I feel like a million bucks!

Or perhaps I should say a 106%.

You know how the parents always say- and imply, and encourage- that all our hard work will someday pay off, and that perseverance will be much more valuable then any short sighted distractions? You know? This is the kind of thinking that lands you in grad school, people, so mind your words closely.

This is also the kind of thinking that doesn't mind you are working 60 hours a week, commuting several hundred miles a week for a job that by any measure isn't "dream" quality. But good, encouraging and supportive friends and family says "stick to it," " someday you'll get noticed, promoted, whatever," "they don't pay you to complain- you're a professional, they pay you to make it look easy" (actually, Dr. Rockstar said this to me). And you keep working, with little more then a sigh of disappointment when you get passed over for raises and promotions and more interesting opportunities.

And then your grump of a boss calls you into his office while you are shooting the breeze with the few other lonely types who are still working the day before Christmas Eve. And he slides a slip of paper across his desk that spells out in dollar $ign$ that he has noticed your hard work, and your talent, and your perseverance, that he'll be damned if they'd let you go now, and that even though your annual review passed with little more than a cost of living increase he wanted you to get what you deserved after all.

Even though Matt isn't the sentimental type, I know for a fact he is still carrying this slip of paper in his pocket, and standing about a foot taller.

Alternate ending- my boss sent me an email today to tell me I am "Awesome." Looks like everyone is going to have a good vacation. Merry Christmas!

Holiday beginnings

So we picked up Kelso a day early from the airport for reasons that were bittersweet as I will describe a bit later. We transitioned straight to the Broiler to engage a halibut burger which has become the signature moment for a return to Alaska for our youngest. By all accounts her finals went well, her trip through the valley of the shadow of snow was uneventful if a bit slow, and she looked just fine to us who haven't seen her for almost 3 whole weeks!!

She came home a day early on a parent sponsored ticket change because we all wanted her to be here for a less joyous event. Last week a group of 5 boys from kelsey's teen-ACTS/youth group got together in a family basement when no-one was home. They got into a locked gun cabinet and through a horrifying series of misjudgements and accidents, fired one of the guns, killing one and wounding another critically. The funeral is today. These were not street punks, these were goofy, awkward, sweet, sincere kids that would have been at home around my dinner table just a few years ago. We know the families. We recognize the kids. What an awful mess. I've been remembering them as we all bubble up toward the much anticipated break at work. I've tried rather clumsily to mention to at least Kelsey how this event puts such a different perspective on this holiday season for me. I know that, for these families, this and many other Christmases will never be the same. It causes so many imagined parenting challenges to just fade to meaninglessness. I have 3 healthy, beautiful, accomplished children, abroad in the world, making me proud, finding their way. God in Heaven, who cares about their bedroom cleaning habits? Of course, it makes me want to find a way to bring them all home and squeeze life into and out of them. But that's not really what matters to a good parent. Its letting them find their own way, sharing, supporting but ultimately biting a lip, sitting on hands, allowing oneself to be amazed by how wonderful they become on their own. So, yes, I am missing Sandlin who's at home doing original research, embracing a loving husband, and believing she misses us even more than we do her. Little does she know. After all, its her mother-in-law's turn and we can be fair, no matter how much we long to make it our own. And we will surrender the Sooby keys and await text messages and wandering cell calls even from our own home bound youngest with absolute delight. We will contemplate the wonders of snow in Texas and hold on for a substantial gathering of all we love in a few more days which will seem just that much more precious to me.

The happiest of Holidays to us all.

Gordie

I want to make cookies

I've been holding off on any holiday related baking. Everyone in my lab is on a diet, and I am certainly in no shape to pick up the slack of a spare batch of cookies, so I've be waiting to initiate any food related celebrations. But lets face it, if you don't go to church, you don't visit your family, your husband doesn't want a tree, and you don't eat the cookies- there isn't a whole lot of holiday left.

Today, I thought, I'll quit killing myself at work and go make cookies while Matt is at his boring holiday party. Yeah, something cute like gingerbreadmen. Yeah. Aside from the obvious butter, eggs and flour I need to buy (still in graduate school), I thought you know- a rolling pin would be nice. I'm too much of a grown-up to roll out my gingerbreadmens with a nalgene. Oh, and if I want them to be mens, I think I'll need a cookie cutter. My diet will probably appreciate that this line of thought derailed before I bought all the butter.

I didn't do anything remotely as cool as buy a house this week, but I did crack an important protocol this month. I've finally got it optimized so I can whip through it another 6 times next month and finish my obligations to my collaborators. Woohoo! My boss has no idea how thrilled he should be.

The Post-Pre-Home-Ownership Post

I'm a homeowner!

We jetted out of work for a bit to go sign some paperwork, presented the title company with a comically oversized novelty check for a bunch of $$$, and signed our names or initials about fifty times. And that's it! The sellers have to come in and do some stuff, and the wire transfer of all our $$$ has to go through (it will) and just like that, we are homeowners. We got to go see our house yesterday, but, um, the previous people were still moving out. Rough. So with any luck, next time we go we'll be able to see the place all cleaned out for the first time. We'll try and get some cleaners to come over and give the place a serious scrub-down before we move in, just cause we can, but mostly it'll just be strange to see the place without anything in it. And then we get to put in all of *our* stuff.

So, yeah, we own a house. What did you do on your lunch?

-N

The Pre-Home-Ownership Post

Today, with any luck, Jess and I will become homeowners. It's December 17th, and though there's been some hair-raising frustrations along the way, it looks like we've at least managed to nail the dismount. True, we're still waiting on paperwork, but there's every reason to believe it will go through just fine and we'll be off and writing HUGE CHECKS in no time.

