may 2025 donation

this month i'm actually pausing my donation :( life has been very expensive lately: taxes, ER bill, flights to maui and kauai, manta ray snorkeling... it was the nearly $1500 ER bill that really did me in. i got it sort of unexpectedly 3 months after the fact. i was billed for the urgent care visit (to get the stitches removed) about a month after whole thing so when I didn't get anything for the ER visit, I dunno... i thought my insurance would take care of it. ...but it didn't.

at that point, i had already paid my taxes and paid for flights to maui and kauai. and after paying off the bill, i reimbursed t for j and my manta ray snorkeling thing. so it was a lot of money leaving within a month.

i may go back and donate anyway. what's $25 really? i can "afford" it. i'm just feeling a little cash poor right now. 

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i recently got a little cash infusion so am donating to NPR because they do amazing work and recently got their money taken back by the fucking govt who instead of using tax payer money to fund the tax payers and out general well-being, wanted to use it to make our lives demonstrably worse. (7/31)

 

impressions: hawaii

speed humps and speed tables (longer humps, like a mesa)

speed table and intersection painted "warnings" of jaggedly lines on the ground

wobbly striped roads, lol. so few lane lines and dashes

well paved roads (so few potholes), and quite a few road closures due to either construction, or more often, tree trimming

fewer street lights and sometimes very yellow ones, to create a more dark sky environment

many 2 lane roads with 1 lane bridges

fewer asshole drivers when merging (either ending lane or merging lanes) 

slower speed limits (nothing higher than 55mph!) and people pretty much respecting them. ...also speeding tickets are only like $137, ask me how i know, lol

very few official police cars (most are personal vehicles with a blue light bar on top)

many abandoned cars on the side of the roads

corrugated metal roofs in hilo

so many small churches with very pointy steeples

glass shutters instead of paned windows to help with air circulation during rain

has something like 10 of the world's 14 climate zones (unclear how many climate zones there are, and even less unclear how many hawaii has, lol)

more local ads on tv and radio (fewer "big box" stores, after all)

island music on the radio. many stations.

chickens everywhere, and rooster farms!

affirming signs: smile, enjoy life, you rock

lack of 18 wheelers

trash / transfer stations / stores

bilingual announcements in hawaiian language / most road signs and place names in hawaiian

asian influence - food, snacks, 7/11!, language (auntie / uncle)

lots of thai food. outside hawaiian, american, and japanese food, it seems like the most popular cuisine 

sweeter foods (including bread), plate lunches, heavy, dense food without veggies

roadside fruit / food stands. many of which are outside homes, in little wooden stands, and a lock box for the honor code

ridged aluminum cans (article about why)

screened lanais

kapu signs all over

irregular business hours

lei fridges in almost all big grocery stores

tsunami warning sirens

foot push pedals at some crosswalks

kauai - "try slow" hand-painted road signs

april 2025 donation

this month i donated to random national parks. we've visited a few here in hawaii:

haleakala national park
hawai'i volcanoes
kaloko-honolohau historial park
pu'uhonua o honaunau historical park
pu'ukohola haiau historical site

i always try to go to the visitor center at each park to buy a postcard or something, and when checking out, the machine asks if i want to donate so i always do. between $1 and $20, depending on my mood, lol.

btw, i'm VERY happy i purchased an annual national parks pass! it's SUCH a good deal if you go to places like this. national parks are like $30 a pop, and national historic parks sometimes also charge. my current pass i bought at acadia last summer :)

march 2025 donation

this month i donated to taylor randal of soft paw vintage. i follow her on instagram because she makes really pretty quilted clothing items and accessories. i happened upon her instagram story after she had been to the dentist and found out she needs two new crowns which will cost a buncha money :'( she just seemed so defeated so i immediately messaged her for her venmo and sent over $25.

non-profits needs money, but so do individuals! my tiny gift won't get her anywhere close to funding her dental needs, but hopefully she can treat herself to something nice and be cheered up a bit. 

i've been feeling pretty down lately cause of current administration bullshit, so i hope that she'll pass along this small bit of random kindness and cheer someone else up too. we all need a little more happiness!

(lol, my god i hope she's not a maga-head!!)

february 2025 donation

this month i donated to pbs, because with trump back in power. well, you just *know* he's gonna pull some dumb, shitty move like trying to defund public media.

impressions: stockton

we spent about 3 months in stockton. j picked it cause it paid well, was close enough to home so we could easily go back for the holidays, and (we thought) it was close to a lot of things in norcal: bay area, napa, tahoe, yosemite, etc. 

the first thing i noticed about stockton is that it was so many big beautiful trees! i kind of couldn't believe we had spent so much time fawning over the new england foliage when it was just as gorgeous here, and maybe even more so since it had the deeper reds of japanese maples and the bright yellows of ginkos. new england mostly has a smaller range of colors, tho it has many many more trees. 

i didn't mind stockton at all, even tho it ended up not being as close to things as we had thought. socal coastal privilege means that we didn't realize so many roads would close due to weather, lol. other than it's beautiful trees tho, stockton is kind of just any other californian city. i joked that it's the norcal bellflower or stanton. we also joked that it's "a plain woman who is past her prime." but seriously, it was fine. it also had a river running thru it, which, of course, i liked tho actually spent zero time at. we had a really lovely two bedroom house with a huge yard and a big ole pecan tree in the front yard. it was all very nice.

so many big leafy trees!

lots of sweet gum trees (look kind of like maple leaves), japanese maples, oaks, ginkos

big piles of leaves in the street waiting for "the claw"

big lawns

slanty residential sidewalks (so you can park half on/ half off)

more tailgating drivers

so many panhandlers...

(popular stockton trees list, and official stockton tree list as planted by the govt)