Congratulations you are the first reader of the 200th Monkeymind blog and winner of a brand new absolutely nothing! Which is a shame. Anyone who has read them all deserves something for their forbearance, tolerance , patience, and high pain threshold. Go ahead, give yourself a treat. Eat an ice cream cone or buy some snow tires. It's your choice and you have my blessing.
I've won a few things in my life. I've twice won turkeys. The first one was in a raffle and the second I won by bowling the highest score in a league during Thanksgiving week. I have won basketball tickets in a free throw shooting contest and a case of beer and a t-shirt in a closest to the pin hole in a golf tournament. I was also on a team that won a golf "Scramble" which is a type of tournament and we teammates each pocketed about fifty bucks for that achievement. The big luckies like cars and houses and Reader's Digest millions have thus far eluded me. Maybe next week.
I do believe in luck, joss, buena fortuna or whatever you choose to call unexpected happy happenings even if they are only the avoidance of downer deeds. Chance seems to play a part in our lives even if most of what occurs is a result of our own doings. The short list of my winnings noted in the previous paragraph shows all but one were actually earned awards. That one, though, the raffle turkey, was pure chance and maybe luck exists in roughly that ratio of earned to random good fortune. I also believe that some people are just, flat luckier than others. Multiple lottery winners come to mind and lone survivors of this disaster or that accident seem to bear me out on that point. Years ago I wrote a bit about a guy who had achieved everything in life, fame, wealth and happiness but as he walks up the aisle to accept his award as the Man of the Century he trips over a blind man's cane, tumbles into the orchestra pit and is impaled on a drumstick. The podium then topples onto him from the stage and the man ends his days in a rocker sucking his thumb and humming show tunes. I have no idea where that story is now, but it goes to show how lucky you are. If I could find it, you'd have to read it because I'd make it a blog.
And that, I suspect, would be pushing my luck.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Bugs Must Die
"Hit it right out of the air!" The big green fly with the Vincent Price head, I'm talking about. Damn thing's been bugging me, pun intended, for two days. It wouldn't land and give me a clean shot so I knew I'd have to get him in flight and I just did that. I'm not feeling an ounce of remorse either. Usually I say something like sorry old sock when I snuff out a bug, because I'm a big hearted "we are all one" kind of a Zenmeister dude, but not this time. This time I had the revenge factor working.
A short while after hosing down Nikita late Thursday afternoon, I shucked my wet blue jeans for a pair of dry old sweats. Unbeknownst to me these cotton comfys were temporary shelter for a bug of some sort. I'm guessing spider, but that's not beknownst to me either as it somehow made its escape without being detected. Before departing for, I'm guessing again, some other article of my clothing, said insecto took a nasty chunk from the back of my knee right atop one of the tendons that runs along back there. I did not sleep well Thursday night. There was a burning, itching it's got to be scratched sensation that conspired to keep me awake for much of my scheduled dream time that was to include slam dunks and a hole in one. Still, I got through Friday morning with nought but a sore leg and more of the annoyingly hard to ignore itching. It was late Friday afternoon when a pain moved up my thigh from the knee and a fever arrived. I mentioned this to Ramon and he told me he had watched a show about spiders on Animal Planet only the night before and, considering my symptoms, he gave me two hours. Luckily, England was playing a friendly with Brazil on the telly so I knew my last hours would be well spent. The two national teams tied and I survived all the way until the third inning of the Red Sox Yankee game before the fever and assorted other symptoms drove me from the couch to my bed where I thought to make progress in the book I was reading before my demise.
And that, of course, is when the fly made its first appearance. 'jever try to read with a fat noisy fly doing a passable impression of a Japanese Zero kamikazy-ing about your head? It requires more will than I had at the moment. Add in Gus snapping his jaws when the bug blew by and to my fevered brain I had already passed and was paying the price for all my sins. Okay, maybe just that one back in '67. I was finally forced to turn out the lights which calmed the fly and, blissfully, induced my own sleep. I awoke a few hours later in a puddle of persperation, fever gone. It was then I vowed revenge.
The fly is just the beginning, ha ha ha ha ha. Be warned you entomological pains in the asses, I am on the hunt. No more Mr. Nice guy, ha ha ha ha ha. I have my swatter, I have my Raid and I have thick soles. Bugs must die, ha ha ha ha! Bugs must die!
I may have a few lingering symptoms.
A short while after hosing down Nikita late Thursday afternoon, I shucked my wet blue jeans for a pair of dry old sweats. Unbeknownst to me these cotton comfys were temporary shelter for a bug of some sort. I'm guessing spider, but that's not beknownst to me either as it somehow made its escape without being detected. Before departing for, I'm guessing again, some other article of my clothing, said insecto took a nasty chunk from the back of my knee right atop one of the tendons that runs along back there. I did not sleep well Thursday night. There was a burning, itching it's got to be scratched sensation that conspired to keep me awake for much of my scheduled dream time that was to include slam dunks and a hole in one. Still, I got through Friday morning with nought but a sore leg and more of the annoyingly hard to ignore itching. It was late Friday afternoon when a pain moved up my thigh from the knee and a fever arrived. I mentioned this to Ramon and he told me he had watched a show about spiders on Animal Planet only the night before and, considering my symptoms, he gave me two hours. Luckily, England was playing a friendly with Brazil on the telly so I knew my last hours would be well spent. The two national teams tied and I survived all the way until the third inning of the Red Sox Yankee game before the fever and assorted other symptoms drove me from the couch to my bed where I thought to make progress in the book I was reading before my demise.
And that, of course, is when the fly made its first appearance. 'jever try to read with a fat noisy fly doing a passable impression of a Japanese Zero kamikazy-ing about your head? It requires more will than I had at the moment. Add in Gus snapping his jaws when the bug blew by and to my fevered brain I had already passed and was paying the price for all my sins. Okay, maybe just that one back in '67. I was finally forced to turn out the lights which calmed the fly and, blissfully, induced my own sleep. I awoke a few hours later in a puddle of persperation, fever gone. It was then I vowed revenge.
The fly is just the beginning, ha ha ha ha ha. Be warned you entomological pains in the asses, I am on the hunt. No more Mr. Nice guy, ha ha ha ha ha. I have my swatter, I have my Raid and I have thick soles. Bugs must die, ha ha ha ha! Bugs must die!
I may have a few lingering symptoms.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Golf and the Bench Press
There used to be a theatre on Colfax Avenue in Denver that featured XXX movies. I think it was called the Bluebird. It was worth a weekly drive-by as the movie titles on the marquis were usually parodies of actual first run features and thus good for a chuckle. I mention this because I was about to say something about pumping iron which is a euphemism for weight lifting and the title of a 1970 something documentary featuring Ahhhhnold and I am compelled to tell you that to this day I am unable to say the phrase pumping iron without thinking of "Pumping Irene", one of the Bluebird's better titles... and now you won't be able to either.
And I did pump some, uh, iron yesterday. Still sore from my two previous bouts with the inert objects lying about waiting to be lifted, I nevertheless engaged in what has to be objectively viewed by those not so inclined as a what the hell are you doing that for waste of time. I didn't really have a good answer for that until yesterday. Before engaging in the aforementioned less than mentally stimulating endeavor, I had accessed the deepest and most profound corners of my mind which just happen to be in Woowoo Charly's head and asked it to look up weight training for seniors on the Internet. There at number 10 on a list of ten, after the usual blah blah blah about good for the bones, cardiovascular stimulation, long life and improved chances of getting it on with Hale Berry was the answer I was looking for. To wit, weight lifting can improve your golf game.
Well alrighty then! This would have to be put to the test.
I got my man Marco on the phone and asked him if it was raining in Puerto Armuelles. He said something in Spanish that I took for a no, so Woowoo Chuck, RTGFKAR and I loaded up Nikita and set off to our as still unknown named Country Ha Ha Club.
We stopped first at Pricesmart to stock up on our diminished booze supply and when we loaded the box of vodka, scotch and wine into the car it occurred to me that if we had any kind of accident it was sure to be reported as "alcohol involved." We also got a giant box of those little cheesy fish shaped crackers whose name I can't recall but it might be Little Cheesy Fish Shaped Crackers. The last one in the store.
When we got to the CC it was, you might have guessed it, raining. Not much though and we hadn't driven all that way not to play golf. Of course, even if we had, all would not have been lost. We had, after all, scored those fish. We teed up in sprinkles at the first and by the third the rain had stopped. I've described the course in previous blogs and it was much the same apart from being greened up considerably. The horses were absent this time so the fairway grass was a bit higher than usual. That last a sentence to give new readers a sense of the course's splendor. Dark black lines had been added to outline the fairways - this side of the line was fairway, that side rough, a thing nice to know even if the grass was exactly the same height on either side - and we all got around, if not nicely, eventually. Yers Truly hit the ball particularly well for the most part and I can only attribute this to one thing and we all know what that is.
Pumping Irene!
And I did pump some, uh, iron yesterday. Still sore from my two previous bouts with the inert objects lying about waiting to be lifted, I nevertheless engaged in what has to be objectively viewed by those not so inclined as a what the hell are you doing that for waste of time. I didn't really have a good answer for that until yesterday. Before engaging in the aforementioned less than mentally stimulating endeavor, I had accessed the deepest and most profound corners of my mind which just happen to be in Woowoo Charly's head and asked it to look up weight training for seniors on the Internet. There at number 10 on a list of ten, after the usual blah blah blah about good for the bones, cardiovascular stimulation, long life and improved chances of getting it on with Hale Berry was the answer I was looking for. To wit, weight lifting can improve your golf game.
Well alrighty then! This would have to be put to the test.
I got my man Marco on the phone and asked him if it was raining in Puerto Armuelles. He said something in Spanish that I took for a no, so Woowoo Chuck, RTGFKAR and I loaded up Nikita and set off to our as still unknown named Country Ha Ha Club.
We stopped first at Pricesmart to stock up on our diminished booze supply and when we loaded the box of vodka, scotch and wine into the car it occurred to me that if we had any kind of accident it was sure to be reported as "alcohol involved." We also got a giant box of those little cheesy fish shaped crackers whose name I can't recall but it might be Little Cheesy Fish Shaped Crackers. The last one in the store.
When we got to the CC it was, you might have guessed it, raining. Not much though and we hadn't driven all that way not to play golf. Of course, even if we had, all would not have been lost. We had, after all, scored those fish. We teed up in sprinkles at the first and by the third the rain had stopped. I've described the course in previous blogs and it was much the same apart from being greened up considerably. The horses were absent this time so the fairway grass was a bit higher than usual. That last a sentence to give new readers a sense of the course's splendor. Dark black lines had been added to outline the fairways - this side of the line was fairway, that side rough, a thing nice to know even if the grass was exactly the same height on either side - and we all got around, if not nicely, eventually. Yers Truly hit the ball particularly well for the most part and I can only attribute this to one thing and we all know what that is.
Pumping Irene!
Morning Coffee
RTGFKAR returns with this entry:
Coffee. You know, that brown ubiquitous liquid found all over America in cafes, restaurants, Starbucks and Peabodys everywhere. Probably not a home in a thousand doesn’t have a Mr Coffee or a Braun coffeemaker at the least, these days maybe more likely a cappuccino maker with steam doohickeys and milk scalders and cinnamon infusers galore.
Coffee here in Panama is everywhere. At least in the mountain region around Boquete. The most recent crop of Geisha coffee sold for $130 a pound at auction, other Panamanian coffee goes for a mere $7 a pound. Doc buys our Ruiz coffee at about half that, direct from the coffee plant. By which I mean the coffee processing place, not the actual plant. The actual plant is everywhere here. If there’s a piece of land bigger than six square inches, someone has planted coffee on it. And it doesn’t even have to be level! There is coffee growing on land nearly vertical. The pickers must start at the top and freefall through the plants, grasping at what they can as they fall by.
Our property has coffee galore. The half acre was 90% coffee. A few plaintains and bananas and the odd limon (lime) tree completed the inventory. The builder sliced a notch into the hillside to level a place for the house, leaving a plateau overlooking the remaining quarter acre of coffee.
Coffee plants are OK. They have pretty, glossy leaves and I hear they have fragrant, orangeish-smelling blossoms before the coffee bean berries come out. But our soon-to-be patio looks out over the lower half of the property, which is a sea of coffee trees. I would like a little variety. Especially after seeing several friends’ landscaping on similar pieces of land.
Garden design was in order. We were supplied with the land plot, which showed nicely drawn lines with neat numbers attached to them, but looking out over the jungle of coffee, they meant little. A bit of hands-on was called for.
So, last Sunday, being an off day for the house laborers and having the site all to myself, I procured the household machete and a sharpener and wandered off to the site. Now, in Denver or Brooklyn perhaps, walking along the street carrying a sixteen inch wickedly sharpened blade might draw more attention than the occasional “Hola” or “Bueno”, but not here in Boquete.
Reaching the property, I elected to start from the bottom up, clearing a way from the driveway to the plateau to get an idea of the lay of the land. I hadn’t taken machete 101, but how hard could it be?
If you remember the old Juan Valdez commercials, Juan walked his burro through neat rows of shoulder-high coffee plants, picking only the finest, ripest beans for the best Columbian blend. Juan was nowhere to be found. Nor were neat rows of shoulder-high bushes. These plants had been planted years ago and the thick, rich volcanic soil had been very very good to them. Many towered over my head and joined together into bowers of impenetrable greenery.
Now, in a battle of machete vs. coffee plant the machete is hands down the favorite. Singing steel, flashing blade in the morning sun, a storm of flying slivers of leaf and limb of rubiaceae arabica everywhere. Within minutes I was lost. Sure I was only fifty feet away from the road and probably less to the plateau, but the clever coffee had cunningly closed in behind me and cut me off.
I didn’t know if I was on my land or the neighboring Indian’s or our landlord’s acres, destroying his $7 a pound crop with every swing. I stopped and let the flying flora settle around me and became aware of another factor that I might have taken into account had I thought about it. Friction. The machete fits nicely into one’s hand and each satisfying “Thwack!” clears a limb or two away, but the wooden handle also rubs a little on your skin with each swing.
I retraced my steps through the debris, nursing the small blisters that I knew would break and annoy me for the next week or so. “I demand a rematch!” I snarled at the unaffected wall of greenery. Suitably chastised, the plants knew better than to answer. I went home for a cup of tea.
Coffee. You know, that brown ubiquitous liquid found all over America in cafes, restaurants, Starbucks and Peabodys everywhere. Probably not a home in a thousand doesn’t have a Mr Coffee or a Braun coffeemaker at the least, these days maybe more likely a cappuccino maker with steam doohickeys and milk scalders and cinnamon infusers galore.
Coffee here in Panama is everywhere. At least in the mountain region around Boquete. The most recent crop of Geisha coffee sold for $130 a pound at auction, other Panamanian coffee goes for a mere $7 a pound. Doc buys our Ruiz coffee at about half that, direct from the coffee plant. By which I mean the coffee processing place, not the actual plant. The actual plant is everywhere here. If there’s a piece of land bigger than six square inches, someone has planted coffee on it. And it doesn’t even have to be level! There is coffee growing on land nearly vertical. The pickers must start at the top and freefall through the plants, grasping at what they can as they fall by.
Our property has coffee galore. The half acre was 90% coffee. A few plaintains and bananas and the odd limon (lime) tree completed the inventory. The builder sliced a notch into the hillside to level a place for the house, leaving a plateau overlooking the remaining quarter acre of coffee.
