Fishing

As planned, we went fishing on Tuesday. And here are the pictures to prove it:
Snapper was first on the agenda:

It is hard to convey just how nice the weather is here. This is what constitutes a traffic jam on the water. San Pedro has really embraced the island way of life with time being a suggested thing instead of a way to regulate your life.

Baracuda was next:

The entire haul:

And here is the picture of our hotel from the fishing boat.
See that guy in the blue soccer jersey sitting underneath a palm tree? Yep, that's me. I bailed on the fishing and sent Paty out to represent the Tobin's. It's a long story that involved a mild case of Mantezuma's revenge, coupled with a fishing boat that didn't have a bathroom, an early wake up call and you get the idea. Paty did well though as you can see.

Since I didn't fish, I did most of the cooking (like this wasn't going to happen anyway). We again availed ourselves of the hotel bikes and rode to the local grocery and stocked up on supplies for the night.

The final tally was A LOT of different types of snapper and three baracuda. Here is what we did with them:


Dinner at the bar and the entire crew:


We actually had quite a bit of leftovers, but after feeding our extremely helpful hotel bar tender that helped us with the cooking utensils and the local security we still had a lot of fish left. Luckily for us the Belize Army has some troops here at the hotel and they happily ate ALL the extra food.

The Army people mainly stay in their room during the day or lounge on the hammocks, and they patrol the island at night. Apparently earlier in the year they had some problems with tourists getting mugged. Well since 100% of their economy is tourism and the local police were either bad or complacent (more likely) in doing something about it the local businesses talked to the federal government and donated accomadations so they could send in the army to crack down on nighttime loitering. It has been worked extremely well and the muggings have stopped entirely. The only thing is, it's kind of a shock to see four guys come out of a hotel room in army dress and M16's the first time. But for sure we feel safe! And now they are fed.

All for now, Wednesday we were supposed to go to Lamani but our tour was pushed back to Thursday. So tomorrow is open, probably some island time for us!

Biking

Holy @#$% she CAN ride a bike:

On Monday we decided to take advantage of the free bikes that the hotel offers and explore the island a little.

Becuase I am that guy, I brought the garmin running gps odometer with us on the trip and strapped it to the handlebars. It is exactly 1.30 miles from our hotel to the edge of downtown San Pedro.

Paty did pretty well riding the bike, she takes a while to start and has problems stopping, turning or changing directions but other than that she does quite well. Luckily the island life pace is really laid back and the local are used to silly tourists riding around on their only road. Most of the traffic is actually golf carts instead of cars.

We ending up riding through San Pedro and across a toll bridge(that we didn't realize was a toll bridge, so we owe the city of San Pedro two US Dollars) and out into the part of town where some of the newer resorts and large personal house are. Exactly 3.6 miles from Mata Rocks Resort we found this absolutely awesome bar that was built on the end of a pier about 50 yards out in the sea, Palapa's:


We needed a break after the 'grueling' 40 minute ride, so we hung out at Palapa's for a while. Paty even took a dip in the ocean there:

Sadly we had to ride back to town:

At night we have gone to Papi's a few times, where Paty befriended the 'band':

Tomorrow we are fishing with another couple from our hotel in the morning and then as long as we catch something, we are going to have a bid beach feast at the Squirrel's Nest. Each night an older Dutch couple that is also staying here has been cooking their dinner on the charcoal grill that the hotel has. So we are teaming up with them to provide dinner for at least 6 people. Assuming we catch the fish that is.

All for now.

Belize first days

Belize is nice. If you haven’t heard Madonna’s Isla Bonita lately go to itunes and listen to it, I’ll wait.

Back? Good, because the song totally exemplifies San Pedro. It is really pretty. We’ve settled into our hotel nicely. Basically it is 14 rooms built around a pool and a beach bar. The bar is great; everyone congregates there in the morning and night. We are planning on fishing on Tuesday and we will most likely do a big bar-b-que for all the guests that want to participate. The Squirrel’s Nest is the name of the bar and it is 100% what you would envision from a Caribbean beach bar. Locals and people from other hotels always swing in from the beach side and stop in for a drink or four.

We arrived on Saturday and went to town for dinner. The city is pretty quiet. It seems like a theme for us but this is the second vacation where we are in a really nice area and it is pretty much a ghost town. It is not as sparsely populated as Croatia was, but a lot of the restaurants and even some hotels are closed for the slow season.

