Tsunami update

Aloha: I have a couple of item of good news to report. First the one of general interest; the tsunami was only half the size expected so we did not have any real damage here in Hawaii. The second is of a more personal nature as I now have another follower. I have not had a chance to check out her blog yet, by the use of the female personal pronoun, you can guess that I think I know who it is.

First the tsunami: I first got word of the earthquake from the County of Hawaii Civil Defence at about 8:30 pm Friday night. I subscribe to their warning "network" so I get the bulletins e-mailed to me at the same time the radio and other news guys get theirs. An earthquake from the same area in 1960 produced a tsunami of 35 feet so we were very concerned about this one. The quake in 1960 was 9.5 and this one was 8.8. The projected wave was to be 6 feet. I have not seen the official report but I believe it was 3 feet above mean sea level.

I will have to report on my new follower next time because I will need time to check to see if it is indeed the one I think it is.

Topher had to go to Honolulu for the weekend and Anakam, Ka'iu and Sammy went to Kona for a little "girl time". Guess who grandma and grandpa had as a house guest? If you said CJ you were right. I will be taking him down to Hilo this afternoon.

The volcano report is SOS. The rain report is dry, the weather report is sunny, and all is well in the middle of the Pacific. May God bless and keep all of you safe.

What's new with you?

Aloha: I am still waiting for news from Kansas Vovo. She left Hilo on Monday and called me from Dallas between flights. She had had an adventure going from Hilo to Dallas and was going to write it all down for all to read, but nothing yet.

Everything is SOS up here in God's country. My wife is teaching a class for the Red Cross this week. It is one of the longer classes; 3 hours tonight; 3 hours tomorrow night; all day Saturday and all day Sunday. We will have our mo'opuna all day Saturday and most of Sunday. I think I will take him into the HVNP. It should be interesting as he is now 4 and can "learn" something about the native flora and fauna. We shall see.

I guess that is it for today. May the Good Lord bless and keep all of you safe.

Sunday (ho hum) Report

Aloha: After the whale watching tour these reports do not seem very exciting. The volcano is SOS, although one reader thought "Thar she blows" referred to Pele, the goddess of fire. The weather has been bright, sunny, and rather cool. We did have about 0.25 inches of rain last night. Oh, before I forget, do any of you know the formula for figuring out the volume of water if one inch falls on a square foot surface. I knew it 30 years ago but my brain seems to not want to find it again. I estimate the quarter inch gave me about 200 gallons.

I think I will be sitting on Monday. I am waiting for a call from Anakam. I am not sure when Topher works so ...

I guess that is it for today. May God bless you all and be good to each other.

Thar She Blows!!!!

Aloha: I know you all were very disappointed not to have me write for all of 5 days. I will try to keep up with my duty to keep you all informed on my exciting life. Well, this time I do have something exciting to write about. Yesterday afternoon Vovo, Hawi Sister and her husband (their treat), and I went on the "Sea Smoke" for a 2 hour whale watching trip. We boarded at low tide so the "cat" got stuck on the sand bar. We finally got off the bar and then the wet bar opened and the Mai Tai's flowed. We left from Anaeho'omalu Bay and the whales were right out there. The seas were pretty heavy, so standing was up was quite a trick. We saw whales on all quarters, maybe 50. Could have been 25 viewed twice but I do not think so. The spinner dolphins (actually porpoises as a dolphin is a mahimahi) were showing the whales how to jump out of the water and the whales were trying. There must have been 200 "spinners" with the whales. One whale surfaced close enough that the watchers on the starboard side got whale "snot" on then. I used Anakam's camera and I hope I got some good pictures. The score for the day: 50 whales; 200 "spinners" and 1 turtle.

I have a feeling that something is up with my 4th grade teacher follower. Her last post was quite interesting.

After Thursday afternoon all the normal reports are rather mundane. SOS: SOS: SOS.

May God bless and keep all of you safe.

It's Sunday again!

Aloha: Guess what day today is? That's right, today is Sunday, the 14th of February, Valentines Day. I well take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy Valentines Day. (Thank God for spell check!)

Kansas Vovo and I had a very good day on Friday. We did a little bit of touring in HVNP; she wanted to see the plume from Halema'uma'u, and I showed her the areas I used to walk before my "friend" started to complain. We had lunch in Na'alehu, then headed back to Punalu'u. There were 5 green sea turtles on the beach and a few more, either coming or going, in the water. Tomorrow Vovo will be heading back to Hawi. I will be going out on Thursday and bringing her back to this side of the island on Friday. Boy, does time fly!!!

Friday was also a very interesting day for the USA. Hawaii was the only state that did not have snow falling. We had snow in October and November (I think), but it has been dry the last few months so no snow. (Yes, we do get snow on our mountains in Winter.) In the 70's I would go up Mauna Kea in the morning to play in the snow on Christmas Day. At about 1p we would head down the mountain to Hapuna beach to play in the water. I do not think you can do that in California. The only problem was I would get a nasty headache. Could it be the change in elevation? (Sea level to 13,000 feet in less that 6 hours.)

Now for the reports. Volcano is SOS; weather is beautiful; rain is just a trace. (We could use a few inches.) I am having an A.D.D. moment. I can not remember if that is it or am I missing something. Oh well, may the Good Lord bless and keep you all safe, and may He bless the USA.

I's still here!

Aloha: It looks like my problem with getting on the web is the wireless router. I am still on after 36 hours so my wife and I will go to Cosco tomorrow and see if I can get a new router. If not at Cosco there is always Office Max.

