HOW I CELEBRATED MY 80TH BIRTHDAY

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        280

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          30       369     4182         398       960          47
Sept     3     1094     5886          830     1083       174
            4     1033     5814          855     1066       115
            5       707     4822          646     1044       101
            6       432     4129          456     1008       110
            8       496     4477          516     1107         82
            9     1208     6222        1136     1168         82

Summary:  Just when you thought all was getting better, new deaths jumped to where they were last month.  Scarily, the new cases/day figure for India is now up to 95,529, and they don't do all that much testing.

Surely I can't be inconveniencing anyone, but my grand finale of rock concert films is again being delayed because I thought I would first finish viewing a couple more of them.  Maybe tomorrow or Saturday.

I was asked by several people what did I have for my birthday dinner.  Initially, I was embarrassed, but on afterthought, rationalized that what I did was good for Planet Earth and Humanity.  To begin, my body is like the United Nations.  It doesn't matter who is in charge.  Limbs and muscles do whatever they want.  This is why my golf game is mediocre.

Well, on Sunday, with great anticipation, I was looking forward to having a Japanese wagyu beef, sashimi and foie gras birthday party.  I opened the fridge, and saw all the food that was accumulating.  Of course this is a waste, but decided to throw away as much as possible.  

A part of my brain then suggested, why not have leftovers for my birthday.  Do something humanitarian this day that commemorates my 80th.  Pretty soon there was a consensus, and this is what I had, watching a baseball game:

The drinks were first class:

Hibiki whiskey and an expensive Cabernet Sauvignon from Stanford.   The meal was mostly vegetarian, with cheese and a croissant.  That plate of brown circular things is salami, which must have been around for a couple of months.  So I fried the pieces to make sure any bad germs were killed. 

Incredibly, I must be changing, but this meal was eminently satisfying.  And everything was a leftover from a previous one, including the drinks.  No birthday cake, but I do have a piece of custard pie waiting for me.   Plus, I still have the wagyu/sashimi/foie gras ready for another celebration.  Maybe tonight to kick-off the NFL season.

However, part of my mind said, surely, I can do better than that, so on Tuesday, after spending some time in my Manoa Campus office, I dropped by Happy Days and took out a Peking Duck package.  The drinks were a beer, the red wine from above and a Johnny Walker Black Label on one large spherical rock.  Why?  A bottle of JWBL on the table at a Chinese banquet was the standard a long time ago.

The NFL season starts today, at 8:20PM EDT (2:20PM if you live in Hawaii).  No problem that this falls just around my nap time.  I'll record the game, watch later tonight and skip the commercials.

A lot of questions.  Will they be wearing masks?  No doubt civil rights will become prominent.  Trump will be pissed.

I alert you to this happening, for you can still add an NFL fantasy team, right now.  The other day I selected three on ESPN.  Today, I went to the NFL site and drafted a fourth.  First time with this link.  Made two mistakes.  Chose players who remain questionable.  Watch out for that small yellow circle with a Q.  Don't pick those players. However, you can right now go to:

• NFL fantasy
• Click on Don't wait, start your season.  Click to draft your team now!  You might need to wait until enough competitors sign up.  It'll take only a few minutes, if not seconds.  Need to get up to 10.  In the meantime, you can read the details.  Also, you can click on TEST THE DRAFT CLIENT to see if you computer is ready to do this.
• As I was there, I picked a second NFL team.  I was #9 out of ten in the snake sequence, and #1 is much better, as I was the first time.  However, I did not select a possibly injured player.  But I had two QBs at the end of round three.  A huge mistake, for people don't select quarterbacks until rounds three or four or five.  Running backs are the prized commodity in fantasy football.  It took about half an hour, after which NFL sent me an e-mail and woke me up with the following score:

HONOLULU WILL ATTEMPT TO MAKE A STRONG STATEMENT THIS SEASON Draft Grade Proj Record Proj Finish B- 0-14  10

0-14?  Now this does challenge me to prove NFL wrong.  My first draft was a little better:

ALTHOUGH THEY STRETCHED FOR SOME EARLY PICKS, HONOLULU HOPES TO FACTOR HEAVILY INTO THE PLAYOFF PICTURE

Draft Grade	Proj Record	Proj Finish
B	7-7	T5

Fantasy baseball tends to be rather stressful, requiring intense concentration.  I drafted my first two NFL teams on ESPN while watching Rachel Maddow interview Michael Cohen, of DISLOYAL fame.  Here is a 12-minute portion of the nearly hour-long discussion.

Kinda boring, but if you're from Hawaii, lived in the Los Angeles area, and now and then went to Las Vegas, you'll enjoy this 11-minute segment.  You might know some of them.

This is September 10, and I noticed one more straggling sunburst bloomed on my lanai, the finale of this season:

I had an aquarium with half a dozen guppies.  One day, they all died, but left some babies.  About a dozen.  Let's see how they will grow with time:

Let me thus end with some incredible sea life:

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