davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2023

[Alliecat]

Ha ha, didn’t you get something similar a while ago?
Now they would be fun to take to the beach for some treasure digging pictures.

I have been known to reuse old screws, but rarely when they are rusty.

[dargosmydaddy]

Janie has been very industrious. Hope she gets a well deserved day off.

[davidd]

Ha ha, didn’t you get something similar a while ago?

Yes, this is the one I got a year ago. I have not yet opened it. No surprise there, huh?

Janie has been very industrious. Hope she gets a well deserved day off.

Janie's idea of a fun day off is starting another project! I only wish I were as motivated.

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16 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

"Whatever this is, it's not nearly as much fun as the beach!"

[Alliecat]

Things are often not as fun as the beach.
Star Wars thing in the background...?

Janie has been very industrious. Hope she gets a well deserved day off.

You kidding? Those girls never get time off

[davidd]

Star Wars thing in the background...?

Yeah, it's the Star Wars girl stormtrooper figure I got a while back that I have not yet fully assembled or properly photographed.

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17 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

Surf's Up... By Florida Standards, Anyway

[Alliecat]

Yer killin me. I wish I was on that beach right now.

[davidd]

Yer killin me. I wish I was on that beach right now.

Yeah, it was niiice today! Kinda crowded, though. Not, like, totally crowded, like on weekends or holidays, but a lot of people compared to... compared to where I used to live in Hawaii where sometimes I could walk for two hours on a sandy beach and not see another person!

Did I really live there? Did I really give that up? Why couldn't I have figured out a way to stay, to make it work?

Gonna cry now.

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18 January – A Doll A Day 2023:

You sass that hoopy Post-Apocalyptic Mutant-Hunting Bikini Babe?

That frood, like, literally knows where her towel's at!

[Alliecat]

A rather strange looking figure, accentuated by the lighting.

I knew someone else who regretted leaving a place. Having a similar ex-perience and ending up feeling like you made a mistake would be awful.

[davidd]

I knew someone else who regretted leaving a place. Having a similar ex-perience and ending up feeling like you made a mistake would be awful.  

Well, yes; leaving a place you liked a lot would be awful. Regretting it and not being able to move back would be, and is, awful.

That said, if you move to someplace you don't like, as long as you are prudent, and have a bit of luck, it is certainly not impossible to leave that place and try somewhere else.

Additionally... yesterday, somebody across the street and down the block who play in an amateur band was practicing. Loud. But not nearly as loud as the guy who lived right next door in the attached house that shared an inside wall when I lived in Hawaii. And at least the guy across the street yesterday was competent, if not great, and played entire songs all the way through. The neighbor in Hawaii would practice one chord set or "lick" over and over for hours!

And fussing about with the little issues here is reminding me, if I think about it, how badly the Hawaii house was deteriorating, and how I did not have the money to repair it: termite damage, a failing septic tank, a sagging foundation... and then there were the increasing property taxes and the insurance. 

I know more now. There are things I could have done to ameliorate the mounting ekspenses. But I do not know if I could have managed to stay there permanently, or simply to have postponed the inevitable necessity of moving.

It's easy to look back and only remember the good things. There were some serious problems with living there as well, mostly related to a cost of living that far outstripped wages.

Hawaii is one of the few states that continues to lose population every year. Only the wealthy or those who inherit property and money can afford to stay there. And military, the overpaid military and their civilian contractors.

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19 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

19 January - Trivia and Jane Replace A Water Heater Thermostat

Of course, as it turns out, the thermostat was not the issue. Nor is the problem with
the heating element. Oh, no, it couldn't possibly be the most common, and relatively
easy problem to remedy.

[Alliecat]

Oh no! MORE repairs!!

Well, yes; leaving a place you liked a lot would be awful. Regretting it and not being able to move back would be, and is, awful....
That said, if you move to someplace you don't like, as long as you are prudent, and have a bit of luck, it is certainly not impossible to leave that place and try somewhere else.

They moved back. They could only afford a crummy house with mold in the basement. There was so much regret. To make it worse, the crummy house was just a few minutes' walk from the better house they gave up. Her words of regret echo in my mind when I think about the mess I am in here

...Well, there's always da Big Island... property is cheap there! Heck, despite the exchange rate, even I could get a few acres of lava in Ka'u.

[davidd]

...Well, there's always da Big Island... property is cheap there!    Heck, despite the exchange rate, even I could get a few acres of lava in Ka'u. 

That is SO seriously tempting!

Some friends of my dad are living their retirement dream on da Big Island. They are retired teachers. They purchased their place probably ten years ago now, when Big Island property was really cheap. They live up in the mountains on a few acres, essentially a small farm, with a distant ocean view. Being at altitude, they are not troubled by excessive heat. They drive down in to Kona when they need supplies from civilization. They live there full time and love it -- doing art, playing music, visiting with a constant stream of friends who come to Hawaii from the mainland. It sounds idyllic.