Sunday we hung out at the Squirrel’s nest in the morning and in the afternoon we went snorkeling. As you saw earlier in our pictures, the reef is literally only 200 -400 yards out from the coastline. The boat for the snorkeling comes right up to the hotel dock and picks you up. And you make two stops for snorkeling in about 2.5 hours. We were able to snorkel with sharks. They are nurse shards, so they are bottom feeders and not aggressive. Good thing as the biggest of the 7 or 8 we saw up close was 9 feet long. Basically they look like those big algae eaters everyone has in their aquarium (placo’s or whatever the official name is).

As we didn’t sport for the underwater camera, I have no pictures to show you. Which is too bad as we also saw manta rays and lots of colorful fish on the reef. Here is a picture of myself on the boat and then Paty getting out of the boat. It was pretty small and the ‘group’ for our excursion was us and one other couple.

MADE IT!

Almost 24 hours to the minute after my buddy picked us up at Casa de Tobin, we made it to our new casa for the week, Mata Rocks Resort.

After our encounter with Elvis in the Dallas airport we flew to Miami and had about 10 hours at the airport. So we stayed at the Miami Hilton in order to sleep and shower. The flight to Belize was pretty uneventful from Miami, we were on the right or starboard side of the plane so we didn't get a peak at any of the brewing storms over Cuba. We did fly straight down the Yucatan coast so Paty felt like she was going home.
Thankfully our bags met us in Belize. We had about 30 minutes in Belize airport until our little commuter jet took us to San Pedro, which gave us just enough time to stop in the airport and meet local legend 'The Jet':

All four feet five inches of the jet was a bundle of energy that claims to have 'the Carribean's best rum punch, 11 ingredients!' It was okay, but the Jet was a character and his bar was classic as you can see from the photos.

We arrived in San Pedro and this is the view from our hotel room:

The bar is a sort of local hang out on the beach. It's pretty cool. Paty is pictured down there getting ready to go tanning so she blends in a little better and stops looking like a gringa!
I am writing this Sunday morning, NFL kickoff morning. We are doing an afternoon snorkeling trip out to one of the reef spots. In the background of the picture from our room you see a brreakwater about 200 yeards out from the beach. That's the reef. It's the worlds 2nd largest barrier reef.

The reason we are going in the afternoon is because our Belize TV gets the local Fox Affiliate feed out of Buffalo. And you know what that means, SEAHAWKS are on live in Belize.

It's currently the second quarter and we need some help. I am thinking of making the transition from watching this epic match in the room to the thatch hut bar. The Seahawks need a change up right now and I need a Belikin. The local beverage of choice.

All for now, I will try to get something up soon.

En Route

Thanks to airline miles we were able to secure a vitually free ticket to Belize. Our flight went Seattle to Miami to Belize. But the Seattle to Miami flight actually stopped at Dallas for about an hour. Which made the flight much longer and kind of sucked.
But it did give me a chance to meet Elvis in the Dallas airport:

 

Belize, HERE WE COME

10 Day Forecast

Going to be hot and rainy it looks like. That's okay.

We are spending seven nights at the Mata Rocks Resort. It is on San Pedro Island. For those of you not familiar with San Pedro, it was the island that Madonna sang about in 'Isla Bonita'.

We fly out Friday to Houston then on to Miami. We get to Miami around 11 pm and leave Miami about Noon on Saturday, we opted for an airport hotel instead of the airport benches for 12 hours. Then we get to Belize City around 2:30 on Saturday and hop on a small puddle jumper plane to San Pedro where the 'Taxi', it's actually a golf cart, pics us up and take us to the hotel for the duration.

Paty has all these ambitions to do you know stuff while we are down there. I myself have ulterior motives. For those of you that we have talked to lately you will know that we, especially Paty, need a vacation. So the 'stuff' referred to earlier will be strongly interspersed with some quality hammock, beer and beach time as well. Of course there will be the inevitable wander through town on Sunday looking for a sports bar with the Seahawks game on. But that goes without saying.

All for now, check this space in the coming days as I might have some 'user generated content' to post.

GAME DAY!

Yesterday was the EPIC event that is a playoff home game. As most of you know that read this space, I am a season ticket holder for many sports in Seattle including the Seahawks. We hosted the feckless Washington Redskins at QWest field yesterday afternoon.

