It's Rainy...... and It's Been Raining....

I'm just back from weekend up north of Quito, a rainy weekend at a 400 year old Spanish Hacienda called La Cusin. Haciendas are the Latin American version of our big cattle ranches, although my guess is that it's been a long time since La Cusin saw any cattle. The place has served as a monastery, a farm, and now as a hotel, a very nice hotel. I've been to the place many times, and I enjoy it every time. It's quiet, colonial, historic, and, when it's not raining, it's got beautiful sunny gardens - and all of this surrounded by mountains and off in the distance, a beautiful lake.

I'm putting a picture of the long entrance into this place to give you an idea of the scale of the place - and this isn't the whole length of the entrance, btw...

I started this posting on Tuesday, but I've been so busy on my business projects (cacao and chocolate; more on these things in later postings) that this posting has languished in draft for most of the week, in fact for so long that the weather, at long last has improved, and we've actually had a day and a half of sun, for god's sake.

In the meantime, I've had a couple of great chats with my kids in Washington and Panama, and it's nice to grow closer to them, especially after years of my not paying much attention to them, because of work, fatigue, and the general, chronic blahs...

The events of last year, which saw my retirement from a 30 year job and the breakup of my marriage after my affair with my secretary, threw me into a whole new lifestyle which I'm starting to enjoy after the first few months in which I was essentially in shock.

I gotta say that I feel much more relaxed, and what with the various nascent business ventures, photog classes, volunteer work and my girlfriend (my former secretary; yes I'm still with her), life is beginning to be fun. As well, as I say, I'm growing closer to my kids and writing/chatting with them more often. Given all this, the fact that I'm 59 and my acute sense of irony, this probably means that I'll be having a fatal heart attack in the near future - just when I'm starting to enjoy life....

Still, the last three/four months have made it worthwhile, so what the hell..

OK, I'll close this out so that something shows up at least every 10 days or so.

I hope the photo comes out this time!