Coffee plants are OK. They have pretty, glossy leaves and I hear they have fragrant, orangeish-smelling blossoms before the coffee bean berries come out. But our soon-to-be patio looks out over the lower half of the property, which is a sea of coffee trees. I would like a little variety. Especially after seeing several friends’ landscaping on similar pieces of land.
Garden design was in order. We were supplied with the land plot, which showed nicely drawn lines with neat numbers attached to them, but looking out over the jungle of coffee, they meant little. A bit of hands-on was called for.
So, last Sunday, being an off day for the house laborers and having the site all to myself, I procured the household machete and a sharpener and wandered off to the site. Now, in Denver or Brooklyn perhaps, walking along the street carrying a sixteen inch wickedly sharpened blade might draw more attention than the occasional “Hola” or “Bueno”, but not here in Boquete.
Reaching the property, I elected to start from the bottom up, clearing a way from the driveway to the plateau to get an idea of the lay of the land. I hadn’t taken machete 101, but how hard could it be?
If you remember the old Juan Valdez commercials, Juan walked his burro through neat rows of shoulder-high coffee plants, picking only the finest, ripest beans for the best Columbian blend. Juan was nowhere to be found. Nor were neat rows of shoulder-high bushes. These plants had been planted years ago and the thick, rich volcanic soil had been very very good to them. Many towered over my head and joined together into bowers of impenetrable greenery.
Now, in a battle of machete vs. coffee plant the machete is hands down the favorite. Singing steel, flashing blade in the morning sun, a storm of flying slivers of leaf and limb of rubiaceae arabica everywhere. Within minutes I was lost. Sure I was only fifty feet away from the road and probably less to the plateau, but the clever coffee had cunningly closed in behind me and cut me off.
I didn’t know if I was on my land or the neighboring Indian’s or our landlord’s acres, destroying his $7 a pound crop with every swing. I stopped and let the flying flora settle around me and became aware of another factor that I might have taken into account had I thought about it. Friction. The machete fits nicely into one’s hand and each satisfying “Thwack!” clears a limb or two away, but the wooden handle also rubs a little on your skin with each swing.
I retraced my steps through the debris, nursing the small blisters that I knew would break and annoy me for the next week or so. “I demand a rematch!” I snarled at the unaffected wall of greenery. Suitably chastised, the plants knew better than to answer. I went home for a cup of tea.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Small Miracles
I am writing this on my own computer. I don't know why it chose to allow me into the blog after months of lock out, but here I am. The only reason I even attempted entry was the near death of our household computer. Yesterday while finishing the blog on that computer, the screen suddenly turned pink and remains so this morning. It is difficult to see through the pink haze to the typed words so I thought I'd give this puppy another chance and even though I had to slip in the back door through "comments" here I bloody am.
"Ramon" I said to my bro seated at his own computer, "why would my computer screen suddenly turn pink?"
"It's because you've just become gay," he replied.
"Don't be silly," I said, followed by "but damn you look cute this morning."
Of course now that I am here I really don't have anything to say. I didn't think I'd be writing this morning. I thought instead that I'd be reading the news - Sox won fourth straight, Rockies streak at seven, Bush still an idiot - and then move on to weight lifting 101. Blah blah blah gang agley again. Now what do I do?
Our dog Gus is tired of rain. Every day he looks at me and says make it stop, so I give him a cookie. Then he says let's go for a walk and I give him another cookie. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth cookie he just takes them from my hand and drops them on the floor. After that he looks at me and says god what an idiot, so I give him another cookie. I mean talking dogs should be rewarded. On the few mornings without rain, we have been able to take short walks up to our new house site - we take the long way by the road going there and the shortcut down the hill through the jungle going back - and although Gus doesn't get all the exercise he needs from this jaunt, he does enjoy riling up the dozen or so dogs we pass along the way. They bark, growl, show their teeth and look menacing and Gus responds in kind, pulling at his leash and saying let me at 'em. When we turn onto our sirvedumbre, our property access road, I untether Gus and he leads us (Ramon is usually in tow) dutifully to the site by jumping into every mud puddle to either warn us they are there or invite us to join him, I'm not sure which. On site we talk to the capataz, the foreman, and together we bemoan the rain for awhile before saying "...talwaygo" (hasta luego)and heading back. Gus likes this part best as he gets to run amok through the coffee plants and other jungle flora in search of stray chickens. There are a couple of Indian dwellings hidden in this part of the woods and they all have uncooped chickens they keep for eggs and Gus' entertainment. Once Gus has forced a couple fowl air born he's a happy camper and he returns to the trail to lead us home. There he gets a shower from the garden hose and a quick towel off before being allowed back into the house. I promise him that once the rain stops for a goodly while I'll take him for a looong walk and he seems happy with that. He then looks at me with his best puppy dog eyes and says, you guessed it, where's my cookie?
Just thought you might like to know.
"Ramon" I said to my bro seated at his own computer, "why would my computer screen suddenly turn pink?"
"It's because you've just become gay," he replied.
"Don't be silly," I said, followed by "but damn you look cute this morning."
Of course now that I am here I really don't have anything to say. I didn't think I'd be writing this morning. I thought instead that I'd be reading the news - Sox won fourth straight, Rockies streak at seven, Bush still an idiot - and then move on to weight lifting 101. Blah blah blah gang agley again. Now what do I do?
Our dog Gus is tired of rain. Every day he looks at me and says make it stop, so I give him a cookie. Then he says let's go for a walk and I give him another cookie. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth cookie he just takes them from my hand and drops them on the floor. After that he looks at me and says god what an idiot, so I give him another cookie. I mean talking dogs should be rewarded. On the few mornings without rain, we have been able to take short walks up to our new house site - we take the long way by the road going there and the shortcut down the hill through the jungle going back - and although Gus doesn't get all the exercise he needs from this jaunt, he does enjoy riling up the dozen or so dogs we pass along the way. They bark, growl, show their teeth and look menacing and Gus responds in kind, pulling at his leash and saying let me at 'em. When we turn onto our sirvedumbre, our property access road, I untether Gus and he leads us (Ramon is usually in tow) dutifully to the site by jumping into every mud puddle to either warn us they are there or invite us to join him, I'm not sure which. On site we talk to the capataz, the foreman, and together we bemoan the rain for awhile before saying "...talwaygo" (hasta luego)and heading back. Gus likes this part best as he gets to run amok through the coffee plants and other jungle flora in search of stray chickens. There are a couple of Indian dwellings hidden in this part of the woods and they all have uncooped chickens they keep for eggs and Gus' entertainment. Once Gus has forced a couple fowl air born he's a happy camper and he returns to the trail to lead us home. There he gets a shower from the garden hose and a quick towel off before being allowed back into the house. I promise him that once the rain stops for a goodly while I'll take him for a looong walk and he seems happy with that. He then looks at me with his best puppy dog eyes and says, you guessed it, where's my cookie?
Just thought you might like to know.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Gualaca and the Beast
Gualaca. It's pronounced Wah-lah-kah as in Gualaca to play golf as often as possible and it's where we went to re-register the Beast ayer. I used ayer there because it means yesterday and is easier to type than yesterday. Of course I have now, counting this next one, typed yesterday three times while explaining that to you. It just goes to show that the best laid plans of mice and men oft gang agley whatever that means and causes one to ponder just how many plans do mice make anyway? Truly a mystery for the ages if you ask me, and you probably should because I know a thing or two about ages having been several of them. Mysteries though,I've always found baffling. Baffling, for those of you out of the loop, is the decorative underside of a copper cornice. You do know what a cornice is right? That's okay, I don't either.
On the way to Gulaca we stopped at our mechanic's to see how the Beast's recovery was coming along. It was supposed to have been released into our custody sound as a dollar the previous Monday, but further tinkering with valves, injectors and some apparati needed to start diesels that are called, I think, glow worms was called for and all dictated that the car should be left behind and dollars traded for euros as quickly as possible. Tomorrow, or manyana as we say here in Paradise With Rain, only we don't spell it that way, was our mechanic's answer to cuando which means when, but I don't have to tell you that, because you are bright, intelligent listeners, the very best in the blog reading business and although some would say I am sucking up, I mean it...really.
The reason behind the re-registration of the Beast, shhh don't tell it, is that we want to sell it and that can't be legally done without the car having passed inspection and obtained new papers. Those of you who have followed the trials and tribulations of the Beast, okay just the tribulations, the car was never really brought to trial this time, not enough evidence to convict is what they said, but if you ask me, and you should, because I did time with the Beast on an earlier rap, it's guilty on all counts. As for the tribulations, well, you can either take the pills or seek out alternative medicine.
Truth is we've bought another car. It's a newer, sleeker, younger model named Nikita and although not exactly a Trophy Car, it is a step up from the Beast. It could even be a whole stairway up from the Beast, but that only time can tell and you know how fickle and close mouthed time can be. Unless you listen very carefully, sometimes you can't hear time at all.
So far though, I thought as we drove Nikki to Gualaca without incident, time seems to be on our side, philosophically speaking like Mick Jagger that is, and I won't feel bad at all if we can find the Beast a good home with nice parental drivers. If we can't, I do have the Beast's signed consent for its parts to be left to science or Marcos the Mad Mechanic who has reassembled the Beast on several other occasions and is familiar with her idiosyncratic moods, which are not the best kind for a car.
Gualaca? It's a nice little town. Warm and friendly.
On the way to Gulaca we stopped at our mechanic's to see how the Beast's recovery was coming along. It was supposed to have been released into our custody sound as a dollar the previous Monday, but further tinkering with valves, injectors and some apparati needed to start diesels that are called, I think, glow worms was called for and all dictated that the car should be left behind and dollars traded for euros as quickly as possible. Tomorrow, or manyana as we say here in Paradise With Rain, only we don't spell it that way, was our mechanic's answer to cuando which means when, but I don't have to tell you that, because you are bright, intelligent listeners, the very best in the blog reading business and although some would say I am sucking up, I mean it...really.
The reason behind the re-registration of the Beast, shhh don't tell it, is that we want to sell it and that can't be legally done without the car having passed inspection and obtained new papers. Those of you who have followed the trials and tribulations of the Beast, okay just the tribulations, the car was never really brought to trial this time, not enough evidence to convict is what they said, but if you ask me, and you should, because I did time with the Beast on an earlier rap, it's guilty on all counts. As for the tribulations, well, you can either take the pills or seek out alternative medicine.
Truth is we've bought another car. It's a newer, sleeker, younger model named Nikita and although not exactly a Trophy Car, it is a step up from the Beast. It could even be a whole stairway up from the Beast, but that only time can tell and you know how fickle and close mouthed time can be. Unless you listen very carefully, sometimes you can't hear time at all.
So far though, I thought as we drove Nikki to Gualaca without incident, time seems to be on our side, philosophically speaking like Mick Jagger that is, and I won't feel bad at all if we can find the Beast a good home with nice parental drivers. If we can't, I do have the Beast's signed consent for its parts to be left to science or Marcos the Mad Mechanic who has reassembled the Beast on several other occasions and is familiar with her idiosyncratic moods, which are not the best kind for a car.
Gualaca? It's a nice little town. Warm and friendly.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday it rained...again.
I blame Al Gore. After he invented the Internet he just couldn't leave things alone, so he invented global warming. Now the weather is all screwed up. Makes me wonder if it's raining in cyber space.
I tuned in to watch the Red Sox game yesterday but it wasn't on. Damn Al Gore. Luckily, the alternate game featured The Rockies and I got to watch my new favorite player drive in the winning run in the tenth inning. His name is Troy Tulowitski and he is my favorite player because I like saying Tulowitski. But then, who doesn't. The Rockies have won five straight. This doesn't rank with the parting of the Red Sea or Joe Namath's Jets winning the Super Bowl, but it is close. One or two more wins and they might escape the basement.
When I wasn't watching the rain or baseball I was reading a book whose events take place in post war Vietnam. I had quit on the book I was reading prior to that and its setting was post World War 2 Germany. I am really hoping now that my next book will be set in post war Iraq. I'm 400 pages away from finishing this current book so somebody has a little time to invent the peace. Not much though, I'm a fast reader.
Better get Al Gore on the job.
One of the things I had planned to do yesterday was pump iron. Who would have guessed there is such a big difference between planning and doing? That's probably a good thing though, at least in this case, as all my body parts from the waist up were still sore from lifting the day before. NFLers are strength tested by seeing how many times they can bench press 225 pounds. I was going to give myself the same test but then I remembered the words of a wise man who said, "Yo Pencilneck, get a clue before you hurt yourself." It could have been Al Gore.
I tuned in to watch the Red Sox game yesterday but it wasn't on. Damn Al Gore. Luckily, the alternate game featured The Rockies and I got to watch my new favorite player drive in the winning run in the tenth inning. His name is Troy Tulowitski and he is my favorite player because I like saying Tulowitski. But then, who doesn't. The Rockies have won five straight. This doesn't rank with the parting of the Red Sea or Joe Namath's Jets winning the Super Bowl, but it is close. One or two more wins and they might escape the basement.
When I wasn't watching the rain or baseball I was reading a book whose events take place in post war Vietnam. I had quit on the book I was reading prior to that and its setting was post World War 2 Germany. I am really hoping now that my next book will be set in post war Iraq. I'm 400 pages away from finishing this current book so somebody has a little time to invent the peace. Not much though, I'm a fast reader.
Better get Al Gore on the job.
One of the things I had planned to do yesterday was pump iron. Who would have guessed there is such a big difference between planning and doing? That's probably a good thing though, at least in this case, as all my body parts from the waist up were still sore from lifting the day before. NFLers are strength tested by seeing how many times they can bench press 225 pounds. I was going to give myself the same test but then I remembered the words of a wise man who said, "Yo Pencilneck, get a clue before you hurt yourself." It could have been Al Gore.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Off and Running
It's a bright, sunny, Saturday morning here in Palo Alto, Boquete high atop the Serracin Builing and this broadcast is being brought to you by the good folks at Cafe Ruiz, the number one coffee in all of my house. Out back, a Panamanian with a shovel and a radio is doing his thing with the latest slide and from a distant wing of Casa Serracin come the sounds of people stirring.
Today's agenda will start with a visit to an estate sale where books and art works galore are reputed to be available and end with either a televised baseball game or a DVD movie. In between there will be stuff.
Here then, without further ado because too much ado makes your hair greasy, is Zendoc to get today's show off on the wrong foot.
Bueno Dias Ladles and Germanmen, I thought I would start off with my thought for the day and that was it. Any questions?
The wife of a friend of ours says the friend's favorite word is sensuous. She says he says "sensuous up get me an other beer" several times a day.
But this is no time for jokes, this is first thing in the morning, okay not the FIRST thing, that would be, you know, but probably the second or third thing when matters of world seriousness should be considered while the mind is fresh and alert. Ha ha ha, okay it is time for jokes. Remember the one about the farmer's son? Me neither.
Woowoo Charly and RTGFKAR are now up and drinking coffee out on the patio and, I surmise, enjoying the morning sun reflecting off the wet leaves of Panama's intensely green flora, creating droplet diamonds that sparkle everywhere and especially on the unassembled but equally aesthetic weight lifting apparatus that is scattered about at their feet. Nature and the work of man in perfect harmony.
More or less.
And now for your further entertainment, singing a medley of her favorite tune, Heeerres Charly!
