Bureaucracy triumphs over logic, yet again.

At some point in the last few months, I managed to get $35.58 ahead on my phone bills.

So the phone company sent me a bill, as always - but this one showed:

Total Amount Due: $35.58 CR

Of course, it showed the various and sundry breakdown of charges and whatnot, so they actually sent me 2 printed pages, double-sided, to tell me that I don't have to pay them anything.

The truly impressive thing?

They enclosed a reply envelope, so that I can mail them my payment of negative 35 dollars and 58 cents!

I wonder how much they waste each year doing this?

My daughter's new bike

I got my daughter a new bike today.  She had been riding a Trek Mystic with 16-inch wheels, which we got a few years ago and knew she had totally outgrown... 

But when she and I went to the local bike store, they told us she was already too big for 20-inch wheels too!  So she skipped an entire size of bike.  In fact, she was almost big enough for full-sized women's bikes with 26-inch wheels.

Her new ride is a Trek Mt. Track 220 with 24-inch wheels, 21 speeds, hand brakes, front shock absorbers and an aluminum frame, which Trek markets as a bike for the 9-12 age group.  (Yes, she just turned... eight.)

We had been looking at the MT220 with a purple "girls" frame, but unfortunately the bike store sold the only one they had.  She was sad for a little bit, but then remembered that she is a tomboy, and decided that a black bike with a "boys" frame was certainly cooler and better than no new bike at all.

(I pointed out afterward that her mom's bike is also black with an aluminum "boys" frame and 21 speeds and all that... but the new bike is the first and only bike in our whole household with front shock absorbers!)

So after riding it up and down the driveway a little bit to get used to the size, she's been flaunting it at all the neighborhood boys whose bikes are smaller or less fully featured.

Yum, fresh bananas

When my daughter and I got back to Hilo on Sunday night, it was dark, but Monday morning we looked out the kitchen window and noticed that at least some of the bananas were ripe.  We were busy with other errands yesterday, but this morning we went out back with a machete.

The "dwarf" gene in our dwarf apple banana plants doesn't seem to be holding up very well - these bananas were too high for me to reach.  So I used the machete to chop and saw a big notch in the plant's stem, until it slowly toppled over.  Then I chopped off the overripe, rotten, damaged or otherwise undesirable ones, cut the ripe or not-yet-ripe ones off and put them in a bucket to bring inside and wash.

After getting rid of the ones we definitely didn't want, we were left with... 4 dozen bananas!  About a half-dozen of those were already ripe; the rest were green and will ripen over the coming days.  So I don't expect to have to shop for bananas for a while.

Even world travel has its downsides

Among people I know, there are a lot of perceived pros and cons of traveling all over the world.  Pros, for the most part.  People think it must be neat to get to see far-away places and meet people from all over.  Of course, I have to explain that since I'm most likely working like crazy most of the time, I don't really get to see all those places...

And then there are the cons.  All that flying! (I don't mind.)  Jet lag! (I don't mind.)  Time away from home! (Okay, I mind that a little.)

The last few days, though, a more personal downside has cropped up, as I've felt a little under the weather.  Stomach a little jumpy, some allergies, a cough, a bit of a fever at times, kinda tired...

Now, three years ago, when I'd never been out of the US, I would write this off as some random generic little harmless virus and basically just "ride it out."

But having been to Indonesia, Kenya and Uganda in the last several months... I look at my mild symptoms and know that they could be the beginning of dengue fever, diphtheria, hepatitis A or B, malaria, rift valley fever, tuberculosis, typhoid, or yellow fever... most of which I haven't been vaccinated against (because there are no vaccines).

So I get to go over to a doctor (paying full price of course, since this being America, none of my jobs give me health insurance) and have them figure out just which nasty things I do or don't have.  And if I do have anything nasty, maybe I'll get a prescription for some powerful antibiotics (and pay full price for that, too.)

All because I don't have the good sense to stay at home in my nice little town that isn't overrun with all manner of tropical infectious diseases.

This, to me, is the biggest downside yet to all the travel.

Hawaii, so far...

 I landed in Hawaii at 8pm Sunday. At 6:30am Monday, I was at base in town, waiting to head up to the work site.  Worked all day Monday.  Spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday paying bills, getting back in touch with friends, and getting a little less jet-lagged and sleep-deprived.  Worked all day again Friday.  Now I've got about an hour before I drive to the airport to drop off the rental car.  (I figured 1 week of rental car would be enough for me to settle in and get things done.)

I was surprised to have the 3 days off in mid-week; I had hoped to get more hours.  But I may pick some up next week since it was too windy today to finish a thing or two.  I've got a lot of other stuff scheduled in the remainder of my time here, involving at least 3 of my different part-time jobs.

Right now, I feel totally drained (not uncommon after a 10-hour shift up and down) and a little queasy (to be expected after being in the back seat for the winding 13700' descent).  I'll find something minor to eat, maybe a few ounces of peanuts, go home, rest for a few minutes, then go to the airport and either bike or walk back, maybe stopping for dinner along the way if I feel up to it.

I'm not setting any alarms for tomorrow morning.  I'm looking forward to a weekend that doesn't involve work or travel!

I'm also looking forward to next Wednesday, when they tell me I will once again have DSL. I've been coming to the office on my days off just to check my email and stuff.  It'll be nice to stop doing that. :)

Still got plenty of stuff to do around the house, too.  At least the dishes I washed before I left in January didn't magically become dirty again!  But I have to tidy up in general.

Old-School Aluminizing on Mauna Kea

This week, the 88-inch primary mirror in the University of Hawaii's telescope on Mauna Kea got re-coated with aluminum. This involved a whole lot of steps, not much in the way of automation because the whole thing was built before I was born, and healthy application of brute force.

 

Happy Birthday, George Carlin

 Happy 70th Birthday to George Carlin, the man who brought us such wisdom as:

"So far, this is the oldest I've been."

"If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?"

"I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed."

and the blessing:

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."