Smokey - The $1800 Cat
Not long after we got back from Hawaii, Smokey started getting sick and was throwing up quite a bit, which resulted in an all-nighter of strange noises from him... As such, Luann took him in to see the "Cat Doctor", and the testing began. First was a test for Urinary Tract Infection (nope, that's not it), then an X-ray to see what's going on inside. It looked like his pancreas might be enlarged, so the next thing was to do an exploratory surgery to take a 'hands-on' approach. During the exploration, a nodule was found on his pancreas which they biopsied. After they closed him up, the next couple of days were spent overcoming a bit of dehydration.
Long-story-short, he didn't have pancreatitus, pancreatic cancer or something else that could have shortened his lifespan (the biopsy came back as a minor cellular growth from his spleen). Instead, it looks like he apparently ate something that made him retchingly sick. So we picked him up Saturday morning and he's at home now, convalescing from the surgery as we deal with the $1800 veterinarian's bill.
Here are some pictures of "Smokey's Crisis"...
Yeah, he had been wearing the "Cone Of Shame" while he was at the doctor's office. You can see where they shaved his forelegs so they could administer an IV and needed injections.
This was his reaction when I freed him up. It's pretty obvious that he couldn't stand to wear that 'Cone Of Shame'.
Unfortunately, this X-ray was not really conclusive.
It looks like his pancreas (the darker, wormy-thing) is enlarged, and might be inflamed. But only a 'look under the hood' would be more conclusive.
So, this is the result. He had his belly shaved for the surgery, and they closed him back up using staples. It looks like he has a zipper on his belly. We've been having an interesting time giving him his antibiotic meds, but after a couple of mis-cues, we finally have it down to a system. Now, all he has to do is stop trying to lick the 'zipper', and stop eating anything he comes across. The last couple of yakking episodes he had were for eating paper strips from the shredder, eating tinsel from a Christmas tree and eating part of a plastic shopping bag. I swear, he's worse than an infant on all fours...
Visit To Hawaii - Page 1
So, we had a week's vacation in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, to be more precise. We had a great time crawling all over the island and photographing our way through the week. In all, we captured 4800 images, of which I had to sort through and post a small sample of them here (180 pictures over the 4 posts) in order to tell the story.
Well, I guess it's time to let the pictures do the talking, and remember, "Click-On-A-Pic" to see a larger version of it...
Now, I could start talking about the above picture, but it would be ahead of the story I have to tell. As a quick note though, this is a picture from the luau we attended later in the week. But, I digress...
Friday - 9/3/10
We arrived in Oahu. Here is a view of Honolulu from the airplane. The long strip to the right is the Honolulu Airport.
Ok, we've made a tight u-turn and now we're lined up with the runway. Soon, we'll be setting foot in Hawaii!
Oh, and did I mention that my cousin Karen was gracious enough to join us for this trip? Yeah, I guess I didn't... Tell you what, with the cousins around, this week is gonna be fun!
Yeah, I did say, "cousins". You see, David Smith, Luann's cousin lives here in Honolulu and he was waiting at the baggage claim for us.
Even though it is no longer customary when travelers arrive to put a lei flower-necklace around your neck, Dave had brought some with him to 'Lei' us (remember, you say the word lei, like 'lay') which made our arrival even more special.
In this picture, I was on the balcony of our hotel (18 floors up) and the 'Mighty Trio' went downstairs to an ABC convenience store across the street to get a few things. Here is David, Luann and Karen, from left to right. They stopped and posed for the picture, while the blurs are of people that were moving.
Ah, a nightime view of Waikiki. The area was hopping with music and shows(which we could hear) until early in the morning (which we could still hear). Thankfully, this hotel was just an intermediate stop before we move into the timeshare hotel tomorrow.
The view while looking straight down from our balcony. The semi-circle of lights in the middle of this image is a stage where they had different hula shows going on.