Today's agenda will start with a visit to an estate sale where books and art works galore are reputed to be available and end with either a televised baseball game or a DVD movie. In between there will be stuff.
Here then, without further ado because too much ado makes your hair greasy, is Zendoc to get today's show off on the wrong foot.
Bueno Dias Ladles and Germanmen, I thought I would start off with my thought for the day and that was it. Any questions?
The wife of a friend of ours says the friend's favorite word is sensuous. She says he says "sensuous up get me an other beer" several times a day.
But this is no time for jokes, this is first thing in the morning, okay not the FIRST thing, that would be, you know, but probably the second or third thing when matters of world seriousness should be considered while the mind is fresh and alert. Ha ha ha, okay it is time for jokes. Remember the one about the farmer's son? Me neither.
Woowoo Charly and RTGFKAR are now up and drinking coffee out on the patio and, I surmise, enjoying the morning sun reflecting off the wet leaves of Panama's intensely green flora, creating droplet diamonds that sparkle everywhere and especially on the unassembled but equally aesthetic weight lifting apparatus that is scattered about at their feet. Nature and the work of man in perfect harmony.
More or less.
And now for your further entertainment, singing a medley of her favorite tune, Heeerres Charly!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Tales from David
Woowoo Charly withheld her approval as I loaded the weight bench, bar and weights into the back of the car. "Where are you going to put that thing?" she asked, and before I could respond she supplied a partial answer to her own question. "It's NOT going in the house." I've had half a mind to buy a set of weights for some time and half a mind is usually all I bring to any decision, so when our friend Bonnie pointed out the weights hanging around in front of a pawn shop, I had to make the grab before some other aspiring Jack LaLane beat me to them. "Don't worry," I said. I'll keep them on the patio for now and then out back when we move to the new house." Woowoo Chuck remained less than thrilled. "C'mon, I added, "if you don't have three or four abandoned pieces of exercise equipment laying about, you're not really trying." Oddly, this didn't seem to relieve her anxiety. Truth is, I am woefully out of shape, a thing that has only occurred once or twice in my adult life and then only after injury, illness or accident. Until the last half year I had always done SOMETHING to maintain at least a vestige of conditioning, a vestige being I could walk around the block without breathing hard, but now, although thin, I was getting a bit, what's a good word here?... soft. I had learned, to my own regret, that I could lose weight on the Sonnaffa Beach Diet without exercising. This was not a useful lesson. I needed to get back in the exercise groove and for that I needed motivation. The weight bench, I surmised, was just the right thing to supply that mo. Of course, as a veteran of many types of workout programs, I have learned that whenever one begins anew, it is best to start slowly. That being the case, today I will remove the weights from the car...slowly.
We were in David to visit our friend LJ who was in the hospital for tests. He was testing the hospital, they were testing him. LJ had gone to see his friendly neighborhood, sanctioned by the AMA, and I suppose, the PMA, witchdoctor to have his U.S, prescriptions rewritten and refilled. The doc put a stethoscope to his chest, threw a cup of bones on the table and sent LJ forthwith to Os-pee-tal Chiriqui. An elevated BP and racing pulse can have that consequence. We were there the next day to see LJ and check his test results. He had gotten a C which means "average man who is going to die prematurely if he doesn't quit smoking, cut back on the booze and start exercising. I told LJ I had bought a set of weights and although that didn't cheer him much, I felt a lot better.
Our other notable purchase made on this David excursion, was a new dog bed for Gustavo. For those of you who might think a set of weights for an old skinny guy a frivolous buy, consider this: Gus sleeps with us...on our bed. As Woowoo Charly threw the faux sheepskin lined dog sleeper big enough for a bear atop the weights in the back of the car, I was forced to say, "That thing is NOT going in the house." This time she WAS amused. Can't blame her. I'm a funny guy.
We were in David to visit our friend LJ who was in the hospital for tests. He was testing the hospital, they were testing him. LJ had gone to see his friendly neighborhood, sanctioned by the AMA, and I suppose, the PMA, witchdoctor to have his U.S, prescriptions rewritten and refilled. The doc put a stethoscope to his chest, threw a cup of bones on the table and sent LJ forthwith to Os-pee-tal Chiriqui. An elevated BP and racing pulse can have that consequence. We were there the next day to see LJ and check his test results. He had gotten a C which means "average man who is going to die prematurely if he doesn't quit smoking, cut back on the booze and start exercising. I told LJ I had bought a set of weights and although that didn't cheer him much, I felt a lot better.
Our other notable purchase made on this David excursion, was a new dog bed for Gustavo. For those of you who might think a set of weights for an old skinny guy a frivolous buy, consider this: Gus sleeps with us...on our bed. As Woowoo Charly threw the faux sheepskin lined dog sleeper big enough for a bear atop the weights in the back of the car, I was forced to say, "That thing is NOT going in the house." This time she WAS amused. Can't blame her. I'm a funny guy.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Fantasy Based
I'm fantasy based myself. Reality based people have to deal with terrorism, global warming, AIDS, The New York Yankees and other bits of nastiness they probably brought on themselves. Faith based people are here to make both we fantasy and reality types look completely sane "Don't worry Dear, God will fix everything." Yeeehaa!
For those of you unfamiliar with fantasy types, allow me to present an example for your edification. Fantasy types never grow old. I for one, have been 32 for many many years now. I call it the Reverse Dorian Gray Syndrome. Hidden away so it won't be tampered with is a photograph of me at age 32 and in it I remain perpetually that most excellent of ages. Sure I walk through life with a face and body that daily succumb to the passing of years like Dorian's portrait, but those are just clothes I happen to inhabit. Inside I am still the guy in the photograph. Inside I am still filled with hope and plans for a rosy future. Inside my heart swells with music, song and dance looking for a mike and a floor. Inside there is always love, frequently laughter and no end to possibilities. You could, if you were fantasy based, win a race, write a book, climb a mountain. You could, if you were fantasy based, do whatever you set your mind to. You could even, like me, drop out, retire and move to Panama to live happily ever after. You could, really. Of course it's best you be no older than 30 or so. People stuck in reality and blind faith, people getting on in years that is, don't do so well here when it rains... or shines.
Fantasy based. We need more pub.
For those of you unfamiliar with fantasy types, allow me to present an example for your edification. Fantasy types never grow old. I for one, have been 32 for many many years now. I call it the Reverse Dorian Gray Syndrome. Hidden away so it won't be tampered with is a photograph of me at age 32 and in it I remain perpetually that most excellent of ages. Sure I walk through life with a face and body that daily succumb to the passing of years like Dorian's portrait, but those are just clothes I happen to inhabit. Inside I am still the guy in the photograph. Inside I am still filled with hope and plans for a rosy future. Inside my heart swells with music, song and dance looking for a mike and a floor. Inside there is always love, frequently laughter and no end to possibilities. You could, if you were fantasy based, win a race, write a book, climb a mountain. You could, if you were fantasy based, do whatever you set your mind to. You could even, like me, drop out, retire and move to Panama to live happily ever after. You could, really. Of course it's best you be no older than 30 or so. People stuck in reality and blind faith, people getting on in years that is, don't do so well here when it rains... or shines.
Fantasy based. We need more pub.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
In Search of a Blog
In search of something to say I typed in search of something to say. Didn't help. Well sure there are subjects just waiting to be examined at length by the monkeymind, subjects of great import like American Idol where that Seacrest guy insists on saying ah-MARE-ih-kin Idol instead of ah-murr-ih-kin Idol, and TV in general which I don't watch on a regular basis these days apart from baseball which does have regular bases and where by now CSI Hoboken and Law and Order Traffic Division have probably achieved top ten status on the Leslie Nielson ratings. And for sure there are the political races to consider, but, really, it's too early for that and truth is they don't actually race at all. If they did, that Obama guy would be a shoo in. I mean he just looks fast. Fred Thompson is throwing his hat in the ring I'm told by reliable spouses and that might get interesting. Ah-MARE-ih-kins love to vote for show biz folk, surely a worrisome thing, but again, it's too early to go down that slope made slippery by the oily contenders. I could, I suppose, knock out a few paragraphs about global warming, recalentamiento global, but I'm not feeling up to a heated debate at the moment. Besides, here in sunny Panama global wetting is the real concern. It's raining as I speak and it apparently rains whenever anyone speaks so the less said about that the better. And finally, there are always currant events to peruse but who, really, wants to read about berries. Truth is I don't know much about berries. Don't even know if it's BARE-ease or BURR-ease.
Tomorrow though, I'll have a subject because I am a subjective kind of person. In fact, if you've read this far, you've been subjected to my blog. See you tomorrow.
Tomorrow though, I'll have a subject because I am a subjective kind of person. In fact, if you've read this far, you've been subjected to my blog. See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Progress Report
The NY on the Yankees cap stands for Next Year.
The house we are living in, like the one we are building, is carved into a mountainside. You dig vertically into the mountain creating a flat spot upon which you put a house. Nice. This does,however,leave you with a wall of earth directly behind the house. When it rains really hard, as it has been doing off and on for days, there is the danger of erosion and small landslides that can cause - and here I will go into my extensive Spanish vocabulary to find just the right word - got it- problemas. Por ejemplo, this house, the rental, has a trench dug behind it that diverts water that streams down the hillside over to a quebrada, a small creek, that runs down the side of the house. A couple of days ago a small slide filled the trench with dirt and the rainfall's progress to the back door was not impeded. Alrighty then. We called that Brown guy from Katrina for advice but he just started screaming "I didn't do it!" so we were left to fend for ourselves. Old towels shoved under the door slowed the water's flow to a managable degree and mops were employed to gather up the rest. The next day, before the rains began again, our neighbor,a young college student, was hired to redig the trench and all is now well. Well, that is, until the next rain, the next slide.
At the new house site there was only the lesser problem of our foundation diggings having been filled with water so that concrete could not be poured that day. Because the house site is near the summit of the mountain, far less water accumulates behind it as much of the water runs off in the opposite direction. Still, at some point we will have to address a retaining wall or something of that sort. Gradual erosion will occur, though I doubt we will ever have a slide.
The timing of the house construction is all wrong, of course, the rainy season is not a good time to start, but that is just how things worked out. We will have to be patient and just put up with the continual rain delays. Once the foundation is poured and stable, the M2 walls will go up very rapidly and a roof can then be added. Roofs, I'm told, are a good thing to have when it's raining.
The house we are living in, like the one we are building, is carved into a mountainside. You dig vertically into the mountain creating a flat spot upon which you put a house. Nice. This does,however,leave you with a wall of earth directly behind the house. When it rains really hard, as it has been doing off and on for days, there is the danger of erosion and small landslides that can cause - and here I will go into my extensive Spanish vocabulary to find just the right word - got it- problemas. Por ejemplo, this house, the rental, has a trench dug behind it that diverts water that streams down the hillside over to a quebrada, a small creek, that runs down the side of the house. A couple of days ago a small slide filled the trench with dirt and the rainfall's progress to the back door was not impeded. Alrighty then. We called that Brown guy from Katrina for advice but he just started screaming "I didn't do it!" so we were left to fend for ourselves. Old towels shoved under the door slowed the water's flow to a managable degree and mops were employed to gather up the rest. The next day, before the rains began again, our neighbor,a young college student, was hired to redig the trench and all is now well. Well, that is, until the next rain, the next slide.
At the new house site there was only the lesser problem of our foundation diggings having been filled with water so that concrete could not be poured that day. Because the house site is near the summit of the mountain, far less water accumulates behind it as much of the water runs off in the opposite direction. Still, at some point we will have to address a retaining wall or something of that sort. Gradual erosion will occur, though I doubt we will ever have a slide.
The timing of the house construction is all wrong, of course, the rainy season is not a good time to start, but that is just how things worked out. We will have to be patient and just put up with the continual rain delays. Once the foundation is poured and stable, the M2 walls will go up very rapidly and a roof can then be added. Roofs, I'm told, are a good thing to have when it's raining.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
A Rainy Night
I was going to write "it rained all night", but then this thought jumped into the monkeymind: How do I know? Was I awake all night? I mean maybe it quit for an hour and then started raining again. I wouldn't want to write something that was blatantly and obviously inaccurate like, say, the resident president is brighter than a breadbox, would I? Of course not. So let me tell you what did happen last night for sure.
I went to a wedding. I don't know who was getting married, but I was an usher and I was affiliated with the groom. I had to wear a suit jacket and some kind of satiny shiny pants. I disliked the pants so much, I waited until the last minute to change into them. I was wearing hiking boots at the time and it took so long to get them untied and off that I didn't have time to put them back on for the wedding. The bride had dark hair and was a little overweight but still looked good. I don't think I knew her. After the wedding, when everyone had gone to the reception - we weren't invited to that and I remember saying to Charly, "we came all the way from Panama just for the wedding?", I couldn't find my boots. I found my pile of regular clothes and a new pair of cheap sneakers in my size along with new arch supports but no boots. Ramon said the guy who took my boots must have felt bad and left me the sneakers. We piled into Ramon's car and headed off to somewhere but were quickly pulled over by a cop in a very lit up and colorful vehicle. He made Ramon get out and take the roadside sobriety test which to the cop's chagrin he easily passed. When Ramon got back in the car, I asked him how he passed the test knowing that he had been drinking throughout the wedding. "Alcohol doesn't affect me" he said. And now I have to believe him.
I really sleep well when it rains all night.
I went to a wedding. I don't know who was getting married, but I was an usher and I was affiliated with the groom. I had to wear a suit jacket and some kind of satiny shiny pants. I disliked the pants so much, I waited until the last minute to change into them. I was wearing hiking boots at the time and it took so long to get them untied and off that I didn't have time to put them back on for the wedding. The bride had dark hair and was a little overweight but still looked good. I don't think I knew her. After the wedding, when everyone had gone to the reception - we weren't invited to that and I remember saying to Charly, "we came all the way from Panama just for the wedding?", I couldn't find my boots. I found my pile of regular clothes and a new pair of cheap sneakers in my size along with new arch supports but no boots. Ramon said the guy who took my boots must have felt bad and left me the sneakers. We piled into Ramon's car and headed off to somewhere but were quickly pulled over by a cop in a very lit up and colorful vehicle. He made Ramon get out and take the roadside sobriety test which to the cop's chagrin he easily passed. When Ramon got back in the car, I asked him how he passed the test knowing that he had been drinking throughout the wedding. "Alcohol doesn't affect me" he said. And now I have to believe him.
I really sleep well when it rains all night.
Friday, May 18, 2007
You Can't Win 'Em All
A quick explanation for what is to follow. The new blog didn't work out - I couldn't get into it either - so I've pasted its content onto this page. I'm back at RTGFKAR's computer, mine being a lost cause as far as blogging is concerned.
Problem Resolved...I Think!