I won't name-drop here, but our mortgage broker hasn't done very well by us. They offered us a *fantastic* rate, and that's why we went with them, even suspecting that they might not be the best for paperwork. Because closing is only for a month, and a mortgage is for a really, really long time. Those .25% increments really add up over 30 years. Unfortunately, though, the person handling our paperwork isn't very good at her job. Which is odd, because handling paperwork is really all she does! There was a hitch and she was instantly on us to actually change our title company, just cause it would make it easer for her. Well we called our real estate agent (who is awesome) and he actually made the phone calls that our mortgage broker should have and got everything through. I'll name drop for him because he's great. Mike Craig. Definitely a two-thumbs-up Realtor.

Anyway, between that and some last-minute-requests that really-should-have-been requested-a-month-ago we've been waiting for paperwork to go through up till the last minute, but everything is in at the title company and they should be letting Mike know precisely how big a check they want us to bring. It's sort of intimidating, but it's good to remember that you're not really loosing that money. Really just investing it. And getting a house out of the deal.

In other goings on, Jess got sick over the weekend and now I've got it. Jess completed the roller derby training and got drafted onto the Holy Rollers, league champions for three years running, a lot to skate up to. Her first game is on January 4. We've started packing up our house for the move, which will be done after we get back from x-mas with family. And, finally, X-mas with family. Yay!

I'll let you guys know when everything goes through.

-N

Bleck...finals...

I'm in the midst of my finals week, which is always fun, but I'm feeling pretty on top of it. I have my Survey of World Music final in about two hours, but I think I'll do pretty good.

Nana and Papa--I got that article you sent me about blue grass clubs in New York. It was a really interesting article. I'm not sure I'd be able to handle the way blue grass is done, but I'd like to think I could wander into a club some day and be able to play a solo.

I just had my orchestra concert last night, which went pretty well. I played a Mozart Sonata in G. It wasn't too difficult, but it did require some work because I was only playing with a piano so I really did have to fully know my part, no faking.

My last fnal is on Thursday, and then I'm flying back to Juneau on Friday morning, and get in later that night. Yay for layovers in Seattle.

Thanks for the pictures bissy! Cuuuute!

Pictures from Las Vegas!

I've finally got the pictures from Las Vegas loaded to Picasa. I have tragically few picture of grandma's birthday party, and suspiciously many pictures of the Autoshow. Can anyone else help me with this deficit? Matt loaded the photos, so he got first crack at the captions. You've been warned.

You should see photos of the aftermath of Thanksgiving dinner at Jeanne's house, quite a few images of cars from the autoshow (with some nice ones of Dad and Matt enjoying themselves), and then other pictures, mostly of random places up and down the strip. We got to wander through a lot of the casinos, which have fabulously over-the-top decor. On our last night, we went to the Belagio to see the Fountain show, and that's where we found the 6 TON Chocolate Fountain. Yeah, wow. It was nice to have some time to do fun things with my family I don't get to see too often.

Working isn't as much fun as Vacation

Christmas music was made for Jazz singers. I didn't realize this until, well, this morning on the bus to work. My iPod is loaded with Tony Bennett's Christmas album- so picture me toddling to the bus stop in the dark and rain at 6:30 this morning with Tony to cheer me along.

Sil. Ver. Bells. Siiilver Bells.....
Ring-a-ling...

That helped a lot.

I am in early this morning to get a few things done before I FINISH TEACHING! Yes, it is dead week, and lab classes don't have finals. We do have a final homework assignment due next week that I've been scheduled for weeks to have finished grading by tomorrow (lame for me), so there will be some schedule acrobatics then- but the major timesuck of sitting in a basement for 10 hours a week is OVER this week. And then I can go back to my day job- or that is having a day job that only takes up the day. I've enjoyed teaching overall, but it is tough to balance that with my major obligation to myself to graduate before I am old. And not sleeping just makes me age quickly. My project is moving in a much more interesting direction these days, so I am pleased to be liberated to work on that without interruption for a while.

These are a few of my fav-orite things...
Thanks, Tony.

Thanksgiving in Vegas!

The matron of the Warner clan, Madamme Grandma, is celebrating her big birthday this weekend. This means the family has assembled for celebrations in her new home in Las Vegas. The best part of this, is that we've all been together for Thankgiving FEASTING at Jeanne and Ray and Grandma's, AND a Fabulous Mexican Birthday Bonananza. We'v been playing games and hanging out. When we get home, we'll post more photos and better updates, but for our dear readers who are not here in person- Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you are enjoying the bounty of the season and the joy of good company as much as we are here!

Visiting the Holy Place- Heinz Feild

This Thursday, Matt and I had the awesome opportunity to attend a Pittsburgh Steelers game. Going to see the Steelers play, was a unique opportunity to understand something really fundamental about the local culture.

We've never lived in a football town before, but it seems to me Pittsburgh takes it to the extreme. Most people here have very strong opionion about how the team should play. They follow the injury lists, the training targets and performance statistics for every man on the field. On game day, no matter what your business, professional dress is swapped for Steelers gear. The day after a game, everyone will be prepared to analyze the game play-by-play with anyone whose got the time- construction workers, college students, yuppies, mothers and grandmothers- it's all anyone can think about. Once we flew into town during a Steelers game, a businessman with a blackberry was updating the score for the whole plane until the cabin door shut, and as soon as we landed the mom with two kids in tow called in for the final score. Heaven forbid a game should end in a loss- the whole city is depressed, moping and grouchy, bitter at the coaching staff and players and each other for letting such a catastrophe befall the sacred Steelers. Football is *important* here.

I am still not sure I understand why, but after going to see a real game, but I understand how. Every seat in the stadium belongs to a seasons ticket holder. Fans pre-lease parking spot near the stadium to begin the righteous tailgating ceremony that involves beer, fire, music and cars. People stream across the bridges to the stadium in a stream of black and gold, the stadium itself is a flood of screaming passion and costumed enthusiasm. We went to a Thursday game, against a team that we were confident we could beat, but not one of the half a dozen teams that Pittsburgh HATES for some historical slight. 60,000 crazy Steelers fans were there, in full dress, in the first winter snow shouting like the place was on fire and waving those Terrible Towels. They take the game SERIOUSLY.

