life in the old lane

For 8 years these ladies put on  old school clotted cream and scones teas quarterly. The ring leader was Faye Daniel, whose formal memorial service was Sunday. . In her honor they had a final tea yesterday. Honestly, these women would have stopped doing it earlier but the tea was Faye’s special project.

I am trying to put together a video for them from the footage I took yesterday. Haven’t got it together yet. But, when my friends at the asylum sent me a really scruffy video and asked if I could put it online for them – I at least have developed the skills to enable me to quickly slap a title on and pull a photo out of my own collection to smarten it up a bit.

My only chore today was laundry. I tossed to stupid white dress in the machine. And, hung it back up. Hopefully, I will not need to wear it again. Ever.  But, I’ll keep it “just in case”.

Gratitude

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Black coffee and dark chocolate, make the list today. The problem with Teas is that tea is served. Not coffee. My friends do serve champagne as well as tea.

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There are two sacred traditions at the Hotel party. There is always pig. Cooked on a spit. This one was stuffed with garlic, onions, and lemon grass.

And, every employee gets a case of toilet paper and a case of kleenix. No matter how hard a year the hotel had – you can always count on pig and TP.

Gratitude

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Really grateful for garbagemen.

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Completed my last holiday task earlier today. I never truly appreciated that old English carol “God REST ye Merry Gentleman” until today.

And, I found this really strange online shopping place today. For The Minimalist.  It really doesn’t seem like the greatest marketing strategy ever.

Something a little different today. I went to a Celebration of Life this morning. For one of my dear local friends. I put on my much unloved white dress and went.

Since I live in an Old Folks Asylum, we have much experience with funerals, the Mass of Christian Burial, and Celebrations of life. Basically, I keep my funeral dress ready.

Some of my friends from The Asylum are regular readers, I decided to put up about 8 minutes of the service. I am not sure how much will be understandable since there are more than a few Hawaiian words. And, the sound is marginal. Cell phones are not stellar audio pickup devices.  And we are on the ocean.

This is is Kahu Uncle Danny Akaka and his wife Anna, You might consider this the homily. A very simple intro to Hawaiian spiritually. We are on a journey. It may not have an end. It may continue into the sunset.

Gratitude

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Grateful for wonderful fiends

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If the kitchen really is the heart of the home – then I should be on the Transplant List! But, hey, it is all I need. More than I need actually.

Yesterday I made an effort to take actual photographs with the GoPro.  The results aren’t all that bad. Especially since I discovered “Screen LocK”. And figured out a burst mode that works for me.

But, along the way I ran into this yellowtail coris that seem to be having a bad day. I am pretty sure this a male and I don’t recall seeing any ladies. So, maybe he is just lonely.  And, I think I will be using Vimeo not YouTube. It is just cleaner and easier for my needs.

Gratitude

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Grateful for whales, dolphins, papayas, and rain.

And Carlton, he has been gone for 5 years, I don’t really miss him anymore. But he is still a part of every day.   Can not explain it.  It just is.

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Went out this evening. Got rained on. Not a problem. I was only a couple of blocks from home.

Gratitude

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(I did stop to be sure that he was alive.)

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Enjoying a little downtime today, walking, swimming, watching surfing on TV today.  My Hawai’i Xmas is usually compressed into 3 or 4 days. This year, it is 4 days starting tomorrow. In addition to the usual stuff, I have a two-day memorial service/funeral/celebration of life woven into the parades and parties. By next Tuesday, I will be taking another downtime day.

The Brits seem to be on course to re-elect their lunatic leader. I fear that we will re-elect our clown next year. I don’t understand this crazed new world. I have stopped trying.  Life is just a computer game anyhow.

Gratitude

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Grateful to have two perfectly fine rented homes. A hotel room here in Kona and a sweet studio in The Asylum. And good friends in both places. With no maintenance responsibilities in either place.

