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Last Saturday, May 13, our family celebrated the beautiful marriage of two beautiful people, my nephew Jason and his bride Rachel.  The wedding took place in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Not least among the joys that a wedding brings is the reunion of far away loved ones for the happy occasion. And so for Tom and me the joy began on the day before the wedding when we drove from Columbus to Cleveland Hopkins Airport, to pick up our daughter Claire, who flew in from Chicago for the wedding to pick up our daughter Claire, who flew in from Chicago for the wedding.  On our way from the airport to our hotel, The Residence Inn in Avon, Ohio, we sought out a spot for lunch, to which end we found a great little Mediterranean place,  ...that had a family of geese living in the front yard, 
   ...and yummy food.
 ...followed by steak kebob with rice for Tom, 
 ...and for myself a very tasty lamb gyro with hot, crispy seasoned fries.  After lunch we headed The Residence Inn,  ...which was also the location of the reception venue.  The hotel lobby had a bright, open, modern decor,    
 ...that changed colors.    
  ...and the work-out room opened to a basketball court. 
 ...was a suite with all the comforts of home-away-from -home,  ...the cabinets were stocked with dishes,  ...plus there were some nice little touches, including a service that will deliver groceries directly to one's room.  And, wonder of wonders, the internet was speedy and there was a plethora of electrical outlets all over the room.  Later, when a dinner hour was upon us, we set out to find a nearby eatery. On our way out of the hotel lobby we came upon the happy surprise of finding some of our just-arrived Rochester, New York relatives at the bar    After our hellos and hugs Tom, Claire, and I headed out to a nearby outdoor mall called Crocker Park where we strolled for a bit,   
 
 ...who snapped our picture for us. 
 ...and sometimes stopping by to sit and chat with us for a few minutes just to make sure we were happy. Which, despite the long wait, we basically were. The food, when it finally arrived, was delicious.
 ...and a plate of grilled vegetables over quinoa, also very tasty; 
 ...while I had the most delicious mushroom-stuffed ravioli.  By the time we finished dinner the sun, which still hung in the heavens when we arrived,  ...had long since set. 
 
 ...to match our celebratory mood,  ...which kicked up a happy-notch when we arrived back at the hotel and met up with Tommy and Emily, who had just arrived from Columbus and stopped down at Tom's and my room for a visit, and stopped down at Tom's and my room for a visit  ...and some laughs. 
 ...but the best was yet to come.
To be continued...
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...Continued from yesterday: So then, yesterday, after complaining my way through painting the second and first floor hallway ceilings - complaining to no one, that is, as the only other person in the house was Tom, who was down in the basement busy complaining his way - also to nobody - through painting the walls down there,  ...then it was time to start complaining my way through painting the second and first floor hallway walls, though painting the walls, I knew, would be ten times more complaint-worthy than painting the ceiling had been, since I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was going to do use the same faux glaze wall covering technique that I'd used the last time I painted the hallway walls ten years ago, a silver glaze over an antique white base,  ...which involved: 1. Buying the undercoat paint and a gallon of the faux glaze, and an extra quart of white paint to mix with the glaze, 2. Acquiring a bucket with which to mix the faux glaze and the white paint, 3. Acquiring whatever implement you choose with which to apply the glaze to get the desired design effect on the wall, 4. Applying the base coat color (or two coats) of paint to the wall, 5. Mixing in the acquired bucket the one gallon of faux glaze with the one quart of white paint, 6. Applying the faux glaze over the base coat. In my case this involved donning a pair of latex gloves and dipping a piece of terry cloth into the glaze then whisking it in swirled cloud designs upon the wall. About twenty thousand whisks before the job was done. It's really a slow, annoying, painstaking process. But on the other hand: 1. I liked the final outcome, and, 2. Choosing the same thing I already had, however much work involved, liberated me from having to make a decision over choosing something new. So I decided to bite the bullet and once again, albeit reluctantly, drag myself through the faux glaze wall covering effect ordeal. However before I left for Home Depot to buy the necessary supplies I stepped out into the back yard where Tom had taken a break from painting the basement to cut the grass to complain to him and make sure my spouse was well aware how poorly I was going to be suffering this whole upcoming process. But when I arrived at the paint department of Home Depot to seek out the implements of my torture I was told that said implements are no longer in stock at that store. "We don't carry faux anymore," the paint