Banking on an Answer

Unless everyone agrees on an established filing system, there will be chaos. In my filing system, for instance, the car insurance bill belongs in the general file under Insurance with a subfile Car. But someone else might feel that the bill is about the car, and all things Car should be stored under the general

No Direction Home

It used to be when you asked for directions in Costa Rica you got something akin to rural American farmer directions: “Just go up the old road past the Van Cleef’s place and when you get to the intersection where the oak tree was struck by lightening, turn north.”

Driving Miss Sarah~

I wrote to family and friends recently about a hair-raising trip I took from the capital, San Jose, to my home in Talamanca. So I thought I’d attend to the blog and write a bit about driving in Costa Rica.  Ticos are not the worst drivers in the world (regardless of what you’ve heard or

Under the Weather~

Costa Rica was hit with a cold front and strong winds last week, leaving 200,000 people without light in five provinces. Winds up to 85 km per hour were recorded, knocking down trees and tearing out utilities across the country. The photo above, courtesy of our newspaper La Nacion, is close to Matina and our

Earthquake!~

There I was on the third floor of a medical building in San José. A half hour early for my yearly exam, I sat patiently in my OB/ GYN’s waiting room. I had just passed my husband, Alan, a magazine and was about to fan through the pages of one I picked out… when all

Pipilachas in the Garden~

Pipilachas (or dragonflies) have discovered the little pond Alan and I installed over the Christmas holiday. They tracked it down it the minute the hole was lined with plastic and we filled it with water. Our first (visible) inhabitants. We discovered, quite by accident, that a large red pipilacha likes to stand guard over the

Here It Comes!~

Here Comes the Sun~ Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it’s all right. Little darling it’s been a long cold lonely winter, Little darling it feels like years since it’s been here. Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it’s all right. Little darling the smiles returning to their faces, Little darling it

Greed in a Time of Giving~

I read about Bernie Madoff and his ponzi scheme the other day, all the people he took down while raking in the millions… no, make that billions of dollars. They say it will go down as the biggest fraud case in history. But Bernie has nothing on us here in Costa Rica, or maybe this

One-stop Christmas Shopping~

One stop Christmas shopping arrived this year in the form of a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) email. I opened my mail this morning and lo and behold there was the perfect gift: a certificate in someone’s name for a reforestation effort of Costa Rica’s dwindling natural habitat. I immediately donated for my entire family

From Foulness to Serenity~

Dawn crept under the window shutters yesterday morning, and as I woke something told me this day would be different from the past few weeks. I had closed them to keep the cold and damp of the weeks before out. Our bed linen has been clammy from the accumulated moisture in the air and it’s