee.
The view they were ignoring.
Better late than never… I finish culling and cataloging my photos from the winter of 2008.
On my way back towards the hotel, I stopped by the farm market. Six dollars yielded a big bunch of bananas, 6 tomatoes, 2 large papaya, and 2 chayote.
When the Restaurant and Bar next door opened before the economy tanked … mimosas and bloody marys were $7.99. After things showed no signs of getting better and the cruise ships stopped coming everyday they had the sign repainted to $5.99. Finally they gave up. You can tell how flush they think each day’s patrons will be by the price they paste over the $5.99
Carlton spotted this ad for snow tire chains – never used – in the Friday paper.
I had a lazy day today. Got some groceries, took in the Coffee Festival Parade, went for a swim, worked on culling photographs, tossed some dinner together… Because of Carlton’s silly volunteer schedule – we don’t seem to be having lunch these days. Just dinner at about 4:30. Carlton is mortified when I insist on calling it “Early Bird Special”.
I decided it would be easier to learn how my new camera works underwater if the subject stayed still. I came upon an underwater cache of coke bottles. The little fish getting a closer look is Hawaiian White Spotted Toby.
Carlton returned to eating real people food today. No more turkey meatballs and yogurt and avocado and banana diet. We finished that all up last night. This evening we had nuked shark, avocado, tomato and interesting local “salad greens”.
How to Nuke a Shark: Get a couple of nice “beefy” shark steaks. Season with whatever spicy seasoning mix you have around. Just pepper is OK. Shark doesn’t have much flavor – it needs spicy. Stuff into a microwave steamer bag. Nuke 2.5 to 3 minutes.
I got a cookbook out of the library today. (Aside: the Kona library is really short of books. Maybe lots of books were just checked out. Or maybe the are still culling old books but have no budget for replacements.) The cookbook was “Meals from Crappy Little Kitchens”. Well, my kitchen at home is up to their Crappy Little Kitchen standard. My kitchen here is not good enough to be called a Crappy Little Kitchen. Maybe I should make a cookbook: “Meals With No Kitchen At All”.
There is a parade tomorrow morning. The second parade since we have been here.
My friends at Hulihe’e Palace asked if I could help them make a cookbook. They want it ready to sell by mid-March. I fear that there isn’t enough time to get it done. Maybe I can come up with a Plan B that will work for the upcoming March event and we can work on the cookbook for March 2012.
Carlton is mending well from his tooth extraction.
Before we left home, Carlton’s dentist told him that he needed to have two teeth taken out – the teeth were next to each other. But, Carlton – being Carlton, decided to have one tooth taken out. Well, in the middle of the night on Saturday – he began to suspect that he had made a big mistake. Today – he had the other tooth taken out. Needless to say, I did not have any dental surgery friendly food in the house – except for yogurt. He is a little grumpy right now – having been fed yogurt for lunch and for afternoon snack time – but he seems much better. He liked the dentist. And, it was within walking distance. So far so good with the no car deal.
I’ll feed the man some “fried” rice and a couple of meatballs and some nice avocado slices for dinner. I think he’ll be able to eat that.
I have been having way too much fun organizing all the files in my computer. Anything that is not “priceless” or “confidential” is going into Evernote. I was an alpha tester of Evernote years ago – but when I stopped using the dear little Fujitsu P1120 computer – I sort of forgot about Evernote. This organization project does not include photos or the stuff that lives in iTunes.
Stuff that is “confidential” is being encrypted and stashed in DropBox. Likewise anything the is “priceless” like my current year tax files and passwords are stashed in DropBox. I like to keep things that I might want to use on any of my computers in DropBox.
For fun, I got some cool new icons for my folders . And then I wrote a little script to clean out my download folder and “junk drawer” folder automatically. I am such a nerd.