department associate informed me. "Why don't you try the Sherwin Williams store down the road?" I found it supremely annoying that I had to make a second trip, to the Sherwin Williams store down the road, for what Home Depot should have been carrying. But my annoyance soared off the charts when the friendly, helpful Sherwin Williams associate informed me that Sherwin Williams likewise no longer carried faux supplies, hadn't carried that stuff for years. "Nobody does anymore," said the associate. "But why?" I demanded. "Well," said the associate, now joined by a second associate who might have feared that his co-worker was about to be pounced on by a difficult customer, "people found the process too hard." "Oh, for crying our loud," I snipped, "it isn't that hard!" "I know, I know," sympathized the associate, who looked as if he'd like to pat my hand. "There were just too many steps involved for most people," added the second, equally sympathetic associate, some sadness in his voice. "Well, if I could do it..." I left it at that, realizing two things: 1. That I was starting to sound kind of ridiculous, and 2. That I was now freed from having to do the faux glaze wall covering thing! It was out of my hands! It was fate! However now I was faced with the task of having to make a decision on what color to paint the walls, with only 10,000 colors to choose from. 
 ...and probably all would have been well had I not succumbed to the need to once again grab Tom, all sweaty and tired as he finished up the grass cutting before getting back to his painting, and gripe to him about how nobody carries faux supplies any more because people (unlike moi), don't have the discipline, the ethic required for the task. Then, feeling relieved of the burden of needing to dredge up the discipline and ethic required to create a faux glaze wall covering look, I returned to the house to take on the burden of choosing a color for my upstairs and downstairs hallways. "Wait, wait," called Tom, following up behind me, "don't we have some of that glaze left over from last time out in the garage?" "What? No. I don't think so," I replied, thinking that we'd gotten rid of that item during a recent old-paint-purge. "Let me look," offered my oh-so-accommodating mate, who, sure enough, retrieved from the garage an almost-full can of the silver faux glaze I'd used last time, along with an unopened jar of gold glaze I must have thought I'd use on some other wall before I realized what a pain the faux glaze wall covering process was.  "But that stuff's ten years old," I countered, "it's not gonna be good anymore." "We'll check," said Tom, prying open the paint can. Though the can rim was rusty the paint inside was perfectly usable, and there was more than enough for the job.  "You're good to go," exclaimed my pleased other half as he awaited the exuberantly happy response on my part that didn't quite materialize. (Sigh). So I'm going to go with the faux glaze wall covering. Because, in truth, all the travail involved in that unsavory undertaking is for me still easier than having to make yet another decision in my life.  Mayhaps what I need is not a new coat of paint on my walls but an analyst.
The vacation was over, and now that Tom and I were back home it was time to face the inconvenient truth that our 45-year-old basement needed some work on its slightly sagging structure, a state of being to which I could totally relate. But how brightly shines our lucky stars that Tom was born into a family of smart, high-achieving siblings, 
 ... one of whom, Donald (in the green shirt), grew up to be a Professional Civil Engineer and the owner of a highly regarded local engineering firm that specializes in home and building inspections, Criterium Liszkay Engineers.  Hence when our basement appeared to have a middling case of wallsteoporosis we asked Donald to come over and have a look. The diagnosis was as we feared: the walls were indeed succumbing to the rigors of age, but the prognosis was not all that bad: all our walls needed was a bit of support: 14 steel beams worth, as it turned out. And the procedure would end up being not be as complicated or costly as it might have been thanks to Tom's rule about basements, which he likely picked up from his career of dealing with Government investigations: never finish a basement; if the walls are covered you can't tell what's going on underneath. Anyway, as many of us have learned to our sorrow, the worst thing about dealing with contractors is, well, dealing with contractors. But, thankfully, not all contractors are purveyors of stress, headaches and agita. And, thankfully for Tom and I, Tom's super-good-guy engineer home-inspector brother set us up with a super-good-guy contracting company, whose card I will share just in case anyone happens to be in need of some super-good-guy contractors:   Wonder of wonders, Kyle Copeland, the owner of K&G Contracting, a friendly, straight-forward, organized young guy, showed up for the initial inspection on the agreed-upon day and time, as did his workers, who finished installing the beams and plastering the cracks in two days. Ryan Copeland, brother of Kyle, likewise showed up with the city inspector for the post-work inspection on the appointed day.
