Looks Like Water Fun

It was May 2005 and we were supposed to head out with the DBA crew on this killer boat and sail around Manhattan.

As you can see from the photo, it was a little overcast/rainy and also pretty windy. Therefore, after boarding the vessel and preparing to disembark, the event was canceled.

Shiver me timbers.

Off to the big apple tonight for Friends, Food and of course Fun.

What The Hell Have You Been Doin?

Well to be honest, we have been very busy here in the Pacific Northwest.

We dove right into a project soon after the last post on this site and this is the main reason I have not been updating the blog. I hope to re-engage going forward as most of the work is now complete.

So, you say, "What was this project you speak of?" A big one: We tore out the old back yard that was Ok but, suffering due to mud plots, cracking patio stones, dry rotten deck and an eyesore of cement table.

Goal of the project was to get us off our asses and get some real work done that would make this summer all the more awesome.

Here is the slideshow (click on it to enlarge):

Back Yard & Deck Project 2009

As you may not be able to appreciate from the imbedded slideshow here are some highlights....

• Built ramps within the debris box to ensure we filled it to the brim (if you have done this before, it makes for good theater seeing someone race a wheelbarrow up the ramp to dump debris in back and on top of the pile)
• We had an minimum load of 4 tons for the box and put in 18 tons
• The truck that came to pick it up looked like it was going to flip over on its side when it was loading up the bin. That would have been interesting and depressing all at the same time.
• Our initial paver delivery was the wrong stones
• The deck wood order was short and this is why we have yet to put on the railings
• Karen was instrumental in picking out the plants for the back garden area replanting (and effort I might add!)
  

Kudos to the following vendors for providing superior service and materials...

Lakeside Lumber
Willamette Graystone
Porland Sand & Gravel

We are off to NYC tomorrow and hope to post from there. Have fun!

Week In Review

We had a great day out last week with Jim, Krystin and Josie. Here are a couple of shots of them at Imbibe grabbing a bite.



One of me taking over the humvee stroller. Now I know why women rule the sidewalk while driving these urban vehicles.


Now for the weekend in Las Vegas with Bob and Kaci.

Kaci and I ruled Susan and Bob at the Euchre table on Saturday 7-1. Bob and I then ruled the table on Sunday against Susan and Kaci 2-1.

Those two ruled at the dining table with an awesome set up of colossal crab, mashed potatoes, grilled shrimp, grilled asparagus and grilled portobello mushroom.



Then a quick shot from LAS before we headed into the airport for the trip home.


As we stalked Krystin yesterday, we took a shot of their flowers and Japanese Maple between the sidewalk and street. Nice to see the colors popping up all over the place.


Now it's our turn to get moving on the back yard and deck. We will post some before and afters once we have completed the work!

Osa Peninsula - Photo Gallery

In order to close out the Costa Rica posts, I have decided to just embed the summary photo gallery from the trip at this point.

Click on the pic to enjoy!

Costa Rica 2009

Osa Peninsula - Birds

Here are some pics of birds we were able to capture on our trip.

Note that we did not get a good picture of the Macaus but, they were all around and very cool.

Ode To Hugo - Year 1

Well we have had the beast for a full year now and decided to do a web album of the past year dedicated to Hugo.

If you click on the picture, it will open up into a larger window, which you can then choose to view the slideshow.

The photos speak for themselves...

From Hugo -A Year In Reflection

Osa Peninsula - Sea Life

Since we spent most of our time in the rainforest, we have very little photos/footage from the water. We can share a few things though.

Here is momma Sea Slug and baby sunning themselves in a tidal pool. The link may or may not be the slug in question.


And now for the Bottle Nose Dolphins.

We were set up by Bosque Del Cabo for the day with Brian. Great guy and he headed us in the right direction for dolphin watching, hanging on the beach and a short but ok snorkeling adventure.

Before we got on the boat, we did see a Sea Turtle by the pier. Dare I say, first Sea Turtle sighting!

When we found the Dolphins, there were about 40-50 animals in the vicinity and it was super cool.

Unfortunately the video on our camera had weird vertical streaks and is a little choppy but, here it is anyway.





Good news is we turned the camera back into Best Buy when we returned and got the new Powershot SD960 IS which features a whopping 12 megapixels and HD video. Now that's what we call a score.

Osa Peninsula - Insects & Arachnids

There are so many bugs in Costa Rica that it is impossible to get away from them. Even in the dry Season and to be sure many of these bugs can be super sized.

Even so, I managed to only got eaten up by mosquitoes the very first night. Simply amazing since I usually am tortured by these creatures and full of welts that last around a week.

We will start off with the Leafcutter ants. On our daily trek from our Cabina at Bosque Del Cabo, there was a couple of ant trails that crossed our path.

Here is what I find to be the highlight of these insects (Compliments of Wikipedia)...

"Leafcutter ants are social insects found in warmer regions of the Americas. These unique ants have evolved an advanced agricultural system based on ant-fungus mutualism. They feed on special structures called gongylidia produced by a specialized fungus that grows only in the underground chambers of the ants' nest."

These beasts were extremely active at night as is represented by the following photo.


And here we have a shot of the them working by day and more detail of the actual insects themselves.


This one took us by total surprise. We had no idea what this was until we got home. At first we thought it was some strange off shoot of the Katydid only to find that this is the infamous Hooded Praying Mantis.