Then there are some people I know who had a farm in Hawaii, near Kurtistown on da Hilo side. The house was unfinished, and as the guy was a carpenter, the house remained in an eternal state of unfinishedness as he would start one project, then move on to another and another. Finally his wife asked him, begged him, to please finish JUST ONE ROOM! Just one! They were trying to maintain two places, the one in Hawaii and one on the mainland in Oregon. He couldn't bear to give up the "family homestead" in Oregon, but he wanted to keep Hawaii. One season while they were in Oregon thieves broke in to the Hawaii house and stripped all the copper wiring out of the walls. They broke in to the steel shipping container storage unit and stole all of his tools. They trashed his truck for good measure. The Big Island is a rough place, with a lot of poverty and a lot of drugs, so you have to be careful where you move to. 

I'd go, if I thought I could afford to. Except... Hawaii was super draconian when it came to COVID lockdowns. You know, you went through that on your island. The government in Hawaii is, from what I continue to read, ragingly out of control, which contributes, I suspect, to people continuing to leave.

On Oahu, marine life artist Wyland's car was recently stolen out of his locked garage. Thieves broke in to his house on the North Shore when nobody was home, found the car keys, and took the car. The car was recovered after having been stripped and set on fire. No arrests, of course. You quickly learn when living in Hawaii that most of the thieves are "cousins" of cops or other authority figures, so they are rarely identified or charged.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CnmtZsiPqiE/

I haven't looked at Big Island property prices in a while. There used to be a lot in the $200k to $300k range, but the last time I looked... much like on your little island... the prices had gone up considerably.

I don't even want to think about what my house cost when I first moved there. I don't even want to think about what I got for it when I sold it. I couldn't even begin to touch a place in the same location today, not without a budget in the millions. Millions. Yes, millions.

So at one time in my life I lived in a million dollar home. Only, it wasn't a million dollar home when I lived there. But it is now. 700 square feet (65 sq m), and the current Zillow estimate is $1.2 million.

Looks like the house last sold in 2018 for $998k. The people who bought it from me added a bathroom, remodeled the kitchen, and flipped it. Here are some pics of the upgraded version:

https://www.hawaii.house/home/67-231a-ka...201803679/

I see that the beach erosion stopped. I planted those palm trees you see in the front yard, except for the really tall one. The tall one is the last of the four that were there when I moved in. Three were claimed by erosion during my time there. 

I keep purchasing lottery tickets, but they have yet to pay off.

Oh well....

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20 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

Creepy Bad Guy Military Minion

[Alliecat]

Creepy Bad Guy looks ready for anything...
...or maybe just a trip to the mall

Auwe... I heard about people stealing copper out of houses in Puna. I watched part of a council meeting -- district, town, I dunno -- where police officers were pleading for more resources. There were like three of them on duty for all of Puna & Ka'u or something stupid like that. One was almost in tears. They said officers were requesting transfers out, to the north side, for their mental health. So yea, some of what you hear is lovely & idyllic, but what a shame that paradise is spoiled by criminal elements. The crystal meth thing was just getting started when I was in Honolulu for that winter.
Then there were the random tourists who got shot at a bus stop a few years ago in Kailua, I think it was, very close to a house-sit I was thinking about applying for. O.o
To think I wandered all over Honolulu with no backup and no phone, for nearly 4 months, with scarcely a care (except for 1 or 2 weirdos in passing)!!
Whoa, the Wyland incident just happened??
People suck.

I wonder if your retired acquaintances will stay as they get older. I read about seniors leaving because they couldn't afford the horrifying cost of care.
I'm appalled at what half a million gets you on Oahu. And most of the rest of the islands. I could afford some of those Puna houses, but ... yeah, crime. And maybe Pele eats your house.

I never buy lottery tickets. About the only thing I recall from Statistics 101 was how to calculate your odds of winning 6-49. It was like 1 in 13-million-and-change. Good stocks might be a better bet.

Oh, it was cool to see your house!! Thanks for sharing it. Right on the beach, >sigh< Except, that kind of density is a no-go zone for me!
What is all the open land around it -- farms? What would they be growing, pineapple?
I'd just wanna go up Mt Ka'ala Rd and wander into the mountains.
...hey, there's a monastery up there?! Is that an option?
I'm not sure I'd be able to look at it, in your position. I will not go on Google street view to look up the house I grew up in, and the one time I went back to the city, I did NOT drive by.

[davidd]

I'd just wanna go up Mt Ka'ala Rd and wander into the mountains.
...hey, there's a monastery up there?!  Is that an option? 
I'm not sure I'd be able to look at it, in your position.  I will not go on Google street view to look up the house I grew up in, and the one time I went back to the city, I did NOT drive by.

