All this heat has me thinking…

Most notably about the vacation I won’t be having this summer. Admittedly we knew when we planned our Costa Rica trip last summer that we, in all likelihood, would not be having a vacation this summer…you know how it is with babies and their budgets.

So with thoughts of the vacation I won’t have come thoughts of the beach I won’t visit. Costa Rica has a marvelous array of beaches, at least the region we visited did. Each day we went to a different one and each day it was a vastly different beach. This particularly deserted one was notable for its wide expanse. We discovered it just north of Malpais on the Nicoya peninsula. With the jungle moving in on it’s turf, the sand just seemed to stretch further out to sea in defiance. It came complete with no one visible for most of the day, a small family-run snack shack and convenience store just off the road behind the beach with plenty of cold beer and a reasonably sunny few hours. It was pure beach bliss.

And while I’m speaking of Costa Rica, understand I’m terribly ashamed of the fact that its been almost a whole year and I have yet to share a damn photo with you of our journey. It was one of those experiences that I am certain I could have done better. I have yet to conclude how, but I’m sure of it. Costa Rica has a lot of strange beauty to it. The trip was filled with a variety of ups and downs, from the precarious hike up a creek to a muddy and disappointing waterfall, the surprising cost of booze, some amazingly authentic Italian food on our last night and the sheer fun and agony of driving in a mostly 3rd world country where pavement is considered a luxury.

I saw these folks several times in the span of a week in Montezuma, the beach town popular with the back-packer set. I speculated much about them and their story as they didn’t appear to be native, at least not Tico. Perhaps they are American expats who have been in Costa Rica so long yet have come to loathe tourists so much as to take to scowling at them high atop their horses. They were one of many of the curiosities that for one reason or another I didn’t resolve in Costa Rica.

More to come in the next few days.

ding dong
It’s the doorbell.

Oh Look. Summer is here.

You’re a few minutes early.

I see you brought friends.

Summer has crashed the party a little early in these parts bringing a few 100+ degree friends with him. Love, love, LOVE IT when they show up. Especially when I’m obligated to a beer festival from dawn to dusk, on an island, in the middle of a river, in a town called Richmond. The last time I cuddled with heat stroke I was in the California desert shooting a burlesque contest with a Rolleiflex TLR and an 35mm strapped around me. I had a head ache for days afterward. I should dig up some of that work.

It’s hot. And I contemplate panting like a dog.

I’m starting to relive my own summers as a kid vicariously through the 7 year old. I get antsy the last two weeks of school for her. “So, did you have movie day today? How about the ice cream social?” and to my surprise the replies were “No dad. What’s an ice cream social?” and “We don’t watch movies”. She’s being robbed but I don’t tell her. At least they still have field day.

Riding bikes till dark, digging for change when you hear that not-so-distant ice cream van bell, chasing lightning bugs, teasing bats at dusk by throwing objects in the air, the neighborhood pool (we are currently crashing a nearby apartment complex pool. Its ridiculously expensive to join a community pool to the point of where it would cost upwards of $5 a day the whole summer) and days where you sit around bored to tears because there is nothing to do and no one around to do it with. It’s an eternity for them and as an adult its seems like a millisecond. I’m looking to slow it down by catching some lightning bugs & chasing the ice cream man.

Do you think they planned getting icees that matched their outfits?

233 days ago I last spoke with you. sigh. A glutton for shame apparently.

A lot has happened in 233 days. At least 233 strange and unexpected (and expected!) things have happened in those 233 days. I would consider them to be some of the more life altering 233 days of my life, some of them definitely in my top ten to be sure.

Wedlock, birth, major career considerations on top of other major shifts in certain relationship all went down in the last 233 days.

Most cute of all the strange is this stranger coming into my life and getting less and less strange every day.

Hello blog!