Ah, and now the sun is rising. It was easy to get up and watch our first Hawaiian sunrise, because Hawaii is 6 hours behind Florida time. This means that while the sun was rising at 5AM in Honolulu, it was already 11AM in Florida.
The interesting thing is that there seems to be a perpetual cloud sitting on top of the mountains towards the center of the island. Dave said that this is what creates a water source for the island. The rain clouds come up the windward side of the island, then when they hit the mountain range, the rains begin and then the water drains down both sides of the mountain, which is how the leeward side of the island gets its water.
Saturday - 9/4/10
And now that the sun is up, we can see the ocean on a point that is southeast of us.
Here it is, Saturday morning at 5AM, and the surfers are already astride their boards, waiting to ride the waves.
And Karen is up, catching them, catching waves...
It's amazing how peaceful it is down there, now that the night has departed...
After we left the hotel, we decided to cruise around and see the sights, since we wouldn't be able to check into the timeshare until 3:00 PM. First, we visited Magic Island, which is a man-made swimming area and a part of the Ala Maona Park.
Here is a view of Waikiki, with the shorter, lighter colored hotel in the middle being the timeshare we will be staying at. The Ilikai Hotel is something of a star in that it was featured in the title sequence of the original Hawaii 5-0 TV series. Click here: to see the scene where Jack Lord (Steve McGarret) was standing near the top of the hotel on the outside, facing towards the sea. Also, this alternate opening sequence shows quite a few of the places we visited. Dave told us about the hotel's involvement in Hawaii 5-0, so we just had to search it out on Youtube...
While we were walking down the seawall at Magic Island, we came across this turtle feeding on the seaweed along the rocks.
The zebra doves (Dave's arch-nemesis for a certain, undisclosed reason), were quite photogenic too.
I got a kick out of Hawaii's version of a Cardinal, as these guys weren't all red in color like the ones here in Florida.
After Magic Island, we drove southward and came across this little spur of land that is down below a lighthouse by the Diamond Head caldera. For some reason, Karen kicked off her shoes and climbed up on the rocks with Dave.
And was promptly soaked on one side by sea-spray. It's a good thing both Dave and Karen gave me their camera's first.
Here is a picture of the beach area of Hanauma Bay. Since this was our first day of roaming around Oahu, we took in the sights, figuring that we will be back to go swimming and snorkling. After making such distance, we drove back to the timeshare a little after 3:00 and secured our room. After this, we went over to the grocery store to do some shopping so we could cook in our room. Shopping was interesting, in that we had a difficult time finding what we would consider to be standard items like coriander and lasagne noodles, but we couldn't find them. We did find more SPAM than we knew what to do with, such as: Spam Classic, Spam Hot & Spicy, Spam Less Sodium, Spam Lite, Spam Oven Roasted Turkey, Spam Hickory Smoke, Spam Spread, Spam with Bacon, Spam with Cheese, Spam Garlic, Spam Golden Honey, Spam Mild and even Spam Hot Dogs. As you can see, if we wanted SPAM, there several varieties to choose from.
And to be honest, when we stopped off at a Walmart this morning, I ordered Spam & Eggs on Rice at the little Chinese restaurant inside, and it was quite good.
Sunday - 9/5/10
We planned on stopping by the Iolani Palace to try our hand at a Wherigo geocache that begins in the courtyard, but unfortunately, I discovered that I forgotten to download the cartridge for the Royal Palace, so we couldn't make it work. Instead, we took a tour of the inside of the palace, which was free today. Talk about good timing! Unfortunately, we weren't permitted to take pictures while we were on the tour, so we don't have any we can show you of the inside of the palace.
Since we wanted to do some geocaching, I fired up my GPS that was loaded with geocaches in the area and I discovered that there was one about 200 feet from the exit where we were standing. Here's a shot of Dave, trying to look subtle as he grabs the tiny, little geocache container beneath his right hand. Congratulations to Dave on signing his first geocache logsheet!