If you didn't see the results, the Steelers won. At work the next day, the discussion centered on whether or not they'd won by enough. Because I was among the chosen there in the stadium, I felt like a hero- as though I personally may have in some small way, through my shouts, or transmitted hating the Bengals, actually had anything to do with the win. Check out the album here.

Hi,

So the house buying is still on. We had an inspection which turned out just fine. There's never anything 'good' on an inspection report, but the only things we might have worried about were minor, easily reparable, or due to code changes since the house was built. It's a little older, compared to some of the houses we've seen, but certainly still a really good house. There are some minor repairs we'll want to make, (to the roof, mainly) but we'll get a professional on that. It's a really steep roof.

We've done some mortgage shopping, and settled on a mortgage broker that's giving us a really good rate. If they don't pull through for some reason, we even have a backup broker. Next up is insurance, which I keep looking around at because the costs I've been told by my broker and real estate agent that I should be looking for...I'm just not getting. Which means either they are wrong or I'm doing something wrong with my quotes. But I have plenty of time to work on that, though, before closing.

So that's been keeping us pretty busy, all in all. We had an inspection on Sunday, and then met with a mortgage broker monday and tuesday. Wednesday I was supposed to go off to Wing Tsun, but we were so tired after being so busy that we just stayed home. We spent a lot of the rest of the week relaxing as well. I spent a lot of time at work this week not doing anything, and having nothing to do all day is *exhausting*.

We've started packing, too. Just a few boxes here and there of stuff we obviously won't use in the next month. It'll make it easier to pack our things up en mass when closing day comes around. New house, how exciting!

Jess is currently off getting her final evaluation for roller derby. They have yet to cut *anyone* from the team, so I'd actually be a little surprised if they told them how they did today, but today does mark the end of the training season. She'll either get picked up by the team, used as an alternate, which is good because there is less responsibility but she still gets to go skate, or let go. Wish her luck everyone.

-N

Fall Ceramics!

I've put together an album of my latest Pottery creations. You'll all be seeing some of these again in some form, so don't look to close if you like surprises under the Xmas tree. Overall I am much happier with what I produced this semester, form and function and color. Not sure that these images will do the glazes justice, but take a look and let me know what you think. As I keep hinting, lots of these (as many as possible, so I can justify the next semester) are going to be gifted. If anything looks remotely appealing, just dibs it.

My vote mattered too!

As I was writing my comprehensive exam during the primary season (read: sitting in front of my computer all day for months), I got myself really worked up about every back and forth of the campaign during this election year. I read opinions, followed the updates and watched the candidates move across the country on the campaign trail. I was also closely following the story of Uncle Ted, seven times a felon, and the mind boggling possibility of his re-election, and then possible dismissal, and then the impending question of who in Alaska would possibly be interested in going to fill his Senate seat... the implications give me indigestion.

Thanks to the electoral college, I cast my vote for president because I should, not because it 'counts.' Matt was thrilled to be a PA voter in a swing state, so he really felt like he personally had a hand in the outcome. And while everyone around me had post-campaign hangovers, I was still watching the ballot count in Alaska. Who would believe that Stevens could win? But the numbers were close, and there are always more to count. But big relief, the final tally shows Stevens will be staying home. I get to walk around with that happy feeling that living and participating in democracy gives you- even if no one else noticed

Moments of the week

One of my labmates works with low levels of toxic radiation. His bench always has weird stuff on it like lead shields. Yesterday, I noticed he had an AM/FM radio out, and I couldn't imagine what it was for. His response "Listening to music." Oh.

----

We've known since he was a kitten, Raoul has a lifelong infection with felines herpes. The vet told us he would have outbreaks that will look like upper respiratory things, but he is otherwise very healthy. This week, his eyes have been running a bit (the first symptom), and he has started sneezing at night. It took us a couple nights to figure out what it is- he sneezes in rapid succession, with a noise that sounds like he is opening up half a dozen cans of soda.

"Pfff... Pfff... Pfff...Pfff... Pfff..."

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The teaching lab where my class is next to the main offices for the construction works renovating our building. I see these guys a lot, and many of them have that charming Pittsburgh accent. I passed a bunch of these guys in the hall, headed back to base with their own chairs in hand for a meeting. As the line of them passed, another guy yelled out (with typical Pittsburgh aggressive hospitality), "Yinz mus' be da chairmen of the Board. Ya' know, good to see ya', chairmen!"

----

Peering outside this morning with coffee and slippers, Matt says "Um, there seems to be some weird slow moving rain out there. Wait, that's not rain. Too white."

---

I got an email from my collaborators in Alabama this week. They are trying to perform a high through put screen to find drugs to treat my viruses. It is a great system if we can get it up and running, I send them protein, they screen their library or 300,000 compounds. Previous efforts have managed to take a time consuming assay I do that could screen several drugs a day to be able to screen hundred. Alabama just announced they miniaturized the assay by 1/4, so they can easily screen thousands of compounds a day- which means I don't have to send so much protein (read 1/4 the work!). Take that, Dr. Bigbucks!

We're buying a house!

No, No, not that house.

So I don't even know if I've mentioned it, what with all the Costa Rica Blogging I've been doing, but Jess and I have been out house hunting. For the past three weekends we've been going out with our real-estate agent and looking at 7-10 houses a weekend, usually. It started out slower, but once we had seen a lot of houses we started being able to discard houses based on things we didn't like more quickly. We had found some houses we liked that were out farther and were newer but cost more, and then this Sunday, we saw THE house.

