Image 1453: View From Our Lanai

I shot this about a week ago. Plumbago and Rainbow Shower Tree make nice colors.

Hibiscus

I shot this a while back in the front yard:

The Ping Pong Ball Goes to Sea

Who knows if it is leaving or just out for a swim? Anyway, it was in front of the house this morning, way in front of the house, of course, but away from it's usual resting place at Ford island.

Adirondack Chairs

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article on Adirondack chairs today. We have the plastic version from Home Depot. Unlike the wood versions, they are very light, can be dried quickly for immediate use after rain or washing them, and at less than twenty clams per, cheap enough to bear replacing about every 18 months. Light weight is particularly nice for those who mow their own lawns and have to move each one twice every time they unlimber the lawnmower. Still, painted wood is great looking, and so are the teak ones after a few years. The good teak ones are plenty heavy and fearsomely expensive though.

Burglary in Paradise

We got burgled yesterday while we were running errands between 11:35 AM and 1:25 PM.

We came home and saw from the car that the front door was ajar and the screen door open.

I pulled the big MagLite out from between the seats and cautiously walked in to find the living room had been trashed:

 

As usual, clik on the pic for a bigger version. Were you aware that burglars have unusually small reproductive organs?

Calvin and Sweetie cat had departed for safer climes. Couch cushions all over:

 

containers of every size from the paperclip box on the desk:

 

through a wooden Tokelau tackle box we use for NetFlix to an old Chinese camphor wood chest we use for an end table had been opened:

 

Oddly, Valerie's school laptop computer had been unplugged and moved from the dining table to the punee, but left there atop a framed photo of Greg which along with a lamp had been moved from atop another box to see what was in that.

There were bottles of prescription meds from the master bedroom on the kitchen floor, and some of the kitchen cabinets had been opened.

 

 

Studies with Canadian laboratory rats demonstrate that burglars have embarrasingly small reproductive organs.

In the hallway, my Dad's old metal fishing rod case lay opened on the floor, stretching from the door to the den across the hall.

 

The room I had thought the safest, the den, which is at the moment more or less a storage room akin to the store room in my old apartment in Milwaukee, had been gone through despite the light being out. The burglars had gone in, moved boxes in front of the sliding closet doors, managed to open the warped doors and rummage through both sides all the way to the floor. They also moved a stack of framed pictures from in front of a curio cabinet to access the lower storage compartment, and seem to have opened the display door and moved an early 20th century Hawaiian covered bowl.

 

In Greg's room they rummaged through his dresser drawers, went through both closets and removed things from the shelves to look, and opened a big metal gun case to find nothing inside.

 

Our bedroom was ransacked: both dressers gone through and the contents on the floor, the cabinet by Valerie's side of the bed had things pulled out, including her grandmother's sewing kit, which was lying open on the bed, the pillows all pulled away from the headboard so they could ransack the storage cabinets there.

 

 

 

 

Researchers using Canadian laboratory rats have discovered that the average burglar engages in inappropriate acts with domestic waterfowl an average 3.003 times per week.

All in all the place was a mess, though with little damage to remaining contents. Among the losses was one of Greg's guitars, a couple of containers of pocket change, a pocket camera of Valerie's, and some things from the den closet which, while not of any sentimental value, were disturbing to lose.

It turned out that they had gotten in through the living room louvered windows: they had cut the screen and pulled out the wooden louvers, crawled in, and left by the front door.

 

 

 

The police eventually arrived after a return call from the dispatcher saying that they were quite busy and that they would be there when they could. They mentioned that Hawaii has the highest rate of property crimes in the country, largely because our noble decision makers (my term) have decided that since few people get hurt physically in burglaries, they get very low priority.

They also mentioned that while the bad guys made off with relatively little, they clearly had a chance to see that they had left a lot of good stuff behind. Maybe they were surprised and fled. Certainly they left the lap top computer after unplugging it, and Valerie's iPad after taking from on top of a box, and uncasing it. They left that on our bed. So the cops' opinion is that they might come back for what they left behind.

Today we spent buying stuff to beef up the louvers and getting a safe deposit box and filling it with stuff they missed.