This is a statue of Queen Liliuokalani located on the grounds of the State capitol right next to the Iolani Palace. Queen Liliuokalani was the last monarch and only queen regnant of the kingdom of Hawaii. Obviously, you can tell by all of the flowers that she is well cherished.
We were surprised to see this replica of the Liberty Bell located in front of the capitol building.
I kind of wonder why it was presented to Hawaii by the US Treasury Department...
This statue is dedicated to Father Damien, noted for his work with those whom were suffering from leprosy.
Unfortunately, due to his close work with leprosy, he too contracted it himself and eventually succumbed to the disease.
Across the way, we saw this installation, titled 'The September 11 Eternal Flame' and wouldn't you know it, there was a geocache located there. By the way, here is a link to a brochure from the government of Hawaii that briefly describes the things we saw around the capitol building today.
After some hunting, Karen noticed something wasn't quite right with the stainless steel box, and came up with the cache. Way to go!
At this point, Karen realized that her sunburn was getting close in hue to her blouse, so she tried out some natural 'epaulets' as sunshades.
In pursuing the next geocache, we discovered that it was right next to the bail bond shop of 'Dog, The Bounty Hunter'. Karen wanted to get a picture in front of the store, and since it was Sunday, nobody was in the shop. By the way, 'Da Kine' is a Hawaiian phrase for 'the kind'. For example, you would say "da kine a thing" for 'the kind of thing'. It's something of a verbal shorthand called Hawaiian Pidgin.
We eventually worked our way back to the hotel and Dave's appetite was whetted for finding more geocaches, so he and I decided to walk over to a nearby marina and try to find 4 of them there. It took some hiking across a jetty made up of boulders, but we got those two, then we made the finds over by the boats too. Here is a picture of Dave, trying to find a magnetic 'nano' geocache that is only as big as your thumbnail, just like the one he found on the lamp post earlier.
Monday - 9/6/10
Today is Labor Day, so we decided we didn't want to go to some kind of touristy spot because it would be packed with people. We instead wandered around, with the sole purpose of finding a couple of geocaches at some unique locations. This picture was taken at a scenic overlook as we were heading for the Pali Overlook in order to collect an Earthcache geocache there.
This is a picture Luann took of some flowers we found at the scenic overlook, but we're not sure what they are.
Here we are at the Nuuanu Pali Lookout, which is known for its strong winds blowing through this location, but we still can't figure out the circumstances of how the bra we saw on the ground by the wall got there...
While we were there, I made sure to get some pics of the plaques situated at The Pali. This one is for a National Soaring Record.
How windy is it? It was almost strong enough to lift Karen off the ground!
This is a signboard of the historical significance of The Pali. Come to find out, the Battle of Nu'uanu was something of a sad affair, with several life-ending battles made in an effort to rule over the surrounding lands.
And here is some back-story too. Sorry about the graffiti, but it does tell a bit about the youth of the area...
So, what is going on here? Well, the requirements for logging the Earthcache at the Pali Overlook were to construct a wind gauge and have a picture taken of you, holding the wind gauge in your hands. It's so windy, my toupe' almost fell off (joke)...
I just love this shot of Dave having a "WTF?" moment while looking at the wind gauge. The indicator string was whipping around so much, he couldn't get a decent reading from the gauge.
And when you're in a place like this, you just can't seem to keep your hair off of your face. At least the wind gauge seems to have settled down again.
This plaque is similar to one we found at Makapu'u, where a plane crashed just like what is being described on this plaque. Seems like foul weather can be quite deadly around here...
We drove through these tunnels a couple of times in order to figure out how to get up here. I think I'll blame our wandering on the GPS in the car. Yeah, that's it, the car GPS...
Here's a different angle of the aftermath. Not really sure what might still be edible in the middle of all this...
Well whaddaya know? The insides are cooked to a turn, but not in too bad of a condition. A little scraping off of the blackened stuff and everything will be fine. Well, sort of.
