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There’s a flash flood watch in effect for the entire state, although the Advertiser confused the situation early today with a breaking news item about the flood watch that carried the headline, “Flash flood warning now in effect for all islands”. When you’ve been in this situation a few times you learn that a “warning” means flash flooding is imminent, while a watch means “that conditions may develop that could lead to flash flooding.” Confusing the two levels of alert isn’t a good thing in these circumstances.

Speaking of the continuing storm, we took Toby and Harry to the vet yesterday to update vacinations and check other little problems. This was the scene near the corner where Ahuimanu Road comes down to Kahekili Highway where a line of Vertical Wili Wili have been struggling to survive against an attacking bug. All had been snapped off by the storm’s high winds. The view in the other direction was a mirror image of this one. Just click for a larger version.

We’re hoping to get through December 7th without further flooding so that we can celebrate my father’s 94th birthday this evening.

That period of computer withdrawal during Wednesday’s blackout was a reminder of how intertwined I’ve gotten with these techno tools and toys. It always seems like high tech is better, but then there are wonderful examples of low tech being put to much higher use. In Japan, half of the current best selling books are novels written on tiny cell phone keyboards. And then I ran across this rather humbling gallery of photos taken with a Treo 650 cell phone, a reminder that it’s not the quality of your photo equipment but the ability of your eye to see potential photographs in the rush of everyday life.

By the way, back to the vet visit, the blemish on Toby’s ear appears to be a simple freckle rather than potential skin cancer, he’s gain (oh my!) two pounds since his last visit, and Ms. Annie’s lump has disappeared with the antibiotics over the past 10 days.

A reader asked my opinion of whether Hawaiirama.com‘s credibility will suffer by having the Honolulu Academy of Arts new communications director contributing items about her own organization.

My reply was that this seems more direct and appropriate than the more typical media approach of superficially rewriting press releases and then reporting them as news. Readers of Lesa Griffith’s reports won’t be confused about the relationship between author and subject. I don’t have a problem with that.

Mr. Toby gets to be Friday’s featured feline again this week.

He followed us up the street during Wednesday’s power outage, to see his new friend, Tiger.

This is the two of them, Tiger out on the sidewalk trying to coax Toby out from under the Ti leaves.

Click on the photo for a larger version, or click here for a close-up of Mr. Toby.