Zippy’s McCully Renovating

If you want to eat at Zippy's McCully, you'd better hurry.

They're closing for a few months after this weekend for a few months. It must have been a couple of years ago when I heard this popular eatery was going to close for a major renovation. But then they kept postponing it and I forgot all about it.

When I went there for breakfast yesterday (our kitchen has been painted but is in the process of being restocked so I can't cook at home yet), I saw this sign on their restaurant door:

At the stroke of midnight Sunday, the restaurant, take-out counter, Napoleon's Bakery and Osaka Okazuya are ceasing service until the Fall.

The staff is being redeployed temporarily to other Zippy's locations throughout Honolulu and I hope they all come back to McCully when the place reopens. I've been eating there for years and have come to regard them all as friends.

Guess I need to get my chili moco somewhere else for a few months.

‘L’ Is For The …

A few weeks ago when we were checking out a house for sale in Manoa, I noticed something quite unusual on the living room wall:

It was a piece of art consisting of four mesh hands in various positions … intriguing indeed. I asked the real estate agent if she knew anything about it and she said it was created by the home owner’s son.

The hands were forming the letters “L,” “O,” “V,” and “E” in American Sign Language. It’s the kind of piece that one might find in one of the well-known art museums around the country. But here it was, hanging on the wall of a home not that far from where I live.

Kudos to the artist – Ehn (pronounced “Ian”) Nishioka, a junior at Iolani School, from whence my two sons graduated many years ago.

Eat Chocolate, Lose Weight?

It may be true, it may not be … but a recent study shows that people who eat chocolate five times a week ended up with a body mass index lower than those who shun it. This was reported recently in the morning newspaper.

The research was done by Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, whose letter to the Archives of Internal Medicine provided some details.

Say you’re five feet tall and 120 pounds. One body mass index (BMI) equals five pounds – not a heck of a lot, but a five-pound loss is a five-pound loss, y’know?  Unfortunately, there aren’t any details as to what kind of chocolate was used in the research, or what type of controls were applied (e.g., diet and exercise).

But she did note that even if those who ate chocolate consumed more calories, the chocolate-BMI relationship still held true.

See? I knew those mini-Hershey candies served a good purpose.

I Can't Stop Laughing

I don't know why, but this cartoon reached into me and touched every tickle nerve I have. Even now, while I post this, I'm having a good laugh.

God bless cartoonists and their sense of humor!

Frozen Moments in Time

The Former Sally Ann Motel, Lake Tahoe

About 40 years ago (has it really been that long?), I took the wife, my little son, and my in-laws on a Christmas holiday to Lake Tahoe. What a memorable trip that was.

First of all, we almost missed our flight at Los Angeles International Airport, getting there just in time to check in, thanks to traffic. Then, as we approached Lake Tahoe Airport (which isn't operating any more), we had to circle for quite a while because the runways were packed with snow and we had to wait for them to be cleared.

I think every barf bag on the plane was used. Even I, who never gets airsick, was about five minutes away from flagging down the stewardess (I didn't have one in my seat pocket ... the wife, y'know).

Okay, so we finally get our car and drive to the motel pictured above. It was a nice little motel called "The Sally Ann" that I found in the AAA Trip Book. It was still mid-afternoon, so I decided we'd go to dinner in Reno, about a 45-minute drive down the mountain. No problem. We got there fine.

Then, on the way back, it started to snow. It snowed and snowed and snowed. And then it snowed and snowed some more. I joined a short line of cars that crept up the mountain, occasionally trading the lead-off spot, slowly making our way back to the motel. That 45-minute Tahoe-Reno drive turned out to be a two-hour return trip.

I thought we were going to die. And believe me, even though everybody was tired, nobody was falling asleep. We thought we were going to die.

I can't tell you how happy I was to see the lights of the town appear before us, and the motel sign glowing in the snowfall. We took a cab to dinner and boy, could that cabbie drive, just plowing through the snow wall in the middle of the road, controlled skids and all that.

That night, the shower never felt so good, and my spirits were up because we didn't die. So I did the only thing a young man who grew up in Hawaii might do. I went for a walk in the blizzard. Oh, about a hundred yards down the road and then a hundred yards up the road and back.

This man slept good that night. The next morning, Christmas Day, it was like a winter wonderland ... except I couldn't see our car. It was buried in snow, the result of what they were calling an 80-year storm. The car wouldn't free, no matter how much I tried. Finally, the motel owner showed up, returning prematurely from a visit to Sacramento; he fired up a little Bobcat and pulled my car free.