The weather in Seattle has been sketchy, including a pretty nasty windstorm that woke me up the mnight before the game. We delayed our tailgate activities by an hour as we were concerned that the canopy might blow away leaving us exposed. Here is what we came up with starting at 9:45 AM for a 1:30 kickoff:

We started the tailgate with Bloody Mary's and Breakfast Burritos. Then continued with an international selection of beers, beer battered bratwurst and something that looked like carmalized onions that Joe brought.

We made it with plenty of time for kickoff and the pregame festivities. Since we entered through the convention center to avoid the Uncommonly long lines around the rest of the entrances we didn't get one of the rare free green hats that you might have seen everyone wearing on TV.

The weather really decided to cooperate as much as we could hope for by game time. Here are a few pics of the pregame hype and pyrotechnics:


I didn't DVR the game but I've talked to a few people that said that QWest field showed well on TV where it pertains to the crowd noise. Let me tell you, they stadium was LOUD. Not loud, but LOUD. I'm writing this blog on Sunday morning and my ears are still ringing and my voice is still hoarse. All four of us came home slightly hoarse. Speaking of the four of us, here is the crew:

After the game we came home to partake of some celebration champagne. We watched the Jags take out the hated Pittsburgh Steelers (I'm still bitter from Super Bowl XXXX, and no I won't let it go) and then watched the Husky versus Cougar basketball game. Unfortunately the #4 ranked Cougars (how weird is that statement?) were able to hold on to a 56-52 victory at Hec Ed. But it was a really good game.

On side note, I've watched a lot of college basketball over the past few years and that Cougar team has a really good chance to make the final four. Mostly seniors and Juniors, great guard play, a slow down ball possession offense that never turns the ball over, very competent big men, the lowest points against average in the nation and a player or two who can create their own shot when nothing is brewing all add up to a team that is going to be REALLY hard to beat in the tourney.

It's tough to say if I'll get behind them during the tourney time. I normally support the local teams as well as the UW, but I already sense a little Adam Morrisonesque bandwagon starting to pick up steam with some of these Cougars. It's hard to believe how 'big' of a basketball fan some of these Cougs are when they rarely if ever sell out their home games.

Now I am going to be an emotional wreck this entire week waiting for the Seahawks at the Packers on Saturday. I really like our chances. Our defense is playing really well and Matthew along with the WR's are an under appreciated unit nationally. Plus you have to like the odds with a Mike Holmgren coached team going to Lambeau field. Coincidentally Lambeau field is located at the corner of Lombardi Avenue and Holmgran Way.

Merry Christmas

It is close to Christmas and we have made our way to the mecca of entertainment that is Vancouver, WA.

On a side note I have learned quite a few interesting facts about my immediate family that I wasn't aware of before this trip. Some are not proper to share and when you think about it will not be interesting to anyone but my very immediate family.

But on another note, we are watching the movie 'Ratatouille' on Blu-Ray DVD and let me tell you that the Blu-Ray technology is the bomb! And this show is all about cooking in Paris with a rat. Super cool, especially as Che Tobin is chef extraordinary! (OK, I try)

On another note as we are talking about Paris it turns out that my sister Natalie is that one person in the world that has been to the Louvre, but didn't see the Mona Lisa. Upon further review it turns out that she didn't miss the Mona Lisa because of some weird maintenance effort by the French, but because she was busy shopping in the Louvre's version of a French mini mall. As Natalie is an equal opportunity art disparage patron, she also missed the Venus de Milo.

The things you learn while hanging out with the family.

Our Cruise

Greetings from the Caribbean. This is post #1 of what is sure to be many entertaining (hopefully) posts about Paty and my first cruise. (edit: this also might also be our last cruise depending on how we mesh with these 'cruise people')

In order to keep some semblance of order about these posts, I wanted to let you know how I am planning on organizing the cruise posts. Here is my idea for posts (obviously subject to change as per my mood that day, let’s call it whimsy):

First Impression (this post)
Samana, Dominican Republic
Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Antigua, St. John’s
Bridgetown, Barbados
Castries, St. Lucia
Final Cruise Thoughts

I am actually going to post the post in reverse order. So instead of reading from the bottom up, you will get the first post last and then be able to scroll down. Since the price of the internet is prohibitively expensive on board ship I won't be able to post until either the Hilton in Miami or back in Casa de Tobin.