The last two words of that title "I Think" may be a bit of an exaggeration at the moment because I'm too mentally exhausted to really put the old gray matter to further work. I've spent hours trying to find a way into my monkeymind blog to no avail and disgusted, distraught, disturbed and demented I've finally just decided to move along. Here then I give you, Taa Daa! the new improved, exactly the same except for the name, blog of a different color, Boquete Monkeymind whose initials BM pretty much describe what I do here anyway. From a literary standpoint that is, and I can standpoint with anybody. I came to the keyboard hours ago with a ready formed blog just waiting to be spit out - spit out being another way of describing my output - onto monkeymind's pages. It was to be a natural, logical, follow up piece to those that proceeded it. Of course after punching, kicking, cursing and finally sledge hammering my way to cyber space's version of nowhere, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say. Fear not, however, gentle reader, for I am not stopped by the small things like a mind devoid of inspiration or even a mind devoid of mind, I'll just tell you what I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to write about the day the TV went off, the Internet went away, the car died and our hot water turned to cold because that would be depressing. Well, for me anyway. Since I'm already gloom struck by having to change my blog, I'll start with the TV. Who knew that if you didn't pay your bill, the tube would go blank? Not me because I always paid my bill... when I got one.
(Here begins today's contribution.) I got the bill yesterday. Ten days after I paid it and fourteen or fifteen days after my programming was turned off for failing to pay it on time. Guess you can't win 'em all.
The water problem was resolved quicker than the others, but not before a few cold showers were endured. My neighbor, Aurelio, showed me that there was a series of storage and filtering tanks on the hillside above us. The second of these, the one closest too our large, blue, this is the final stop before entering our house container, had a leaf flattened against its exit pipe. One small leaf for man, one giant leaf for mankind's woes. How the leaf got into a sealed concrete tank remains a mystery unsolved, but, you know, as I once heard a guy say, you can't win 'em all.
Somewhere, someone, I'm told, dug up a bunch of fiber optic cable thinking it contained copper that could be sold. Said cable being destroyed is the reason, I was further told by our friendly neighborhood Internet provider, affectionately known here as Cable and Worthless but actually entitled Cable and Wireless, that we were unable to access the worldwide web for some ten or eleven days. Alrighty then, I guess you can just put this in the category of... you can't win 'em all.
The Beast's demise, as noted on an earlier blog, is not certain. It is at the moment on life support systems being attended to by able physicians named Marcos and Paulino, otherwise known as The Car Guys. Should it recover to any drivable degree, it will be sold to the first buyer offering money or, oh I don't know, mangos, guava, zarsamorra or doughnuts. That it should come to this right after I had spent a small fortune to insure the car's welfare gives further credence to that oldie but goodie homily that says - all together now - you can't win 'em all.
It's a nice day today though. Nice that is if you like rain. If you don't, well, what can I tell you? As someone once noted....................
Problem Resolved...I Think!
The last two words of that title "I Think" may be a bit of an exaggeration at the moment because I'm too mentally exhausted to really put the old gray matter to further work. I've spent hours trying to find a way into my monkeymind blog to no avail and disgusted, distraught, disturbed and demented I've finally just decided to move along. Here then I give you, Taa Daa! the new improved, exactly the same except for the name, blog of a different color, Boquete Monkeymind whose initials BM pretty much describe what I do here anyway. From a literary standpoint that is, and I can standpoint with anybody. I came to the keyboard hours ago with a ready formed blog just waiting to be spit out - spit out being another way of describing my output - onto monkeymind's pages. It was to be a natural, logical, follow up piece to those that proceeded it. Of course after punching, kicking, cursing and finally sledge hammering my way to cyber space's version of nowhere, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say. Fear not, however, gentle reader, for I am not stopped by the small things like a mind devoid of inspiration or even a mind devoid of mind, I'll just tell you what I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to write about the day the TV went off, the Internet went away, the car died and our hot water turned to cold because that would be depressing. Well, for me anyway. Since I'm already gloom struck by having to change my blog, I'll start with the TV. Who knew that if you didn't pay your bill, the tube would go blank? Not me because I always paid my bill... when I got one.
(Here begins today's contribution.) I got the bill yesterday. Ten days after I paid it and fourteen or fifteen days after my programming was turned off for failing to pay it on time. Guess you can't win 'em all.
The water problem was resolved quicker than the others, but not before a few cold showers were endured. My neighbor, Aurelio, showed me that there was a series of storage and filtering tanks on the hillside above us. The second of these, the one closest too our large, blue, this is the final stop before entering our house container, had a leaf flattened against its exit pipe. One small leaf for man, one giant leaf for mankind's woes. How the leaf got into a sealed concrete tank remains a mystery unsolved, but, you know, as I once heard a guy say, you can't win 'em all.
Somewhere, someone, I'm told, dug up a bunch of fiber optic cable thinking it contained copper that could be sold. Said cable being destroyed is the reason, I was further told by our friendly neighborhood Internet provider, affectionately known here as Cable and Worthless but actually entitled Cable and Wireless, that we were unable to access the worldwide web for some ten or eleven days. Alrighty then, I guess you can just put this in the category of... you can't win 'em all.
The Beast's demise, as noted on an earlier blog, is not certain. It is at the moment on life support systems being attended to by able physicians named Marcos and Paulino, otherwise known as The Car Guys. Should it recover to any drivable degree, it will be sold to the first buyer offering money or, oh I don't know, mangos, guava, zarsamorra or doughnuts. That it should come to this right after I had spent a small fortune to insure the car's welfare gives further credence to that oldie but goodie homily that says - all together now - you can't win 'em all.
It's a nice day today though. Nice that is if you like rain. If you don't, well, what can I tell you? As someone once noted....................
Sunday, May 13, 2007
RTGFKAR Joins the blog
Ramon The Gringo Formerly Known As Raymond or RTGFKAR has joined Monkeymind in the blogosphere. Here is his first entry:
A Typical Atypical Morning
It’s 5:30. Awakened by some noise or internal clock, since I have been going to bed extraordinarily early the last week or so, my efforts to return to sleep are fruitless. I arise and try to quietly make my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee without the flushing toilet, the squeaking door hinges or the banshee-like howl of the unplumb doors screaming as the wood rubs against the tile floors.
Surprisingly, having wakened no one, or, if I did, they groggily wrote it off as the remnants of a nightmare, and drifted back to sleep, I take my cup of coffee, and passing two more angrily vocal doors and the jangling of searching for the correct key to open the last barrier to the exterior, I gain access to the patio.
It is dark. Or almost dark. No moon, but the night is giving way to day as the Earth turns us in to sunlight.
But I don’t notice the light, or lack thereof. My other senses are drowned out by sound. In the bedroom, a few loud calls sifted through the slats of the jalousie windows, but nothing like this. I am standing at the side of a rushing river; no, a rushing river plunging over a cataract. The noise is astounding.
I close my eyes, and , after a few moments, the sound does not diminish, but clarifies into a thousand bird calls, overlapping, echoing, complementing, conflicting, blending into the roar that mimics the loudest riparian rush I have ever heard.
I make my way in the dim light to the center of the yard, and, standing on the concrete lid of the septic system, I turn full circle. I cannot distinguish the stand of coffee trees twenty yards away from the mass of Volcan Baru several miles away, from the bulk of the low hill across the road, several hundred meters away. They are all silhouettes in deeper shades of gray, like images from a southwestern painting come to life, cocooning me in a bowl of sound.
Above the roar, I begin to sort out a few landmarks from the fabric of sound: here a “Caw”, there a “Whit-whit-whit Woo” like a rock or log in the river creating a unique current or backwash. As I concentrate, I can separate the background fabric into threads of different chirps and coos and tweets that interweave. If I don’t concentrate, they flow together.
The sky lightens, and the hills and trees begin to coalesce into their own identities, but the sound remains and I notice… there are no birds flying! No soaring, no swooping shapes flashing by. The sound comes from the Earth itself and the trees and rocks that are growing out of it.
Another voice joins the chorus. More shrill, and distinct, it is one I can identify: “Aw-Aw-Ca-Aww”, strident, loud enough to be noticed, but nothing like the “Cock-a-doodle-doo” it is supposed to sound like.
Here, it is ever-present, not just the wake-up call at sunrise. I can pinpoint the fowls in the various yards around our casa, and some from farther away.
I look around again, and notice the grays are resolving themselves into discernible shapes, and suddenly the sound has dimmed, and as I turn, shapes begin to flit from tree to tree and soar overhead. The river of sound is dissolving as if evaporated by the light. Echoes and splashes of sound will color the day, even through the heaviest rains, but I will have to wait 'til tomorrow to hear the torrent rushing by again.
A Typical Atypical Morning
It’s 5:30. Awakened by some noise or internal clock, since I have been going to bed extraordinarily early the last week or so, my efforts to return to sleep are fruitless. I arise and try to quietly make my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee without the flushing toilet, the squeaking door hinges or the banshee-like howl of the unplumb doors screaming as the wood rubs against the tile floors.
Surprisingly, having wakened no one, or, if I did, they groggily wrote it off as the remnants of a nightmare, and drifted back to sleep, I take my cup of coffee, and passing two more angrily vocal doors and the jangling of searching for the correct key to open the last barrier to the exterior, I gain access to the patio.
It is dark. Or almost dark. No moon, but the night is giving way to day as the Earth turns us in to sunlight.
But I don’t notice the light, or lack thereof. My other senses are drowned out by sound. In the bedroom, a few loud calls sifted through the slats of the jalousie windows, but nothing like this. I am standing at the side of a rushing river; no, a rushing river plunging over a cataract. The noise is astounding.
I close my eyes, and , after a few moments, the sound does not diminish, but clarifies into a thousand bird calls, overlapping, echoing, complementing, conflicting, blending into the roar that mimics the loudest riparian rush I have ever heard.
I make my way in the dim light to the center of the yard, and, standing on the concrete lid of the septic system, I turn full circle. I cannot distinguish the stand of coffee trees twenty yards away from the mass of Volcan Baru several miles away, from the bulk of the low hill across the road, several hundred meters away. They are all silhouettes in deeper shades of gray, like images from a southwestern painting come to life, cocooning me in a bowl of sound.
Above the roar, I begin to sort out a few landmarks from the fabric of sound: here a “Caw”, there a “Whit-whit-whit Woo” like a rock or log in the river creating a unique current or backwash. As I concentrate, I can separate the background fabric into threads of different chirps and coos and tweets that interweave. If I don’t concentrate, they flow together.
The sky lightens, and the hills and trees begin to coalesce into their own identities, but the sound remains and I notice… there are no birds flying! No soaring, no swooping shapes flashing by. The sound comes from the Earth itself and the trees and rocks that are growing out of it.
Another voice joins the chorus. More shrill, and distinct, it is one I can identify: “Aw-Aw-Ca-Aww”, strident, loud enough to be noticed, but nothing like the “Cock-a-doodle-doo” it is supposed to sound like.
Here, it is ever-present, not just the wake-up call at sunrise. I can pinpoint the fowls in the various yards around our casa, and some from farther away.
I look around again, and notice the grays are resolving themselves into discernible shapes, and suddenly the sound has dimmed, and as I turn, shapes begin to flit from tree to tree and soar overhead. The river of sound is dissolving as if evaporated by the light. Echoes and splashes of sound will color the day, even through the heaviest rains, but I will have to wait 'til tomorrow to hear the torrent rushing by again.
Car Wars Continued
This is being written on the computer of Ramon the Gringo Formerly known as Raymond. If I choose to do so, I could also write this on the computer of Rolando the Panamanian Still Known as Rolando because I have his computer to use while he's away in Spain furthering his education in robotics. What I can't do is write this blog on my own damn computer. For reasons I don't understand, I am unable to get into my blog to write although I am able to go there and read old entries. This is a thing I am not particularly inclined to do as old entries are about as thrilling to me as old food. Ramon suggests that my computer, having been forced to host over 180 blogs against its will has finally said enough! Maybe he's right. We will see how long these alternative laptops can tolerate the monkeymind.
When last we met the Beast, our ancient Toyota Landcruiser, had rolled across a restaurant parking lot with neither driver nor passenger. Like my computer's refusal to allow me blog entrance, this seems to be an act of mechanical will. For those of you who don't believe machines have minds, I say put your ear to an ATM when you try to access money from an account with no funds. That's right, you will hear it laughing. As an act of contrition, I drove the Beast from its personally selected parking space to an insurance office where I purchased coverage in case it, the Beast, should decide to collide with something on its next driverless outing. As an act of gratitude for not having done that so far, I then drove it to Pricesmart where I had two shiny new Pirelli radials mounted on the Beast's rear wheels, the two stops combined lightening my already meagre bankroll by a little over 400 dollars. Amazingly, the Beast's earlier starting problems had resolved themselves and after a few more errands were run and retired, M.E. and I pointed the Beast at Boquete and congratulated ourselves on how much we had accomplished that day. It was perhaps our failure to include the Beast in our back patting that pissed it off and, if I really think about it, I'm sure that during its coughing and sputtering, I could hear it say why do I bother with these people just before it spit out a huge cloud of black smoke and died.
Luckily, for every machine that gives up the ghost at the worst of times, there is another that if treated with love, affection and homage, lots of homage, will come to your rescue. In this case, cell phones were withdrawn from pockets and calls were made. A friend was soon en el camino to pick us up and in no time at all M. E. and I were taken to our separate homes where we did exactly the same thing...drink heavily.
The next morning, bright and early, a thing everyone always says, bright and early, whether they are bright or not and who can really say what's early considering the subjective nature of the definition, and there goes the monkeymind so I better wrap this up, I engaged the car morticians to take the Beast to the morgue where it was declared dead but not done. Apparently there is a way to revive newly dead cars that doesn't require human sacrifices and black magic. I am not quite sure of the details, but it starts by opening the hood and throwing in large amounts of money. About this, I'd need to think.
When last we met the Beast, our ancient Toyota Landcruiser, had rolled across a restaurant parking lot with neither driver nor passenger. Like my computer's refusal to allow me blog entrance, this seems to be an act of mechanical will. For those of you who don't believe machines have minds, I say put your ear to an ATM when you try to access money from an account with no funds. That's right, you will hear it laughing. As an act of contrition, I drove the Beast from its personally selected parking space to an insurance office where I purchased coverage in case it, the Beast, should decide to collide with something on its next driverless outing. As an act of gratitude for not having done that so far, I then drove it to Pricesmart where I had two shiny new Pirelli radials mounted on the Beast's rear wheels, the two stops combined lightening my already meagre bankroll by a little over 400 dollars. Amazingly, the Beast's earlier starting problems had resolved themselves and after a few more errands were run and retired, M.E. and I pointed the Beast at Boquete and congratulated ourselves on how much we had accomplished that day. It was perhaps our failure to include the Beast in our back patting that pissed it off and, if I really think about it, I'm sure that during its coughing and sputtering, I could hear it say why do I bother with these people just before it spit out a huge cloud of black smoke and died.
Luckily, for every machine that gives up the ghost at the worst of times, there is another that if treated with love, affection and homage, lots of homage, will come to your rescue. In this case, cell phones were withdrawn from pockets and calls were made. A friend was soon en el camino to pick us up and in no time at all M. E. and I were taken to our separate homes where we did exactly the same thing...drink heavily.
The next morning, bright and early, a thing everyone always says, bright and early, whether they are bright or not and who can really say what's early considering the subjective nature of the definition, and there goes the monkeymind so I better wrap this up, I engaged the car morticians to take the Beast to the morgue where it was declared dead but not done. Apparently there is a way to revive newly dead cars that doesn't require human sacrifices and black magic. I am not quite sure of the details, but it starts by opening the hood and throwing in large amounts of money. About this, I'd need to think.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Car Wars
To the naked eye, it was all going smoothly and I can tell you that all four of our eyes were starkers. Maryellen and I had driven The Beast to David to accomplish numerous tasks, the first and hardest of which was now behind us. The Beast had passed inspection. Well for sure we had to drop some names and pay for a wheel balancing, but the stamped and official document that would allow me to re-register the old Land Cruiser for another year was now in hand and we were off to chore number two. Under the hood of the now certified and approved for driving vehicle, trouble was either lurking or brewing, pick your own cliche.
