It has been pretty hot and muggy after the storms.  Usually this happens when our natural air conditioning, our island trade winds stops blowing.  Our trade winds usually blow down from the north and north east and that is why the north eastern part of our Island is called the windward side.  Down wind from the windward side, we have the leeward side on the south western part of the Island.

Every once in a while we get winds coming up from the south and south west.   These are our Kona winds.  They bring up vog from the Big Island and increase problems associate with the vog, including respiratory problems and headaches.  I think the Kona winds have been blowing.

But, that is why we love our trades!

I Paint

It was nice hearing from my friend Ellie. I haven't talked to her in a while, but she had heard about the storms and sent a concerned text to me a few days ago. She has always been so thoughtful. She's a bright light in this world.

Anyways, way back when we use to hang out on the ebay artist discussion boards together, and talk about laugh about all those thing we held dear, she shared a picture of her dog Sparkie. I painted Sparkie in the above painting, and everytime I see this picture it reminds me of those conversations from long ago.

The Stinging Rain of Iselle

If I am reading the noaa forcast correctly, it is about the time when the eye of Iselle is nearing the closest it will come to our Islands, around 125 miles or so to the south.  The driving, stinging rain has come, but it is intermittent.  As I write the rainfall goes from  light drizzles to hard and driving.  The sun is even peeking through at times.  

It is windy, but so far, not strong enough to cause too much concern.  But I know it could pick up.  The weather on Google has the wind at 29 mph.  It would be nice to have a wind gauge, right about now.   My "make do" wind gauge is my guava tree in the back yard.   When the branches sway wildly I think to myself, "yes, it is pretty windy".  But If the branches were to start breaking off and flying away it will put me on high winds alert.

So far my Guava tree has weathered the storm.

My package arrived in the mail from China!  I know that there are people out there who don't like to buy made in China products, but I actually buy directly from China vendors through aliexpress.com.

For about $6 I picked up a clip and 3 different types of lenses to experiment with on my iPhone and iPad.  The set I bought came with a fish eye lens, a Wide angle lens, and a macro lens. My daughter already ran off with the fish eye lens, so I guess I will be testing them out later.

I also have my eye on a 12x lens, but have a hard time imagining that I could keep the iPhone still enough to get a good picture.  Still, I might not be able to resist.

Let the picture taking begin!