 So, our beamed-up basement now having the fine, firm foundation of a perky young domicile,    ...and our family room now looking like a hoarder's dream,  ...Tom and I were forced to face a second inconvenient truth: before we dragged all of the above back down to their accustomed lodgings we needed to clean up the residual work dust and dirt that had settled on the walls and floors and, truth be told, it was high time that those walls and floors received a fresh coat of paint to go with their new physique. We got the cleaning done,a nd now Tom's tackling the painting.  He's not really as happy about having to paint the whole basement as he looks in this shot.  I, meanwhile, decided that, as long as Tom's doing the basement, I'd tackle the upstairs and downstairs hallways, which are also overdue for a new coat of paint. The reason these areas are overdue for a painting is that I'd been lollygagging around over starting the project because last time I painted the hallways I was aiming for the faux wall covering effect, which called for painting the wall with the base color (two coats, of course) then feathering the faux color with a rag on top of the base color, which turned out to be a mucho messy undertaking and a heck of a lot of work. However I liked the result so much that I want to go faux again. I just haven't been able to motivate myself to get into gear and get started.  Until now. And even now I'm not exactly afire with enthusiasm. Still, the project has officially started, with the protective taping and papering of the trims,  ....which is really the worst part of the job. which is really the worst part of the job.  "Aw, gee, Mom," exclaimed one of my daughters when I told her how we were up to our elbows in painting projects, "I can't believe you guys still don't hire someone to do your painting!" "Oh, we would," I sighed, "except that we'd rather go back to Hawaii."  ...Continued from yesterday: The following day, Saturday, Tom and I left Hawaii and returned to the mainland. But as our flight out of Hilo didn't leave until 9:30 pm we had another day to visit The Big Island. Our plan was to spend our last day in Hilo, the main city on the wet, volcano side of the island known as The Hilo Side,  ...as opposed to the other dry, sunny, beachy side of the island, known as The Kona Side. So after we took a last once-around-the Kilauea Military Camp,   ...and one last stop at the PX for travel snacks,  
 ...then we headed to Hilo. Historic downtown Hilo, built on a beautiful bay, with a lovely view from the highway that runs along the edge of the town,   
   ...crowded, on the Saturday afternoon we were there, with cars,    
 ...street artisans, 
 ...and packed, mostly expensive restaurants. The presence of a number of old-fashioned wooden buildings give parts of downtown Hilo the look of the 19th century sugar plantation town it once was.     We did a once-around-the town,     ...and discovered some historic buildings, including the Federal Building.    And, this being Merrie Monarch Festival week, we saw a couple of street parades,   
  We strolled around the Hilo Farmers' Market,   ...and we found a cute little hole-in-the-wall not-crowded place on Haili Street called The Surf Break Cafe,  
 ...then one is given a colored stone to place on one's table which identifies one's order.   
 ... and Tom his turkey and cranberry wrap. 
 There was all kinds of Hawaiian stuff for cheap. Alas, our suitcases were already full enough.  Then we visited the very interesting Pacific Tsunami Museum,  ......where we learned that Hilo is precariously situated in a tsunami zone and the waterfront area has been wiped out several times over the years by monster tsunamis.   After our tour of the tsunami museum we walked around town a bit more and came across a doughnut shop called Holy Donuts, 
 ...and yummy they were,    ...though when we got the bill for $9.50 for our two donuts we mused that we'd have been just as happy with a less holy McDonald's one-dollar Haupia Pie. In fact, we'd passed a McDonald's along the way, with a facade resembling the town's other 19th Century wooden structures,  ....and so just for the heck of it we decided to stop in to see if this McDonald's sold Haupia Pies.  Turned out they did. So of course we were not throwing away our shot at one last delicious Haupia Pie. After we'd savored every last crumb of our Haupia Pies we sat back and realized that, even though it was only 4:00 and we had at least another two-and-a-half hours to kill before we needed to think about heading back to the airport, we were kind of tired. So we left Hilo and headed out to the airport anyway. The Hilo Airport is a pretty place that opens to outdoor courtyards.   
