A couple of months ago, we finally, FINALLY moved into a new house with two of our friends. I love it because it has actual rooms, and I have a bedroom that I can run and hide in when I don't feel like being the hostess to guests. We have a kitchen with COUNTERTOPS and an OVEN and real STOVE and a MODERN bathroom and a spacious living room. We don't have internet though so I haven't been able to blog. Baxter, Chad and I are housesitting at a house with internet this week so I can give you a cute little update.
We adopted a kitten... Meet Lemur!
We rescued this little man off the streets! We were getting ready to drive home from a concert one night and I saw this little kitten bolt across the parking lot. I screamed, "KITTTEEENNN!!" Our friend in the car said, "do you want it?" and I said, "YES!!" "Are you sure?" "YAA!!"
The little kitten looked so scared running back and forth meowing at the store front and was trying to find something to be against to stay warm. It took a little chasing, but our friend got the kitten and brought it in the car. I held the kitten the whole way home even though he was meowing bloody murder. I don't think he was more than 5 weeks old at the time.
We brought him into the house, and he was so scared he slept in my closet and meowed the entire night. We put tuna and milk out which he would snack on when nobody was around.
When he got used to being around humans and the house, we were able to give him a bath and clean out all his eye crusties. He actually really enjoyed the bath with warm water.
A clean, flea-treated, healthy kitty a few weeks later:
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I noticed his black and white striped tail and I new it was just meant to be. Ringtail Lemurs are my favorite animal, therefore I named him Lemur.
He loves attention more than any cat i've ever encountered
Life has been fairly uneventful these past few months. I really, really, REALLY wanted to be out of this house by the end of summer. So far that hasn't happened. It is hard to find something out here that will allow dogs in our price range. Also, I really want to live in Hilo town to be closer to school, and Baxter wants to stay in Puna to be close to work. In the end, I would be happy for anything with more space and a more traditional bathroom.
I will always be a fan of living the simpler life, but I think there is a big difference in living a simple life and an uncomfortable life. After awhile, there are just certain things you get really tired of dealing with on a regular basis, and rustic life begins to lose its charm. Certain things become a luxury such as privacy, organization, cleanliness, space to prepare meals, and getting a good night sleep without being bitten by tiny red fire ants.
Even though we haven't found a new home yet, I still fulfilled many of my goals during summer break. My parents bought me a car as an early graduation present, which in turn got me a great job almost immediately. When I say "great", i'm talking bussing and occasionally hosting at a nice restaurant downtown. But the key terms here are STEADY and NON-SKETCHY. Compared to past jobs i've had here, this is smooth sailing and I am very thankful. I am also looking at getting a tutoring job on campus once school begins. Maybe my universe will present a new house in the near future.
Also, you may see the title of the blog changing from time to time as I am trying to find one that fits :)
I know the feeling: you go into the store and see a bag of macadamia nuts. You want them so bad, but they are so dang expensive for such a small amount! You may have seen brands like Mauna Loa which is actually produced here on the Big Island, but macnut products are also kind of pricey here as well. Have you ever found yourself losing sleep over the price of macnuts? Let me ease your restless mind.
As you have heard, Baxter works at a macnut farm. Like any farm, it is a lot of work. But people might be surprised to find out the details of running a macadamia nut farm.
A macnut tree with nuts still in their husk
As these nuts, which are still in their protective husk, fall to the ground, a harvest begins. The "pickers" are called to the farm to collect the fallen nuts from the ground one-by-one. The pickers put all the nuts into 10-gallon bags, then when the bags are full they leave them in piles around the trees. Baxter and his bosses come to the orchard with a big trailer and lift the 10-gallon bags one by one into the back to be brought to the de-husking machine.
Now this is already no small task. The harvest, which happens somewhere around once a month can yield between 100 and 200 bags. Could you imagine being bent over all day hand-picking a couple hundred bags of nuts? No thank you.
De-husking machine
The macnuts are then brought to this de-husking machine, which the picture does not do justice. Baxter, or one of his bosses will stand here all day pushing the nuts through a contraption that well, rips off the husk for lack of a better word. If the nuts are too moist, the husk often has trouble coming off and is thrown into the reject pile and then are repeatedly put back through the de-husker until the husk is removed. Tedious is an understatement.
After the husks are removed, they are emptied into these massive baskets. Still don't look like the macnuts you see in the store? That is because they are still in their shell. It is kind of funny to think about people trying to eat macadamia nuts before modern times considering how much work it takes to get to the core of one nut. The energy it takes would just make me more hungry.
The "nut house"
After each macnut is de-husked, they are brought into the "nut house" where they REALLY tedious task begins. Baxter has to examine EVERY SINGLE MACNUT!
Sorting thousands of pounds of macnuts
Baxter has a trained eye to look for shells that have holes or appear to have moldy kernels inside the shell. Those ones are rejected and are produced into mulch later on down the road I think. The smaller nuts are bought by places like companies who use them for ice cream and candies.
Once all the nuts are sorted, Baxter and his bosses prepare them to be shipped out to customers who often order hundreds of pounds at a time. Baxter's work doesn't crack the shell so they are shipped out as is after they are sorted. The customers are companies who must crack the nuts themselves and produce the final product you see in stores, or interestingly, people with pet birds.
A happy pet macaw customer eating a macnut in-shell
via: http://mac-nuts.com/Pages/customer.html
Here is a link to a video Baxter made on the farm for his digital media arts class if you would like a cool visual of the process:
People often romanticize living in Hawai'i as a tropical paradise where people are always relaxing on the beach drinking Mai Tais or surfing all the time.