Poor guy, he got a good talking to from the mother-in-law. She laid into him: How dare he go to see his mother in Sacramento and not tell us there was a storm coming. I felt sorry for the guy, I mean, even the weather experts never expected so much snow; plus, it wasn't his fault. So I had a short talk with him afterwards and apologized for the way she'd acted.

I did miss the longest NFL playoff game in history because I was outside trying to put chains on the car tires. The rental agency had only provided one set, and it wasn't that easy to dig the car out and install the chains. My legs felt frozen and the only thing I could think of was amputation below the knees ... "Operating room, here I come."

The snowfall had stopped and everything looked so white and pristine as we went to breakfast at Harold's Club. Oh, how beautiful the lake looked from 'way atop the hotel. Certainly worth all the trouble we'd gone through.

Heck, we even got a partial refund from Hertz because of the tire chain situation. I don't know what made me think of this adventure this morning. But I did. So there you are.

Hope Springs Eternal

For baseball fans, yesterday was the first day of the rest of the year. It was opening day in Major League Baseball, and the boys are back in town. Every team will start its season in the next couple of days; every team will feel it has a chance for the diamond ring come October.

I probably jinxed my favorite team –  the Atlanta Braves –  by placing preseason bets in Las Vegas that they will win the National League pennant and the World Series. They've got a good-looking team this year and open their season today in New York against the Mets.

We'll see if the Braves can get into post-season play after their 162-game season ends on October 3, either as the National League East Division winner, or one of two (one more than last year) wild card teams. I've got my fingers crossed for them.

It's a brand new season, and for the teams and us fans, hope springs eternal.

Go Braves!

World War II Gun Emplacement?

I wish I knew what this concrete block along the seawall of Kakaako Waterfront Park is. I see it every time the wife and I go walking there.

In a perfect world, someone would have written about it in a blog or on a website somewhere, but an intense Google search turned up nothing.

My guess is it's the base of a turret, perhaps a World War II gun emplacement installed along Honolulu's shore to keep vigil over the skies, as anyone at the location can watch airplanes heading to the right, toward Hickam Air Force Base, which was strafed pretty badly during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But the thing is, I don't know for sure. There's no plaque there or anything. If anybody has information, I sure would appreciate hearing from them.

Humorous Sign Sighting

Signs like these can be found all over the United States, usually gracing one side of an aisle, hanging from a rotating exhibit, or a store wall.

So it's not surprising that when I walked into a gift shop near Lexington, Kentucky, that I came across these and stood there for several minutes just reading, visualizing and giggling to myself. I had to stop when I noticed several people casting odd glances in my direction.

See if they don't make YOU smile:

The last one is my favorite. An alert person will learn something useful and informative every day!

Nosy Doggie

As the audience packed into the Woolshed at Kentucky Down Under in Horse Cave (I love that name), Kentucky, I was drinking in the Australian barn scene before me and getting used to the smell of animals and their doings (if you know what I mean), when something caught my eye.

On the stage, off to the left, I could see a doggy nose pressing through a gap in the wooden wall.

It was indeed a nosy Australian Sheep Dog, trying desperately to sniff out what was going on in the theater seats. Did I say "theater seats"? It was more like wooden-bench stadium seating.

Apparently this dog does this every time there's a sheep show. Nosy critter.

That's all, end of story. I bet you thought there was a clever and entertaining ending, right? LOL.

What's Up, Doc?

9:30 a.m. Thursday, March 29, 2012

See the policeman on the right side of this picture, holding his arms out to his sides as if to say, "What's with you!"? Also, notice the light is red.

Okay, here's the scoop. Last week, the intersection of Beretania and Punahou Streets was a mess – only one lane was open in either direction on Punahou because of road work, and two lanes heading downtown on Beretania were closed. It was an extension of work farther up the street, I reckon, as Punahou has been a mess for a couple of weeks now.

Anyway, I had whipped out my phone and had just clicked a shot of the mess when I noticed the cop in a "What's with you, buster" stance, staring at me, wiggling his fingers, obviously letting me know he was upset that I wasn’t paying attention to him.

But y’know, I was paying attention to the traffic light and frankly didn’t notice him telling me to proceed against the light. He gave the “the eye” as I drove forward just as the light changed and passed him.

Me? I just gave him a Queen Elizabeth hand wiggle-wave as I drove by. No harm, no foul.