Sunday, October 15, 2006







EARTHQUAKE!


If you haven't heard yet there was a significant earthquake centered on the Big Island of Hawaii at 7:08 am this morning. I had just woken up and was in the bathroom when the house started to shake. This is the first earthquake I've felt on Kaua'i since I moved here in 1999. I used to feel them every now and then on Oahu but they were small tremors. The picture of the landslide above is from the Kawaihae area on the Big Island from the cnn.com website.

My sister on Maui left me a message that their house shook for about 30 seconds and the whole island was without power. I also had a message from my mom on Oahu that their power was out too. I've tried calling my sister back but can only leave messages. I did talk to my mom and they are fine.

Just now they are starting to show some photos of damage on the Big Island. Mostly what I'm seeing is structural damage to rock walls and landslides. One hospital in Kona is evacuating their patients to other hospitals or to Oahu. Apparently the airport on Oahu is a mess - no functioning toilets and no running water. No outbound flights although people are still showing up thinking they can catch their scheduled flights out. Inbound flights are being allowed if they were past the halfway point into their flight. An airport without power has to be a crazy scene as computers aren't working and the TSA can't function. I wonder what backup power they have???

My sister just called from Maui and they don't have power in Makawao yet but they're okay.

I'll post more pictures as they become available.

PS - No deaths reported yet but some injuries.

Saturday, October 14, 2006








So what do you do when the weather sucks and you can't go to the beach?

You go anyway.

First we vacummed the house and I scrubbed the kitchen sink. We've had Kona weather all week and it's been hot, hazy and humid. I decided we needed to get out of the house.


So we went to Nukoli'i. My son went for a swim while I walked down the beach.


As we were leaving some people showed up with their horses for a ride on the beach. My son was showering off when I turned back towards the beach and the horse on the right in the top photo was bucking riderless and heading towards the parking lot. She got as far as my car when a guy in a big white truck turned around and blocked her from getting any farther. It was pretty scary but the beach is fairly far enough away from the highway. And she had calmed down enough to stop and just stand there. Apparently something spooked her and she took off. I don't know if it was the ocean or something else. Her owner thanked the truck driver and walked her back to the beach. In the second photo she is being walked around to calm her down. We left after this so I don't know if they got their beach ride in or not.

Saturday, October 07, 2006


Last Night's Sunset

Monday, October 02, 2006


The Jeweler's Prayer.....

That's when you're down on all fours looking for a loose stone on the floor. It's what I was doing last Friday. I was putting a diamond into a file-a-gem holder and sliding it into the plastic cover when the diamond popped out, hit the floor mat under my chair and bounced to who knows where. So I grabbed a flashlight from my drawer and started looking for the diamond. Without any luck. Drat. It was a diamond we had a memo from a supplier.

I did find two tanzanite beads and a pearl that must have escaped from my predecessor. I was just about to ask for help when I decided to look a little deeper under my desk. Bingo! There it was. So I got it seated properly in the holder and slid the cover over it. Whew!

At least it wasn't as big as the diamond that one of my bosses lost last year when they were cleaning a ring. That was a 3/4 carat. That belonged to a customer. We had to replace that one. We searched high and low for that bugger. We even went through the trash can that was nearby. Then one day last week the steamer broke and my boss took it apart and guess what was inside? Yup, the diamond. We had even sent the steamer to Honolulu for repair last year when it broke down. When it was sent back it accidently went to Maui instead. It finally made it back to us. So the lost diamond had been inside the whole time and traveled from Kauai to Oahu to Maui and finally back to Kauai.