Friday, June 26

Farrah's Story


I'm watching it now on NBC (I just discovered we have NBC back). What a beautiful thing a beautiful person did. Document her journey through cancer treatment and make it public for all to see "the other side". My mother and husband died of cancer and not once did I ever think of documenting the process.
A smart and amazing lady.
Thank you Farrah for Farrah's Story. I'll surely miss ya.

If you've never seen "Poor Little Rich Girl - The Barbara Hutton Story" starring Farrah, you must. I watched it after my husband died and before coming to Costa Rica. Now, living here, I feel a little like her character in the movie except with a whole lot less money, hoping I don't outlive my funds (and friends).


TeriTunes is back on. I thought it fitting for Michael to sing for Farrah's post.
Playing now, Michael Jackson - Gone to Soon

Thursday, June 25

Busy-ing Myself

Well, I'm back to bidness, being busy getting my computer stuff hooked up, dogs done (includes vet trips), and the general running/cleaning of the household. It's rainy season which means MOLD SEASON. You understand what I mean if you live in the tropics. "Cloro" is your best friend and with all the rock finish and brick in my house, I stay busy with bleaching the "hongos", or my favorite word "moho" and then sealing with HydroStop - good stuff! I finally found my scanner cord, it was under the scanner, and misc. stuff (like pick up new wireless router today, the old one didn't make the cut when I reconnected everything) - to get me back and running S M O O O T H (again). I want to scan postcards I'm sending and receiving.
EVEN WITH voltage regulator on the house's meter, TWO surge protectors for the computer/printer/etc., this is Costa Rica, with it's many power outages and sooner or later, it fries everything, or at least it seems that way. For now, here's that rock I mentioned last week.
I just love that postcard from Norway!!


R.I.P. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

...talk about "being in between a rock and a hard place".

Monday, June 22

Ama Tierra Retreat



Last Saturday, early in the morning, three groups of women loaded up in cars and headed up the mountain, WAY UP the mountain, to visit Ama Tierra Retreat and Wellness Center for the day. It was a great experience, including the drive there. The owner of the resort, Jill, presented to our women's group the benefits of herbs last week so most of my photos are of the herbal plants so I can remember what's what. At the retreat, I did my first yoga class, we hiked through the jungle lead by two experts pointing out plants and trees along the way, had a wonderful lunch and I played the piano, first time in 20 years! Some ladies received massages, manicures and pedicures. Pamper yourself time. It was all a very moving experience and I encourage everyone to visit. Ama Tierre is nestling in the mountains in a most magical setting.

I came away with a sense of peace, balance, and harmony and plan to return,,,, soon!
Here are the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ticamachatourscostarica/sets/72157619941154373/

This week will be spent on my gratitude list and getting centered again. Last week was hell week, losing things, forgetting things and just plain ole scatter brained. I really needed this little retreat excursion to get back on track.
You can visit their site at www.AmaTierra.com

I have provided the driving directions from both the San Jose and Jaco area in the comments section of this post.

Sunday, June 21

Back in the Day... and Happy Father's Day

For those of you that are too young to have experienced this wonderful era, forward this e-mail onto your parents and grandparents.

Now Scroll and I think you'll enjoy it. Whoever wrote this must have been my next door neighbor because it totally described my childhood to a 'T.'

Hope you enjoy it.

(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go...pull a chair up to the TV set,

'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting
board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food
poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw
sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown
paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a
pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then..

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a
pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high
top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes
with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any
injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we
are now. We all wore white, short sleeved, buttoned shirts and (short) blue
shorts for gym, washed over the weekend and brought back clean on Monday.
We all took showers at end of Gym before going to our next class.
Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be
much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and
staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we
had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed
to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station,
Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that
bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction
sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of
mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did)
and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49
bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor
for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did we got
our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got
home..

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on
the front stoop, just before he fell off.

Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.

Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a
neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were
from a dysfunctional family.