It started out like a lot of others, but for some reason when we were done looking at it, we didn't want to leave. We couldn't explain why, but even though it had the formal living and formal dining room in the front of the house that we usually didn't like, the downstairs felt very open and connected, our #1 criteria for a house. It was also less expensive and closer to work than some others that we had liked. We ended up walking through the whole house over and over, we just really liked it.

So this monday, we went off to see a couple more houses that were on our list, and that pretty much wrapped up all the houses that were on the market in our price range and size range. The last house we saw was very, very similar, and it even had hardwood floors and tile, which we like, but somehow it didn't feel as good. We couldn't figure out why, but since we were in the neighborhood, we actually got to drop by 'favorite house' again. We took some pictures, and as it turns out there's some *very* subtle differences that really made our favorite house feel different.

Our agent liked the house too. There were some very little things, but all of them could be changed or improved easily. The 'Bones' of the house, the things about it that couldn't be changed like location on a non-busy road, lot size, and general layout were all very nice. There were small things like single-paned windows and older fixtures, but all of that would be easy to fix, if we wanted.

So Monday, after looking at the home for a second time, we sat down with our agent and hammered out an offer and a contract. He was very nice and explained everything to us, and we put in an offer very close to their list price. And today, they accepted! THAT MEANS WE'RE GOING TO BUY A HOUSE.

Next up is the inspection, which it looks like it will happen on Sunday. We'll get the professional to check out the house and see if there's anything that would need fixing, and then negotiate about repairs or whatnot, but the house looks like it's been kept up really, really well.

So, yeah, exciting! I made a little video of some of the brief shots we took as we walked through the house, so you can see some of it, but obviously not all. We'll put up some more stuff later, and if you really want to see it, you can come visit! We'll be moving in 'around' X-mas, and hopefully we'll be all settled in for the new year. How exciting!



-N

Get to the kitchen!

Stop everything! You NEED to make this soup.

Black Bean Pumpkin Soup

Food, if well made, can express things. A warm chocolate chip cookie says "I love you." Homemade chicken soup says "It's going to be ok." This soup says a sort of lovely mix of things, "Welcome Home" "You deserve this and more," with a charming exotic mix of flavors that- believe me here- comes together even better then you would think. Seriously, change your dinner plans and eat this soup.

IT'S ALL DONE!

Whoo!

So I have successfully cataloged the *entirety* of our wedding and our vacation to Costa Rica. There's something like a BRAZZILION posts I just threw up, so there's lots of text to read, pictures to look at, and video to view. I hope you enjoy.

Just a couple of last things, though. If you want to *just* view the posts I made about Costa Rica, you can Click right here.

Also, I uploaded a couple more web albums onto Picasa. One of pictures of us doing Waterfall Rappelling, and the other of all our Pictures from the Pacuare River, our white water rafting trip. You should be able to view them if you've got a google account, I guess. Let me know if you can't see the albums.

Pacuare River Pictures.
Canyoning Pictures.

Also, on a side note, I have TOTALLY BEATEN SANDLIN'S POST COUNT HA HA HA.

So...let me know what you thought? Was it too much? Were the movies nice, or distracting? Just so that I can be a better blogger in the future. Thanks!

-N

Costa Rica, Day 11 and beyond

My journal stops here. I didn’t feel like writing.

Today SUCKED. Least favorite part of the trip by far! We woke up and had some breakfast, then waited to raft out. Chulo was our guide, taking Me, Jess, and a couple from NYC. The new wife wasn’t experienced with adventuring in general, and the rest of us were just amateurs when it came to rafting. We waited for a while while some other people rafted in on a day-long rafting trip. Today was the exciting day. Class four rapids. I hate class four rapids.

Well, the other two boats showed up, and we set up our convoy. One guy on a raft with all the gear, two guys on canoes, one to take pictures, and three boats of tourists and guides. Oh, our boat did have one other guy. A guy that wanted to be a river guide.


So we set off, did some class threes, all was going pretty well. The first problem we had was that one of the sections in the middle of our raft came loose, making it difficult to wedge your feet appropriately to stay stable in the boat. We got through and fixed that. Then we started hitting the class four rapids. We made it through the first two okay.

On the third set of class four rapids, Jess got sucked out of the boat. Sucked. Look at the pictures. She’s there one second and gone the next. I remember getting hit with a big wave, and then looking around and Jess isn’t there anymore. Neither is the other girl. I turn around and see them both floating through the rapids. Jess’s face is relatively calm, but you can tell the other girl is terrified. We pick up the girl in our boat and one of the canoe guys gets Jessie safe. We pull off to the side to get ready, but you can tell the other girl is still in shock. Jess tells me about getting pulled under. Really, just wait, hold your breath, and try not to panic. Eventually, you’ll get bobbed up again, that’s what the life vest is for. Get some air, and then repeat. Good advice, especially because at the next set of class 4 rapids, we flip the boat.


Everyone gets tossed out. We all hit the water. I drop in near the boat, but my first instinct is to turn around so my feet are facing forward. That’s what they tell you to do, so that you don’t get dragged backwards onto any trees or rocks. When I look behind me to see if I can grab the boat, but I’m already ten or so feet away.
Jess and I are near each other in the water, and I, (somehow) have two paddles with me. She’s making eye contact to make sure I’m okay, and then it’s just us versus the river.

Let me explain something to you, this is TERRIFYING. In my head, I was trying to relax, time my breaths, and look for an opportunity to stop myself or get pulled in. But when you’re getting tossed around in the water like that, your body clenches up, and terror just seizes you from within. This is why waterboarding is torture. Because when your body can’t get enough air, and you think you’re in danger, you get *instinctively* scared. I’m doing my best to keep my head above water and keep air in my lungs, but every once in a while there’s this long ripple of rapid and I’m under water again. It was scary. It was very, very scary.

Jess got rescued first. The same canoe that picked her up before gets her again. The guy asked her if she was alright, and she actually told him to drop her and go after me. “I’m only okay if he’s okay.” Luckily, she stayed with him and he dragged her to the side. Behind us, the boat had gotten upright and came down to pick up Jessie. I, on the other hand, kept going.