 But it's also a very small airport. Smaller than we'd realized upon our arrival. We were four-and-a-half hours early for our flight and, as we were flying United and that ticket counter didn't open for another hour-and-a-half, we were a little at loose ends as to what to do with ourselves. There was only one cafeteria-style restaurant in the airport,  
 But the lady running the place was friendly and chatty, which gave the place, though it was empty except for us, a kind of welcoming, homey feel.
  ...so we were good. After a while we decided to get some dinner. I asked the friendly lady in charge what was good on the menu board and she gave me a couple of suggestions, including the chicken over rice, which Tom and I both opted for. It was amazingly delicious, doubly amazing that such good food was being served up in a lonely cafeteria in a tiny airport.  When I returned to the lady at the counter to offer my compliments to whoever made that chicken, the lady called back to the kitchen for the cook to come out. The cook was an elderly Hawaiian lady who told me that this was Singapore-style chicken that she'd learned to make when she worked in that country as a cook for ten years. It really was the best chicken. Then we checked in and discovered that Hilo, along with having the best airport food, has also got the coolest gate waiting area,  ...with comfiest chairs.  Then we were flying back across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles where, happily, we had a few days of vacation left to spend before heading home.
To be continued... ...Continued from yesterday: The next morning, Friday morning, we started out the day with breakfast at the friendly Crater Rim Cafe,    ...where we bought a local paper to check who won the previous evening's Merrie Monarch hula competitions.    Then we drove back out to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park; having seen the inner crater at night, we now had a hankering to see it again to compare how differently it looked by day. 
 
 ...told us that Pele was active that day.  In the Hawaiian religion Pele is the goddess of fire and volcanoes.  After we'd paid our respects to Pele we left the park and drove south to the coast along the Chain of Craters Road until the road ended at a ranger station. After a proper grilling and inspection of our footwear by the park ranger,who was also very nice, but just doing her job to make sure no naive tourists get into trouble in volcano country,  ... we began the 11 1/2 mile round-trip hike along the coast line to Pu'u' O' o, a volcanic crater in the east rift zone of Kilauea, that has been continuously pumping out lava since 1983. Here, I expect, is what the crater - I snagged this image of Pu'u O'o from the 'net - might have looked like had we made it to the end of the trail - spoiler alert, we didn't make it to the end -  ...but we had a nice hike anyway, or at least it was nice for about 4 1/2 miles until the hiking path ended and we came to the off-path lava field, a moonscape of high, steep, uneven crags,  ...and fissures, 
 A few steps into the lava field I threw in the towel and turned back. Tom, a speck way off in the distance in the above picture, soldiered on for about another hundred yards before turning back.
    ...and smoking hills on the other,  
  ...and the newer ones.  The newer lava fields were works of natural art.    
 ...in various stages of melt-down.   All along the trail were signs warning hikers to stay 1/4 mile inland to avoid breathing the hydrochloric acid fumes that could form when the sulfur from the volcanic plume mixes with the sea water, and not to enter the water, as the lava pouring into the ocean from Pu'u O'o raises the sea water along the coast to a scalding to boiling temperature. As we came closer to Pu'u O'o we could see off in the distance the steam plum from where the hot lava met the sea.   Then we arrived at the end of the gravel path, where there were signs pointing us in the direction of the crater,  ...along the rope line.  There were also a number of signs where the path ended and the rope line began warning us of the dangers ahead:    By now there was a vaguely familiar smell in the air reminiscent of the smell of my high school chemistry class; which, as I recall, I was no better at than I was at crossing the lava field. So, mission aborted, we walked back to the ranger station and arrived just in time to see a most amazing sight: the sudden rising of a behemoth steam plume, massively visible all these miles away.  Pele must have been having a lava-fest on the ocean. Then we headed back to the camp and before dinner stopped by the Lava Lounge   ...for a before-dinner drink,  ...and, as we'd arrived just in time to watch some of the Merrie Monarch hula competitions.    After dinner at the Crater Rim Cafe we returned to our apartment to watch more of the hula competitions, some of the Men's Division teams.    Then before we went to bed we drove back out to Halma'uma'u, to say good-night to Pele.   ...Continued from yesterday:
 ...I bought a couple of his CD's,  ...then Tom and I continued our exploration of the Kilauea Caldera, the miles-wide crater of a collapsed but still active volcano.               