Ohhhh.... The Long Road! That's what the road from the North Shore side is called locally!  It looks like I took down all my Flickr photos from my running days, when I used to jog up the Road to Mt. Ka'ala! I did that run a few times. Ultra-runners and Iron Man competitors used to use the road for training runs and training bike rides.

As an aside, the missing photos are another story of an ill-advised change of venue: I got tired of Flickr's nonsense during the Yahoo / Verizon years, particularly when that nasty piece of work CEO at Yahoo started making huge changes, and I began deleting my Flickr photos, starting with the most-viewed. I was going to move to iPernity. Yeah, well, that didn't pan out, and now I've lost or misplaced thousands of images, including my most popular, along with the captions and comments.

Anyway, back when I was Not Fat, I got myself in to such good shape that I could jog up the Long Road to near the top of Mt. Ka'ala. You can't actually go up to the radar dome on the top, but if you followed the road to the very end, it took you to an abandoned missile launch facility... which you can see if you scroll down to Item No. 8 in this article:

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/hawaii/abandoned-hi/

That's actually my photo they used in the article. Picture 3 is also my photo -- I encountered wasps on that little adventure, much to the amusement of a couple of old guys sitting on their porch across the street.

I climbed up those towers a couple of times. Then... can you believe it... a year or two before I left Oahu, "the government" decided the old towers were a hazard... even though they'd been abandoned for like fifty years... and they tore them down. Totally leveled them. I went up there one day and... gone. Barely even a cement slab on the ground.

It was possible to continue up a narrow, muddy trail behind the missile site to a ridge where you could see the ocean on both sides of the island.

The U of Hawaii has a native plant nursery up there now. And one time I saw a pair of Nene geese, who must have flown over from the Big Island.

And to think... I lived there! 

As for the monastery -- crazy enough, a relative of a relative spent some time there. She showed up and told them she wanted to become a nun. The monks, who were apparently all very elderly, let her stay there for about three weeks. Finally they had to insist that she leave, as her dependence on her cell phone did not mesh well with their largely tech-free and silent lives. 

My brother and I sold the Oregon house we grew up in a couple of years ago. I drove by once, a few months after we sold it, and the new owners were already junking up the place with a bunch of beat-up cars. We sold the vacant orchard lot next door separately, and the trees had been cut down and a new multi-storey house was already going up. My brother told me to not ever drive out to where my grandparents once had a 40-acre farm. He said the whole area had been developed and was unrecognizable and heart-breaking. My brother is not prone to emotionalism, so it must be pretty bad for him to have said that.

I'm gonna go play in my make-believe doll world now:

21 January - A Doll a Day 2023:

21 January - Dive & Bait Shop Guy

[Alliecat]

Why do I think Dive & Bait Shop Guy might be running some other back-room enterprise that isn't quite legit...?   

Hmm...  I'll have to have a "drive" on Street View.
Is it really rare to see nene on Oahu?  I would imagine it would be way too peopley for the odd ones that might stray there.  Unless up in the mountains.
Funny about the cell-phone addict in the monastery    Kinda missed the point, didn't she.
Cool that your photos are in the article!  Such a waste that places are left to decay and not even cleaned up to give nature an easier time of reclaiming the land.  Geez, why would a whole resort be abandoned!  For a moment it gave me a "wait a minute"... but it was Maui Palms where I stayed long ago.  I think I shot a "this room was HOW MUCH?" photo 
I'd be up for the Old Pali Road.  If you go with some respect for the ancestors and the 'aina, would they let you be? 

Oh no... didn't you back up all the photos?  A crashed laptop taught me to BACK.EVERYTHING.UP.NOW.

Yeah... you should probably never go back to look at old homes 

Will you be watching the Eddie?

[davidd]

I'd be up for the Old Pali Road.  If you go with some respect for the ancestors and the 'aina, would they let you be? 

Have you been to the Pali Overlook? You can walk a section of the Old Pali Road from the overlook parking lot. I'm sure that's where the photo was taken.

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22 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

On "trash day," Triv and Janie found an old travel case left out on the curbside, so of course they dragged it home to look it over more closely.

"What's in it? What's inside?"

"Nothing... but a smell."

"An odor?"

"A... stench!"

"I don't know if I'd go that far."

"Take another whiff, then!"

"Wow! Check out the label!"

"Do you think it was really hers?"

No, the "Amelia Earhart" labeled travel case did not actually belong to the famous aviatrix. Earhart licensed her name to a line of luggage beginning in the early 1930s. The brand has passed through a variety of owners over the decades, and still occasionally appears on travel bags. This particular travel case appears to be a style manufactured by the Orenstein Trunk Company of New Jersey, USA, and dates between 1943 and 1950. (Credit to the Henry Ford Museum website for that helpful information.)

Unfortunately, in addition to having a musty, slightly moldy interior and corroded hardware, a hole of about four inches in diameter has been punched through the bottom side of this travel case, tearing through the canvas outer cover and splintering all the way through the plywood core to the inside.