Kauai - December 10 2014 - March 4 2015

People ask me, "What is the best time to visit Kauai?" and I always said, avoid February, it could rain every single day. Well not this time. We had amazing weather and for the most part calm seas on the East side for our entire visit.

I tried to walk every day and we went swimming when we could. There is a lovely trail along the ocean on East shore. From my house to the Kelia shower station it is 7.35 miles round trip. When I went to buy food, I walked to one of our four supermarkets, Foodland, Safeway, Cost U Less and Big Save with a 3.0 liter pack. There were times when I was moving faster than the cars on the road especially at the daily 4:30 PM traffic jam in Kapaa.

2013 Hanaiali'i Merlot

I. like my mother, son and some of my siblings have been struggling with vertigo, (balance, room is spinning issues), so one of the first things I dropped was wine, (alcohol of any sort).

After 8 weeks and monitoring my vitals, it appears the dizzy spells are related to a drop in blood pressure, not the occasional bottle of wine. Kathy and I decided it would be nice to purchase a bottle, it has been a while. We were at the Long's Drugstore, (Lihue), and we saw this bottle. It is a Napa valley Merlot with a Hawaiian motif and description and it was the only one they had. How could we pass it up?

Oh my, my, my, this is incredible. At first taste it smells and tastes like a much older vintage. I would have guessed 7 years in a wine storage facility where they rotate the bottles monthly/quarterly as the vintner would suggest.

The alcohol content was 15.1% so we took it slowly, the pour was for the entire night. I also whipped up some quinoa/cheddar crackers so our tummies would have some reinforcements as supper was absorbed.

It costs a smidge more than what I usually spend, but we are going to Long's, (Kapaa), tomorrow. We will look for it there. If we find it, we will buy a bottle to share with some friends on the island. Nope, that may be the only time we ever get to enjoy that one.

Kauai: New Home Inspection Business (KHIS)

Mike Lagana attends my Kauai church, (Calvary Chapel Lihue) and has been a successful building building contractor. He has reached a point where he wants more control over his calendar. Wow I can relate. If you need a home inspected give him a call: (808) 639-8664 or email Mike@KHIS.US

Office 365 Experience

I would like to +1 to anyone that has concerns about Office 365. Some dummy, that would be me, spilled coffee on my Macbook Pro keyboard. I cleaned it up, but no joy, I would hit a “k” on the keyboard and an “X” would appear on the screen. I thought about an external keyboard, but when on travel more stuff to carry gets cumbersome. I headed to the Apple store, bought a new Macbook Pro, (poor, poor me) and a license for Office 365. Oh do I wish I had make them install it at the store, but Rosetta Stone not withstanding, most of the time, software installs. Office 365 did not. It said invalid product key. 

I had purchased Apple care so I called them. They said, “duh, we do not know what you are talking about”, ok, ok, those were not the exact words. After some more research, I found an Apple MS Office support group, called them. They said, “That is a Microsoft problem, you will have to call them”. Called, Microsoft, “That is an Apple problem”. Called Apple back, a lady really tried, she kept me on one phone line as was talking to Microsoft on another. However, all to no avail.

Two days later I was on a plane to spend a little time on Kauai where there is no Apple store or Genius bar. By the time I get back to Seattle, it will be too late to return my clearly defective MS Office 365.

However, every cloud has a silver lining. There I was with no MS Office. People were sending me Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and the like. What the heck, I clicked on the word attachment and this program called Pages came up and it could read the Word document. Even better, when I clicked on a spreadsheet attachment, this thing called Numbers came up. It appears one can function without MS Office. 

My organization's help desk was kind enough to provide me a key for the previous version of Office. Things are looking up. Meanwhile, I have been recording some instrument readings, every event has seven fields, formats include: text, numbers, date time, 100 readings to a sheet. And on the second sheet Excel goes nuts and apparently can’t remember what data type is in a column and my spreadsheet is a mess. I remember my experience with Numbers. I saved the file, closed Excel and opened the file with Numbers, it fixed everything. 

The bottom line, Microsoft has done some incredible things for the consumerization of information technology and I hope they keep employing people in the state of Washington. But there are alternatives to Office that are fairly stable and gaining acceptance. 

My neighbor broke her kneecap

It is kind of funny. Yesterday, Sunday, there was a call at our Kauai church, (Calvary Chapel Lihue), for a meals for sick and injured ministry. Well my neighbor broke her kneecap in a fall and is in a cast. We have been delivering meals daily for a while now so she can stay off her feet. I will not bother with all the details, but here are two of the dishes, a pineapple upside down cake and a meat pie. Tonight is a Middle Eastern Mezze, tomorrow is a Japanese Bento Box.

Anini Beach, friends and a hike

Jim and Mandy return to Seattle tomorrow, so we wanted to meet up. Kathy and Mandy decided on a picnic at Anini beach. It has been dead flat, with no wind on East shore Kauai; imagine our surprise when the wind was howling and the waves are bigger than I have ever seen there. Winter on the North shore I guess.

Jim suggested we retire to their vacation rental and finish the picnic there. Good plan. Jim and Mandy own this cute little vacation in Princeville. If you are ever looking for a vacation rental and want to be on the North shore of Kauai, here is your opportunity, write jm@hanaleivacation.net or call 253.862.7113. To get a quote or to book visit: http://www.vrbo.com/301268

After we ate, we went on a hike. I am not exactly sure where we were, but we had two fantastic overlooks of Hanalei, those big winter swells are certainly impressive.

Taj Mahal (Kapaa Kauai) and friends

Yesterday, Kathy and I walked to the Marriott Courtyard to see, (Kauai boy), Taj Mahal. The opening act was Ledward Kaapana & Mike Kaawa, (gosh they are good). They later rejoined the stage to play with Taj, though I noticed the sound board had them at a low level.  The legendary Willie K. came up on stage for a few songs. He was brilliant, but did not blend in as much, but they gave him some lead slots and he did his thing on the ukelele.

The event was sold and and more. The Marriott scrambled to deliver some more chairs, but soon there was no place under the tent to put them. No matter by the halfway point in this tree hour concert so many people were dancing there were plenty of empty seats.