We managed to get a few more errands run and chores accomplished before the first sign of any problem occurred. It was upon leaving a store named Guerra, which means war, but in this case had no particular significance that I can determine unless my car is a protester, that The Beast refused to start. "You drive, I'll push" was my Johnny Mechanic on the spot solution, "maybe we can jump start it." A couple of the war guys came out to help and by golly and by effort we got it going. ME made a u-turn at the corner and returned to pick me up. Lunch and contemplation of the day's remaining tasks seemed in order so we bee lined to the Italian joint affixed to the Grand National Hotel. Part two of our adventure would occur out of our sight and perhaps, in fact, unseen by anyone at all.
"Back into that space near the door" I said, " it's got a downhill slant that should give us enough roll to jump start again if we need to." "And, " I added, "race the engine hard before you turn the key off."
"I can't," she replied, " If I take my foot off the brake, the car will roll."
"Just put it in neutral and move your left foot off the clutch and onto the brake."
ME did as instructed and roooom rooomed the engine a couple of times before turning it off and hopping out for lunch.
Pause here to consider good pizza.
When we returned to the car I am happy to report it started right up. What I am less thrilled to tell you is that the car was across the parking lot some fifty or sixty feet from where we left it! That no other car had been parked in its path can be viewed as a mite lucky. If, however, you take into account that our very next stop was to renew the car's insurance which had expired, then you can say without argument that this view can now be cranked up to Good Goddammned Lucky! For our part, ME and I just looked at each other with matching expressions of Holy Shit.
To be continued.
We managed to get a few more errands run and chores accomplished before the first sign of any problem occurred. It was upon leaving a store named Guerra, which means war, but in this case had no particular significance that I can determine unless my car is a protester, that The Beast refused to start. "You drive, I'll push" was my Johnny Mechanic on the spot solution, "maybe we can jump start it." A couple of the war guys came out to help and by golly and by effort we got it going. ME made a u-turn at the corner and returned to pick me up. Lunch and contemplation of the day's remaining tasks seemed in order so we bee lined to the Italian joint affixed to the Grand National Hotel. Part two of our adventure would occur out of our sight and perhaps, in fact, unseen by anyone at all.
"Back into that space near the door" I said, " it's got a downhill slant that should give us enough roll to jump start again if we need to." "And, " I added, "race the engine hard before you turn the key off."
"I can't," she replied, " If I take my foot off the brake, the car will roll."
"Just put it in neutral and move your left foot off the clutch and onto the brake."
ME did as instructed and roooom rooomed the engine a couple of times before turning it off and hopping out for lunch.
Pause here to consider good pizza.
When we returned to the car I am happy to report it started right up. What I am less thrilled to tell you is that the car was across the parking lot some fifty or sixty feet from where we left it! That no other car had been parked in its path can be viewed as a mite lucky. If, however, you take into account that our very next stop was to renew the car's insurance which had expired, then you can say without argument that this view can now be cranked up to Good Goddammned Lucky! For our part, ME and I just looked at each other with matching expressions of Holy Shit.
To be continued.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
A Brillinat Mind
"Don't! Don't! she kept saying as I called the dog over to the edge of the patio from where I could see a chicken emerging from the coffee plants that border our yard.
"C'mon Babe," I replied, ignoring her protests, "chasing chickens is Gus' favorite thing in life."
I usually listen to my wife because she is wise in the ways of the world. Okay, wise in the ways of the Woowoo World anyway and that special planet includes among its virtues lots of weeeuuuu skills like, for instance, intuition. But here was Gus on the end of his tether, back turned away and oblivious to the encroaching fowl and I thought that he, as the self appointed home protector from the menace of stray cats, other dogs and small birds that linger too long on the bush should be made aware that a big fat enemy was advancing on his turf. Besides that, I was sure this was going to be a laugh riot.
"DOC DON'T!... DON'T! was coming at me in volume as Gus came to my side and I pointed at the fearsome fowl. Of course, pointing doesn't do much for dogs. They mostly just look at your hand and wonder what the hell you're trying to tell them. Gus though, is smarter than the average mutt and on about the third "Look there Gus, there" which I was saying in counterpoint to the rising "Don'ts" in the background, he got the message and saw the chicken.
Here I need to pause a moment, because we humans can do that, pause and reflect before taking action, while dogs when called to arms get right on the job...and tell you that the other end of Gus' tether was truly and stoutly affixed to a water spigot at the side of our house. Had I paused and reflected on that circumstance or had Gus not been the noble family defender that he is, or had either of us, man or dog heeded the pleas of "Don't! Don't" now being directed at us both, well, the outcome would surely have been different.
But then, who would have guessed that a 30 pound pooch could have the strength to actually rip an iron spigot from a concrete wall even if he was traveling at roughly the speed of light? Really, who?
Some of you might be inclined to remind me that there WAS a warning voice throughout the episode that I chose to ignore and that most of you, had you been there, would have advised caution as well. To you I say, oh come on! Have you ever seen a dog chase a chicken? It's hysterical. And besides, he's my dog, he's never actually caught a chicken and he wouldn't know what to do with it if he did. But most of all, let's not forget, the chicken WAS trespassing! It's all the chicken's fault! ... right?
The words I didn't choose to ignore were the "I told you's" that immediately followed. Truth was I couldn't hear them over the chicken screeching, the dog barking and the Niagara Falls that was gushing from the side of my house. My ha ha's turned into oh no's in a split second. In the other half of that second, the chicken disappeared into the coffee plants, the dog got hung up on a bush and it's likely that Woowoo Charly was calling me something I'm glad I couldn't hear. The best laid plans oft gang up on me.
Charly, the chicken and I were now officially distressed. Gus, on the other hand, was a happy fella. He had, after all, successfully done his job.
After that it was all denouement. For those of you who don't know, denouement is a French word that means find the shut off valve, call the plumber, do without water until he gets there the next day and pay attention to your wife when she says,"Don't!
Why is that last part is so hard to remember?
"C'mon Babe," I replied, ignoring her protests, "chasing chickens is Gus' favorite thing in life."
I usually listen to my wife because she is wise in the ways of the world. Okay, wise in the ways of the Woowoo World anyway and that special planet includes among its virtues lots of weeeuuuu skills like, for instance, intuition. But here was Gus on the end of his tether, back turned away and oblivious to the encroaching fowl and I thought that he, as the self appointed home protector from the menace of stray cats, other dogs and small birds that linger too long on the bush should be made aware that a big fat enemy was advancing on his turf. Besides that, I was sure this was going to be a laugh riot.
"DOC DON'T!... DON'T! was coming at me in volume as Gus came to my side and I pointed at the fearsome fowl. Of course, pointing doesn't do much for dogs. They mostly just look at your hand and wonder what the hell you're trying to tell them. Gus though, is smarter than the average mutt and on about the third "Look there Gus, there" which I was saying in counterpoint to the rising "Don'ts" in the background, he got the message and saw the chicken.
Here I need to pause a moment, because we humans can do that, pause and reflect before taking action, while dogs when called to arms get right on the job...and tell you that the other end of Gus' tether was truly and stoutly affixed to a water spigot at the side of our house. Had I paused and reflected on that circumstance or had Gus not been the noble family defender that he is, or had either of us, man or dog heeded the pleas of "Don't! Don't" now being directed at us both, well, the outcome would surely have been different.
But then, who would have guessed that a 30 pound pooch could have the strength to actually rip an iron spigot from a concrete wall even if he was traveling at roughly the speed of light? Really, who?
Some of you might be inclined to remind me that there WAS a warning voice throughout the episode that I chose to ignore and that most of you, had you been there, would have advised caution as well. To you I say, oh come on! Have you ever seen a dog chase a chicken? It's hysterical. And besides, he's my dog, he's never actually caught a chicken and he wouldn't know what to do with it if he did. But most of all, let's not forget, the chicken WAS trespassing! It's all the chicken's fault! ... right?
The words I didn't choose to ignore were the "I told you's" that immediately followed. Truth was I couldn't hear them over the chicken screeching, the dog barking and the Niagara Falls that was gushing from the side of my house. My ha ha's turned into oh no's in a split second. In the other half of that second, the chicken disappeared into the coffee plants, the dog got hung up on a bush and it's likely that Woowoo Charly was calling me something I'm glad I couldn't hear. The best laid plans oft gang up on me.
Charly, the chicken and I were now officially distressed. Gus, on the other hand, was a happy fella. He had, after all, successfully done his job.
After that it was all denouement. For those of you who don't know, denouement is a French word that means find the shut off valve, call the plumber, do without water until he gets there the next day and pay attention to your wife when she says,"Don't!
Why is that last part is so hard to remember?
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Country Club Revisited
Boquete's intrepid trio of golfers, LJ, Woowoo and Yers Truly, set forth in wind and rain to once again brave the wilds of our country club whose name remains a mystery. (There is a sign that says something about a Club Atletico y Social, but we are not sure if that is a name or a description.) We had called ahead to check on the weather and were told it was "esta bien", so we remained undaunted as our windshield wipers tried valiantly to make the highway visible. About halfway to the course, about 45 minutes out, the rain gave way to sunshine and our spirits brightened so we took them out of the bottle and had a slug. Just kidding. We got to the Costa Rican border, made a hard left through the wild and woolly border town and cruised parallel to CR for another 30 minutes or so. We arrived at the club (ha! ha! ha!, I just love saying that... the club) at 3:30 sharp, okay rounded, and found our caddies waiting for us. Ten minutes later we were teeing off and using the horses in the center of the first fairway to give us a sight line to the green. You may find horses in the fairway a bit unusual, but then you probably use lawn mowers to keep your grass trimmed.
I won't, as usual, tell you about the round, because I know how boring it is to people who don't play golf. I won't even tell you about the great shots I hit on holes 2, 5, 7 and 9 which included an excellent chip-in, because you all know I mostly write fiction and wouldn't believe me anyway. I will tell you about the cart lady.
"She's no lady, she's a..." is the punch line to more than one joke. In this case I'm not kidding because the cart lady was a guy, on a bicycle, passing by. He took our money in a serious and forthright manner and set off for the clubhouse on his vintage fat wheeled, no gears bike, for our order of cokes and beers. The cokes were for Woowoo and the caddies. He was back before we had completed the hole, which, if you knew the truth, says more about our tee shots than the speed of the cyclist.
I'm not sure at what point I should mention the principal feature of the golf course, so I'll just do it now and get it out of the way. Golf course descriptions usually range from the lyrical " the flowers at Augusta National remind us all of poetry past and present yadida yadida yadida" to hyperbole that includes best, most, toughest, and meanest, but until now you haven't heard this phrase about your average, run-of-the-mill eighteen holer: The landing strip the runs through the center of the golf course can be used to good advantage. By landing your tee shot there, you can gain an additional fifty yards on the bounce. There is, of course, the danger of hitting the small planes that actually land there and as they all look like the planes used in drug runner movies, this may not be a fortunate circumstance. Pilots and passengers of these aircraft can seldom take a joke.
Apart from the soccer game skirting the eighth hole and the softball game in progress on the ninth fairway, there is not much more to tell. A quick post game Cerveza Panama was had by all, the caddies were paid and we were on our way.
The drive home lacked drama, which is how all drive homes should be unless, of course, like me, you make stuff up. ("Stuff up" is probaly not a great way to end a sentence unless you are cooking a turkey or giving an order, but I'm going with it anyway.)
Upon arriving at LJ's casa, we were greeted by his wife Bonnie who became in contention for wife-of-the -year, okay week, by presenting us with frozen margaritas and a pot of chili. Now, how good is that? I'll tell you how good as that. It almost made me forget my chip-in and the long putt I almost made on six.
Did I tell you about that putt? It was and uphill left to righter with a... Hey! come back here!
I won't, as usual, tell you about the round, because I know how boring it is to people who don't play golf. I won't even tell you about the great shots I hit on holes 2, 5, 7 and 9 which included an excellent chip-in, because you all know I mostly write fiction and wouldn't believe me anyway. I will tell you about the cart lady.
"She's no lady, she's a..." is the punch line to more than one joke. In this case I'm not kidding because the cart lady was a guy, on a bicycle, passing by. He took our money in a serious and forthright manner and set off for the clubhouse on his vintage fat wheeled, no gears bike, for our order of cokes and beers. The cokes were for Woowoo and the caddies. He was back before we had completed the hole, which, if you knew the truth, says more about our tee shots than the speed of the cyclist.
I'm not sure at what point I should mention the principal feature of the golf course, so I'll just do it now and get it out of the way. Golf course descriptions usually range from the lyrical " the flowers at Augusta National remind us all of poetry past and present yadida yadida yadida" to hyperbole that includes best, most, toughest, and meanest, but until now you haven't heard this phrase about your average, run-of-the-mill eighteen holer: The landing strip the runs through the center of the golf course can be used to good advantage. By landing your tee shot there, you can gain an additional fifty yards on the bounce. There is, of course, the danger of hitting the small planes that actually land there and as they all look like the planes used in drug runner movies, this may not be a fortunate circumstance. Pilots and passengers of these aircraft can seldom take a joke.
Apart from the soccer game skirting the eighth hole and the softball game in progress on the ninth fairway, there is not much more to tell. A quick post game Cerveza Panama was had by all, the caddies were paid and we were on our way.
The drive home lacked drama, which is how all drive homes should be unless, of course, like me, you make stuff up. ("Stuff up" is probaly not a great way to end a sentence unless you are cooking a turkey or giving an order, but I'm going with it anyway.)
Upon arriving at LJ's casa, we were greeted by his wife Bonnie who became in contention for wife-of-the -year, okay week, by presenting us with frozen margaritas and a pot of chili. Now, how good is that? I'll tell you how good as that. It almost made me forget my chip-in and the long putt I almost made on six.
Did I tell you about that putt? It was and uphill left to righter with a... Hey! come back here!
Friday, March 30, 2007
Questions From Proust Revisited
...LOWEST DEPTHS OF MISERY? Snowman on a par three. That's an eight for you poor, miserable people who have never learned to play golf and have, thus, never experienced real life and think being below par means not feeling well.
...YOU LIKE TO LIVE? A weekend at the Playboy Mansion would probably be enough.
...IDEA OF EARTHLY HAPPINESS? Being as one with the great WHATEVER.
...FAULTS MOST INDULGED? Faults? What faults? Oh sure, the San Andreas.
...FAVORITE HEROES OF FICTION. Nick and Nora Charles. They had great clothes and strong livers.
...FAVORITE CHARCTERS IN HISTORY? Lincoln, De Soto, Pontiac. If you were important AND a swell fella, you got your name on a car. That's why nobody drives a Hitler.
...FAVORITE HEROINES OF FICTION? Those are like girls, right? Hmmm. Xena, Warrior Princess, Barbarella and Brigit Bardot's Babette.
...FAVORITE PAINTER? Sherman Williams.
...FAVORITE MUSICIAN? How can you choose from among the greats...Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Elvis? Too hard to decide. Okay, Haile Berry. She plays, right?
...QUALITY ADMIRED IN A MAN? The ability to pick up a bar tab.
