Woody

Thanks! I guess I'll have to settle for croissants.

Lulu's was always my favorite vivero because she had large quantities of flowers and shrubs suitable for mass plantings. I went by there this week and the lot is emptied and gate locked. Does anyone know if she has relocated or has she shut the doors permanently?

Great response! Dealing with the bureaucracies of Panama is always an exercise in frustration and angst. But, finding the entertainment value in all of it may be the biggest step toward a successful transition to living here.

I don't have a clue what absolute truth on this is, but I do know several couples who have remarried in Panama to have their marriage legally recognized. Good luck!

All of us have learned to be cautious here. No disagreement. But, hopefully, we can all keep enough balance to give young people a chance to succeed. As the saying goes, it keeps them off the streets. I will say that I found the survey question concerning what bank we use to be rather benign. Every time we write a check or do an electronic payment, we are providing someone with both the name of our bank and our account number. There have been lots of discussions in this and other forums about which banks are recommended and which banks people have problem with. Those public discussions have associated a person's name to their bank, and it's not really a big deal. It sounds to me like these kids are exploring an opportunity to help expats navigate through the rocky shoals of setting up a Panamanian bank account. Knowing which banks we use is probably helpful in their plans.

Whoa. Let's do a little time out on this. First, Penny has always added the News Boquete postings to CL. That has been a bone of contention in the past from some people who feel that it is redundant to their other information sources. So be it, but this post seems to be consistent with what Penny has been doing. Second, the OPs may not be using perfect grammar, but what they have used is far better than the Spanglish grammar used by most gringos. I have an admiration for anyone who appears to be striving to make an honest living, and I'm not going to look for a snake under this rock. Lastly, I do not expect CL admins to vet every post on here. In fact, I would probably drop this site from my reading list if I found out that they were over-extending their censorship abilities and providing "truth" as they determined it. Sorry, but this hit too many of my hot buttons to let it pass without stating an opinion.

I'm reminded of the old saying that opinions are like butt holes -- everybody has one. My opinion is that Stihl builds the only weed whackers that will survive the kind of heavy use required in Panama, and you can get factory authorized service and parts. They are worth the premium cost. The biggest downside of Stihls is that they are highly popular with thieves; a fact I know well.

Agree with Bonnie. It's insightful commentary. I quoted the part that was most meaningful to me. I have an expectation that the mail forwarding service will do everything necessary to clear a parcel in a timely manner or advise me on a frequent basis what the status of obtaining clearance is -- especially when I am paying a monthly fee for services. Recently, it seems that the majority of forwarders are failing in communicating status to their customers.

We added a solar backup system to our house when we first arrived. The grid/solar switching system is as sensitive to frequency fluctuations as it is to voltage fluctuation, and one thing I am sure of is that Fenosa power is frequency "dirty", and that is very hard on any appliance with a motor.

Your story brought back a memory of an evening job I had in high school working at a full service gas station. Some people might remember the days when the pump attendant washed the bugs off of your windows, and checked your tire pressure, oil level, and water in the radiator. I had trouble staying focused then, just as I do now, and after adding a quart of oil I realized that I had put it into the radiator. It's pretty easy to make an unintentional mistake.

Pablo's welcome and Bonnie's recommendation have put Toco Madera at the top of our list for our next meal in Boquete. What days of the week are they NOT open?

Guilty, as charged.

This is getting humorous.

That is an extremely well written message. Those of us who rely on freight forwarders are really lucky to have several excellent choices in Boquete.

Better idea. He gave me his card:

If you want, send me a PM with your tel # and I will give it to him.

Supposedly, he will be spraying at our house tomorrow. I will let him know that you are searching for him. I don't have his telephone number, but his email is: chdpestcontrol@yahoo.com

That got my vote for best response of 2016. And, BTW, it is too old, but I understood anyway; phonetically speaking of course.

Earlier this year, I started blocking my FB friends who overdo it with political comments. I'm really hopeful that I can unblock them after the elections. p.s. I'm not happy with how we are being governed, and I'm not happy about our choices for future governance, but the social networks, including CL, will lose their intended purpose if political discussions are uncontrolled. I use the comment blocks in the internet news stories to vent my steam, and those comments are only read by people who want to read them.

I regularly scout the cookie aisle for graham crackers also, but have only found them twice in 5 years. That shortage, coupled with being retired, spawned the idea that I should just make them myself. I've made my own chocolate snaps and graham crackers that are then processed to crumbs for other desserts. The results have been great and all of the necessary ingredients are available locally. That said, I wish some enterprising soul would start selling crumbs at TMM.

Novey occasionally has Scott's 2+2, but I haven't found it to be very effective with Panamanian lawn weeds --- and it is really expensive. My recommendation is to stick with a good lawn fertilizer that you can buy at a fair price at the agro store on the left side of the road just as you come into Boquete, and then spray 2-4D onto the lawn to kill the weeds (also available at the same store.) The guys in that store are super helpful with any type of lawn or plant problem, and they tolerate Spanglish very well.

I pondered it for a minute. It's SNAFU. Shouldn't there be a comma between the N and the A in that acronym, or are punctuation marks excluded from acronyms? Baffling, totally baffling.

Tres Amores is the name in Spanish -- and it is a quite appropriate name. The blooms are not in three distinctly separate colors. They actually change from white to purple as time passes, but during blooming season it does appear that they are separate colors.

Yep. My wife woke up two weeks ago and found that Windows 10 has mysteriously installed on her PC during the night. She had declined every "upgrade" notice she got from Microsoft before that. She still can't figure out how to use it, and since I'm a Mac guy, I don't have a clue how to get it off without paying someone. So, she's stuck with it. But Apple does this same kind of crap too. We have all kinds of useless apps on our iPhones that were factory installed and non-deletable. It reminds me of the days when a car dealer thought it could put a two foot sign with the name of the dealership on the rear of the car you just bought. Really pisses me off.