Our volcano is basically SOS, with one major change. The lava is not flowing through tubes to the coast. Within the tube the lava is contained. We now have surface flows and we just might lose another house to Pele. The flow is about 150 yards from the house in the Royal Gardens subdivision. The entire subdivision has been cut off by lava and you need 4WD to cross the lava to get into the subdivision. Because of the surface flows no lava is entering the ocean.

Before I started writing today I read the new posting from my favorite 4th grade teacher. I was very happy to see a new post from her but the news was not too bright. Her school is having money problems and might have to cut staff. I will have to send Manuel a request to have her situation put on his prayer list. Hopefully all will be well with her.

The weather in Volcano is sunny and the air is clean. For a short time this morning I thought we would have rain, but no such luck. I still have more than half a tank of water but would rather have it full.

That is all for today. May God bless and keep all of you safe.

Sunday report, one day late.

Aloha: The title says Sunday, but it is Monday. I could not get on the "net" this weekend even though I did the unplug, plug in thing. This morning I was looking at the modern and cable and such and I thought, "What if it is the wireless router, not the modem, that is 'kaput'". I hard wired the desktop to the modem and have been on this thing for about 2 hours now. If it works for the next 24 hours I will get a new router.

We had about 0.1 inches of rain this past week. This morning it was 50 degrees and clear in God's country. Our volcano is fuming and doing a little shaking. The overlook webcam went out at about midnight last night. The report said that there are 2 holes in the floor of the "inset" in the vent in the floor of the crater in the caldera called Kilauea. If that makes sense to you please explain it to me.

I do not have to sit my Mo'opuna this week. My wife has to take another day off that was earned last year; I think she will be taking off on Wednesday. I have to get in touch with Kansas Vovo to see if she wants to do something this week.

Take care and may God bless and keep each and every one of you safe and sound.

It's working, for now.

Aloha: The cable guy came and informed me that when the modem is changed, the router must be reset to get the whole thing to work. When he left it was working, but went down after a few minutes. I did the unplug, replug thing for the modem and the router and nothing happened. Tried it about half an hour later and the whole thing started to work again. I had called him and he was still working in Volcano and will stop back later this afternoon. You and I know that it will knock off again after the cable guy goes down to Hilo.

I was able to get into the earthquake website today and I did not see much change. California had a nice shaker today. I have not heard much more about that so I do not think it did much.

The weather today is beautiful, the volcano is SOS and I am still hooked up to the internet. May God bless and be nice to each other.

Earthquakes?

Aloha: I tried to check the earthquake website yesterday afternoon and again this morning and can not get in. Some kind of error; page not found or something. I clicked on the webmaster link and got a page to send an e-mail. Got it all written out and could not find the "send" button. Talk about "technologically challenged". I think my picture is in the dictionary.

Have you been following the Hatti orphan story? I noticed something and am wondering if anybody else has noticed the same thing. The US citizen who adopt these children and the groups that are trying to help are all "white". Where are the American "black" church groups and "black" families? I hope that I am just not watching the TV at the time that they are engaged. If any of you have seen anything different please let me know. Some of my wife's co-workers have asked her if she will be going for the Red Cross. This is a International Red Cross/Red Crescent project, not an American Red Cross. Also my wife does not have a passport so she can not leave the country.

The reports from the volcano are all SOS. This blog program is giving me a warning that the autosave has failed. I wonder if I am still hooked up the the internet? I will find out when I post this thing. God bless and take care.

Something new all over again.

Aloha: News flash!!!! I saw something new on the HVO website this morning. Sixteen earthquakes beneath Kilauea were strong enough to be located along a south-trending delineation through south flank faults. This occurrence and preliminary data that indicate south flank GPS receivers moved 2 cm southward yesterday suggest that a "slow earthquake" may have occurred. Confirmation will take some time. How about that! A "slow earthquake"! I wonder how long "some time" will be? With confirmation I hope we will get a detailed explanation of just what it is. Not confirmation; "slow earthquake".

Kansas Vovo visited Manuel on Friday and it seems that the two of them caught the same bug. From what I hear both of them were confined to a space within 10 seconds of the "head". "Head" is the Navy term for bathroom for those who do not know. Manuel had a theory that this bug only liked males, but I guess Kansas Vovo disproved that. Too bad, can you see it. A weapon that will attack males and put them down for 3/5 days. Within a week we could have a great big happy world. Now is the time to laugh!

We had about 0.05 inches of rain yesterday. Other than above the volcano is SOS. Manuel plans to go to work tomorrow. Vovo should be out of bed. OTWC has not fixed my network connection yet, nor have they called to make an appointment.

God bless all of you and may He bless out president with common sense. Sorry Hawi sister and Manuel.

I'm still alive.

Aloha: Guess what? I am still alive! It is my internet connection that is dead. I took Kansas Vovo to Hawi a week ago and was going to spend one night. Sorting through the last (I hope) of our mother's items. It was slow going so I ended up staying one more night. When I got home on Wednesday I would log on and after a few minutes I would get a "Can not connect to the internet." message. After resetting the modem about 5 times I called the cable company and the technician could not get a "rise" out of my modem. I took the modem down to the cable company and got a new one. Guess what? It does not work. Now I am waiting for the cable company to send a technician (Sometime in the next 3 years,) to check the lines. The TV works.

I thought that after a week I would have a lot to talk about, but the weather is the same as it was before I left; the volcano is the same; the rain gauge is dry; my followers have not posted; my readers have not commented.....I feel neglected. Don't you feel sad for me?

May the Lord bless and keep you all safe. May God bless the USA.