While it is a paradise, most people have to work just as hard out here to maintain living in an expensive environment with jacked up prices from the reliance on imported goods and tourism. When people come here for vacation and leave, the hustle and bustle of the locals continue until pau hana when they can go home and relax just like the rest of the world. People really know how to chill out here, better than anywhere else i've been. I like to call these "vacations on vacation".
Our crew likes to use vacation time to go camping. A much needed vacation on vacation took place Thursday when our crew had 2 days off for a camping trip over on Kona side.
As you can see, The Big Island is well, big. Ho'okena is almost 100 miles from our house.
My awesome man, Baxter, is an extremely hard worker who more than deserves some time off for fun stuff. Baxter works at a macadamia nut farm in lower Puna, sometimes two straight weeks in a row. On the days he has off he is usually catching up on chores around the house that need attention. Sad for us though my new job has been causing us to have oposite schedules lately. He leaves for work at 7:30am and I have been leaving the house around 5:00pm for work when he is just getting off work. When I get home around 10 or 11:00pm he is ready to call it quits for the day (am I married?). So as you can see this was a much needed trip for us to have some chore-free couples time at the beach with our friends. Baxter hasn't been on a vacation on vacation in over 5 months I think. Whew!
You know, I actually have a really nice camera but I always "forget" to bring it on trips on account the on/off button is clogged with sand and its just a hassle. Its a shame though, because we don't get the sunset on Hilo side, and all I have are these crappy phone pictures that in no way do it justice.
We didn't get there until around 6:00pm but it was still great. In the morning our buddy Reed went spearfishing and caught a couple tasty swimmers for breakfast, but somebody always gets injured on these trips and this was no exception. Though minor, Reed shaved off a good amount of finger skin in a spear mishap.
Also exciting...earthquake! Yup you're reading a blog post from a real earthquake survivor, you lucky duck. Okay but really, there was no damage as far as I know, but people were still excited about it and I won't pass up this attention getting/conversation starter. From my quick google searches it was possibly caused by activity within the newest forming island, Loihi. It was a 5.3er, enough for me to form an evacuation plan quickly in my head for whatever might be happening. My emergency evacuation plan would have been pretty much to run away, a stupidly ineffective plan I formulated in panic. My house is still standing on its cinder blocks though and i'm sitting here bragging about it. Success.
Wow, so many cool facts jam packed in these pictures. You're probably asking, "why Tori? Why post such scientific and confusing pictures? Did you take these picture yourself?" These are all great questions, and the answer to your first question is for educational purposes you dummy! The answer to your second inquiry is no, but for my credit I did find these by myself on google images.
Pretty much what is happening from what I understand is that the volcanic hotspot that created the Big Island is the same hotspot making Loihi active. I'm counting the days until it possibly emerges in 100,000 years, or doesn't.
Well that is about all I have as far as this post goes, here is a video with some dramatic narration if you are craving some suspenseful education.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Since this is my first post, it is probably appropriate for me to give some background information on myself. I will try to keep this as fascinating as possible. Here I am:
Just kidding. Well actually it is me, just fatbooth me.
Okay this is a little easier on the eyes, right? I'll work on that...
Lettuce get to the good parts. Born and raised in Eugene, OR. I successfully moved away without getting a 97404 zip code or 541 area code tattoo on my forearm. Originally I attended the University of Oregon, but I lived with my parents across town which A: provided me with rent-free living and B: prevented me from having the stereotypical college experience portrayed in all the movies. I was pretty socially awkward and wore my headphones in between classes to prevent Greenpeace from stealing my money. All in all, I was ready to move on. "I must live!" I declared. But not really because it was more like, "get me out of this s-hole!" Please don't take offense though; I was simply a 20-year old ready to get a friggin life.
So I exchanged schools. I moved to the Big Island in 2010 to attend UH Hilo, or rather UHH which yes, spells "uhh..." which is appropriately named. Don't get me wrong though, it is a great school and the people are awesome. Let me put it this way: school isn't the hardest part out here, its finding a steady job.
What a beauty. Feels like you're really there huh? I know.
My grandparents actually flew from Maui to meet me at the airport and take me to my first apartment. Everyone remembers the first time they moved out of their parent's house? Purely magical, and a little overwhelming, especially when its across the Pacific Ocean. My apartment, the University Palms, was a college apartment complex, like dorms but better. Less rules and a lot bigger. When I arrived, the apartment managers told me they had changed my assigned room and placed me in a different apartment. Come to find out they based my room assignment on my real name, Torisha, and had originally put me in an apartment with all African American girls. Not that it would have been a problem for me, I just found the situation and the irony to be pretty comical. When they showed me to my room, they told me to make sure if I smoked to keep my bongs out of the living room while my grandparents were standing right there. I cringed wishing they had saved that comment for later.
Until a few days ago, I had to walk and hitchhike everywhere due to lack of a vehicle. People like to call me a hippy because of this, and it's really caught on. I don't think these people have ever been to Eugene before, i'm telling you. Hitching can be dangerous, yes. But i'll have you know its gotten me to epic places on this island and given me experiences I wouldn't trade for anything. So put that in your rasta pipe and smoke it.
People also call me a hippy on account of my house/cottage I live in now. What people don't understand is how poor I am and that living in Hawai'i is not the cheapest place in the world.
For those who don't know, most people out here in Puna are on catchment tanks. This means we take our showers with rain water that accumulates in the giant contraption people often mistake for a swimming pool. Well its not, and don't you ever let me catch you swimming in it. For drinking water we go to the transfer station and fill up those big 5-gallon jugs you see for water coolers at the office.
I do my fair share of complaining about my living situation, but its actually pretty awesome when I think about it. I'm lucky for shelter and the people in my life I get to share it with. And i'm not a hippy.
