12/12/12 12:12

It's 12-12-12! (The 12th gate out of 13.)
Welcome the light and open your spiritual gateway wide! Clear your karma and make way for healthy, happy relationships and ways of being in the world. 
This spiritual activation gate will bring the highest frequencies ever encoded in the Light of the Ascended Consciousness,  followed by the final gate in 9 days on 12/21/12 when Baktun 13 begins. 
All the spiritual energies we have been working for since 1/1/1 will be fulfilled and available very soon.
Make it count today! Be light, be love.
Shamballa on!  
(image source:  ME!  This is a drawing I did for a class on Merkabas and Sacred Geometry)

Jaguar Nights merchandise

My artist Mike has put up two of his designs, both used in Jaguar Nights 2013, as t-shirt designs on Zazzle. 

The shirts are available in a multitude of colors.  The designs are Rabbit in the Moon (I LOVE IT) and Jaguar Warrior.  The rabbit design is probably going to be the back of the Mayan Oracle cards.  You can search Zazzle for "MichaelGiza" (no space) to see all of his work.

In Meso themed work, he also offers Sun God cards, Sun God t-shirts, and the Jaguar Warrior on red greeting cards, turquoise and brown greeting cards, playing cards, and a red notebook.  The Rabbit is also available on a mug. (soon to be mine) The Sun God picture gives you an idea of the style of artwork and color that will be on the Mayan Oracle cards.

Jaguar Nights 2013 in Kindle & print, with screen shots

Jaguar Nights 2013 Mayan-Aztec Calendar is now available in both print and kindle formats.  The Kindle format has color pictures for those using a Kindle Fire or a Kindle app on a smartphone or tablet.  Click the cover or the above link to purchase either version.  Because of the large expense of mailing from Amazon to me and from me to you, I'm only selling books in person, not via mail anymore. 
The print version is in a totally new format, expanded from 64 pages to 110, with more room on each day for writing.  It is one week per 2-page spread; Saturday and Sunday are a bit larger, and there is an informational panel.

 Compared to 2008,2009, 2011, and 2012, which had 2 weeks per 2 page spread with all information at the back of the book.  People complained that there was not enough room to write appointments and notes with this format.  So I listened,and changed it!

It's hard to make a Kindle screenprint; I don't have a Kindle Fire, just an old-school black and white one, but here are prints from the emulator program. The daily graphics are in color and so are the photos.

I welcome comments and suggestions.  This is my first attempt at a Kindle calendar so I'd love to know what you think.  transformations at obsidianbutterfly dot com. 

Cruise 2012: Grand Cayman (NOT!) and homeward bound

All night the boat was heaving and groaning. Since we were so low we heard lots of water rushing, and things clanking around. Not surprising that early in the a.m. Jacques the lisping cruise director said we’d be getting into Grand Cayman at 10:45 instead of 10:00 due to the waves, and that we’d dock elsewhere than Georgetown but no shore excursions would be rescheduled. Ours was at 11:30 so we weren’t worried. It was the only one we were doing with our friends—Reef and Ray Snorkel—and we were really looking forward to it, because we love Grand Cayman and the sting rays there.
Just before we were ready to follow our ticket, our friends called. They had been in line at the excursion desk and found out that all the snorkeling tours had been canceled. We were sad to miss our sting rays but we’d still get to walk around, buy cigars and rum cake right?

By the time our friends came down 1 level to our room, they had announced that, although 5 tender boats were circling the Liberty waiting to take us all off, we weren’t going to Grand Cayman. It was RIGHT THERE outside the window and we couldn’t go. Will was so angry. He really loves Grand Cayman and he was feeling better and he promised his friends at work good cigars. Our plan was to go to the comedy show that night, 3 comedians back-to-back for 3 hours, after dinner. We all went to the pool, since we had bathing suits on, and while there, Jacques announced that the comedians had been waiting on Grand Cayman to be picked up and thus…no comedians either. We were all mad. We had to wave goodbye to our favorite destination without going there, not knowing when we’d be back, and no comedians either!?

So it was two days back to Miami. The pool water had all sloshed out so that day after Grand Cayman I didn’t spend much time in the pool. The second formal night, the night we didn’t go to Grand Cayman, had no lobster for my hubby. The next day they had refilled the pool so I worked out for over an hour in the early morning before it got too hot. We ate at the burger bar for lunch again, our usual spot, indulged in the Chocolate Buffet after that, had our last dinner in the nice dining room, watched Pirates of the Caribbean for a while, while the pool water sloshed out around us—I saw video when I got home of a Disney cruise and the pool wasn’t half as violent, I didn’t even think of video taping the pool! Packed up, headed home, feeling very sad.  (more under the pics)

One thing that really bothered my friend and me was that the Carnival Liberty's decor was so UGLY.  Pictures don't do its ugliness justice. Who designed this ship?  Were they blind or high?  Were they freshmen in high school?
Here are more pics that weren't discussed & thus ends this chronicle.