Between me and open water were the two other rafts. One tried to toss the emergency rope to me, but it ended up too far away and I couldn’t grab it. The other came after me. They got me up to their side and then pulled me in. I was alright, and after they negotiated a few more rapids, they pulled off to the side to wait for everyone to regroup.

Jess and the rest of my boat came stroking up eventually, and Jess has blood running down her face. I’m surprisingly okay with this, because I know that even a tiny cut will do that, but it’s still a spooky sight. It turns out that when Jess and the NYC guy went through the next set of rapids, she got bonked in the eye with his handle. She actually couldn’t see out of that eye for a while, but she didn’t tell me because we were both panicked enough as it was. And eventually, the sight came back.

We stopped for lunch at this point, and our entire boat is just a wreck. The NYC girl just goes off and cries with her husband for a while, and Jess and I just sit next to each other. Upon further research, we don’t think our lives were actually in any danger, but at the time it felt like we had both just dodged a bullet, and we were really just glad that neither of us were widowers. We would have abandoned the rest of the trip at this point, but the only way out was along the river, and so we had to get back in. I ate some food, for fuel. (There might have been rice or beans, I wasn’t paying attention) Then I got back in that boat, determined to show that stupid river who was boss.


We actually got an addition to our boat, another guide to help us paddle. There was one other class four rapid to negotiate and...we made it through just fine. There was one other gut-wrenching moment when we got the boat stuck on a rock, but we made it through okay. After that, we just rode out the river, and every time we hit rapids I’d start cursing out the river, telling it that it had *nothing* and that I was going to show it who was boss. Eventually, we made it back to land. Sweet, sweet land.

Jess and I both showered and got some of the pictures from our harrowing trip, and then we had to endure a bus ride back to the hostel. We were the last people to get dropped off. So we were scared, wet, annoyed and very, very tired. We had some food and then went to lay down, but every time we closed our eyes, we kept seeing water. To try and keep us from obsessing, I came up with a game. It was 20 questions, and we had to guess which of the other favorite moments from the trip we were thinking about. The Peace Lodge, Hunter, Zip-lining, canoe trip together, stuff like that. It helped us relax, but after the adrenaline had worn off, we both felt pretty horrible. Eventually, we fell asleep.



Day 12: Today, we went home. I actually woke up at 2 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. Sleeping at all without obsessing about river water was enough of a task, and I didn’t feel like forcing it, so I just went out into the common room, picked up a random book from the book exchange, and started reading. I got about 250 pages into it before Jess woke up and it was time to get ready to go. We took some video of the hostel, then packed up our stuff and got ready to go. One again, Mayra, our hostel matron, got us a taxi, and we zipped off to the airport. We got there entirely too early, of course, but we hung around and had some food. There was even a cinnabon at the airport. So that was a nice treat.

We got on the airplane and flew home, getting through customs no problem. We got picked up by Jessie’s mom and hung out at her house for a while, going through old school notes and family albums. We spent the night, then woke up, flew home, petted our kitties, and then just spent the rest of the weekend glad to be home, safe, and happy.

All in all, it was a really great vacation. We had fantastic time everywhere but that stupid rafting trip. It’s just a shame it was the last thing we did. Of course, if it was the first thing we did, Jess wouldn’t have been able to get me to do *anything* else. “Zip lining? Oh yeah, is this going to be like white water rafting?” But we had a great time, had a wonderful honeymoon, and would definitely recommend Costa Rica to anyone that wants to see some amazing nature up close. Just stay away from the big rafting rivers in the rainy season unless you know what you’re doing.

And...one more movie.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 10

We woke up early and got ourselves ready, packed up our stuff in the appropriate bags and waited for our pick-up and ride to the river. We were the only people on the bus, and we mostly lounged around as we drove. It was a three hour drive to the river from San Jose, and we stopped to have some breakfast (RiceYBeans!) on the way. We got to the river and, sure enough, it’s just Jess and me rafting in today. Which is okay, because it’s all class 1 and 2 rapids. Simple enough stuff. I’m sure our guide could have done it on his own.

So we got our safety lecture and and did some practice strokes before setting off. Almost as soon as we started, we stopped and our guide led us up along a river nearby. There was a spot there with a couple of lagoons and a short waterfall leading between the two, and so Jess and I swam around in it for a while. It turns out you can go over the waterfall face first, a little mini water-slide. We tooled around there for a while and had quite a lot of fun. Jess was in heaven.

We set off again, over a few class-two rapids (my favorite) and touched down at the lodge. Very pretty. No electricity, but somehow that just added to the charm. We met everyone for lunch. Two other couples there, both on honeymoon. One from NYC and the other from Israel. We were to raft out with the NYC couple tomorrow.

After lunch, we grabbed a quick nap and then Chulo, another gude, and the guy that would be rafting us out in the morning, took us to another waterfall. One that you could climb up and then jump into. More fun had by all. Then we got back to our room and waited for dinner, by candle-light, while it poured rain. Dinner was nice, but I’ve decided that any meal with more than two courses is just too darn much. You either end up wasting food or stuffing yourself until you get sick.
Then we went to sleep.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 9

Today was another ‘travel’ day. We woke up and had breakfast at the peace lodge. (Riceandbeans!) Then we checked out and hit the road, on the way back towards San Jose. We actually stopped near the airport where we flew in to drop off the car. The bumpiness, craziness of the roads, and general weirdness all combined to give me a stomach ache, but we made it through just fine. We checked our car back in and then the Poas people offered to take us to our hostel. Boy am I glad they did. Here’s a tip for all you travelers out there. Don’t drive in San Jose.

