Dominoes by candle light make for a very romantic evening, and I only have the termites to thank. That’s right, termites can be romantic. Around here we have two kinds of termites; those that live in the ground and can level a house in a few weeks, and those that fly to your home, drop their wings, mate, and then begin chowing down. Twice a year, flying termites swarm every evening just after dusk for a few weeks. Being drawn to light, the termites get the neighborhood to play who can be the darkest house on the street. I don’t know if we are winning, but we are at least having fun in the process!
So, the most common variety of bananas here in Hawaii is the apple banana or latundan banana. It is small and sweet, and is in many ways much better than the cavendish banana that you find in mainland grocery stores. We’re taking the ‘small’ to the extreme
No, they aren’t actually that small. Sometimes the top few bananas of a ‘rack’ don’t get a chance to mature. Even though they’re tiny they’re still pretty good. They’re like the cocktail wiener of the banana world.
Despite the fact that our house is only 750 feet from the Ocean (a feature aptly reflected in our homeowners/hurricane insurance premium) we cannot hear the ocean. Or at least we couldn’t until last Thursday. While touring the property, a visitor to the house pointed out “wow you can really hear the ocean!” I listened closely for a minute, and sure enough, the crashing waves hitting the pali (cliffs) were clearly audible if not dissimilar to the sound of distant thunder. Since that moment, we have been able to hear the ocean clearly rising above the tapestry of natural sounds to which we have become so accustomed.
Well, the following advertisement from the local grocery store epitomizes the cultural melange that exists here in Hawaii.
While weird, I bet they’re pretty good.
The middle ‘bedroom’ in our house had two awkwardly placed doors. One was 29 inches, the other 22 inches. Why two doors? We’ll never know. On Friday, I decided to do something about it. Being fairly well versed in construction skills the idea of moving/removing a wall isn’t daunting to me. However, the previous statement only applies to conventional Mainland double wall framed construction.
As I mentioned in a previous post, our house is single wall construction. What this means is that all the walls, interior and exterior, load bearing and aesthetic, are constructed exclusively of vertical 1x6 tongue and groove Douglass Fir planking . How the house stands, much less how it was initially constructed is a mystery too me. At least this wall wasn’t load bearing, so I mustered the courage to take it apart, and put it back together the way I wanted it. 
Before…..
Demolition
Rebuilding: I managed to reuse all the lumber which at $30.00 for a 10’ board is a really good thing!
Almost There…
Complete (well…. I guess there’s some painting and finish work now.)
A little video of our ‘new’ house with some cheesy Hawaiian music to brighten your late winter days.
Our new house, which we have pretty much neglected telling you about, is a specimen Hawaiian plantation home. These houses were built by the thousands during the sugar boom of the early and mid 1900s. They were cheap, but well built single wall construction (more to come on that) and had all the space and amenities a family working on the sugar plantation would want. Our title says our house was built in 1937, but the square nails used in its construction lead me to believe that it may have been earlier. Regardless, people, or at least their furniture must have been smaller back in the day, because when we tried to fit our newly acquired couch and chair through the front door it got stuck. As it turns out all of the exterior (and interior for that matter) doors are only 29 inches wide, and and only 6.5 feet tall. Not big enough for a full size couch. So we scratched our heads, and decided to completely remove one of the adjacent 32 inch windows. We needed to take it out anyhow to replace the spring stops and a piece of cracked molding anyhow. Now that it’s back in, I sure hope we like the Couch!
My lovely wife was just elected Student President of the Hawaii Student Chapter of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. She ran a clean campaign free of negative adds, super PAC money, and bribery and she still won! Perhaps most importantly, because she’s president, that means I’m first Gentleman, which is a position I like, and should probably get used to, given her propensity for success!
So there were a lot of close guesses, and creative ways of delivering the answer, but the winnings go to Granddad with a guess of 131! There are actually 128 bananas ripening up as we speak! So CONGRATULATIONS GRANDDAD! A priority package will be headed your way soon!
Neil is currently playing a song by Guy Clark on the guitar, but altering it for our purposes…Homegrown “Bananas”!