So, on with the first thoughts. Oh and at the end of each or some posts, I’ll put the ‘in case you go segment’. For reasons that are really only funny and applicable to me and a certain elemental Shaman, we’ll call this the ‘Tuha Segment‘.

First impression starts now:

DAMN, the boat is BIG. Mental note, stop calling the ship a boat.

The room is nice, the balcony is great. As expected the room is small, but you are not noticeably cramped or anything. Each room has it’s own flat screen TV, and there are not one but TWO espn channels. Very good news. Also there are two movie channels showing relatively new movies (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ocean’s Thirteen were on when we walked in) plus a Turner station also showing movies commercial free. On an ironic note, Titanic was the first movie we saw on this station. Foreshadowing? I hope not.

We checked in at 1 PM, and what seemed to be an interminable line actually moved fairly well. It took us about an hour from the time the taxi dropped us off from South Beach (where we went to kill 5 hours since our flight arrived at 7 AM from Seattle) to get into our cabin.


We are sailing on the Norwegian Cruise Line Pearl. It is supposed to be ‘freestyle cruising’, thus no set times on dinner, no eating with the same people every night, you do as you want. The ship has about 12 different restaurants, of which the largest two by far are buffet style. As Paty hates buffets, our goal for the trip is to never eat in the buffet. Also there are a plethora of bars scattered throughout the ship. While the food is free, a few restaurants have a premium surcharge, the drinks are not. The first bar we came to had a nice selection of beers on tap, including my personal favorite Stella Artois. Great news for me! So I ordered a pint glass of Stella, to my chagrin the bill came and the beer was $5.50, plus all drinks they added a mandatory 15% service fee. Thus one beer cost $6.33. And it all gets charged to your room, you pay at the end. I quickly realized that the bill at the end is going be extremely painful.

First Tuha note: Make dinner reservations as soon as you get to your room if you are planning on doing any of the premium restaurants for dinner. We did Tepin Yaki ($20 surcharge, entirely worth it) the first night, it was great.

Official day 1 was a sea day as we made our way to the Dominican Republic. The weather was nice, it was a tad windy on deck, but I think that might be because the ship was cutting through the seas at 22 knots (about 25 mph). Paty and I went to the gym in the morning, I actually ran 5 km on the treadmill, there was a soccer game on TV that made it bearable to run on the treadmill.

So far so good, the ship is actually much nicer than we thought it would be. Dinner #2 was at the Italian restaurant, no surcharge. Not necessarily ‘Casa de Tobin West Seattle’ but good nonetheless.

Tortola, BVI

Second stop, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands or BVI.

Today we had plans to do a mountain hike and then to go snorkeling on the beach afterwards. But upon waking up we were informed that the tour was canceled. The path was too muddy because of all the rain. As it was too late to get another excursion planned we were winging it again.

We docked at the pier in Tortola, thus no tender today. Tortola is the name of the island and the city you dock in is called Road Town. There are only 16,000 people in Tortola. They are part of the British Commonwealth and as such the town seemed much more organized than Samana.

We decided to take a ferry from Boat Town to Virgin Gorda. This is another island in the BVI that is about 35 minutes on the ferry from Road Town. Virgin Gorda has a really nice national park called the Baths. The view of our ship and Road Town from the ferry:

As you can see it is still raining, day two with our rain jackets being paramount.
But the beauty of the Caribbean is that the weather changes in a heartbeat. This picture is from the restaurant above the baths:

The baths, started raining again.

As you can see, the baths is basically this really cool beach with these huge rock formations. It is quite scenic, but because of the rocks the undertow and currents created by all the waves make this a relatively dangerous place to swim. Paty with the large rocks:

We then took the ferry back to Road Town and stopped for the second time at an authentic English Caribbean pub called Pusser’s. They actually exported rum from this pub to England and the US. So it’s a kind of Micro distillery. A very cool place, in fact in retrospect the best pub we found on the trip. Here's the website in case you are interested:
Pusser's

Dinner this night was again the Italian restaurant.

Tuha note:
The best thing about this port is the pub. Too maximize your use of the day here, either plan an excursion or else take the ferry to Virgin Gorda on your own and hang out in the baths. The package will cost $30 each for the ferry from Road Town to Virgin Gorda and transfer to Baths National Park. But if you want to get some cool pub gear from the Caribbean, Pusser’s was the only such place we found on the entire cruise and it was really nice stuff. Plus, what’s better than random bar paraphernalia to start conversations for the next few years?

