Monty says about a couple weeks of curing and then he'll start framing.
Hopefully after that it will start to go up fast. Crissie wants to play hopscotch on it.
So Happy New Year everyone. New Years here is a lot like the mainland. Parties, celebrations, and general merriment combined with DUIs. But there is one main difference. And that is home fireworks. They go on sale the day after Christmas and everybody stocks up. They shoot off more fireworks here on New Years than the fourth of July. There are three types you can buy. The first is the regular fireworks found everywhere - fairly tame and anyone can purchase them. The second is the fireworks that you need to get a permit for - not as tame. The third and most common is the illegals - these are the biggies and I think more of these are sold than the others.
So we went to Marilyn's cousin's house about an hour away in Kona to a Hawaiian New Years party. Norman is Marilyn's cousin and he owns a security business that deals with the major hotels. Beautiful house, lots of Koa wood (very expensive wood found mainly in Hawaii). The party was much like mainland ones. Lots of food, drink, and conversation combined with fireworks. It's fairly traditional for kids to call us auntie or uncle even though we're not related. On our way down the highway (well two lane road) people were shooting off the illegals by the side of the road and they were exploding over our heads in showers. Pretty cool but they're extremely noisy. It's like a city's fourth of July exhibition but instead individual homes are doing it.
At Marilyn's cousins for the party.
Lots of great food. Short ribs (Korean style, called Kalbe), pork belly, pickled everything, ahi fresh caught, sushi & rice (called Nishime from Japan) poke (Hawaiian sushi), Gobo (the carrot like dish - Chinese), noodles, and Japanese sweet black beans that you must eat for a good and long life. All very eclectic as this food was brought in from all the various sugar cane plantation workers who lived in camps to harvest the cane. The only thing missing was some Filipino food.
Now when we got home we started the fireworks and to everyone's surprise, Crissie actually stayed up til after midnight. It did, however, start to rain, but it didn't dampen anyone's spirits and Tony & Marilyn were more excited than Luca, their four year old grandson, to shoot off the fireworks.
Crissie, Tony, Agnes (Marilyn's mom) & Marcus in the garage with the fireworks on the back of the pickup.
These are the tame ones.
Now for the real tradition as these two videos will explain. We must ward off the evil spirits from
the property for the coming year.
Now this is how it worked at Tony and Marilyn's. We strung the fireworks from a pvc pipe attached to a stepladder. So when we were done, we started down the street to the property, but it started to pour. That didn't deter us. No umbrella, only sweatshirts and by the time we got down there, we were soaked. Tried to light the fireworks and the lighter gun failed. Went back and got matches. Still no luck. By this time we could have used a bar of soap and showered we were so wet. Finally, laughing hysterically at our predicament, we gave up, left the stepladder there in the dark and went back home. Evil spirits - one, Buzzie, Crissie, Tony & Marilyn - 0. And today it rained all day.
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