LIFE AT 15 CRAIGSIDE

I will have been living at 15 Craigside for 10 years as of this coming May. For those seeking a secure and comfortable lifestyle for the rest of your lives, this is the place.

This 13-story tower offers 170 independent living units (140 one-bedroom apartments and 30 studios), a 41-bed licensed nursing facility, 4 boarder beds, and assisted living services throughout the building.

Here is a rating from U.S. News and World Report. And another. Interested? Click here.

Here are photos of recent and upcoming activities. First, we are back to wearing masks. After all, the average age is in the mid-80s.

The administrative staff, with Chief Operating Officer Bree Komagome.

We have a monthly Aloha Hour, where new residents and new staff members are introduced, with drinks and appetizers. President of the residents Irene Nakamoto with Renee Ohta, executive assistant to Bree, followed by Lorri Kobata, director of talent and acquisitions

We invite speakers, such as Robert Toyofuku, lobbyists, who educated us on how to get a bill passed by the State Legislature. He represents 62 organizations, including Boy Scouts of America, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Johnson Controls, UBER Technologies and Hawaiian Humane Society. Joined us for lunch.

15 Craigside provides three meals a day. For dinner, we bring our own drinks. Below, David, who made purple martinis, and below that, Steve with our wines.

We have dining tables for dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

My brother Dan from Las Vegas with his bridge team for a tournament at the Hawaiian Prince. We had lunch at Oceans in Halekulani, Nice Day and Fook Yuen. The following meal is only for Fook Yuen, where we had the $480 dinner for ten.

There was a line outside the restaurant through our entire 2-hour meal. Dan, Kyungwon and Sooja, followed by Hannah in the second photo.

Janice and Yas.

We started with a Decoy Chardonnay, went on to a Meiomi Pinot Noir, then Justin Cabernet Sauvignon, ending with cognac.

Caught the #4 bus outside of 15 Craigside, which passed through downtown, up to the University of Hawaii, and down McCully Street to a bus stop exactly at this restaurant. Took the bus home. Night bus travel is iffy, but this one worked out fine.

Here are the activities for February.

February 6. Tai chi classes cancelled because our instructor is on a trip to Japan.

February 11, Super Bowl shown in our theater.

We just had a Korean lunch, where Cass Beer and Korean shoju were served, and soon to follow will be a Chinese New Year lunch, then a Valentine's dinner.

Someone on this floor replaces the decor outside our floor elevator.

There is a monthly Action Line newsletter. That cover photo for this month is a shot I took on our recent trip to Japan. Waiting for the Shinkansen.

Among the features in this issue were a cocktail hour, John's hole-in-one and an announcement about the Photo Club.

I will today be making a presentation on our Fall colors trip to Japan.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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