...QUALITY ADMIRED IN A WOMAN? For no discernable reason they seem to like men. That's a good quality. Also, they look great jumping up and down in slow motion.
...FAVORITE VIRTUE? Mine? Yours? Random? If you say the word virute fast and loud someone else will say guzhundeit. Not being judgmental. (In my case that's "having no judgment.")
...FAVORITE OCCUPATION ? Pimp? No, just kidding. Watching football while smoking a good cigar, having a drink and a tasty snack, reading a good book and getting a ... I am a seven, afterall.
...HAVE LIKED TO BE? For one day? A beautiful woman. For a lifetime? Taller.
...YOU LIKE TO LIVE? A weekend at the Playboy Mansion would probably be enough.
...IDEA OF EARTHLY HAPPINESS? Being as one with the great WHATEVER.
...FAULTS MOST INDULGED? Faults? What faults? Oh sure, the San Andreas.
...FAVORITE HEROES OF FICTION. Nick and Nora Charles. They had great clothes and strong livers.
...FAVORITE CHARCTERS IN HISTORY? Lincoln, De Soto, Pontiac. If you were important AND a swell fella, you got your name on a car. That's why nobody drives a Hitler.
...FAVORITE HEROINES OF FICTION? Those are like girls, right? Hmmm. Xena, Warrior Princess, Barbarella and Brigit Bardot's Babette.
...FAVORITE PAINTER? Sherman Williams.
...FAVORITE MUSICIAN? How can you choose from among the greats...Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Elvis? Too hard to decide. Okay, Haile Berry. She plays, right?
...QUALITY ADMIRED IN A MAN? The ability to pick up a bar tab.
...QUALITY ADMIRED IN A WOMAN? For no discernable reason they seem to like men. That's a good quality. Also, they look great jumping up and down in slow motion.
...FAVORITE VIRTUE? Mine? Yours? Random? If you say the word virute fast and loud someone else will say guzhundeit. Not being judgmental. (In my case that's "having no judgment.")
...FAVORITE OCCUPATION ? Pimp? No, just kidding. Watching football while smoking a good cigar, having a drink and a tasty snack, reading a good book and getting a ... I am a seven, afterall.
...HAVE LIKED TO BE? For one day? A beautiful woman. For a lifetime? Taller.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Questions from Proust
Special K sent me the following series of questions called The Proust Questionnaire. I thought I would answer them seriously the first time around and get back to them at a later date for a round of whimsy. I would also very much like to read the responses of all or any of you who choose to answer the queries.
WHAT DO YOU REGARD AS THE LOWEST DEPTH OF MISERY?
Being crippled by fear, guilt or doubt and, hence, unable to act.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE?
Right here in Boquete is the best place I've found so far although I suspect there are many others that would suit me. A desirable place to return to from traveling for golf and education is my best definition of a suitable place.
WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF EARTHLY HAPPINESS?
Being in good health, loved and loving, golfing, reading, writing and, of course, being present to appreciate all those things.
TO WHAT FAULTS DO YOU FEEL MOST INDULGENT?
If this means what faults do I most often indulge, then the answers are now, as they have seemingly always been, lack of ambition, going too often with the flow, allowing fear to dictate responses and I probably drink too much. All but the last have, however, served me well.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROES OF FICTION?
David Copperfield, Nick Charles, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and any of Dick Francis' protagonists.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS IN HISTORY?
FDR, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and the knights of the Round table. Of course, Hood, Ivan and Arthur's boys were probably not real, but they should be.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROINES IN REAL LIFE?
My wife Woowoo Charly and the woman who went to jail rather than talk to Kenneth Starr.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROINES OF FICTION?
Wow, tough one. Ms Marple and jeez, I don't know, Batwoman, Catwoman, and any of the lusty ladies from the classics.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE PAINTER?
Salvador Dali.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE MUSICIAN?
My two sons and Carlos Santana.
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A MAN?
Honesty and the lack of ego.
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A WOMAN?
The same.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE VIRTUE?
If this means which of my own is my favorite, then I would have to say my tolerance.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE OCCUPATION?
Sauna surfing with bikini models. Oops sorry, that's for the other blog. Hmmm, sex, golf, reading, writing, good conversation while smoking a cigar and having a cocktail...I'm an enneagram seven, there are so many things to choose from.
WHO WOULD YOU HAVE LIKED TO BE?
I honestly cannot imagine being anyone else.
WHAT DO YOU REGARD AS THE LOWEST DEPTH OF MISERY?
Being crippled by fear, guilt or doubt and, hence, unable to act.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE?
Right here in Boquete is the best place I've found so far although I suspect there are many others that would suit me. A desirable place to return to from traveling for golf and education is my best definition of a suitable place.
WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF EARTHLY HAPPINESS?
Being in good health, loved and loving, golfing, reading, writing and, of course, being present to appreciate all those things.
TO WHAT FAULTS DO YOU FEEL MOST INDULGENT?
If this means what faults do I most often indulge, then the answers are now, as they have seemingly always been, lack of ambition, going too often with the flow, allowing fear to dictate responses and I probably drink too much. All but the last have, however, served me well.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROES OF FICTION?
David Copperfield, Nick Charles, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and any of Dick Francis' protagonists.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS IN HISTORY?
FDR, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and the knights of the Round table. Of course, Hood, Ivan and Arthur's boys were probably not real, but they should be.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROINES IN REAL LIFE?
My wife Woowoo Charly and the woman who went to jail rather than talk to Kenneth Starr.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE HEROINES OF FICTION?
Wow, tough one. Ms Marple and jeez, I don't know, Batwoman, Catwoman, and any of the lusty ladies from the classics.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE PAINTER?
Salvador Dali.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE MUSICIAN?
My two sons and Carlos Santana.
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A MAN?
Honesty and the lack of ego.
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A WOMAN?
The same.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE VIRTUE?
If this means which of my own is my favorite, then I would have to say my tolerance.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE OCCUPATION?
Sauna surfing with bikini models. Oops sorry, that's for the other blog. Hmmm, sex, golf, reading, writing, good conversation while smoking a cigar and having a cocktail...I'm an enneagram seven, there are so many things to choose from.
WHO WOULD YOU HAVE LIKED TO BE?
I honestly cannot imagine being anyone else.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
My English Side
As some of you know my heritage is half Irish, half English, a condition that causes me to continually rebel against myself. And - this line is from Rita Rudner - half of me is wild and carefree and the other half is appalled. Rita used the gag to describe her son who is half Brit, half American.
This morning I am fully in tune with my English side. I fell asleep last night reading P.D. James and awoke this morning needing a biscuit and tea. I'm sitting rather more erect as I type this and wondering where the Dickens, Jeeves is. Odd, really, that I am a bit of an anglophile in that the country has little that appeals to me apart from its pubs and golf courses. I would like to visit, for sure, but only on a warm summer day. That cold looking, drizzly rain that seems to be a regular feature of British Isle weather doesn't do a thing for me. "Bracing" they'd say, with stiff upper lips. "Bullshit" I'd say, heading to the pub, but then I do have that Irish side.
It's not the country, it's the people and their - as perceived by me - culture that fascinates me. Bobbies and double decked buses. Bowler hats squarely aligned and umbrellas tucked smartly under arms. Nifty names like Chelsea and Liverpool and The House of Lords. And you've got to love the accents, cockney and upper crust. One's so proudly aggressive, the other's deliciously a snoot. There's "guvnas" and "old socks" and "chums" aplenty. But best of all for me, is the overriding sense of civility. Do let's be polite. "I say Old Boy, sorry about the bullet but Daphne and I were engaged."
Of course I got it all from books and movies and TV, sketchy source materials at best, but I do have, don't you know, my image of the average Brit. He's an amalgam of James Bond, Bertie Wooster, David Niven and all the Monte Python characters. Today I am that guy. So to you I say, Ta Ta, Cheerio, chin up and I want it shaken, not stirred. Wait! That last part might be Irish!
This morning I am fully in tune with my English side. I fell asleep last night reading P.D. James and awoke this morning needing a biscuit and tea. I'm sitting rather more erect as I type this and wondering where the Dickens, Jeeves is. Odd, really, that I am a bit of an anglophile in that the country has little that appeals to me apart from its pubs and golf courses. I would like to visit, for sure, but only on a warm summer day. That cold looking, drizzly rain that seems to be a regular feature of British Isle weather doesn't do a thing for me. "Bracing" they'd say, with stiff upper lips. "Bullshit" I'd say, heading to the pub, but then I do have that Irish side.
It's not the country, it's the people and their - as perceived by me - culture that fascinates me. Bobbies and double decked buses. Bowler hats squarely aligned and umbrellas tucked smartly under arms. Nifty names like Chelsea and Liverpool and The House of Lords. And you've got to love the accents, cockney and upper crust. One's so proudly aggressive, the other's deliciously a snoot. There's "guvnas" and "old socks" and "chums" aplenty. But best of all for me, is the overriding sense of civility. Do let's be polite. "I say Old Boy, sorry about the bullet but Daphne and I were engaged."
Of course I got it all from books and movies and TV, sketchy source materials at best, but I do have, don't you know, my image of the average Brit. He's an amalgam of James Bond, Bertie Wooster, David Niven and all the Monte Python characters. Today I am that guy. So to you I say, Ta Ta, Cheerio, chin up and I want it shaken, not stirred. Wait! That last part might be Irish!
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Literary Giants
Someone said something last night that I found really interesting and vitally important. I wonder what it was.
Today's Spanish class is going to be about literature. (Litter at cher...own risk) Our teacher, Blad, from Translaterania is a lit enthusiast and my fellow student, Alan, is both a writer and former lit teacher. I'm sure they will bring their literary favorites to the discussion and names like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Dickens will all be bandied about. Not wanting to be left out, I will contribute my early influences in the field of great writing, those being Claire Bee, E. Rice Burroughs and Bob Kane. For those of you unfamiliar with these literary giants, they were the writers of the Chip Hilton series (The Hardy Boys of sports), Tarzan and the Batman comic books respectively. You may scoff if you must, but cover your mouth when you do so because we don't want that to spread.
It was from Claire I learned all my ethics. Winners never cheat and cheaters never win, it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game and cover your mouth when you scoff being some of them.
From Burroughs, and this is E. Rice not William, I learned that a man could be raised by apes, kill lions and crocodiles with nothing but his bare hands and a big knife while living happily with a hot babe in a tree house that lacked even the barest of essentials like a satellite dish. I haven't had a chance to put all this to the test just yet, but I did once shoot a rabbit. Of course I felt bad later and I'm sure Tarzan would have too. (From Burroughs, William I learned some other things, but this is a family blog.)
Kane was the earliest of my influences besides the magazines I found at my Uncle Bill's house as I pretty much learned to read from him. I wanted to know what those little black marks he put in the bubbles above Batman and Robin's heads were trying to tell me. I was just no good at figuring out the pictures. In fact, even now I wish they'd go back to putting words on the road signs. A picture of a truck going downhill doesn't tell me a damn thing.
So there you have the intellectual discourse I will be taking to class. Luckily, I'll be speaking Spanish and no one will understand me anyway.
Today's Spanish class is going to be about literature. (Litter at cher...own risk) Our teacher, Blad, from Translaterania is a lit enthusiast and my fellow student, Alan, is both a writer and former lit teacher. I'm sure they will bring their literary favorites to the discussion and names like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Dickens will all be bandied about. Not wanting to be left out, I will contribute my early influences in the field of great writing, those being Claire Bee, E. Rice Burroughs and Bob Kane. For those of you unfamiliar with these literary giants, they were the writers of the Chip Hilton series (The Hardy Boys of sports), Tarzan and the Batman comic books respectively. You may scoff if you must, but cover your mouth when you do so because we don't want that to spread.
It was from Claire I learned all my ethics. Winners never cheat and cheaters never win, it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game and cover your mouth when you scoff being some of them.
From Burroughs, and this is E. Rice not William, I learned that a man could be raised by apes, kill lions and crocodiles with nothing but his bare hands and a big knife while living happily with a hot babe in a tree house that lacked even the barest of essentials like a satellite dish. I haven't had a chance to put all this to the test just yet, but I did once shoot a rabbit. Of course I felt bad later and I'm sure Tarzan would have too. (From Burroughs, William I learned some other things, but this is a family blog.)
Kane was the earliest of my influences besides the magazines I found at my Uncle Bill's house as I pretty much learned to read from him. I wanted to know what those little black marks he put in the bubbles above Batman and Robin's heads were trying to tell me. I was just no good at figuring out the pictures. In fact, even now I wish they'd go back to putting words on the road signs. A picture of a truck going downhill doesn't tell me a damn thing.
So there you have the intellectual discourse I will be taking to class. Luckily, I'll be speaking Spanish and no one will understand me anyway.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Me and the Prince
My Spanish teacher is named Bladimir, Blad for short, pronounced Vlad, and the only other Vlad I know of is Vlad The Impaler, Prince Dracule, later known simply as Dracula. I think Bram Stoker called him a Count, but Bram didn't know him as well as I did. Back in the fourteenth century the prince and I were tight. We used to hang together and party on the weekends. We'd fly down the mountain from Drac's place and drop in on one pub or another for a brew and a game of darts. Everyone knows that Drac didn't drink wine in those days, but I'm here to tell you he could put away the suds. He was a pretty good hand with the darts too and was a fierce competitor. Beating him was not a good thing to do because Drac would get real surly after a loss and was easily provoked to violence. We'd end up throwing people around the room like ragdolls, which usually got us eighty- sixed and damn, we'd have to cross another good watering hole off our making the rounds list. I tried to point this out to the prince when we lost The Hungarian Rhapsody Bar and Barbecue, but sometimes there was just no talking to him. Around an hour or so before dawn, we'd both get real hungry and have to go in search of food. We were on the Transylvania Diet at the time, trying to stay fit and all that, and as you know that diet only allows for the blood of ripe young women. Try finding that an hour from dawn in the Carpathian Mountains! I tell you we went hungry many a night and our exploits were wildly exaggerated. We thought about moving to London where we were told the pickings were easier, but the prince was a homeboy and truly loved his castle. A few centuries later, he did make his way there when food was scarce locally, but I've heard it didn't go well for him. Anyway, when we did stumble on a fair damsel prowling the night, we'd play the paper, rock, scissors game to see who got to gulp the jugular. The loser had to make do with a wrist which was more suited for sipping and not very filling. If we'd gone several days without a thirst quencher, the prince would cheat and hypnotize some sweet thing early in the evening and then call her out later in the night. They'd waft right out of bed and zip right up to him like they were on a string. I was never able to do that. Of course I was a lot younger than the prince as he'd only made me a century before and I lacked both experience and a title. He promised to show me the trick one day, but he never did. After that we'd call it a night and head back to the old coffins to sleep through the day. It wasn't the greatest way to live, but, you know, it was fun and it worked for us. Even though he was a prince, old Vlad was a regular guy. I wonder if Bladimir is related. He seems like a regular guy too.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
At A Loss For Words
I've got three English/Spanish Dictionaries, including one heavy enough to do one arm curls with and a Webster's New World College - has anyone seen their Old World version? - and I find them no help at all when I'm at a loss for words. I just this minute opened up my dusty, trusty, old Webster's to a random page and locked my morning blurries on the word "ideology." It's defined as "the study of ideas, their nature and source." Well of course it is. The problem is you have to have an idea before you can study it and damn if I know the source from whence. I mean if it wasn't for Woowoo Charly, I wouldn't have any ideas at all. Hmmn, maybe I should wake her.
