Our Final Day At Tropics Cafe

We finished our final day at Tropics Cafe today and needless to say it was emotional for me. Many of our favorite customers wished us well and said they were sorry to see us leave. Good thing is that we had a sold out crowd and I was too busy to chat too much!!

I told them that we "would be back soon" while running to the kitchen to wipe the sweat off my brow and tears out of my eyes......

I feel as if I had been given this "CHILD" to care for and nurture over that last 12-14 months and now it's time to give it back to its parents and that makes me a sad and pathetic slobbering mess.

Regardless, I'm sure that they will take good care of my "little one" and we can move foreward with next chapter in our lives.

Goodbye Tropics Cafe. I will miss you dearly.............

Santa Baby

Paul is busy updating his Holiday music collection on his IPod so we can play Christmas music at Tropics Cafe. Yesterday we played it all day long!!

So by next week I will be sick and tired of it and ready to throw the IPod in the ocean.

Jingling your bells from the Caribbean!!

I've never understood Black Friday

There's something about Black Friday, the shopping extravaganza day of the year, that I've quite understood.

The very idea of camping out overnight after stuffing yourself full of turkey and vittles on a cold November evening in a Wal Mart parking lot just to be "the first one" in to snatch and grab whatever piece of crap toy that's on sale.

I mean, REALLY!! What's the point when you can just go online from the comfort of your home and order it and have it wrapped, shipped and sent??

Well being on Saba we don't have shopping malls, outlet stores and other venues for wasting your hourly rate so I've come up with my own version of Black Friday...........



It's Black, it comes in a bottle AND it's 100 proof........

A "Non Traditional" Thanksgiving

Even though this is my 2nd Thanksgiving on Saba it still feels a bit weird to NOT have a smell of wood burning in the fireplace, a comfy turtleneck on and Mom's homemade marshmallow sticky rolls.

Regardless, we made the most of it in swimming suits and flip flops on the beach and swimming in the ocean.

We did enjoy a meal of turkey and all the fixings and ended our Turkey Day early and I was tucked into bed by 9 o'clock.

Happy Black Friday from Saba!

Sinfully Delicious!

So we have tried out some new recipes for the dessert menu at Tropics and the first one, a Chocolate Turtle cheesecake is guaranteed to add a few inches to the waist line by just looking at it!

It is served on a drizzle of warm dark chocolate ganache, homemade caramel sauce and whipped cream. It is SOOOO rich it actually makes your teeth hurt.

Another new one is this Banana Cake with a vanilla cream cheese frosting. I learned this new technique where you put the cake layers in the freezer as soon as you take them out of the oven and all the "heat" goes back into the cake and makes it really dense and moist. This big guy towered at almost 12 inches high!!

We used local Saba Fig Bananas which are super sweet.

Happy "Sugar Coma Day" from Saba.

So I was thinking

Today's big news events on the world wide web are talking about Oprah's plan to announce the end of her show after 25 years and Sarah Palin's sell out book going Number One and I started to think about what may come of this and decided that the perfect solution is to have Sarah Palin take over Oprah's slot at 4 O'Clock on weekdays.

I mean if all these fools would actually stand in line in chilly weather to get their books autographed then they would probably watch her show, right?

I've even come up with the starting line up of topics for the first episodes:

1. Teenage pregnancy and how to capitalize on it
2. Wrongful termination of State Police officers and how to capitalize on it
3. Soccer Moms teaching pit bulls how to wear lipstick and how to capitalize on it
4. Sexualizing the political arena and how to capitalize on it
5. Publicizing a messy divorce and how to capitalize on it
6. Calculating how many little red dresses you can buy with an $11 Million dollar book deal and how to capitalize on it
7. Real world politics and how to .... no wait, that wouldn't fill a whole hour for the show.......

Happy Friday from Saba!

A Moist Day here on Saba

We've had some torrentials rains over the last day or so here on Saba. And living on a rock/mountain that means the water follows gravity.

Fort Bay at the bottom is the recipient of it all and these shots show the "mud slide" that resulted. Literally a wave of water came rolling down the main road carrying pebbles, rocks and boulders with it.

Glad I don't have to do the clean up on that one!

Sorry to have been slow lackluster in my November postings so far. I promise to catch up.

Happy Wednesday from Saba.

Back on "The Rock"

I arrived back on Saba last night on the final flight onto Saba.

I spent the last 3 weeks back in the Mid-Atlantic spending some quality time with family and friends.

Back into the swing of things already today with Tropics Cafe although we are down to our last 2 weeks there. We gave notice to end our one year lease and are on to "greener pastures".

More to come on what's in store.

Happy Friday, the 13th from Saba.

D.W.O.

So I was reading the msn.com home page and clicked on this link that tells of a woman in Korea who just successfully passed her exam to get her driving license after 950 attempts.

That just gives a whole new meaning to D.W.O. - Driving while Oriental.......

To Marry or Not to Marry??

With the many elections around this past Tuesday discussing who is going to be the new governor or mayor or delegate or, well who really gives a shit anyway I always pay attention to whatever "gay related" theme is going on.

This week's hot button item came from Maine with the repeal of the same sex marriage law.

I chuckled when I saw this poster from an "advocate" in favor of the law.

I wonder if the conservatives are thinking that the ban will curb the sexual aspect of same sex marriage. It that's the case they should LET them (oops, I mean US) get married and the sex will stop right away!! See how easy that was??

I know I should be more concerned about issues of equality for all but really feel that it just cuts into my drinking time so why bother.

Bad Homo, Chris. You're a BAD HOMO.

Images from Maryland and DC

While I've been here in the DC area I have gotten some decent photos but didn't think I brought my "down-loadery-thingy" for my camera but was happy to see that I had packed it afterall and found it this morning in the bottom of my suitcase!

So here are some shots of Maryland and DC for you. The first one is at sunrise from my sister's deck in Annapolis.

Another is here in DC which was really beautiful with the late afternoon rays of sun gleaming through the clouds and sunset on November 2nd.

and the final one showing the November full moon overlooking the city.

It has been nice to spend time here with my family and friends although I'm down with the flu/cold which makes me cranky.

I met with my real estate broker recently and he told me that the market has seen signs of a rebound but the lending community is making things really hard with underwriting and appraisals issues that arise on almost every case! And most every buyer and seller is looking to the real estate agent to "kick in" monies to make transactions go through.

It makes me think of a patient that goes to their doctor and says "I'll go ahead and have the surgery but only if you rebate a chunk of your fee to do so"!! It seems that only in the housing market will clients try to dig in your pocket. Nasty stuff!!