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I was recently diagnosed as having ADOLAB…that’s Attention Deficit OHH LOOK A BUNNY!

Tag surfing this morning on the balcony of my hostel in Panama City, Panama, I ran across a commonly used expression that drives me up the wall. The author described something as being “surrounded on three sides.”  If something is “surrounded” it is enclosed on ALL sides. You can have something “bordered” on three sides but not “surrounded.” This is a common error and is perpetrated even by journalists who are paid to know the difference.

Another one that makes my back teeth scream is the misappropriate use of the word “jealous” when a person actually means “envy.”

Example: “I’m going on vacation to the French Riviera to visit all the topless beaches there” or “My father just gave me a Testosterona 360 convertible for my graduation gift.”

“Wow, dude, I’m so jealous.”

Jealousy is a feeling based on unjustified and irrational beliefs, usually in relationships with other persons. Your girl/boyfriend, wife/husband run into an old flame at a party. They seem to be having a good time together, talking and laughing while you sit on the sidelines by yourself stewing and thinking he/she is going to go home with the other person even though you know good an well it’s not going to happen. It’s your insecurity about the relationship that’s causing you to be jealous. On the other hand, envy is the painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. Totally different, unless you’re a third party at the party watching the couple in the corner engaging in deep and lustful looks into each other’s eyes, occasionally exchanging bodily fluids and you wish it was you participating. That’s envy.

Now that I am one I’ve always been bothered by people who call those who have left their own country to take up residence in another as “expatriots.” They aren’t. Those people are EXPATRIATES, from the  Medieval Latin expatriatus, past participle of expatriare to leave one’s own country, from Latin ex- + patria native country, from feminine of patrius of a father. An expatriot would be someone who was once patriotic but no longer is. A turncoat.

Don’t even get me started on the to, too, two crowd or the there, their, they’re idiots.

When I first put a headline up here I started it as “A Couple of Misused Words” but then, of course, realized that the word “couple” means two and would then be another misused word.

When I worked as a chauffeur for a time, picking up people from the airports in south Florida, one of the questions I’d ask new residents was how they liked it here. Often they’d say they missed the “seasons.” To me it seems that the “seasons” the people missed were for dumb folks who pay little or no attention to their environment. “Look, Martha, there are no leaves on the trees and the ground’s all white. It must be winter.”

There are four distinct seasons in Florida, too, but you have to be aware. You can’t spend all your time in your air conditioned home, move to your air conditioned car that takes you to your air conditioned office or mall. There’s a statement in a song by the jazz poetry group in New Orleans that says, “there’s nothing more southern than air conditioning.”

Sure, Summers here are stiflingly hot and humid, but then one day, if you’re paying attention, the humidity seems to have disappeared overnight, the temperature has dropped a couple of degrees and it’s Fall. Fall slides seamlessly into Winter with the passage of the first cold front and then Spring announces itself with brilliant splashes of color as the various flamboyant trees begin to bloom.

While many people think that the first green buds on the dormant trees in the north signal Spring, I think the true color of Spring is yellow. One of the first to show up is the forsythia This was taken from http://corditecountryshownotes.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/40409/

My friend Omar who edits http://epiac1216.wordpress.com/ had a post today about a brilliant yellow tree in bloom in Panama now called the Guayacan:

It is very similar to a tree that grows here in south Florida though I can’t recall its name at the moment. All I do know is it raises havoc with my nasal cavities and thank whomever it’s only in bloom for a couple of weeks. This one is about two blocks from my home.

A close up of the flowers:

While it’s very similar to the Guayacan I don’t think they’re the same. It seems that Omar’s tree has a smooth bark while the one here in Florida is rough barked.

When I was in Chitre, Panama, last spring I found this yellow tree which no one could identify for me:

Spring on the French Riviera where I lived for nearly three years brings in the mimosa which I loved:

Those two photos were stolen from the blog http://menton-daily-photo.blogspot.com/ that I visit daily. I dated a doctor in Menton for a short while and loved walking through the old town there. It’s the last town in France before you enter Italy.

It seems there have been a lot of cataclysmic earthquakes lately. While many believe the quakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, I always harbored the idea that the pumping of billions of barrels of oil  have somehow destabilized the earth. Hey, why not?

But it seems that both theories are wrong. According to Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric, women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. After all, Eve got mankind kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Actually, the statement is just another example of why I shy away from religious fanatics of all faiths. Besides, I’m rather fond of promiscuous women.

Properly displayed.

Science flies men to the moon.

Religion flies people into tall buildings.

The last hurdle to moving to Panama has been overcome. The boat was sold today. Much less than it’s worth; a little less than I’d hoped for (but not a lot less). Tomorrow I’m buying a one-way ticket to Panama and will be there for the first of May. Buying a one-way ticket because with the Pensionado visa tickets I purchase in Panama get a 25% discount.

5 p.m. Sunday,  March 21, 2010

5:10 p.m.

5:12 p.m.

For a while I was convinced you couldn’t sell hundred dollar bills for fifty bucks with the state of today’s economy. but some guy from the Bahamas wanted the boat and it’s his, now. A great boat for over there. He got a real bargain and I get to continue to pursue my One More Good Adventure.