 ...to the Visitor Center where the Merrie Monarch Festival crafts classes were taking place.     But rather than staying for the crafts, we went off in search of another Volcano: the town of Volcano, located a few miles from the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where we found a cute little place for lunch called, 
 ...and the food delish.   After lunch we returned to Volcanoes Park to hike around some more,   ...and see, among other things, a lava tube, which is a tunnel formed by the passage of lava,  
 ...where one can see the site of what was once a rain forest, destroyed by the 1959 eruption of the Kilauea Iki crater.   The plume of the Halema'um'au Crater is visible in the distance from the trail,  ...along parts of which the vegetation is slowly growing back.    Late in the afternoon we headed back to the Kilauea Military Camp (see post from 4/29/2017) for dinner at the Crater Rim Cafe,   ...then back to our quarters to watch the Merrie Monarch hula competitions. which were awesome. (These photos I found on the 'net are better than the ones I took from the TV screen).   Then at 9 pm, when it was good and dark outside and the black sky was filled with more stars than I've ever seen in any sky, we climbed back into the Mustang and headed back to see the Halema'um'au Crater.
 ...coloring the rocks and the smoke, 
 ...Continued from yesterday: So we had a good look at the inner craters of Kilauea - which I could appreciate now that I understood the geography of the Kilauea Caldera (see yesterday's post) - though at this volcano I was scared to death not by the smoking crater, but by all the young selfie-tourists standing,  ...and sitting,  ...on the guard wall above the precipice.   A little before noon we left the inner crater and headed over to the Kilauea Visitor Center,  ...because that morning at breakfast I'd read in the local paper about The Merrie Monarch Festival taking place this week throughout the Islands (see yesterday's post) and that as part of the local festivities there would be music and crafts programs on the lanai (veranda) of the Visitor Center. As I'd become enamored of Hawaiian music, after having heard some live music in Honolulu along with lots of recorded music pumped into every public venue we entered there, I wanted to check out the performance at the Visitor Center. For me this turned out to be the high point of our trip. The performer was recording artist Kenneth Makuakāne, composer and producer of traditional Hawaiian music.  His songs were so beautiful, as was his voice, a soulful tenor that now and then broke into a Hawaiian-style falsetto. At one point a group of eight Japanese ladies in the audience took to the floor and began dancing the hula to the music.
 ...and lovely.  We learned that they were members of a hula class in Japan who'd come to Hawaii with their teacher, the lady in red.  I wondered if perhaps they'd come to The Big Island to watch the nightly hula competitions at the Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo. After their dance Kenneth Makuakāne and the rest of us in the audience prevailed upon them to dance some more, but they shyly deferred until Mr. Makuakāne began singing "Hawaiian Lullaby," my favorite Hawaiian song and apparently theirs, too, because they couldn't resist getting back up and dancing - and singing - to the music.  After the Japanese ladies returned to their seats three other ladies got up and began dancing.  They were so good,  ...I wondered if they were hula-competition contestant who were out doing some volcano sight-seeing during the day.    After they finished another lady got up and began dancing to the music. She was an older lady,  ...and her movements were so fluid and natural, 
 Her dance looked like a prayer.   Afterwards I asked her if I were too old to learn the hula, to which she replied, "You're never too old."
Mayhaps if I can find a hula teacher in Columbus, Ohio I'll find out. |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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