I'm supposed to be doing my Spanish homework, class is in two hours, but, you know, I'd rather shoot baskets or mess around with my friends. Maybe talk about sports or girls. If the conversation gets good, we can use our lunch money for cokes and Moon Pies down at the corner store and keep it going. Besides I've been studying way too hard lately. Four hours a week is no easy class load and I was telling my bud LJ only yesterday that our parents expect too darn much from us. Wish I had a car. I'd find that route 66 and drive it end to end and maybe even go to Panama. I've heard that's a really cool place.
Slap! Damn that smarts. Well I did make it to Panama after all. It just took longer than I thought. Now I have to do two things I should have done back then when my mind was nimble, but focused on all the wrong things. Learn Spanish and get a clue.
Whoops, just got interrupted and lost a half hour. Now I'm panicked. Gotta go.
I'm supposed to be doing my Spanish homework, class is in two hours, but, you know, I'd rather shoot baskets or mess around with my friends. Maybe talk about sports or girls. If the conversation gets good, we can use our lunch money for cokes and Moon Pies down at the corner store and keep it going. Besides I've been studying way too hard lately. Four hours a week is no easy class load and I was telling my bud LJ only yesterday that our parents expect too darn much from us. Wish I had a car. I'd find that route 66 and drive it end to end and maybe even go to Panama. I've heard that's a really cool place.
Slap! Damn that smarts. Well I did make it to Panama after all. It just took longer than I thought. Now I have to do two things I should have done back then when my mind was nimble, but focused on all the wrong things. Learn Spanish and get a clue.
Whoops, just got interrupted and lost a half hour. Now I'm panicked. Gotta go.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
A Nice Age To Be
I can't wait to get to the four or five books I might already have read if I hadn't been reading the thousand page middle book of a trilogy by George R.R. Martin. I finished "A Clash of Kings" last night about two minutes after I had finally sorted out all the central characters. The book's appendix lists all the players at the back of the book and takes over twenty pages to do so, so keeping track of all but the most important secondary characters was far beyond my abilities. I can't imagine how old George R.R. (Roy Rogers? Ronald Reagan? Robert Redford?) managed to do it himself. Must be nice to have talent. Now I have to avoid finding the last book of the three , so I can get some other reading done. I'm not one of those guys who can spend a lifetime reading Proust or Balzac or even Shakespeare to the exclusion of others. Variety is the spice of life as Willy Shakes (surely another seven) tells us, so bring on the P.D. James and Richard Russo. (George Richard Russo Martin?)
And speaking of lifetimes, today I am officially closer to age seventy than I am to sixty. Oddly, that doesn't bother me at all. I'm quite comfortable being a sixty something and seventy no longer sounds all that old. Turning forty was the last time I stressed over a birthday. I didn't like hitting that milestone one bit. The twenties and thirties were all nice ages to be. They were still young and full of hope and promise. Then forty came around and I morphed into Jack Benny for the next decade. "That's right, I'm 39." After fifty, age no longer mattered to me so I owned up proudly to my actual number. Somewhere in that decade, I realized the age of my "self", my "essence" (whatever it is) had become constant and didn't get any older with each passing birthday. I don't know exactly what that age is, it may in fact me timeless, but I can tell you one thing, it's not forty. I'll never be forty and you shouldn't either. It's depressing.
And speaking of lifetimes, today I am officially closer to age seventy than I am to sixty. Oddly, that doesn't bother me at all. I'm quite comfortable being a sixty something and seventy no longer sounds all that old. Turning forty was the last time I stressed over a birthday. I didn't like hitting that milestone one bit. The twenties and thirties were all nice ages to be. They were still young and full of hope and promise. Then forty came around and I morphed into Jack Benny for the next decade. "That's right, I'm 39." After fifty, age no longer mattered to me so I owned up proudly to my actual number. Somewhere in that decade, I realized the age of my "self", my "essence" (whatever it is) had become constant and didn't get any older with each passing birthday. I don't know exactly what that age is, it may in fact me timeless, but I can tell you one thing, it's not forty. I'll never be forty and you shouldn't either. It's depressing.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Fun in the Sun Continued
Sleep lay on me like a sack of something heavy when I forced myself to wakefulness este manana. Must have been the same for Gus as he did a lot of stretching before leaping to the floor and leading me to the door. He's usually off the bed like a cat the minute I swing my legs over the side, afraid, I surmise, that I might actually open the door and not let him out. I'm fully awake now though, having poured several cups of my caffeine delivery system into my welcoming maw. I am in fact lit up which is somewhat different than lit out. "So," I say to myself and hear Morey Amsterdam finish the question, "self, where was I when I left off ayer?"
Let's see, we had killed the camels and opened their bellies for the water stored there and then trekked to the sixth hole only to find the oasis dried up. The green, which is of course a laughable name for what our golf balls located after several wayward attempts, was surrounded on three sides by, what a surprise, sand. Sand that was in fact so sun burned, it had tanned up nicely. Brown sand. I looked about for Shaharazade, Cleopatra or Dorothy Lamour, but they were apparently off on Wednesdays. I asked my caddy, donde esta los cart ladies? and he, being a fast learner, came back with his latest new word, "huh?" so we moved along gamely. Or was it gamey. We were, after all, pretty sweaty.
Eventually we found the tee box for the ninth hole, a five mile, par 200, straight away to the clubhouse adventure that challenged both our reserve and our resolve. Nevertheless, intrepid troopers that we are, we finished strongly with triple or maybe quadruple or quintuple bogies, I mean who was counting at that point, and reunited with our pal LJ who had recouped. Beers were in order and our new best friend Roberto had the keys to the bar. Abierta la puerta Roberto! Panamas all around.
After that, well, there's not much to tell. We stopped at the nifty roadside restaurant we'd found last Mother's Day where the food is good and the service slow which is pretty much the description of every eatery in Panama. We all had, in one form or another, the corvina, a nice white fish and possibly the name of a car model. Now on showroom floors everywhere, the Chevy Corvina. It has a ring. Then it was on to Boquete to cool down and watch the latest episode of American Idol.
The guy singers on AI are totally mediocre and should be voted off forthwith. That though, is a blog for another day.
Let's see, we had killed the camels and opened their bellies for the water stored there and then trekked to the sixth hole only to find the oasis dried up. The green, which is of course a laughable name for what our golf balls located after several wayward attempts, was surrounded on three sides by, what a surprise, sand. Sand that was in fact so sun burned, it had tanned up nicely. Brown sand. I looked about for Shaharazade, Cleopatra or Dorothy Lamour, but they were apparently off on Wednesdays. I asked my caddy, donde esta los cart ladies? and he, being a fast learner, came back with his latest new word, "huh?" so we moved along gamely. Or was it gamey. We were, after all, pretty sweaty.
Eventually we found the tee box for the ninth hole, a five mile, par 200, straight away to the clubhouse adventure that challenged both our reserve and our resolve. Nevertheless, intrepid troopers that we are, we finished strongly with triple or maybe quadruple or quintuple bogies, I mean who was counting at that point, and reunited with our pal LJ who had recouped. Beers were in order and our new best friend Roberto had the keys to the bar. Abierta la puerta Roberto! Panamas all around.
After that, well, there's not much to tell. We stopped at the nifty roadside restaurant we'd found last Mother's Day where the food is good and the service slow which is pretty much the description of every eatery in Panama. We all had, in one form or another, the corvina, a nice white fish and possibly the name of a car model. Now on showroom floors everywhere, the Chevy Corvina. It has a ring. Then it was on to Boquete to cool down and watch the latest episode of American Idol.
The guy singers on AI are totally mediocre and should be voted off forthwith. That though, is a blog for another day.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
We lit out for Puerto Armuelles at eight in the morning. ("Lit out" is a gift to me from our amigo LJ to whom such expressions come naturally as he is, by his "own account" an old redneck. ) We arrived there some hour and a half later and made our way to the "Country Club" to play some golf. It was closed. We were just determining to play the course anyway when a truck pulled up and a young man hopped out to explain the course didn't officially open until four in the afternoon when people got off work and wandered there to get in nine before dark. We explained that we had driven all the way from Boquete to play so surely there must be some way to make that happen. The young fella, Miguel by name, pulled out his cell phone and fifteen minutes later three caddies appeared to lug our bags, or in Woowoo C and I my's case, pull our carts. We learned that to join the "Country Club" it would cost us an initial fee of thirty dollars and then ten dollars per month. These sums would entitle us to unlimited play on the golf course and use of the swimming pool, tennis courts and bar area. Woowoo C as my wife would be, and here comes one of my favorite Spanish words, gratis and yes you are correct, it does mean free. Alrighty then. Show me the dotted line.
It was in the neighborhood of ten thirty when L mailed a long drive down the left side of the first fairway and C and I hit fifty yard grounders up the middle. I use the word fairway here to indicate we were on an actual golf course despite its lack of even a single green blade of grass. The course appeared to have not seen rain since Noah played there shortly after The Flood. The entire layout was the color of straw with the exception of the palm and coconut trees that bordered the poorways (a more accurate description) and in some cases defined the parameters of the holes. It all looked and felt very very dry, like a tropical desert if such a thing can be imagined. The sun was pouring heat down upon us we ambled along and if you had no understanding of what we were doing I'm sure we would appear to be some sort of lost safari. Nevertheless, we were playing golf and C and I were digging it. L and his caddy were not so sure. The temperature had to be in the mid nineties range which is smoking hot for we who are used to the "eternal Spring" seventies of Boquete and L was suffering from it. His caddy, a stocky muscular guy named Marcos was also having a tough time as L's bag was no light lift. Both called it quits on the fifth hole, L from dizziness and Marcos from exhaustion. C and I plugged on with our caddies, Roberto and Abel. We were playing poorly but learning the course and tidbits about our companions. Abel, for instance, has a brother named Cain. I pointed out that this was not, historically, a good thing, but he didn't seem to mind. Roberto, impressed with my snappy Spanish, talked to me as if I were a native and was baffled my frequent use of the Spanish expression "huh?" I did glean that the course greens up nicely from May to November or thereabouts.
And now, speaking of Spanish, I must get ready for my class in same. I will pick up this narration later today or tomorrow.
It was in the neighborhood of ten thirty when L mailed a long drive down the left side of the first fairway and C and I hit fifty yard grounders up the middle. I use the word fairway here to indicate we were on an actual golf course despite its lack of even a single green blade of grass. The course appeared to have not seen rain since Noah played there shortly after The Flood. The entire layout was the color of straw with the exception of the palm and coconut trees that bordered the poorways (a more accurate description) and in some cases defined the parameters of the holes. It all looked and felt very very dry, like a tropical desert if such a thing can be imagined. The sun was pouring heat down upon us we ambled along and if you had no understanding of what we were doing I'm sure we would appear to be some sort of lost safari. Nevertheless, we were playing golf and C and I were digging it. L and his caddy were not so sure. The temperature had to be in the mid nineties range which is smoking hot for we who are used to the "eternal Spring" seventies of Boquete and L was suffering from it. His caddy, a stocky muscular guy named Marcos was also having a tough time as L's bag was no light lift. Both called it quits on the fifth hole, L from dizziness and Marcos from exhaustion. C and I plugged on with our caddies, Roberto and Abel. We were playing poorly but learning the course and tidbits about our companions. Abel, for instance, has a brother named Cain. I pointed out that this was not, historically, a good thing, but he didn't seem to mind. Roberto, impressed with my snappy Spanish, talked to me as if I were a native and was baffled my frequent use of the Spanish expression "huh?" I did glean that the course greens up nicely from May to November or thereabouts.
And now, speaking of Spanish, I must get ready for my class in same. I will pick up this narration later today or tomorrow.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Dramas and Dreams
I watched the movie "Resident Evil 2, The Apocalypse" last night thinking it was going to be about Bush's second term. Ba ding bong chiish! It wasn't, although the flick did have a lot of zombies, mindless monsters, robots and other Bush supporters in the plot. The good guys sort of prevail at the end, but the door is left open for "Resident Evil 3, Revenge of The Gingrich" which may or may not be playing in 2008. The heroine in the film is an ass kicking, DNA altered hot blonde. She is accompanied by an almost equally tough brunette and both are dressed in somewhat dominatrix style, ie: mini skirt, high boots, bare midriffs and halter tops. There are a couple of good guys in the movie as well, an heroic white guy who couldn't act and a comedic relief black guy who could, a little, but seriously, they mostly got in the way of my own, and apparently many other guys, personal fantasies. Sexy babes that can mop the floor with bad dudes being much in vogue of late.
I have to admit that I am not sure if Hollywood is missing the boat with their scare pics or if I am just too much a veteran viewer of the slash, mash and mangle genre to be frightened by them. It seems to me that the directors of today's fright films are caught up in what they can do with their special effects and forget that the object is not to amaze the viewer, but rather to scare the pants off him. To my way of thinking the audience needs to be squirming in their seats a bit more from fight or flight adrenaline and not from slimy, creepy things which have been way over done. (And here the Bush presidency comes back to mind.) Too much is too visible too soon. The nasties in the unknown are more frightening than the clearly animated or costumed baddie in the foreground. Which brings me to my pesadilla, my nightmare.
Last night I dreamed I had fallen asleep in my chair watching television. I awoke with a start feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Something was amiss. I turned off the TV which left me in complete darkness and I made my way slowly to the bedroom by groping along the walls. I didn't want to wake Woowoo Charly by turning on the lights. Just as I was about to climb in bed I heard a loud noise at the front door as if someone were trying to break in. I went to the bedroom window where I could see at an angle to that door and there was clearly someone or something there. Its shadowy outline was not especially human, but was especially thick and large. I hit every light switch I could as I rushed back to the living room and I was reaching for a three iron I keep in our umbrella stand when, with an ear splitting, wood ripping noise, the door exploded open and the thing came rushing in to get me.
I sat abruptly up in bed all sweaty and atremble. This had been too cool. Far better than the movie. Took me a good ten minutes to get back to sleep afterwards. I nodded off trying hard to promote part two, the ass kicking babe sandwich, but no such luck. Maybe tomorrow night. Still, I wonder... are your dreams as much fun as mine?
I have to admit that I am not sure if Hollywood is missing the boat with their scare pics or if I am just too much a veteran viewer of the slash, mash and mangle genre to be frightened by them. It seems to me that the directors of today's fright films are caught up in what they can do with their special effects and forget that the object is not to amaze the viewer, but rather to scare the pants off him. To my way of thinking the audience needs to be squirming in their seats a bit more from fight or flight adrenaline and not from slimy, creepy things which have been way over done. (And here the Bush presidency comes back to mind.) Too much is too visible too soon. The nasties in the unknown are more frightening than the clearly animated or costumed baddie in the foreground. Which brings me to my pesadilla, my nightmare.
Last night I dreamed I had fallen asleep in my chair watching television. I awoke with a start feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Something was amiss. I turned off the TV which left me in complete darkness and I made my way slowly to the bedroom by groping along the walls. I didn't want to wake Woowoo Charly by turning on the lights. Just as I was about to climb in bed I heard a loud noise at the front door as if someone were trying to break in. I went to the bedroom window where I could see at an angle to that door and there was clearly someone or something there. Its shadowy outline was not especially human, but was especially thick and large. I hit every light switch I could as I rushed back to the living room and I was reaching for a three iron I keep in our umbrella stand when, with an ear splitting, wood ripping noise, the door exploded open and the thing came rushing in to get me.
