Tuesday, July 21: Today was Mom’s service at sea and the arrival of Gabriel Zarate. Gabriel arrived at noon, we did some errands (flowers and champagne) in prep for the service and the service was at 5:00 p.m. on the Kamanu out of Holokohau harbor. We also got the flat fixed on the Subaru, I found a nail and was afraid to take it out, so we took it to Len Brody’s down on Kaiwa street, close to the Killer Taco’s where we had lunch.

Strange hours at the Attorney General’s office. We just missed the cutoff time for our Hawaiian ID cards, the office closed at 2:45 and we showed up at 2:44! Too bad for us!!

Part of persuading Douglas to stay an extra week was our promise of getting him a dive knife for his adventures in Santa Cruz. We checked out a dive shop adjacent to Killer Tacos and picked that up as well. I think he, and we, feel better about his being prepared in the ocean when he free dives.

Mom’s service was very nice, we ended up booking the Manta Ray dive on Thursday evening with this outfit, they gave us a great deal of 59.00 dollars per person.

We went to the Kona Brewing Company for dinner afterwards, Katie likes pizza, so it all worked out and everyone was exhausted and Rosie and Gabriel drove the 2 cars home. Gabriel had a VERY LONG day!

Monday, July 20: Anna and Katie arrived safe and sound and on time Sunday night. This morning, we attended the Paniolo Greens orientation briefing and sales pitch to get the week setup. They have horseback riding on Wednesday, Helicopter touring on Thursday and Snorkel Cruise on Friday!. Saturday is still free but they leave on Sunday!

The afternoon was spent down at Pauako, specifically at beach 69. It was beautiful and the coral and fish were fantastic. Down and around the large rock outcropping is some beautiful scenery. We all agreed that Katie out-snorkeled everyone, she would live in the water if she could!

Dinner was steak and mashed potatoes with salad. Anna and Katie were exhausted and they didn’t join us.

Sunday – July 19: Half way through our summer here, bummer. It is flying by!

We went to Mass at Annunciation, up in Waimea and out to breakfast at the Paniolo Inn, good basic fare, again. It seems to the be regular place after church!

Travelled the Highway 19 back to Waikoloa and ended up at the Kauna’oa Beach at the Mauna Kea Resort. Interesting thing is that they have to let you in to access the public beach, but since the parking lot is on private property, the hotel has the right to limit access. They have a pass given to you at the gate and then collected down at the beach parkling. This way they count and limit cars to only the spots that they have available.

Anna and Katie are arriving this evening at 7:00 p.m., and surprise, surprise … Gabriel is coming in out Tuesday for 10 days, leaving on the 31st of July. Interesting turn of events, we’ll see how it all plays out!

Did another of the glass panels by the front door entrance way. That is alot of work, I think it is easier to just replace the glass. The buildup is due to the water spray from the golf course, the water is laden with minerals from the lava and the acquifer system here on the island. LOTS OF WORK to scrape off the residue with the polishing compound …

Saturday – July 18: Another lazy day, decided to see a movie and go to the beach.

Went to see the movie “The Hangover”. It was a Douglas type film, a little crude but funny.

Decided to check out the beaches near the airport but we ended up at A Bay in the late afternoon. Douglas and Mom went in and Sandy soon found a turtle swimming by and Douglas saw a baby stingray, the barb being longer than the actual stingray’s body!

For dinner, we BBQ’d some Ahi tuna, with Costco mango relish, excellent.

Played some more gin rummy and I seem to be on a losing streak!

Friday, July 17: Helicopter tour with Paradise helicopters from the Hilo airport at 9:30 a.m. Took the coast route for our reservation. We left at 7:25 assuming 1.5 hours as most folks told us. The GPS told us 9:14, which I didn’t believe. Well, there are very few passing zones and people don’t move over to let other cars pass, just going with the flow. Rainy and foggy on the way and in Hilo as well. I was wondering if the flight was going to go.We arrrived at 9:15, we were supposed to be there between 8:45 and 9:00 a.m., oops!

The flight was fantastic and spectacular as mother nature usually is. Great photos!

We hoped to hang out in Hilo and were ready to go the beach but it was still rainy and foggy. Breakfast was at Ken’s Pancake House. Fair, written up in the “Hawaii, The Big Island Revealed” book, but recommended by the staff at Paradise Helicopter. Fair was the review from us, the pancakes were lacking taste.

We took the Saddle Road back over to Waikoloa because of the weather in Hilo. It felt like a shorter drive, but people tell us, the 2 roads are within 15 minutes of each other, depending on traffic. The views on Saddle Road are spectacular, especially at the crest of the road, between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The road on the west side IS rough, at the crest is a NEW freeway and is undulating, up and down on the Hilo, wet side. I think I prefer it to Highway 19, through the north shore.

Did the pool pupus at 5:00 p.m. for dinner. Sandy made her 7-layer bean dip, good stuff!

Thursday, July 16: Lazy morning getting Douglas adjusted to the time zone and new place.

Harry Potter afternoon movie day. All 4 of us went to see Harry Potter, the half-blood prince down in Kona. Great movie, a little long but entertaining. Went after the movie to the Kona Brewing Company for pizza and my favorite brew. We picked up a growler of Wailua Wheat for later consumption as well.

Wednesday – July 15: Douglas is coming, we are all looking forward to having him here. We talked with him this morning and his flight from San Jose to LAX is on time, but the flight from LAX to Kona is delayed from 1:00 to 3:43 p.m.. Instead of arriving at 3:45, he will be coming in at 6:13 on Delta 1767. It’s OK, but Rosie is REALLY anxious to see the new Harry Potter movie with him. He agreed to wait and see it with us as well, after he teased Rosie that he was going to see it with Julia last night at midnight.