Antigua

Stop number three, Antigua. Now we are really getting into rhythm of the cruise. Today again no excursion planned. We were on the wait list for a Catamaran cruise and snorkel package. But we never got the call. We again docked at the pier in Antigua. This town was obviously set up to cater to the cruise ships. As you get off the dock, you have a relatively nice shopping area and a pretty cool restaurant. There were two other cruise ships also docked that day, but the area was not overwhelmed.

The native language in Antigua is also English, same as Tortola. Antigua has been an independent country only since 1981. They claim that there are 365 beaches in Antigua and while I do agree that there are a lot of Antiguan beaches, 365 seems like an awfully suspicious number created by the tourist board.

We got a group taxi to one of the beaches in the area, Turner beach. The weather had been postcard nice all day, we had seemed to put the rain behind us. Here is a picture of me at the beach holding a Wadadli, the local beer.

I had to take this picture just to make sure I got the name right:

The Wadadli really was not that good, but here is the photo I'm sending into the Wadadli promotions department in my attempt to be their new Seattle spokesman:

After our time at Turner beach, we took the taxi bus back to the city. We still had some time before all aboard. Paty continued her crusade to 'Shop Through The Caribbean' in town. Afterwards we had time for a rum punch at the Rum Shack with the Norwegian Pearl in the background:

Apparently the Presidente beer already has a better spokesman than me.


Dinner that night was at Cagney's the steakhouse. There was a $20 surcharge for this restaurant, but it was entirely worth it. Paty had a whole lobster. She was messing around trying to crack the claws (they gave her three claws) until the waiter came over and cracked the lobster and pulled out all the meat for her. It was fabulous. The steakhouse experience would compare favorably to the nicest steakhouse in Seattle.


Tuha Note:
Antigua was a really nice stop. Whatever excursion you choose, you should make sure that it includes some beach time. Antigua is famous for it's beaches for a reason. I heard some good things in retrospect about the Catamaran cruises. Also, try the steakhouse. This is a stop that is very easy to do on your own if you are looking for a day off from the planned excursions. The town is right off the pier and taxis can take you to any beach you want.

Barbados

On a side note before I get going on the Barbados post, tonight is my indoor soccer team's fall season championship game. This would be championship #5 in a row, good luck guys. I most likely will not be thinking of you, but I'll be there in spirit.

Today is Barbados. Again we docked, along with five other cruise ships. Unfortunately the pier is about 1 mile outside of downtown Bridgetown. Bridgetown being the largest city on Barbados. Barbados is actually a lot larger island with a population of 260,000 avid cricket fans. On a strange side note, we were reminded a minimum of 8 times that you could not wear any type of camouflaged clothing outside of the boat. Apparently this is a privilege reserved only for the military and they take it very seriously.

Today we booked an excursion to Malibu beach. It is the beach located and operated by the Malibu Rum Company. As we had a little time to kill before the excursion we were able to take a quick tour of a local cigar factory. We saw the entire cigar process, pretty interesting actually. This is where it all happens, myself pictured with my new pack of stogies:

Malibu beach was another great Caribbean beach. It had more waves, but that made swimming fun. We actually rented a waverunner from one of the 'beach guys' for 30 minutes today. It was fun to ride in the ocean out in the waves. We went up the coast for 15 minutes looking for turtles in the water and then turned back. We 'might' have seen a turtle once. I'm going with yes.

No beer picture today, instead here is me with a Malibu Rum punch. In the background are all the cruise ships.

This is the first thing you see as you pull up to the factory:

I did have the local beer, it was nothing special. One of the reasons why there is no picture. That and the fact that we did go to the Malibu beach it seemed a little dumb to order a beer.

View from our cabin as we were getting ready to depart. You think that this cruise line would plan their itinerary better so as not to have two ships in the same port?

Tonight we went back to teppanyaki again. We met an English couple from London at dinner.

Tuha note:
The Malibu beach is pretty fun but it does not need to be an entire day commitment. Our London friends did a bike adventure that we considered. We didn't do it as the itinerary mentioned a mountain, and Paty + Mountain + Bike = Bad day for Chris. It turns out you start at the top of the mountain and have little if any uphill climbs and during the tour you stop at the Malibu factory. Double Bonus.