The first half of the drive wasn’t bad. It was a typical freeway, but the city proper was bonkers. There was a road closure that just made the traffic worse, and at one point were were on a 1-way, four lane road that had been ‘converted’ to a six lane road by everyone just squeezing in as tight as they could. People treated lane lines as suggestions. All the while, dudes on motorcycles weaved in between cars, trucks, and busses, as if they had right-of way because they were small. But our driver got us through just fine. We tipped him really well. I’m sure glad I didn’t have to negotiate those roads.

We stayed at a place called ‘Cinco Hormingas Rojas’. Five red ants. The hostel was very impressive. When you drive up, you end up between normal, concrete houses, looking up at a twisting mass of vines and trees growing up from somewhere inside. The lady that runs the hostel has spent the past thirteen years converting the place into a little ecosystem, like a bit of the rainforest in the middle of the city. (We got some video of it, but It’ll show up later). The front yard even has its own canopy, with lots of birds nesting up in there. Down at floor level, it’s mostly dirt and bugs, but you have to have something for the birds to eat. The whole place was also very artistic, for a certain value of ‘art’. (That value being boobs, brush strokes, cloth, old plants, darkness, and mess.)

Getting some advise and directions from our hostel matron and leaving valuables behind (because who knows what to expect?) we went out to see San Jose. On foot. Our first task was to get some more cash, also verifying that we knew how to read a map. After that, we walked down toward some of the museums. We stopped on the way to check out an ‘art row’. Really more of a ‘costa rican swap meet’, but there was still a lot of interesting stuff to see. We got a set of hard-wood dominoes in a beautiful box. After that, we saw the national museum, learning more about Costa Rican history and seeing some nice artifacts. I liked the pre-colombian gold artifacts. Our hotel Matron also recommended a couple of restaurants to us, and both were very nice.

We hung out for a while, playing dominoes (I won so hard!) and then had some dinner across the street. After that we got to bed early, ready to be picked up to raft down the Pacuare river.

Sorry, no pictures or movies today, we were too busy getting places.

-N

Costa Rica, Day 8

We woke up when it became evident Hunter had gotten into our munchies. We gave him some croissant instead, but he didn’t seem to like it. We suited up for breakfast and exploring and Hunter even left our room when prompted. Smart kitty, I liked having him around. (We missed our kitties). They had a nice variety for breakfast, but I still had some riceandbeans. It’s good morning food!

After that, we did the famous waterfall hike. We took the long way around to start, called the ‘fern trail’, just to see more nature. It was pretty, but steep, slippery, and spider-webbed. I guess we were the first to go through in a while. Eventually we made it to the reason they call this place ‘waterfall gardens.’ Four waterfalls, all of them beautiful and TALL. One right after another. Remember that waterfall that we saw on the drive up the previous day? We ended at that one, but this time up at the very top. What a view! At the bottom of the hike was a gift shop, and I picked up a nice vase and wooden bowl. I think I’ll start a tradition of getting simple containers representative of the foreign countries I have visited. It can go with my Japan Bamboo-cup. Lucky us, they have a bus to take you back to the peace lodge, cause it would otherwise be a serious hike back up.

After that, we saw the rest of the attractions at the gardens. They had an orchid garden, but few of them were in bloom. They also had a ‘typical house’. from back in the earlier days of Costa Rica, and even some cows. Jess tried to pet one, but it got grumpy as she approached. We also went back to see the frogs during the day. They sleep *hard*. We walked back in the rain and saw Hunter again, who is still cute. Had dinner, and then slept.

Now with 100% more movie!



-N

Costa Rica, Day 7

There’s an entry in our guidebook that says the following: “Take a long, hard look at your partner. If you love them even just a little bit, you should stay at the Peace Lodge.” We agree.

We left La Fortuna after breakfast and drove up, up, UP the mountains towards the Peace Lodge. We were touching clouds at a couple of points. Beautiful scenery the whole way. We stopped briefly at this neat waterfall on the way up, too. It was falling right by the road, and there was a little path that actually ran behind the waterfall that *I* got to go on before Jessie did. I can be adventurous too!

We arrived before check-in time, but we just left our stuff up by reception and decided to explore the ‘waterfall gardens’, which is this whole sprawling complex that is associated with the peace lodge. Lots to see and do. We got bracelets to allow access, but they were *special* bracelets that only people on their honeymoon get. That was neat because every time people saw it, they told us congratulations. Very nice.

Our first real big sight was the bird sanctuary. There were lots of avians (and army ants!) hanging around, all sorts of different types and colors. Very pretty. They had several toucans flying around, some in their own area, and one hanging out with one of the keepers so that you could see and pet him. They’ve got *huge* beaks. There were a bunch of parrots, too, from the bright and amazing to the drab but intelligent.

There were some marmosets (tiny primates) running around in the aviary, too, in their own cage. They were really curious and playful, a whole family of them. One of them even played a game with Jessie. She’d turn her head sideways, and he’d sit sideways on the bars, and then she’d keep twisting and they’d both end up spinning around and around. They got right up on the bars, too, so you could get a finger-full of fuzzy critter. We watched them run around for a long time.

After that, we saw the butterfly conservatory. The previous one was neat, but this was was VERY impressive. You could barely sit for all the butterflies lying around. There were older ones that were probably on their last legs, but those were nice to pick up and look at since they lacked the energy to dart away. There were flowers and fruit everywhere, with butterflies flapping all around and munching on everything. I was really impressed by the operation, we got to see where they hung the chrysalises. They had, literally, buckets of transforming caterpillars, and they hung them on long sticks and let them sit out where everyone could see them. You could see several of them emerging, and several more butterflies hanging and drying their wings. After that, we found a buffet lunch, with hot dogs!

We got to check into our room then, and WOW. The room was so nice. They had a sound system playing classical music throughout the whole area, a huge bed with fireplace, our own private Jacuzzi, and a hammock out on the balcony, overlooking the costa rican wilderness. The bathroom was even more impressive. It had a waterfall shower, a tub, and a waterfall that ran down the wall just for aesthetics, and a nice, wide sink area. Everything was decorated with hard woods and was very elegant. We soaked in the Jacuzzi for a while, then went out again to see more stuff. Oh yeah, there’s more.