Well, things change. Douglas’ flight has been delayed from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m Hawaii time. We have been just hanging out waiting it out with him. He is due to arrive at 11:00 p.m., instead of 6:45 p.m. or so. I am sure that he is tired, but we are anxious to have him here for a while. It is a good thing we didn’t plan anything for tomorrow so that he can relax!

Tuesday – July 14: Slow day, took my walk and tracked it with the GPS-X application on the iPhone. After you create a track, the software lets you upload it to your Facebook or Twitter account, it is very seemless integration and quite kool.

The afternoon was spent playing with my website and converting it to the “Piece of Paper” template from jmjetten@home.nl (henkvreissler). After I was all done, I’m not sure that I like the new look any more than the existing one.

Dinner was chicken tacos, home-made beans and mango-peach salsa from Costco. Excellent, better than last night’s Prime Rib dinner at the Marriott!

We talked with Douglas and he is ready to come over tomorrow, hopefully everything will be smooth.

Monday – July 13: Took the Subaru to service down in Kona to replace the a wiper linkage that was broken during the last service inspection. I waited for about an hour and they were prompt and on time. On the way back, stopped by Home Depot to check out marble refinishing – with no luck. I need to do some more research.

The afternoon was nice and relaxing with dinner at the Hilton Waikoloa for their Monday 50% off specials. The restaurant is good at 50% off, I’m not sure that it is worth full price.

Using the new Handbrake version 0.9.3, you can rip and convert non DVDs. I took the Quicktime mov files created with the Mimo Recorder and fed them to Handbrake for conversion to 640×480 format for playback with Quicktime on PC/Mac or for importing to iTunes. A 42 meg file was reduced to 8 megs, quite tolerable for student downloads. 8 megs is about 1 song at 192 kbit AAC format. The 42 meg file is about my upper limit in detail and length.

Sunday – July 12: Went to Church in Waimea and we dragged Rosie with us. The hula “Our Father” was the highlight and we wanted Rosie to see and experience it.

Had breakfast at the Paniolo Country Inn again. Afterwards, we explored the Parker Ranch store and Rosie picked up a cowboy hat fror her Chico farm work. She does look like a wrangler now!

We explored the north part of the island via highways 250 and 270. These are different parts with many weather contrasts. Stopped by the Lapakahi hisorical site to check out the native people and their livelihood. Rosie was bored.

The afternoon was nice and quiet. Tomorrow, the Subaru goes to service a broken wiper link.

We used Netflicks to steam a movie over the TV, worked quite well!

Saturday – July 11: Went down to Kona to visit a Christmas in July craft show at the King Kamehameha hotel at the intersection of Panali and Alii drives. Cute show, not too large.

Drove down around Alii and stopped at Don’s MaiTai Bar for lunch, again. Good stuff!!

Came back around, stopped at Costco for dinner, we had the pre-cooked ribs, yummy!

Noticed this morning that this blog didn’t have the random photos on the right hand sidebar, they disappeared when I updated from WordPress 2.8. to 2.8.1. The RSS plugin did not catch the changed folder for the Smugmug thumbnails, fixed that and we are back in business. For the record, the path is ../blog/wp-content/plugins/photo_sb_cache. Make sure you change that in the plugin settings from /photo-sb/ and everything is good.

Finally, with the Freshy 2 theme, don’t forget to edit the my_footer.php file in the theme editor to modify the footer of each page to your liking.

Friday – July 10: Day for relaxing, nice and slow. Did a few more math lessons, I am up to Chapter 3, Lesson 6. It is proceeding, but I keep getting distracted by other stuff. I am not sure what the other stuff is, but I ended up reading the Hawaii Underground Guide for a while.

We have to go to the Volcano Park and go to the sea area where the lava is expanding the island. Maybe hike to the Green Beach again too.

Looking around for themes for the daveesquer.com, nothing from elixer graphics worked out for me. I am back to looking at Blue Ball Design templates.

It is nice to “get in the groove” and not be running around or doing things. We do have Mom’s service firmed up for the the 21st  leavin from the Honokohau marina.

Thurday – July 9: Found this theme called Freshy 2 on the internet. I played around with the Freshy theme for my blog and moved to it. I have added the equations options of ASCIIMath as well. Let’s try it out as `x^2`. I think I like the new look. It is highly customizable. The right sidebar is set to dimension 210 px and the overall dimension of the blog is 800 px. The stylesheet is modified to be “custom_dave_sunset_2”.

Changed from the Picasa photo RSS feed to one for generic RSS feeds. It is from district30, located here. It is actually more flexible that the Picasa plugin I was using. It is picking up the RSS feed from my Hawaii Summer 2009 gallery only and displaying 20 photos at a time.

Went in to Kona to see “Transformers 2” in the afternoon. Great movie, lots of action, the theater has a great surround sound system surprisingly! Stopped by the Kona swap meet down on Alii drive and found some flowers for Mom’s service and a good deal on Mac nuts. The market place is open Wedneday – Sunday from 8:00 to 5:00 pm.

We were craving Mexican food, did a search on google and found just one review of Pancho and Lefties on Alii drive. Comments were not good, free bugs, things like that. So .. Sandy suggested we try that place on the way into Kona, on the left side, before you hit the Costco turnout. It is called TacoDelMar and it was pretty good, right up there with Killer Tacos. Their website is tacodelmar.com. It is located at 74-4038 Hulikoa Drive in Kailua-Kona and their phone number is (808) 331-8226. Their brochure has their address as 74-5452 Makala Blvd #201 however. They have beer, whereas killer tacos does not, and they say … they are cleaner!