Molly & Donnie's last night on Saba

Molly and Donnie leave today to go home to Annapolis. We celebrated our last night together by having some BBQ ribs at Swinging Doors

and then going to Saba-Oke at Scouts Place.

Needless to say the whole Lenten sacrifice "thing" went out the window. What was up with that after all????

What to give up for Lent???

I have realized that working in a bar and restaurant you can really fall into the bad habit of using vices associated with that line of work. Having folks at your bar all day long drinking and smoking it is easy to grab one for yourself and "join the party".

Thinking of what to give up for Lent I decided to try and remove 2 of those items from my daily regime over the next 6 weeks or so.

You know what that means:

God help the staff and guests at Tropics until Easter, bless their souls.........and you thought Leona Helmsley was rough on her staff!

Fat Tuesday

We celebrated "Fat Tuesday" by wrapping up our work day early and going to our friends Sonya and Shawn's house to deliver our baby gift to the baby Adrian. My Mom made this handmade quilt for him as a "welcome present"



After our delivery of our baby present we went off to celebrate the balance of our Fat Tuesday evening completey beaded, bedazzled and bejewelled....



We enjoyed a nice evening with a great meal at a local resutarant and too many drinks at our local favorarite "watering hole" and now are home for a full night's sleep. And it's only 11PM!!!!!

LOBSTERS!!

We had a guest in for dinner night before last and they are from Alaska. They wanted to come back in for dinner tonight and said they were baffled that so few restaurants carry Caribbean Lobster on their menu so we're going to surprise them and have fresh lobster as tonight's special.

Four of these little guys ranging from about 2 lbs up to 5lbs just arrived alive and kicking from the harbor.

This is me freaking out right when on of them on the floor touched my ankle with it's antenna.

Probably being allergic to shellfish is the reason why I cannot see all the fuss over lobster but I hope they enjoy it anyway.

Happy Friday from Saba!

Soup It Up!

Look what Johanna found for me at the local supermarket!!

Had I known that I could just wander down to the local market and pick up some "Jamaican cock" for the evening's meal I would have moved to Saba by myself!

And with Pumpkin to boot, Life is good.

February Blues

I'm walking around the house this morning in sweat pants and long sleeves! It has been raining all night long and it's only 73 degrees outside and I'm FREEZING!!

We got Jody off safely on Tuesday afternoon for his trip back home to Charlotte. We really had a nice visit. This Saturday my sister Molly and brother in law Donnie arrvie for the week.

I really hope the weather will cooperate and move this cold front out of here.

BRRRRRR........

First time diving in nearly 3 months!

Yesterday I completely "unplugged" from the restaruant and Jody and I went diving for the day.

We were going to do 2 dives in the morning but had the chance to get in 2 additional afternoon dives as well so had a total of 4 dives and spent the whole day on the water.

Our first dive site was named 3rd Encounter Red and is a pinnacle called The Needle. It's basically an underwater mountain with this neat lava column that were created when the island's volcano last erupted. (about 500,000 years ago or something like that) Visibility was pretty good and I reached a depth of 112 feet and saw lots of great marine life.

Next, we went to Diamond Rock and dove that site. Our "vis" dropped a bit there but was saw more good stuff including a baby nurse shark and a couple of black tip reef sharks.

After a quick trip back to the harbor to change out air tanks and get a new group of people on board we went back out and did the site Tent Reef Shallow followed by Big Rock Shallow.

Our final 2 dives were shallow dives with mostly sandy bottoms but saw plenty of Hawksbill Turtles, a barracuda, awesome coral formations, barrel sponges and Jody saw an octopus (I didn't).

Now this is way to live your life on Saba!

This "hallmark" Holiday sucks

Happy Valentine's Day.....

We have just finished dinner service at the restaurant and I an SOO ready for bed.

All those happy and romantic people having dinner, drinks and my "famous" homemade desserts and THIS is what I'll remember from MY Valentine's of 2009:

Maybe I will have a midnight cocktail on the deck first to wash away my "clean up duties" at Tropics.....

Again, Happy V-Day from Saba!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Since Leanna has been gone Paul and I have been working 12-14 hour days and we're pretty fucking tired.

Our friend Jody arrived last night on the last flight and we're so happy to have him here for the long holiday week end.

I'm excited to get through tomorrow (Valentine's Day, Ugh!!!!) and half a "half day" of work on Sunday for brunch and Happy Hour and then have Monday OFF and we're going diving. I can't believe that we haven't gone on a dive day since November. Simply unacceptable!!! We need to change that.

M&M's

About a month ago we met this nice couple from New Jersey who recently bought a property here on Saba and are in the process of renovating it which brings them down to the island quite a bit.