I sat abruptly up in bed all sweaty and atremble. This had been too cool. Far better than the movie. Took me a good ten minutes to get back to sleep afterwards. I nodded off trying hard to promote part two, the ass kicking babe sandwich, but no such luck. Maybe tomorrow night. Still, I wonder... are your dreams as much fun as mine?
Friday, March 09, 2007
A Good Night's Sleep
There is not much in this world better than a good night's sleep. When I've had my solid eight, I can deal with global warming, nuclear holocaust, alien invasions and even the more serious disasters like the Bush Administration and the reemergence of Newt Gingrich on the political scene. Being completely rested allows me to appreciate all the gifts that nature has to give with family, friends and dogs topping the list and cigars rounding out the top ten. When sleep eludes me, an untied shoelace can be a source of major aggravation. "What the hell, how did that happen? Now I have to bend over and redo the damn thing like I've got time for that with all the other crap happening right now." I mention this because I want my legions of readers, all four of you, to know that, yes, I am an addict and if anyone tries an intervention I will stay up all night and you will be very sorry in the morning.
Tylenol PM is my drug of choice. Colored light blue to match my eyes, these heavenly sleep inducers may not quite have been made by nature, but you know, as the Dali Lama once said about something or other, "who cares?" They sit atop a little glass shelf - I like to think of it as a shrine - next to our bathroom mirror and each night, when I am awakened by the howling of our
neighbor's, the Baskervilles, dog, I tip toe quietly to our smallest room and extract one of the magic pills from its container. I then break it in two and place the smaller half back on the shelf for later in the night when, if all goes as usual, I will be reawakened by the howling of my bladder. I wash the other half down my gullet with a swig of water as that's the only available liquid in our bathroom. Any kind of booze would be preferable, but Woowoo Charly says the bottles would be unsightly on the cabinet shelves and, besides that I like to drink a glass of water every day whether I need it or not; small sips being the best way to achieve that goal. I then scurry back to the bed and resume my reveries, the good night's sleep being the best of those.
After which there are the dreams. I won't wax on them at the moment, but I will say this: Bush and Newt play no part.
Good morning world! Bring on the day!
Tylenol PM is my drug of choice. Colored light blue to match my eyes, these heavenly sleep inducers may not quite have been made by nature, but you know, as the Dali Lama once said about something or other, "who cares?" They sit atop a little glass shelf - I like to think of it as a shrine - next to our bathroom mirror and each night, when I am awakened by the howling of our
neighbor's, the Baskervilles, dog, I tip toe quietly to our smallest room and extract one of the magic pills from its container. I then break it in two and place the smaller half back on the shelf for later in the night when, if all goes as usual, I will be reawakened by the howling of my bladder. I wash the other half down my gullet with a swig of water as that's the only available liquid in our bathroom. Any kind of booze would be preferable, but Woowoo Charly says the bottles would be unsightly on the cabinet shelves and, besides that I like to drink a glass of water every day whether I need it or not; small sips being the best way to achieve that goal. I then scurry back to the bed and resume my reveries, the good night's sleep being the best of those.
After which there are the dreams. I won't wax on them at the moment, but I will say this: Bush and Newt play no part.
Good morning world! Bring on the day!
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Hi Ho Hi Ho
...it's off to school we go. No time for fun no time for play, hi ho hi ho.
Day 2 was better, harder. I'm still ahead of the curve, but I'm filling in some of the gaps in what I thought I had already learned. It's good to know I don't know it all, because if I did, I would have to become a 5. Omniscient and all that.
It is fun sitting in a classroom with a lecturer at the board scribbling out notes with his dry erase marker. What ever happened to chalk? I enjoy the banter and the back and forth questioning and I particularly enjoy the sense of "eureka, I did not know that!" Ya gotta love learning. It's right up there with super models in vats of tapioca for a good sensation. Yesterday, por ejemplo, I learned exactly when to use the words por and para which are commonly misused by gringos. Now if I could only remember where I left that tub of pudding...
After school, - what a strange phrase that is for someone my age to write - I did my homework, tarea in Spanish, took Gus for a hike, practised guitar, I can now find the B chord in less than an hour, watched Chelsea knock off FC Porto in the Uefa, it's back on, chatted with mi esposa over cocktails, had dinner and went to bed to read a book. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there I also did some chores and ate some peanuts. I'm only mentioning this in answer to the what do you do all day question that we jubilados get on a regular basis.
I think my mouse is dying. And that's another sentence you don't often see in print. It's a Genius and it has a little mouse head in profile stamped above the G in Genius which is itself stamped across the middle of the gismo. I'm bringing this up because I am out of things to say in the four minutes I have left to write before I get ready for school. So that's it for the day. Hi ho hi ho.
Day 2 was better, harder. I'm still ahead of the curve, but I'm filling in some of the gaps in what I thought I had already learned. It's good to know I don't know it all, because if I did, I would have to become a 5. Omniscient and all that.
It is fun sitting in a classroom with a lecturer at the board scribbling out notes with his dry erase marker. What ever happened to chalk? I enjoy the banter and the back and forth questioning and I particularly enjoy the sense of "eureka, I did not know that!" Ya gotta love learning. It's right up there with super models in vats of tapioca for a good sensation. Yesterday, por ejemplo, I learned exactly when to use the words por and para which are commonly misused by gringos. Now if I could only remember where I left that tub of pudding...
After school, - what a strange phrase that is for someone my age to write - I did my homework, tarea in Spanish, took Gus for a hike, practised guitar, I can now find the B chord in less than an hour, watched Chelsea knock off FC Porto in the Uefa, it's back on, chatted with mi esposa over cocktails, had dinner and went to bed to read a book. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there I also did some chores and ate some peanuts. I'm only mentioning this in answer to the what do you do all day question that we jubilados get on a regular basis.
I think my mouse is dying. And that's another sentence you don't often see in print. It's a Genius and it has a little mouse head in profile stamped above the G in Genius which is itself stamped across the middle of the gismo. I'm bringing this up because I am out of things to say in the four minutes I have left to write before I get ready for school. So that's it for the day. Hi ho hi ho.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Leccion de Espanol
El hecho mejor planes de ratones y hombres frecuentament va malo. Or something like that. That "oft gang agley" part is tough to translate.
There were only three of us at yesterday's class. Alan and I, of course, and a twenty something young woman who was nice, but not SI swimsuit material. El nombre de nuestro profesor is Bladimir, a name that doesn't exactly resound Latino. Upon arrival I was given an info packet that contained a nice map of Boquete and several pages of text about the course. One of the points made in the text was that fluency in conversation was the principal goal and that grammar was of far less importance. We then spent two hours mostly diddlying around with, I might have known... grammar. Two hours was also all the time allotted as the school has had a sudden influx of students and there aren't enough teachers and classrooms to handle a four hour block.
Still, my only real complaint is that so far the curriculum is too easy. I don't mind grammar. I like language rules and structure. La problema is that I am far ahead of what is being taught. I want (and need) more vocabulary and situational conversations. I want to be pushed and challenged in class. Otherwise I'll just get lazy, sit back and show off how smart I already am. Not a good thing to do at eight fifty an hour. So... we'll see how it goes today. (Vamos a ver hoy o este dia.)
Alrighty then! (Which has no translation that I know of. Hay caramba! may be close.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Roy and Dale were beating the stuffing out of Trigger when...
Not that, the other ranch blogger breath...I was happy to learn that the Sonaffa Beach Diet continues to be successful as I have lost another pound. The weight is just flying off me in fractions of ounces! At the rate I am going I should achieve my target weight by my mid March birthday... in the year 2012. If the Mayans are correct, I'll be looking good going out. And I am unhappy to learn that Venezuela, from whence our television programming originates has determined that Spanish League and UEFA soccer are now pay-per view events. Yeah yeah, I know, who cares? Well, I do and four other gringos as well. It's important to remember, well, okay, not really important, but maybe worth noting, okay it's not that either, BUT, I've learned half my second language from Spanish speaking sports announcers. "Se va, se va, se va, se fue! Digolete no no, no no, no no! Cuadrangular. It's going, going, going, gone! Let me tell you, no no, no no, no no! Homerun! Now that's useful stuff.
There were only three of us at yesterday's class. Alan and I, of course, and a twenty something young woman who was nice, but not SI swimsuit material. El nombre de nuestro profesor is Bladimir, a name that doesn't exactly resound Latino. Upon arrival I was given an info packet that contained a nice map of Boquete and several pages of text about the course. One of the points made in the text was that fluency in conversation was the principal goal and that grammar was of far less importance. We then spent two hours mostly diddlying around with, I might have known... grammar. Two hours was also all the time allotted as the school has had a sudden influx of students and there aren't enough teachers and classrooms to handle a four hour block.
Still, my only real complaint is that so far the curriculum is too easy. I don't mind grammar. I like language rules and structure. La problema is that I am far ahead of what is being taught. I want (and need) more vocabulary and situational conversations. I want to be pushed and challenged in class. Otherwise I'll just get lazy, sit back and show off how smart I already am. Not a good thing to do at eight fifty an hour. So... we'll see how it goes today. (Vamos a ver hoy o este dia.)
Alrighty then! (Which has no translation that I know of. Hay caramba! may be close.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Roy and Dale were beating the stuffing out of Trigger when...
Not that, the other ranch blogger breath...I was happy to learn that the Sonaffa Beach Diet continues to be successful as I have lost another pound. The weight is just flying off me in fractions of ounces! At the rate I am going I should achieve my target weight by my mid March birthday... in the year 2012. If the Mayans are correct, I'll be looking good going out. And I am unhappy to learn that Venezuela, from whence our television programming originates has determined that Spanish League and UEFA soccer are now pay-per view events. Yeah yeah, I know, who cares? Well, I do and four other gringos as well. It's important to remember, well, okay, not really important, but maybe worth noting, okay it's not that either, BUT, I've learned half my second language from Spanish speaking sports announcers. "Se va, se va, se va, se fue! Digolete no no, no no, no no! Cuadrangular. It's going, going, going, gone! Let me tell you, no no, no no, no no! Homerun! Now that's useful stuff.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Blog on the Run
At 10:30 this morning I begin a week of intensive Spanish classes. I will be in class four hours each day and have homework to boot. (Drop kicking homework into a corner was one of my specialties back in the day.) The course is being given here by a language center called Habla Ya. (Speak Now) I've been wanting to improve my Spanish at a faster rate for sometime, so I wandered into Habla Ya one day and took their placement test. I'm an intermediate. I think that means I'm over five foot five but less than tall. Habla Ya then rounded up three other intermediates to fill up the class; four people to a teacher being their maximum. One of the other students will be our friend Alan who became an inter by having taken classes in the past. I think he's a bit more fluent than I am but, hey, I'm taller. I don't know yet who our other classmates will be, but I'm hoping for SI swimsuit models in need of lessons. It's always good to have hope. At the end of the week I will cut back classes to two hours a day two times a week for the rest of the month. After that I will go on the Spanish Lecture circuit dazzling the masses with my fluency on a wide variety of subjects dear to the Latino heart like, Salsa. Is it music or something to put on food? Woowoo Charly will then begin her classes at Habla Ya or maybe Spanish By The River, she likes the sound of that one, and the two of us will no longer be intimidated by smart alecky six year olds speaking better English than our Spanish.
Wish us luck.
Wish us luck.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Out of Sorts
I've been out of luck, out of time and out of money, but the worst is being out of sorts. I mean when you don't have any sorts you're in real trouble and that has been exactly my condition for the past several days. The thing that caused my sorts to run and hide was not having the morning time to write a blog. I have, as you may have noticed, been blogless for several days. Bloglessness leads to sortlessness which in turn leads to disgruntledness and grousing. Fortunately, as you can see, I have found my sorts and fended off the personality change my daughters claim is to curmudgeonness.
And speaking of personality changes, one occurred to me while watching last night's lunar eclipse. As interesting as it was from our human point of view, I had to wonder how it affected the poor werewolf. "What the hell? Am I changing? Changing back No, wait, I'm half changed, I'm... somebody's screwing with me." Must have been very traumatic.
With help from our friend Randy, we got our new washer/dryer on line yesterday and also managed to change a few light bulbs. What, you think changing light bulbs is easy? These babies were inside a fixture that wouldn't give them up. It took a man with years of experience to figure out how to free them and, you guessed right, that guy wasn't me. We replaced the bulbs with those new energy saving, "last forever" types and then put the fixture back together. I suspect that last forever might be a slight exaggeration for the bulbs, but if they hang in there until after we move again, it will be close enough to forever to suit me.
The washer/dryer part didn't go as smoothly. The first obstacle occurred the day before when we brought it back from Daveed (specialK says I have to pronounce David that way or it sounds weird) in Alan's truck and unloaded it in front of our house. It was at that point that Alan and I realized the large cardboard box that had been loaded into his truck bed weighed approximately, oh, I don't know, say a thousand pounds. More than we could lift anyway. I called another friend, Larry to come and help. And did he ever. After pushing and pulling on the box for a bit, he said, "I know exactly what to do." Then he left. Which, of course is what I wanted to do, but damn, it was my washer/dryer. Larry returned though, in a matter of minutes and brought with him four Panamanian construction workers built like NFL linebackers. They picked up the appliance and carried it to the back of the house where it will now live until we move again. Nice. And my back doesn't hurt a bit. The next day, Randy and I hooked up the w/d. Okay, Randy did, but I helped.
So there you have it. I get by with a little help from my friends. Thank you, Alan, Larry and Randy for returning my sorts. I was lost without them.
And speaking of personality changes, one occurred to me while watching last night's lunar eclipse. As interesting as it was from our human point of view, I had to wonder how it affected the poor werewolf. "What the hell? Am I changing? Changing back No, wait, I'm half changed, I'm... somebody's screwing with me." Must have been very traumatic.
With help from our friend Randy, we got our new washer/dryer on line yesterday and also managed to change a few light bulbs. What, you think changing light bulbs is easy? These babies were inside a fixture that wouldn't give them up. It took a man with years of experience to figure out how to free them and, you guessed right, that guy wasn't me. We replaced the bulbs with those new energy saving, "last forever" types and then put the fixture back together. I suspect that last forever might be a slight exaggeration for the bulbs, but if they hang in there until after we move again, it will be close enough to forever to suit me.
The washer/dryer part didn't go as smoothly. The first obstacle occurred the day before when we brought it back from Daveed (specialK says I have to pronounce David that way or it sounds weird) in Alan's truck and unloaded it in front of our house. It was at that point that Alan and I realized the large cardboard box that had been loaded into his truck bed weighed approximately, oh, I don't know, say a thousand pounds. More than we could lift anyway. I called another friend, Larry to come and help. And did he ever. After pushing and pulling on the box for a bit, he said, "I know exactly what to do." Then he left. Which, of course is what I wanted to do, but damn, it was my washer/dryer. Larry returned though, in a matter of minutes and brought with him four Panamanian construction workers built like NFL linebackers. They picked up the appliance and carried it to the back of the house where it will now live until we move again. Nice. And my back doesn't hurt a bit. The next day, Randy and I hooked up the w/d. Okay, Randy did, but I helped.
So there you have it. I get by with a little help from my friends. Thank you, Alan, Larry and Randy for returning my sorts. I was lost without them.
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