I don't have any pictures yet, but a good friend hosted a great bonfire dinner last night out in the hills near town. Living so close to the beach it is easy to forget the beauty of the local hill areas. We enjoyed a cooling breeze and tried to pick constellations out of about a bazillion stars. It was actually tough to see the "main" ones for all of the little ones that you can't usually see.

And speaking of celestial bodies... found a new product out there that I really wish we had owned during our trip down to Costa Rica. SPOT is a GPS unit and satellite transmitter that can allow you to provide real-time location transmission. In essence, it reports your position on a Google Map about every 10 minutes. It also has a 911 feature that purports to contact local authorities and search & rescue folks that you are need of assistance, also sending them your exact location. Finally, you can hit a button every now and then, if you like, to email to your pre-arranged contacts a little "Hey, I'm ok" message.

I think that if we could have used on of these on our trip, our families would have slept a little better. We might have taken some comfort in having it along for the ride as well.

On a totally different note: I was trimming some palm fronds this morning (a constant battle here.... too many dang palm trees in our yard) and a snake fell out of the tree onto my arm. Startling. It was about the diameter of a pencil and maybe two feet long. Olive brown on top, lighter underneath. Pretty little thing. It wasted no time in slithering right back up into the palms, pausing briefly to look around only after it was well off of me. I imagine that I startled the snake at least as much as it startled me, but since snakes don't type (no fingers) you're only likely to get my side of the story.

Labels: garden, travel, weather