Zelda works from The Mars Corporation and had her husband John bring down some samples of M&M's for us. Each M&M is stamped with our logo for Tropics Cafe and for Juliana's Hotel.

They come in all different kind of packages and are pretty darn cool! The power of technology that you can get our logo in exact detail on a tiny piece of candy.

I think we'll use them as hotel and restaurant guest gifts for folks staying with us.

Enjoy life, don't sweat the small stuff and have some M&M's! It will make you feel happy, I assure you.

February 9th Full Moon

Today was our "day of rest" and we spent the entire day getting chores done at the house, putting up new light fixtures, cleaning, doing laundry and getting our home office put together now that our remaining office furniture arrived.

Wim and Johanna arrived later this afternoon and we entertained them on the deck with afternoons cocktails until about 6pm when we left to go to another friend's house, Chris, for pre dinner Hors D'Oeurves and then to dinner at a local restuarant which was excellent!

We finished our evening by going down to the local overlook and watching tonight's Full Moon which was pretty spectacular in spite of the cloud cover. All in all, a great day on Saba......

"Goin Once, Going Twice... UNSOLD"

The Auction house in DC had their Winter Fine Arts and Antiques auction yesterday and some more of our shit was up for sale.

I have to let it go, I have to let it go, I have to let it go, I have to let it go.........

Of the five paintings and three antique pieces of furniture only 3 paintings sold and 2 of the furniture pieces sold AND for crappy prices.

Now I have to decide who is going to help me schlepp these things that were not sold off the "worthy" homes or to have the auction house crooks try again in the Spring at their next sale.

I moved to the Caribbean NOT to have stress. This morning it's not working........

Happy Saturday

I'm just getting up at 9am!! I think this is the first time in months that I've slept in so late.

Last night was the Big Animal Rescue Wine Tasting and Auction fund raiser for the island so the restaurant was pretty darn slow. Paul and I decided to close up shop early and go over to the event. It was a lot of fun. Then we popped into Saba Treasures (another restaurant and bar nearby) and ended up at Scout's Place for Sabaoke, their Friday night tradition.

Our new deck furniture arrived this week from Miami. It looks really nice.

We're still waiting for a couple of the cushions that didn't come and one chaise lounge. We were going to wait on buying the chaise lounges but Paul decided to buy just one for now since Molly, my sister, is coming soon and she's a "Sun Goddess" and needs a place to lay out. I hope it arrvies in time.

Thursday Night Blues

Well I've finished the second day of "grueling days" at Tropics without Leanna's help and I'm Freakin' tired! The very idea of working 13 plus hour days for multiple days in a row is enough to, well make me have a cocktail.......

I did get a nice surprise from the post office today. It was our Christmas care package from our friend Jody in North Carolina. Only 7+ weeks late! In the box was our "new" Charlie Brown Christmas tree which seems to suit me just fine these days and.....

My NEW jeweled toned calculator since I'm the keeper of the Bar Tabs at the bar. Very snappy and thank you Jody. You're soooo thoughtful!

Happy Thursday (I'm fuckin exhuasted) from Saba.......

It's Gonna be a rough 2 weeks. Arggghhh!

Well I have to tell you that I have spoiled many of my readers by posting so many posts in the month of January and I've already heard from a select group of rabid fans that I've let them down so far in February with a "spotty performance" from me.

To update you: Sunday for Super Bowl was a huge success. We had a great BBQ and had over 60+ people for the big game which I have to admit was pretty darn good!

Monday was our "day of rest" which included doing paperwork, paying bills, cleaning the house (OK, not really) and maybe, just maybe having a cocktail or two-elve....

Yesterday we had a big private dinner at Tropics for the Saba University Medical School staff and administrators and all went well with that.

This morning I got the unfortunate call from Leanna, our lead waitress and staff member extaordinaire that she had a death in the family and needs to leave tomorrow morning for Dominica to attend to family, the funeral, etc.

What does that mean for Chris you may ask??? That means double/triple shifts at Tropics from today through the 17th of February.

I predict a rapid weight loss of another 5 or more pounds in less than 2 weeks......

Super Bowl Game Day

Today's the big day for our Sunday Super Bowl BBQ Bash at Tropics. We begin serving at 5pm and will offer a feast of BBQ baby back ribs, beef brisket and Jerk BBQ chicken served with potato salad, cole slaw, beans and corn on the cob with homemade apple cobbler for dessert.

Once we get the big screen up and start the pre game festivities we will serve loaded potato skins, spinach dip, onion rings and Buffalo wings along with $2 beer, wine and drinks.

The game will be played on our 12 foot X 18 feet screen and we're expecting a pretty big crowd.

I'm sure there will lots of testosterone and empty beer bottles everywhere.

Good times, I tell you, Good times. . . . . . . .