We were excited to read that several states are taking action against non-native plants that invade natural areas. You can read a Yahoo News story about it or you can head over to California Invasive Plant Council for more information.
Not exactly fun reading, but we have a devil of a time getting information on native/local plants down here (just 50 miles away here is non-native in many regards), so it is good to see that other areas, at least, are providing resources for everyone.

Labels: california, garden

On account of having found a sub-$500 flight from San Jose, California, Mom and Dad Broyles decided to make a last-minute visit. Turned out to be great timing for Steve and Jocelyn as we both had work that could be shoe-horned into a few hours here and there instead of spending all day at the offices. So the 'rents got some qt to relax by the pool and do some reading, we got to work and play with people we love, and the four of us visited the beaches, did some offshore fishing with Captain Ali and his friendly crew, ate well at home and in some local restaurants (most notable was Laguna del Cocodrillo, where owner Ben and Dylan hosted us with excellent food, wine and friendly style), and generally enjoyed each others' company. The following photos are a small sampling of the many that we all took.

fresh snapper for lunch, great start to the vacation	shopping for veggies at the local market	sunset cocktails in Langosta	Waiting for the fish to bite
Huge pod of porpoises! There must have been over 100 of them.	Dad's Tuna	Steve's Tuna	Mom got one too!
More porpoises jumping along in our path	Jocelyn's Tuna. Such beautiful fish. *Almost* makes you not want to eat 'em. Almost.	Non-sequiter flower. Think of it as a palate cleanser.	Out for a morning walk in Langosta estuary
Lots of water in the estuary, not very deep	parked at Playa Conchal	one of the area's prettiest, most swim-friendly beaches	more pretty Conchal beach
A local fisherman fought for what seemed a long time, pretty to watch in the setting sun. The fish got away.	Beautiful women out to dine at Laguna del Cocodrillo. Wonderful dinner!	Late night dog tricks to entertain our nephew (12MB file)

Labels: day trip, food, photo, tamarindo, travel

So it turns out that the Sandcruiser Technical Team isn't as tech-savvy as we thought. Or at least, not as blogger-savvy as we thought. Somewhere along the way, we turned on the "moderate comments" button. Mostly because the signal to noise ratio was dropping off alarmingly and more often than not the comments involved content that was irrelevant (and often irreverent). Unfortunately, that meant that a fairly large number of relevant (though perhaps still irreverent) comments weren't showing up.

Fixed it! Steve spent a few minutes "approving" comments, that should now show up on the posts.

If we didn't respond to a question you asked, and yet you've stuck with us anyway, THANKS! and we are sorry, we'll try to do some backfill.

Meanwhile, Jocelyn's birthday was last week. She's still between 20 and 50, by the way, I'll leave it to her to clarify that number any further. We celebrated with a passle of friends up at a little pizzaria. A good time was had by all.

The Real Costa Rica, written by some folks near San Jose. Haven't read all of it yet (nor even most) but it has some interesting stories/links/observations.

Labels: Costa Rica, travel

Once again, Steve threw Jocelyn a wonderful birthday bash. We had about 20-25 friends, lots of good italian food and of course, lots of wine. Maybe a skosh too much, as Steve and I couldn't muster the brain power to post this entry yesterday.

The camera came out at the end, so we missed photos of Camilla and Ronnie, Tony and Karina, Claudia and Samuel, Jennifer and all the kidlets. But some photos are better than none, no?