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A cruise ship comes to Kona most Wednesdays. And the ocean gets filled up with boats. I was sitting on the pier watching dolphins (without a suitable lens for dolphins). But, you might like watching all the boats coming and going. 90 seconds.

Gratitude

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Grateful for my friends and the staff at The Asylum. I never imagined such wonderful friends would be with me on the last great adventure of my life. Old Age. Never saw it coming.

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Another shot from the grocery store. This is the grab-n-go section. If you don’t like spam and rice. Tough.

Gratitude

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Tonight I am grateful for the ocean and especially grateful that I can still get out in it. The ocean was murky today. Too murky to see the bottom. So, I sort of grumpily swam around for 30 minutes or so. Coming in, a couple of very pink visitors were delighting in how clear the ocean was. Gratitude wake up call. The ocean, known as moana or kai here in Hawai’i is a daily blessing.

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So, continuing through my Australia photos – I found a 20-second video of the HUGE bats in Cairns. I slowed it down to make them look more Dracula like. The audio is real and not slowed down. The little 40 second creation will be coming out again for Halloween.

If I had remembered how much I liked Cairns – I would be heading out for Xmas in Cairns. Warm weather, great ocean, huge bats. What’s not to love?

But, I have warm weather and a great ocean right here in exciting downtown Kailua-Kona. Lacking only huge bats. (We do have small bats. But, they don’t come down to sea level.)

Ten seconds that you will rarely see. Peg IRONING.

Gratitude.  Lots of bad stuff going on. And, I think it is only going to get worse. So, it is time to break out gratitude. When I would get bitchy, yes, I know that is hard to imagine-but you should have been around when I went cold turkey off estrogen. But, I digress. When I would get bitchy, Carlton would direct me to go to my room and make a Gratitude List. I don’t think it works that way.

So, let’s try to do gratitude for a couple of days or so.

Gratitude

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Tonight I am grateful for the humble peanut butter and banana sandwich. A fine breakfast, lunch or dinner. In my case. Tonight’s dinner. I am also grateful that I am happy with a PB sandwich.

Hey, this gratitude business has to start with the basics. And dinner is pretty basic.

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Remember that 20 feet of soy sauce at my grocery. Well, right across the aisle, we have 20 feet of rice.

Last night while I was updating my blog somehow or the other the .htaccess got deleted. That wasn’t pretty. So, I might as well get the suspense over and just hit the publish button right now.

My 60 minutes of ocean time reduced to about 60 seconds.

OK. PUBLISH.

Hey, it worked. It’s All Good. Think I’ll just stop here while everything is still working. Well, everything that I have control of is still working. There is one hell of a lot of shit that isn’t working but I can’t do anything about it. So, I will invoke one of Carlton’s AA things “… grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.

I spent one night in Adelaide on my Australian Adventure in February 2018. I just happened to be in Adelaide during Fringe Fest. Where they had a fantastic lightshow. Maybe 20 buildings were turned into … well, you have to see for yourself.

Watch it in full screen.

It’s time to plan the next adventure. But don’t plan it too carefully. Leave plenty of room for “luck”.

About this learning about videos crap. I have gotten better at it. I am not comfortable with video editing.  And, I haven’t a clue about what to shoot. But, when someone sent me a vertical video that they wanted on YouTube – at least I knew how to make it work.

Winter in Kailua-Kona. Misty rain, temps in the 70’s. Time to wear sock and sweaters. Drink hot cocoa. Have soup for lunch. And, work on old photos. Still in Australia. I was in Sydney during Lunar New Year. They turned the Harbour Bridge red one night. One minute along the water.

I don’t know why I put off processing photos. For two years in the case of the trip to Australia. I guess I fear that  I should be doing something useful. But, why am I beating myself up over “doing nothing”. Nobody is going to censure me for rearranging my digital archives.

This is a recurrent theme. Ever since digital photography. I have been trying to keep my photos organized and cataloged. Too many seasons as a museum tech maybe?

PS: I loved Australia.