Morning all:

On the horizon light is just beginning to touch the distant sky of the Caribbean. Good news and bad news. The bad is that since I am trying to let Marcia sleep a little I am sitting in the dark on the hotel balcony and can barely see the keyboard. The good news is that I will very shortly be in for a marvelous sunrise. Coffee will have to wait since I’ll have to run downstairs for a fill-up.

I love these large resort hotels . These places are always done up like palaces of old, only better. Every nook and cranny is filled with great artworks. The carpeting throughout is thick and luxurious. Appointments in the rooms including the marble baths are all bar-none—except there is no coffee maker. Which leads me to the point I want to make, everything in these places is a profit center, example: I have full WiFi connectivity at only US$19.95 per day. Oh well, before I start to obsess on that, I will just focus on the shadowy shapes of the frigate birds effortlessly gliding by overhead on their eight foot wingspans. Then I’ll head downstairs to buy the coffee.

My presentation I am asked to give later on this week is “in the can” as the Hollywood crowd would say. This leaves today as a complete play day. Marcia is in her glory. Our room looks like a library as various brochures touting one wonder after another fill desk and table-top. We have connected with friends and in a couple of hours will have made a selection. Currently it is a boat ride to a nearby island for snorkeling or bike-rides, or to another location for jungle rides on ATVs. There are some wonderful nature preserves and Mayan ruins nearby but those are already on the list for later on this week.

We left our yard in disarray. The afternoon before our flight the tree-trimming crew finally showed up to take down our four-story high and very dead Buckeye tree. Since Jason and his neighbor want the wood we purposely had the trimmers not take any. I just never realized what a mountain of wood a dead tree turns into. Marcia went a little nutty trying to bring some semblance of order into the pile. She had a wonderful flight here fully charged on a huge dose of Ibuprovin.

We’ll I can’t stand it any longer. I am cutting this post short to grab that cup of coffee I have been talking about. And then, truth be told, it is Saturday morning and I am in one of our continents best play areas so I really must cut this short and head out to dig my toes into the sand along the beach.

Paul Jr. we’ll miss your wedding today but wish you and your bride well. Whatever your aunt and uncle end up doing today, snorkeling or riding or whatever, we’ll be thinking—am I piling it on thick enough?

Make it a great week everyone.
Cheers,
Dirk