Equally as green and much larger is the Katydid. One of our crew was brave enough to hold this guy for the camera so we could get perspective on the size.


Here is another one hanging out on the front veranda of the lodge.


One day out at the swimming hole, we encountered this water spider. From toe toe, this spider was about 5-6" long.

Not in the water of course but, apparently it can walk across water as needed.


Susan captured this menacing creature in a palm frond. We believe this is the Golden Orb-Web Spider. Super cool colors and it was about 6 plus inches long!

Most interesting fact we could gather and what this means to you and me...

"The silk of N. clavipes has recently been used to help in mammalian neuronal regeneration. In vitro experiments showed that a single thread of silk can lead a severed neuron through the body to the site it was severed from. With a tensile strength of 4×10⁹ N/m, it exceeds that of steel by a factor of six. It is not recognized by the immune system and has antibacterial properties."

- Sourced from Wikipedia, footnoted to Allmeling et al. 2006


We now turn to our flying friends.

We did see the Blue Morpho butterfly but, we did not have the where-with-all to get a photo. Take note that most of the flying things are quite hard to get good photos of.

Interesting fact about this creature...

"These colors are not a result of pigmentation but are an example of iridescence: the microscopic scales covering the Morpho's wings reflect incident light repeatedly at successive layers, leading to interference effects that depend on both wavelength and angle of incidence/observance."

- Sourced from Wikipedia and footnoted to P. Vukusic, J.R. Sambles, C.r. Lawrence, and R.J. Wootton Quantified interference and diffraction in single Morpho butterfly scales Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 266: 1403-11. (1999)

Here are two shots that seemed noteworthy and we are stepping out on a limb a bit to state that the first is an Owl Butterfly and we have not identified the blue winged one.



As I thnk about it more, this could very well be a juvenile Blue Morpho or maybe just an awesome moth. Not being a trained entimologist has its limitations.


Now for something different (as if). This first insect is extremely cool and was hard to get a good photo of. It kept fidgeting around but, we finally nailed it.

We tried to find out what it was in order to feature it but, to no avail. So I may send this off to an OSU professor to see if he can ID it for us.

Unidentified bug


Remember that game... Centipede! Well this is the real deal.

True Story: The venom from some of these can be life threatening.


Drum roll.....

Scorpion take down!

The first shot is a close up from our previous post. Note this scorpion was about 7" long from claw to tail. I know this seems like a fish tail (per the link of up to 110 mm) but, this sucker was big. The katydid (?) it was eating was no small fry either.


In the close up, you can kinda see that this bug is turning into goo to be sucked up by our flat mate.

Sleep did not come easy with this visitor.


Let it be know that this wicked venomator was much smaller than the one in our Cabina. And see how easily it head butts the rather large Hooded Mantis. Extraordinary wouldn't you agree?



And I leave you with the description from a researcher of being venomated by this night crawler...

"There was immediate pain, as if being penetrated by a thorn much larger than the actual sting. The site of the sting felt tight and as if it was burning, although there was little visible inflimation. [sic] After approximately an hour, the pain had subsided to the point where I was more aware of a sensation of tingling like when you stick your tongue on a 9V Battery. After an additional half hour, the pain and tingling had subsided to the point where my thumb felt like it had a sealed paper cut on it -- where moving my thumb felt odd but keeping it still was without much sensation. Several hours later, this too had subsided and I felt nothing. At no point did I experience any systemic effects, nor did the symptoms extend beyond the initial sting site -- not even as far as my first joint on my thumb."

- Sourced from Wikipedia and footnoted to arachnoboards.com - Arachnoboards > Reports > Sting Reports

Osa Peninsula

So, the idea here is to post some shots from the trip and plan to post more over the next week or so which will be broken out by Category (Flora, Fauna, The Group, Bugs, Reptiles, Dolphins, Etc - not necessarily in this order).

We had a great time (kudos to the staff at Bosque Del Cabo) and were able to bear through the heat and humidity without too much problem.

Here is a shot from our flight over from San Jose on Sansa Airlines to Puerto Jimenez. Just as an FYI, might be wiser to fly Nature Air as they have dual turbo props and can handle the windy conditions better. We definitely had a rough ride back to San Jose (white knuckling if ya know what I'm sayin).


Arrival in Bosque Del Cabo! The long haired gent is the son of the owner and he road in with us from the airport. The ride from Puerto Jimenez is about 40 minutes and pretty bumpy.


Frogalicious! This little fella was hanging out by the Pool.


We found this creepy crawly in our Cabina (La Paz) rafters munching down on a large Katydid (At least thats what we think it is). We thought best to just leave them alone.


Flora


Mothra!


First Coati sighting!


Here is good ole Toucan Sam Hanging in the canopy.

And last but not least, MONKEYS!

This shot was taken right out back from our Cabina and that is tough to beat.

Bosque Del Cabo

Ah, 5 hours til wheels up on our way to Costa Rica!. We will be staying at Bosque Del Cabo which is supposed to be way amazing. This is located on the Osa Peninsula and it sounds like we will be literally living with the wild life.


As we understand, we will be off the grid in every possible category and do not expect to post anything until we get back (on the 22nd). However, if we can, we will try and post. We just do not expect any internet access.


The reviews for this place are pretty much off the charts on tripadvisor. We will give you our own assessment once we get back (assuming an ocelot or a puma don't eat us).