Saint Lucia, Thanksgiving 2007

Our last stop was Saint Lucia, an independent nation in the British Commonwealth. But at times in it's history St. Lucia was ruled by both the French and the British. As a result, the official language is English but all the locals also speak a type of Creole dialect that is more and more common in the West Indies. The weather was again fabulous.

Saint Lucia looked like a really nice island, the main city of Castries was built right on the hillside. It was quite impressive. The island actually has two large volcanoes that dominate the entire landscape called the Pitons. Both are over 2,000 feet above sea level, pretty impressive for such a small island and a reason that it was one of the first islands in the West Indies 'discovered' by Columbus. Population 140,000 or so.

But today's outing was our most anticipated of the trip:


That's right, ZIP LINES through the rain forest. We took a thirty minute van ride from the pier up into the mountains where we caught an aerial tram up through the rain forest canopy to where the zip lines started.

The ride up the tram took a little over 30 minutes, not exactly your high speed quad, but it was really scenic. The world's largest species of fern is pictured here, hard to get the scale right.


For those of you that might be worried, the people that ran the zip lines were very safety conscious. Yes, Paty is sporting a stylish hair net.

Cool tree that is part of the hike from the tram to the zip lines. All told we 'zipped' across 11 total chasms.

On the tram ride up, we went through the mid canopy. While on the ride down we rode through and above the upper canopy, which provided some great vistas of Saint Lucia.


I did like the vibe and the feel of Saint Lucia, but the zip tour took most of our day. We did have time to stop and get a quick bite to eat at a restaurant directly next to the pier where we were tendering. It was actually quite a good restaurant. Paty bought some banana ketchup (surprisingly good actually) and I was able to sample the local brew, Piton:
The Piton was pretty good, but unfortunately another lager.

Today was also Thanksgiving day, Happy Turkey Day all. For those of you keeping track at home, our last Thanksgivings have been quite varied:
2007 Caribbean Cruise
2006 Galway, Ireland. Surprisingly good pub dinner for charity that night.
2005 Paris, France. Typical snobby waiter, great champagne.
2004 Berlin. I can't remember anything about dinner here. Rest assured it involved beer and Gluhwein. We were probably still depressed at this point that we had to leave Prague for Berlin.

We branched out for dinner this night and went to Shabu Shabu, some type of Mongolian hot pots. Where I can see that the style of cooking, and I use the term loosely, could have some potential it was horrible. I'll save you the details, but just know that we had smoke coming out of our hot pot.

Tuha Note:
Don't go to Shabu Shabu on ship. As for the excursions, the zip lines were great. The only downfall is you really don't have any time to see much of what seemed to be a really nice stop. Have a snack or late lunch/early dinner at the restaurant right off where you tender. You can't miss it. Try the banana ketchup and the jerk fish. Our English friends did the five star lunch tour. To the resort where Bill Gates, Oprah and Beckham go to. They loved it. But it is quite expensive.

Final Thoughts and Cruise wrap up

reserved

MLS in Seattle

Long rumored but coveted and encouraged for even longer:

SEATTLE WILL BE GRANTED AN MLS TEAM THIS WEEK!

For those footy crazed fans in Seattle like myself, this is super good news.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=480678&cc=5901
Now the question is, what tickets do I give up?
Seahawks
Husky Basketball
Sonics

Thanks to a Mr Clayton Bennett, it seems like that decision has been made for me. More of my thoughts on that situation to follow.

Reid and I are going to get four tickets as soon as they are announced, anyone else in?

Blogs Are Cool!

Okay, maybe that is an ubiquitous title. But my point is that I like using this space to keep everyone that has even the slightest interest in keeping track of the West Seattle Tobin's activities updated via the blog.

The blog does a few things for me:
A- I don't have to tell fourteen family members and friends the same thing. With this space I only have to post it here and tell Natalie (as she calls me more than the rest of the family combined).
B- It has served as the best 'scrapbook' I would ever put effort forth to create.
C- Third it keeps me in touch with people that sometimes through space, distance, kids and work you just drift away from. You know who you are, thanks for reading!

On a further note, keep track of this space over the next few weeks. We have the Caribbean trip coming up and since the boat doesn't have internet I might not be able to post in real time, but I will most likely get a few post queued up and catch up on some things I have been procrastinating on.

So, happy reading!