This Bud’s for you, Mr. Starter-of-modern-electronics.
Yes, when I was but a wee lad, on cold, blustery winter Saturday, I would pull the old RCA away from the wall on one side. I would take my toy soldiers and cars behind the cabinet, tune in Johnny Dollar and the Lone Ranger, and play what today would be called “IED.”
Somehow those soldiers always ended up getting blowed up. Maybe George W. had the same kind of childhood.
Those tubes that had to warm up before you could get a reception looked like a little city to me. The tubes were the buildings and the little rectangles that glowed red inside were windows.
Holy Mackinoley. What a weird kid. Yeah, I bet George W. did have the same childhood.
January 20, 2011 we landed in Costa Rica for the first time.
And now we live here permanently and are on our way to becoming residents.
Here’s the timetable:
- January 20, 2011 we arrived.
- January 22, 2011 we took TheRealCostaRica.com tour.
- Sometime in March Nancy and a friend returned for a week to look at homes. They found one and made an offer which was accepted.
- We listed our home in Bowling Green, Kentucky with a real estate agent.
- April 2011, I came down to make the purchase of the house. Left Thursday, closed on Friday and returned on Sunday.
- Sunday evening when I walked in, Nancy said: ” We have an offer on the house.”
- We made a counter-offer on Monday which was accepted.
- I quit my job.
- Nancy moved to our house in Costa Rica with two dogs on June 21 with a different friend in tow.
- The container left Bowling Green on July 1.
- I moved with the remaining two dogs on July 2.
- We started construction on a master bedroom addition and bodega on August 1.
- The construction was completed in November.
Did we mean for it to happen this rapidly?
Not by a long shot. What started as a five year plan turned into a five month plan when we were able to sell our house for 96% of our asking price and got a 90 day possession window.
We broke the cardinal rule of “rent before you buy” in Costa Rica. Not because we felt we were smarter than anybody else, but because we had four dogs and we just couldn’t visualize renting a house in Bowling Green. I wasn’t retired, so coming down for more than a month wasn’t possible (I would use all my vacation time on one trip)
We are damn lucky. We love where we landed. Perfect? Pshaw. Is any place? We survived the rainiest October in the country’s history all the while there were construction guys clamoring around. One of our dogs died.
But that is all behind us and nothing but a bright future lies ahead.
Not working in Costa Rica is working out just fine so far.
As with a lot of things, the best are close to home.
We wanted to take our Kentucky guests, Sally and Mary Kay on a tour of a coffee farm. (Wandering around our coffee plants next to the house didn’t qualify because we don’t process coffee, only grow it.)
In asking around “Long Tall” Sally, our friend who lives here too, said that the El Toledo Organic Coffee tour was the best.
And it was only minutes from our house.
It only took a few phone calls and Gabriel had us booked to tour the farm and have lunch.
We met him at 10 a.m. and immediately started learning about growing and processing of organic coffee.
Why organic coffee?
That was a question he asked us early on. My response (which was not wrong) “because it’s the right thing to do.”
Har, when it doubt, be vague.
He was serious with his response:
Because of our health.
He said his father realized 14 years ago that all the chemicals he was inhaling was causing him health problems. Five other neighbor fincas decided that they didn’t want to expose themselves or their families to the hazards of herbicides and pesticides any longer. They formed a tiny cooperative and started learning how to farm organic coffee.
Not because of the marketing, not because it was easier, not because they would make more money, but because … it was the right thing to do… for their health.
Since we were having lunch after the tour, Gabriel decided that the coffee tasting should happen first. He explained how they create light, regular and dark coffees and we sampled each.
Did I mention there were only six of us on the tour? Did I mention that Gabriel was very knowledgeable and patient?
We soon left the “Starbucks” of Atenas and started traipsing among coffee beans spread out on black plastic and on mesh screens drying in the blazing sun. This was organic coffee farming at the basic level. There was nothing “bulk” about the process here.
We soon found ourselves surrounded by coffee plants as Gabriel not only talked coffee, but local flora and fauna. He showed us trees and plants and butterflies and birds – and told us the names and why they were important to growing organic coffee. Everything interacted to produce better coffee without destroying the surrounding ecology. Even the horse shit baking in the sun was important.
Go here if you want to read more about organic coffee farming and processing.
I am impressed.
This tiny group of coffee farmers near Atenas, just down the road from the giant Coopeatenas, are raising a top quality coffee without ruining their health or the health of the ground.
I guess we will tour the giant Britt Coffee processing plant at some point in time, but we won’t learn any more about coffee and how it’s grown than we did from Gabriel.
I’m convinced that we need to prune our coffee plants back, let them recover and not bear fruit for a year, and then grow them without pesticides and herbicides.
Of course, my livelihood doesn’t depend on selling coffee.
I hope El Toledo and their neighbors do well. They deserve it.
“Think Big, Eat Smart.”
This just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
The slogan works. But taken in the context of who is promoting the idea just boggles.
World’s Finest Chocolate, the candy maker who loves to convince your rugrat grandchildren that unless you buy their milk chocolate, the school will won’t be able to fund art, or music, or math, or lunch.
In order to make it possible for school administrators to allow their product to be pushed by mini-dealers with the endorsement of schools, World’s Finest Chocolate decided to…wait for it…
Make the world’s largest chocolate bar and take it to schools around the country.
World’s Finest says they are teaching “portion control.”
“The concept is strange to a lot of people,” … “we wanted to reach younger children because reaching them at a young age is extremely important.”
said Tour Director Sarah Linn Brannan.
Yeah, strange. Especially when you wave a 12,000 chocolate bar under their noses.
The chocolate bar is 21 feet long and weighs an astounding six tons!
Paula Deen would be proud of this effort to teach children portion control from a six ton candy bar, which could suggest that a ten pound chunk would be reasonable portion control.
Of course, the school comes to a screeching halt while kids line up to view this delectable, delicious, distraction.