Next up were the monkeys. The spider monkey family was my favorite. They just seemed to ‘move intelligently’. They used momentum, grabbed at handholds, and generally just looked elegant when they moved around. Well, elegant for monkeys. There were also some ‘white-face gibbons’. One of them would hang out near the window with food, and occasionally bring up a rock with him. He’d pound the rock against the window occasionally, and that got a rise out of the tourists. Heh.

There was a snake display after that, with a lot of really skinny critters hanging around. Then, hummingbirds! They had a series of feeders and flowering bushes that had loads of hummingbirds flying around, chasing after each other, and generally being very impressive. We got there at a special time where they closed off the feeders and gave us little hand-feeders, so the birds came right up and ate out of our hands. Definitely a highlight. Then we saw their newly-opened big-cat place. There were a lot of them, even though they were mostly sleepy and annoyed at the rain, but they were all very cute. There was even one that was smaller than Tigger. He tromped around his cage, all protective of his territory, and growled at us if we got to close, but it was an adorable growl. Best was when he was munching on his chicken and would growl. It ended up sounding like: “NOM Nom nom nom....NOM Nom nom...” So cute!

The restaurant at the hotel insisted that we make reservations, so we did, and we ended up getting there early. We sat and waited and while we were waiting, a cat came wandering by. Just a normal house cat. I sat next to him and he crawled onto my lap. I ended up just sitting there and petting him for about an hour or so while we waited. His name was Hunter. Remember him, he’ll show up again later. We went up to dinner, early for our reservations, but got seated anyway. Glad we got the reservations because...we were the only people there. Low season. The soup and appetizer were great, but the fist was TERRIBLE. And I don’t skip fish easily.

After dinner, we had signed up for a night tour of the frog house, frogs being more active at night. It was really neat, our guide showed us all the fogs in the house, grabbing them and letting us see them, even the very iconic ‘green leaf frog’. Very pretty critters. We got to see them up close with our lights. At one point, though, our guide got this, tiny, TINY red ant on her neck. Is there nothing in this country that won’t kill you if you touch it?

When we got back it was still raining, and hunter was waiting for us back where our tour dropped us off. He actually followed us the whole way back to our hotel room, so we invited him inside. It was a bit of a cold night, for costa rica, and he just curled up on our couch and fell asleep. We figure he probably does this to tourists all the time. Poor kitten. All he wants is to be lazy and get petted and sleep, and he happens to live in a country where even the hummingbirds are big enough to carry him off.

Good grief, that was a long one, and there's even *two movies* to accompany it!





-N

Missed visit

Gordie called me yesterday afternoon to alert me to the rare and wonderful possibility of dinner together that night . . . thanks to a five-hour layover at SeaTac on his way to Atlanta.

We confirmed the details on our cell phones and I was just thinking about whether to order steak or fish, when I got the text message that his plane was stalled. We exchanged other text messages (thumb-typing is sure hard) but the end was 'flight cancelled.'

I don't know what today's travel plans are, but it would really have been fun last night. Sigh . . .

- - Bart

generational note

I'm hope it's OK to post over Noel's fascinating account of their trip to Costa Rica (a place I've always sorta wanted to see) but I stumbled across this account of one Gen Xer's response to the election.

An open apology to boomers everywhere
Your earnest, self-important prattle has gotten on Gen X nerves for decades. But now we finally get it.

On behalf of every gray-haired geezer who ever choked up listening to Bobby Kennedy announce the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and for all the times I said "when I was your age . . . " apology accepted. Now, everyone, let's sing 'Kumbaya' . . .

Costa Rica, Day 6

Day 6: Up early, again. We were normally awake and kicking at about 6:30 or so most every day of our vacation. The sun was up, there were people doing things outside, and we usually went to sleep pretty early, too. I know it’s odd to think of 6:30 as ‘sleeping in’, but it seemed to work well for us. When it’s dark outside at 7:00 pm, it’s hard to stay up, especially considering all the adventuring we do. Of course, the other thing that usually woke us up were cows and donkeys. I’m not sure what they were doing back there, but when the sun came up, those cows got noisy.

So today was another, different zip line tour. This one was different, but we really liked it. Instead of blazing across the sky on our line, the lines were shorter and there were more of them, and they usually wound through the canopy as opposed to shooting high above it. It gave us more of an opportunity to check out the surrounding countryside. We also got to control our own speed to a greater extent. They gave us these thick, leather things that we used to brake and slow ourselves up on the line. It was a very different experience, and I’m glad we got the opportunity to do both.

The other thing that this tour had was the Tarzan Swing. That’s where they attach you to a cable strung high overhead, pull you to the edge of a ledge, and then drop you off. You get to swing back and forth a whole bunch and then they stop you at the bottom and you continue on, but let me tell you, that first drop is a thrill ride. We both really liked that part.

We made a stop at a local super market, it’s always neat to see what passes for normal and not normal in foreign country shops, and then filled up on gas for the drive the next day. Then we drove WAY out to El Castillo to see a butterfly conservatory. The book recommended we stay there, but I’m *very* glad we didn’t. I’ve determined I don’t like the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks very much. There seems to be, at least in the Costa Rica book, a certain ‘smarm’ that permeates all their recommendations. As if any place that is ‘popular’ or ‘accessible’ than it’s just not ‘out there’ enough. As if you can’t be enjoying a place unless you’re way out in the middle of nowhere, where people like...well, like you, don’t normally get to go. I, for one, like convenience on my trip. Especially on my honemoon trip. If I feel like going off the beaten path and really exploring a place, I’ll probably go do it somewhere where I speak the local language.