Cruise 2012: Dolphin Extravaganza!

We were last in Roatan (Honduras) on our 10th anniversary, 9 years ago, on the second cruise ship that ever went to the island. And wow how Roatan has changed. We docked at another of the ubiquitous dock-side shopping experiences. This one was on a hill above the ship (no tenders!). (more text below pics)

Our dolphin swim and snorkel didn’t leave until 10 a.m. so we had time to walk around first. The first few shops I went into hoping to find some Mayan art were disappointing. Honduras is at the edge of Maya-land, I know, but I did have hope. But these shops seemed to carry art that looked more African, or even Australian. I hadn’t found anything AWESOME yet for me or my friend and this was my last stop where it was possible. Then I saw a place called Roatan Stone Art. It was exactly what I had been looking for, and if Roatan had been an earlier stop I probably would have spent my budget there. Nothing mass produced and badly carved, only nice and unique items. I bought a pair of altar bowls. Since we had forgotten towels and water my husband headed back to the boat with the bowls to get the towels.
We had to fill out ridiculous paperwork to go on the tour. Basically it said we could be eaten by, or at least munched on, by all sorts of wildlife from horses and iguanas to sharks, stingrays and dolphins, and if we did get eaten it wasn’t the tour group’s fault even if they shoved us into the mouth of a shark. Excellent. We signed.
We took a short ride on a small Hyundai bus across the island from Mahogany Bay to Anthony’s Key Resort and the Roatan Maritime Institute where the dolphins were. We walked through the jungle to a dock where we boarded a very small boat to cross the water to a little key, or cay, where the dolphins live. One person said there were 24 dolphins, another 30. Lots of dolphins, some babies. They were Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, some bred in captivity and some wild-caught.
The dolphin for our group was a 10 year old female named Marley who had rejected her last baby, which is apparently very rare, and the baby had been adopted by an older female. She was a goofball of a dolphin. Everything she did, she’d roll over a little and get her eye just out of the water and look at us to see if we approved. The male trainer was trying to get her to blow his whistle and she was sticking out her tongue at him and then flopping her head around so her tongue flapped out of her mouth and laughing at him. He said, “this isn’t a trick, this is her!” and then the dolphin went to the female trainer and immediately blew her whistle with no tongue action. (more text below the pics)

Basically we stood in waist-deep water with the dolphin and the trainers in front of us and the dolphin did tricks and swam back and forth in front of us so we could pet her. We all got our pictures taken hugging her and getting a “kiss” (dolphin leans its beak on your cheek and grins). We had 10 minutes to take our own pictures and videos (some of which are above...and more text is below).

Then we put away our cameras and got our snorkels and fins (fins were required; I actually had bought a pair but Will had to rent them) and we got to snorkel freely around the lagoon while dolphins dive bombed us and played with us. It was so awesome. If you had a piece of seaweed a dolphin would come and steal it. Even the babies came around. If you spun in place they’d race around you in a circle. You’d hear them squeaking and then they’d come from behind (always from behind) and roll to look at you with their big brown eyes as you laughed and tried to pet them. There were also all kinds of cool reef fish to look at, and corals, and lots of grass under the water. It was maybe 15-20 feet deep and the various fish we saw were maybe 8-10” long at most. It really felt like they were playing with us and teasing us, especially if you had seaweed. If you put your hand out they would come and push it with their noses (the trainers did that a lot to them) like a cat or dog would. I can’t explain how amazing it was.
My mask kept getting water in it and I wasn’t scared or panicking, only annoyed that I had to come to the surface and clear it out. Not one bit of panic attack, even when water came in my snorkel! Normally we disdain having others take our pictures for money but in this case, we bought the pictures. The deal was that it was $12.50 for each picture, minimum of 2, and if you bought all them of them it was $40 on a thumb drive, plus $10 for each other person in your group. So a couple was $50. I bought the thumb drive for $50 with no hesitation because some of the pictures came out really good.

We went for a drink at Fat Tuesdays on the way back to the ship & Will took my picture with the parrot-bird and Toad Purse. Will had a Hurricane in an Atti-tube cup and he said it was the worse Hurricane he’d ever had. He actually dumped it in the trash it was so bad.
At dinner our friends surprised us with a heart shaped cake from the bakery that said Happy Anniversary (even though our anniversary had been 2 weeks before) and then we went to see Edge Evolution, a juggling show, a sophisticated one. He did juggling, ancient yoyo work, and thunder sticks, and did it on stilts and blind folded. The ship was plowing through violent waves (Hurricane Sandy) and he only missed one trick because of it.