Over all we were lucky. This was a wake up call. Now we have to figure out what to do both in the very short term before we leave Thursday for Utah and white water rafting on the Salmon River in Idaho. A safe deposit box already and stashing some things more carefully. When we get home: to be decided. Maybe a safe. Maybe an alarm system. Somethings to think about.

No one was killed, no one was raped. Nothing really important to us was destroyed or stolen. All in all we have a lot to be thankful for.

Calvin and Sweetie, illustrious Guard Cats, understood that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, and strategically retreated to fight another day. Like graduates of a Junior Life Saving course, they understood that sometimes one must let what is going to happen happen rather than go down fighting a futile fight.

Calvin seems to have internalized that wisdom:

 

Calvin, BTW, has a nearly bare naked tummy and shaved arms as a result of tummy surgery about three weeks ago for kidney stones: the doc opened him up, and had IVs in both front legs. Poor little guy seems to be well on the mend.

Bulgarian Minimalism Meets Manhattan

I have to admire Malena Georgieva. It looks like she did quite a nice job with a bitty apartment in Manhattan

The fourth-floor apartment, for which she pays $1,750 a month, consists of a single room, just over 200 square feet, with a bed, a desk, a dining table and a couple of swivel chairs.

Apparently it is a fourth floor walk up, as the story says she had to cut down a picture a few inches to get it up the stairs. Gotta love New York prices. Thankyou, rent control. What a disaster that has been.

My first apartment in Manhattan, on West 108th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, was a 275 square feet two bedroom, so I can relate a bit to her 200. I did have a studio apartment in Madison for a while around 1974 which would have been around 200 square feet. It was actually quite nice. Since it was in a mid-19th century house built in what was then a very affluent neighborhood, it had very high ceilings, two big windows facing south, yellow walls with white trim, and between the windows, a Murphy bed.

The kitchen, which was built into what was perhaps once a closet, was a bit on the tight side, though: in order to open the oven door I had to stand in the main room, as the oven door took up the entire floor space. When I moved in I had to use a screwdriver to chisel the mineralization off of the bathroom sink, but other than that it was a cheery place.

I Realized I Was a Cheapskate When...

...I went to Goodwill and was appalled at how expensive the used clothes were.

This morning I realized I had crossed a line of some kind when I needed my pick up truck to haul home the stuff which out neighbor Ed had tossed in his dumpster.

Thunderbirds at Hickam Air Force Base

Yesterday Valerie and I trekked off by bus and hoof...much hoof...toward Hickam Air Force Base to see the Thunderbirds perform. Google maps were a trifle misleading, so after much hiking along the side of the highway in a generally counterclockwise direction...a fully counterclockwise direction and then some...in fact, if it had been the horn of a mountain sheep it would have been a trophy curl... we settled on a footbridge which made a pretty good viewing platform. Fortunately we had brought water or we never would have made it to the bridge, but instead would have been one day found, dried, dessicated, nay mummified, by the side of the Interstate, possibly of interest to local archaeologists.

While we waited for the Thunderbirds to show, we sat under a nice plumeria tree and polished off most of the rest of the water. Back in shape, we clambered up the bridge in time for the fun.

 

Zoom! Or something to that effect.:

 

More Zoom! but in a different direction:

 

Today we got up at 4:30 to help the Troop 147 Boy Scouts pass out water to the Nike 5K joggers at Kapiolani park, sauntered thru the craft fair there, then home for a nap and more Thunderbirds from the lanai:

 

Then off they flew into the wild blue yonder behind the shower tree:

 

Aiea Sunset

 

Taking a break...

...from removing, or, rather, trying to remove, a defunct and now extremely recalcitrant garbage disposer, I came across this nice little essay on building soil, by Gerri Hershey, in the New York Times.

GARBAGOLOGICAL UPDATE: The stubborn one finally surrendered to a vigorously yet judiciously applied hacksaw. Hence I hie myself off to the Home Depot for another.

Who says violence never solved anything?

Pics from around the house

Moonset over the Waianae Range:

 

New Year's cookies:

 

Though the kitchen doorway: Nicholas and Valerie at the computer:

 

Calvin:

 

Sweetie under the Christmas Tree:

 

Ford Island, Pearl Harbor: Ping Pong Ball on an Oil Rig (part of the missile defense system--- it leaves, then returns, leaves, then returns.):