How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even
notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA. AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT
YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.
Disclosure: the above was sent to me this morning by my friend and I thought I'd share it with everyone.

The very first gift I bought my dad for Father's Day was a shoeshine kit from Piggy Wiggy. I made such a secret about buying it with my own money while my dad shopped. I was six years old and had an allowance. I still have that shoeshine kit from my dad's things. Funny the stuff I save....
In the years to come, my dad recieved a lot of Old Spice. I have that same set-up as in the photo... I kept it to remember my dad. I laugh at the things I brought to Costa Rica but I'm glad I did! It makes "a stranger in a strange land" feel like it's home.

This Sunday, I got it right. Happy Father's Day!!

Friday, June 19

Dancing Matt

Found it, I did a search on my blog (top left) for 'where the hell is matt' and under the post Everybody Dance Now, I got to that link I was referring to in the last post.... dancing on the rock in Kjeragbolten, Norway -"1000 meter above the fjord".

Pause TeriTunes before you click over and sit back and watch Matt dance all over the world for Spike.
Cool video. The rock is towards the end.
http://www.spike.com/video/where-hell-is-matt/2745949cmpnid=753&pt=sr&refsite=7063

Here's the link to the Virtual Satellite Tour of the same locations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LWw0L7LIUY

Google discovered him and sponsored the "Where the Google is Matt".
...it's all on the Internet. A really clever idea to get paid to travel.

Thursday, June 18

Postcrossings

Like I don't have enough to do,,, but I've started doing this new little project. It's adding postcards to my personal collection from others from all over the world, with stamps. I found it at www.postcrossing.com and started sending out cards to "perfectly unknown strangers". It's cool. Is it the years we live that make us realize how small the world really is or is it I'm in a foreign country and want to connect with the outside world? I received my first postcard today from a nice lady in Norway. It had the coolest photo of a man standing on a rock and the rock suspended in air, squished between two HUGE rock formations. Water below. Do you know that site? www.wherethehellismatt was at that location dancing on that same rock, it's on his dancing tour video. Maybe that was what planted the seed, seeing Matt dance all over the world. I have a photographer friend traveling now and photographing for pay....what a life!

I've met lots of people through my blog. In fact today, I met a newcomer to Jaco that has been reading my blog. It still surprises me. I plan to collect all the postcards and use them for educational purposes for the schools around here. I'll put them to good use somehow but in the meantime, I'm waiting for my next postcard!

postscript: O.k. I watched Matt's 2008 video again to see that rock and it's not on "that" video. It must be on an earlier one. Yo-yo (you're on your own to search for it). I'll probably keep searching because what Matt did, is incredible and I enjoy watching the world flash by and seeing people happy. I wonder what he's doing now???
(he has a girlfriend now and sticks close to home, or so I read awhile back)

Isn't this too cool. It's a postcard posted on Postcrossing from a postcrosser in Costa Rica!
Send postcards!
Tica Macha
Apdo. 325-4023
Jaco, Costa Rica

Wednesday, June 17

Hermosa Wave


The waves have really picked up this week!! It's such a treat to get out there and photograph stuff like this. Loveit, love it.

