back to
Home Diary Dates
April 4, 2007
It's been a few days over a year since we brought the kitties here from Georgia. So, we are 1 year old as fulltime Hawaiian residents. We still turn to each other and say, "We live here!", with big smiles across our faces. And we still have morning coffee on the lanai viewing our mountains and waterfall.
I (Becky) still do not have much more of a tan than I did this time last year. LOL I've painted a couple more paintings (see my paint & draw page). I've done more with music than I have in decades. You can find my tunes, and my collaborations with other musicians from all over the world, here at iCompositions.com. On my becwil page on iComp, you'll also see my list of other favorite artists on the site (down the right hand side). Check 'em out and explore beyond that for yourself. You might be amazed as to the quality of music you'll hear from all these folks, and it's all free and most tunes are downloadable.
I apologize for not keeping more routine with these postings. And now I'm having a hard time remembering even the significant happenings from the past year to tell you about. LOL Okay, I'll give it a go.
After moving the cats in April of 06, we went back to Georgia about a month later for Dylan's first birthday and to get our house ready for packing by the movers. We had many estate sales and took many loads to the local charity place. We were sort of ready when the movers came. It took them 4 days to pack our stuff. Once they began, we just got out of the way for the most part.
Mid June we were back in Kauai, very glad to have all of that part of the move behind us.
Our PT is now Hawaiian. Tagged front and back. Now dirty with the island red dust, though in this pic, it's still clean from just rolling off the ship after its arrival a few weeks after ours. Not a scratch incurred.
The moving company did a overall good job of everything. Given the few things that have to break in such an endeavor, it all went pretty much as they said it would go. Our stuff arrived in about 6 weeks, several days sooner than expected and much sooner than we were ready for the experience of unpacking. Though, George was very glad to have his toys. We so unwittingly didn't think to bring his toys with him.
Lessons learned:
• bring your cats toys with him/her.
• watch even professional packers with the out-of-the-ordinary things of yours; what breakage we had was with out-of-the-ordinary things.
• if your things are being divided into long-term-storage and to-be-delivered-right-away, be sure the things you want right away doesn't get put into long-term crates; those crates aren't opened at arrival, they go straight to the storage facility for insurance reasons.
So, our stuff arrived. It seemed for a while that we had moved all of Fannin County into our home here. Stacks of boxes head high and just narrow paths to get from room to room through. Scary. We began unpacking. Little by little we made progress. And even though we had gotten rid of so much before leaving Georgia, we still found more to give away and sell.
The kitties seemed to realize things were going to be okay when the Georgia stuff arrived. I think it really did make a difference for them to have some familiar stuff around them again. Now, they are quite happy. They love the windows being open all the time and doors open during the day. We still don't let them outside. Though, George fell off of the upstairs lanai soon after he began going out there. I saw him loose his balance and with nothing to grab onto, he went over the edge out of my sight in an instant. I jumped up to look over the railing expecting to see him hurt on the ground below. Naw, he was already walking around, curious in to his new surroundings. He had landed in the grass, on his feet (I'm guessing), and seemed to not be the least bit alarmed. I retrieved him quickly.
From our upstairs lanai, the cats can walk all the way around the house on the first floor roof. They love it. In the next door lot, the local riding stables often graze a horse. In the below pic, George has seen a horse for the first time in his life. George sat there for a long time just looking at the horse and sniffing the air.
After several months of being here fulltime, we thought we'd sell the used Chevy truck we'd bought a couple of years ago and buy a new Tundra. We let the prior owner of the Chevy know it was for sell. He had missed it and bought it back from us. The Toyota dealer had the truck we wanted on Oahu and in about a week we had it.
At the end of October, we went back to GA to visit family and friends. Mainly it was a trip to surprise Marilou's mom for her birthday. We stayed in GA for several weeks. The trees' leaves were turning. It was a very pretty time of year to be there.
Also, for Christmas and New Year, we returned to GA. Christmas we spent with the 3Ds and New Year in Orlando at Disney World with Mark and Jamie. It was our first trip to Disney World. Wow! What a place!
I know Marilou is working on some diary pages of her own, so hopefully she'll go into much more detail about what she's been up to this past year.
I will say she has become a regular volunteer at the Kilauea National Wildlife Refuge where there is an old lighthouse which is a very popular tourist destination (the lighthouse, not Marilou, hehe). In working there a few hours a week, she got to know the biologist on the refuge and began helping with the care of injured seabirds, of which several species here are on the protected species list.