Sunday, June 14

Day for Fathers


You don't hear me say much about my dad on my blog. I guess after almost 20 years, it's still too sensitive for me to mention much. He is with me everyday in my heart and soul. It is his voice I hear warning me "don't trust no s.o.b.", "be independent", "get a good education" (a lifelong deal for me), and remember "no one will ever love you like your daddy". He was right. My dad was the one that taught me to drive a car, bait a hook with a cricket, take a fish off that same hook, operate his Glasstream bass tournament fishing boat, to bluff when playing Black Jack (I learned to count, too), mind my manners, act like a lady but be a tomboy, how to tell time, put together model cars,,, and this all started at about age six. He and my mom parted ways when I was three years old. He was in a bad car accident and was in the hospital for nine months after he hit a tree and went through the windshield. He called it "pickin' pecans with a Buick". I didn't see my dad again until I started spending my summers and Christmas with him at age six. He was Santa, a good Samaratan, hardworking, salt of the earth kind of guy. He called me "Blow-blow", "Blow" for short cause when the summer came and I was with my dad, all we did was blow and go, blow money that is,,,, mostly on the Miracle Strip at Panama City Beach. There was nothing my dad wouldn't do for me. I thought we were rich and I felt like a princess. At Christmas, we would go shopping and I would buy all sorts of things I liked. I'd wrap them and then he would pick out the ones that were going to the Salvation Army. I never knew what I was getting or giving but I picked out everything and wrapped it. I don't think he knew either. We'd load up the presents, drive to the Salvation Army house, I'd get out, run to the door and deposit the gifts and ring the bell. Then, off we'd drive. He taught me about anonymous charitable giving and how to give away things you'd really like to keep for yourself. He always had money in his pocket to give to little kids on the street or back on the farmlands. We'd always go for a long Sunday drive and I learned to drive a La Sabre Buick at age six, sitting on his lap.
I could go on for days about my dad, he was and always will be, my hero. To all you fathers out there, I hope your daughters and sons feel as blessed as I do.
My dad would NEVER believe I live in Costa Rica, permanently. When I moved to "Ha Why Ya" (Hawaii), he couldn't understand why I had to "leave the country". When funds got short, I asked him to send some money and all he said was "I'll send you $50 or a plane ticket home". I took the fifty and stayed awhile in Hawaii, never asking for money again. For all the money he did loan me over the course of my adult life, he always told me when I'd pay him back, "you're only paying yourself". I really didn't have a clue what he was talking about until after he died. There it was, an account in only my name and in it was all the money (plus interest) that I had ever borrowed from my dad. Not many men like my good ole dad.
Miss ya still, Blow.

On TeriTunes: "He Stopped Loving Her Today" - George Jones
This was one of my dad's favorite songs. My dad never remarried and I never saw him with a girlfriend. He outlived my mother by just a little but he never stopped loving her. I'd play this on the jukebox for him, if I could again. This will have to do.

Friday, June 12

Stand By Me

This link to an amazing video was sent to me by my friend Carol. It's so great, I had to share. Please pause TeriTunes before you click onto it:

http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741
"The song itself is that classic standard "Stand By Me" originally released
in 1955 by The Staple Singers and released again in 1961 by the Drifters.."

Our "authentic self" knows we are all connected,,, somehow.

All day rain here today. A great chance to catch up on stuff in my home.
I have my computer back but it is bare of all my programs. I am limiting the time I spend on it as not to become too frustrated.

The "real" reason for paused blogging was when I realized I was starting to think in a "blog" dialog over stuff of no interest to others. I knew then, it was time to back away from blogging until I am fresh and have something to blog about. Maybe new photos, too. I'm still learning Photoshop and Cesar's Way. It takes a lot of time. "Back in the day", I was a b & w darkroom wizard. Now with digital, it's to learn all over again and the diversity is mind boggling and constantly expanding.


I took these photos last October of Evan, local surfer. Just the other day, I happened to run into him again and was able to give him his cd of that session. I've really fallen behind on stuff. I would like all the locals to have photos of themselves. I'm posting a couple of "solarize" photos for Bree Wee, cause I know she comes here for the surf photos.

Friday, June 5

Taking a break

So you know, I'm taking a little break until my "REAL" computer is back from the shop. Recently, I got a letter from a friend that said send her $2,500, she was stuck in 'Europe' and needed money to clear her hotel cost. It was all bogus, someone hacked into her computer and sent this out to all her people in her address book. I called her to confirm what I suspected.

Now, my computer's registry is all screwed up. Not sure if it's connected but to be on the safe side, Armando at 3-D Computer is giving it a good cleaning and re-installing Windows.


I could blog from my laptop but I need a break to concentrate on some neglected issues.

Just hang with me, I'll be back!