The below pics are actually two different kinds of Tropicbirds -- the left (MK in blue shirt) is a Whitetail Tropicbird and the other is a Redtail Tropicbird. Both are endangered species. These chicks were dislodged from their nests in some unknown fashion and fortunately found in time. They both grew to fledging and flew away to the rest of their lives. Marilou is feeding them small fish and squid in the pics. They are not as tame as they appear in these still shots. She got cut and bruised often by their sharp and powerful bills.
And then there was the Albatross. She came to be called Makana (short a's), which in Hawaiian means Gift. Long story short. The Japanese are conducting an experiment to see if Albies will relocate when moved as young chicks. (Albies strongly tend to return to the same location from which they were raised.) There is a Japanese island that is unstable due to volcanic activity where a colony of Short-tailed Albies live. There are very few of this particular species left. They want to move them to another island. They need to know how young, or if at all, an Albie will imprint on a new location and return there, instead of going back to where it was born. They used some Laysan Albies from nearby Midway Atoll, in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, to test their relocation theory. The Laysan isn't endangered.
They brought a certain number of chicks to Kauai to hopefully imprint with the small colony of Laysan Albies that nest and raise their chicks here every year on the northshore. One chick's wing was injured in the process of shipping. Marilou joined the team taking care of it. The seabird grew fine, though it was soon determined her wing was not going to mend correctly, therefore she would never be able to fly. She did try when she was old enough. Since Albies are known to live at least 60 years, and the Refuge here couldn't continue to support her for that length of time, a home was searched for and found in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Marilou even helped deliver Makana to the Aquarium in November of 2006.
Makana is becoming a star attraction as an educational bird, helping to teach folks about the plight of seabirds around the world. Makana is the only Albie to have been raised from a very early age in captivity. It's the first time people have seen a young Albie molt and many other things are being learned from her living with her handlers in Monterey. Wild Albies fledge at about 6 months old and stay at sea the first 3 to 6 years of their lives. Many aspects of an Albie's life is a mystery still. Makana is truly a gift.
Makana in her digs at Monterey Bay Aquarium. She lives on the roof of the building, in a prepared area, with her own saltwater pool. She's not in the general population of the Aquarium, which does have other seabirds. She's brought out to meet the public on special occasions.
We both went to Monterey Bay in February for an International Seabird Conference. While there attending what talks we felt we could understand and birding in the area in between presentations by the scientific community, we also got to visit Makana at the Aquarium. We were even taken up to her penthouse apartment and given the behind-the-scenes tour of the rest of the Aquarium by the curator herself.
This winter, yes we have a sort of winter, the Albies were doing their annual family thing as usual. Brenda, the biologist that Marilou works with, noticed a chick whom had lost one of its parents. Knowing it would need two parents feeding it in order to grow properly, the proven answer is to transfer the chick to a nesting pair of adults that had lost their egg. Below, Marilou is the proud temporary parent of this youngster on its way to a new nest. The transfer was successful. The chick is growing very well. It should fledge in July with the rest of this year's batch.
We've joined The Kauai Society of Artists and I've entered paintings in the annual membership show (March 17 thru April 20). Every member is guaranteed one piece of their work to be placed in the juried show. The judge (an art professor from the University of Hawaii) then selected what pieces, after the first submitted, that will be included in the show. I submitted 3 paintings: Scotland Fields, Polihale Beach, and Opaekaa Falls. All painted here on Kauai.
Click
for larger view. Then click your browser Back button to come back here.
Two were hung in the show: Polihale Beach and Opaekaa Falls. The third might have made it if the space had been larger. Also, the judge seemed to key on Hawaiian images.
Polihale Beach received an Honorable Mention Award. One of eleven awarded, out of 98 pieces of art. There wasn't a 1st, 2nd, etc. place given at the show. I'm very pleased and excited about the award. I've not shown my work in a juried show in many, many years. I believe my style is maturing.
About a week ago ago we spent six days on Oahu. Marilou took an art doll workshop and I worked on music. When Marilou wasn't in class, we explored Oahu. Except for Honolulu and Waikiki, which are over populated areas in our opinion, Oahu is an interesting place and different from Kauai. We saw three kinds of birds that aren't on Kauai. So many people come to Hawaii and only see Honolulu and/or Waikiki. Please, if you come to Hawaii, see at least one of the other islands, too.
All this year, we've been working with our architect and contractor to arrive at plans for the addition to and remodel of this house. We are very close to that goal. We expect to begin preparing the soil in just a few weeks now. This addition and remodeling will be a big project, taking possibly two years to complete. Things happen slowly here. Very slowly.
George likes to lounge in the window next to my computer.
The kitties have become very comfortable here. We are happy.