Anyway, El Castillo. It was a long and bumpy drive, but eventually we made it and got to see this really nice butterfly conservatory. They had huge, closed areas where they raised a wide variety of butterflies, from the common and popular ones to the deep-forrest ones that don’t like light and are nearly translucent. The area also had frogs, lizards, and a rhino beetle. Huge and cool. We also saw another battalion of army ants, this one marching from some preposterous distance, we couldn’t find the entrance, to climb a tree and chop away at some leaves that were too high up for us to see. Those buggers work hard!

On the way back we got this picture, which is definitely one of my favorites from the trip. This is what vacationing with Jessie is like, ending up at places so far off the beaten path that you have to drive back to the unpaved road that the GPS even knows about.

Would you like to see our movie menu? We have a delicious chardonnay.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 5

Day 5: Today was our canoe day. We hadn’t planned this before we left, but we read about it some and it seemed like a nice addition to our tour itinerary. Plus we had some free time to fill up. I got up in the morning and was briefly paranoid about what time it was. See, U.S. cell phones don’t work in costa rica, so we left ours behind. The only thing we had to tell time by, then, was the bed clock, and that was prone to getting reset by power outages. Turned out we were fine, though, as we had our same riceandbeans breakfast and got picked up by the tour company and driven off to the river where we’d be canoeing.

At the river, they showed us how to paddle and steer. I’ve been in canoes before, but Jess is the real expert, so she took the rear, steering position. Once we figured out how best to communicate directions, we were experts on the water. There was a swiss family that was on the tour with us, and I don’t mean to brag, but we were TOTALLY BETTER THAN THEM.

The tour was beautiful, relaxing, and peaceful. Every once in a while we would spot some monkeys or birds from our boat, and the guide was very educational and informative. He always knew some-or-other interesting tidbit about the plants and animals we were seeing. My favorite was spotting a young crocodile sunning itself on the river bank, and his explanation about a specific kind of tree. Evidently it had evolved holes and trails inside it so that it made an ideal house for ants. The ants, in exchange, defended the tree against potential predators. Very cool. We even made a stop where the guides went off into the woods and found some poison dart frogs for us. Only dangerous if you have a cut on your hands. They were tiny, bright, and a real treat. They put them back when we were done.

We also picked up a hitchhiker at some point during our trip. A grasshopper-shaped bug with a short body and HUGE legs dropped into our boat at some point, and hung out with us as we went down the river. We thought he was gone while we took a break on the river bend, but it turns out he was hiding out in Jessie’s life vest. Harmless, though, but funny.

We ended the tour with lunch, tortillas and fruit, and saw some leaf-cutter ants hard at work, as well as some really strange-looking caterpillars. The rest of the day was for resting, pretty much. We went out and booked a second zip-line tour for the next day, our last in La Fortuna. A few minutes after we left, it started POURING rain, and didn’t let up all night. We had an early dinner and then relaxed in our hotel room, eventually falling asleep to the sounds of rain on a metal roof.

Oops! I made the movies in the wrong order. I'll make one for this post in just a bit...okay, its done!



-N

Costa Rica, Day 4

Day 4: We skipped the normal morning breakfast at the hotel this morning, opting to once again head out to the good-smelling place near the Burger King. I ended up having a traditional breakfast anyway, with rice and beans and the like. But it also came with *fried cheese*. That’s some good stuff, let me tell you. Jess had the American style breakfast, which she liked as well. After that, we went, on our own, to Arenal National Park to do the Hanging Bridges tour.

The Hanging Bridges are pretty neat. The whole tour is part of a nature walk through the rainforest preserve, and the whole place is undeveloped and, other than the trail, completely untouched by human hands. Quite a spectacle. There weren’t any mammals there, but there were plenty of insects, amphibians, and birds around to make up for it. Plus, trecking through the underside of the rainforest gives you the opportunity to look at an entirely different ecosystem up close. Very impressive. There are some really strange critters around there.

We saw a couple of butterflies with shiny blue wings. They are one of the more common butterflies, and definitely some of the prettiest. Another Costa Rica icon. We also saw Army Ants on the march. Now that is an impressive sight. Just this trail of massive, red ants all migrating from old site to new, all moving in the same direction. Scattered throughout were the soldier ants, much larger with angrier-looking pincers. They travel for miles and devour anything that gets in their way other than, evidently, potato chips. We stared at them for a good long time. Lots of cicadas, too, though we never saw any. Their cries were deafeningly loud, though.

The bridges were neat, too, because most of the trail has been cut into the side of some steep hills, and occasionally they built a bridge across these hills that would take you out over the valley. You spend so much time on these trails down low among everything, and then all of a sudden these bridges take you out and over the canopy, and you really get a sense of how big, diverse, and amazing the whole ecosystem is. The hanging bridges were another of my favorites.

After that hike, we drove back to Church’s Chicken, another American import, and had some lunch there. Then we got ourselves geared up and went off to Tabacon hot springs, one of the most impressive resort complexes I’ve ever seen.

As the name implies, the main attraction is the volcano-heated water, but instead of a pool or two, the place is built as a huge, sprawling complex of trails and pools with this bone-soothingly hot water flowing through the entire place. We had nearly as much fun exploring the area as we did lounging and soaking. We found a couple of spots we really liked, where the water was warm but not so hot it forced us out. We lounged and soaked and floated in the water and had a really great time. They also had a couple of pools and a bar that you could order drinks at while still lounging in the pool. We got pina coladas, of course. The highlight had to be the waterfall. Big, luxurious, and HOT. It gave you a nice back massage when you sit under it.

We had bought a package that allowed us to stay in all afternoon and then have dinner, so we soaked for hours. We probably should have dried off earlier, but it was very, very relaxing. Dinner was nice, too. An Indian-style buffet. We started with desserts. Yum.

This movie *may* contain humor.



-N

Happy Halloween

What do Republican Zombies eat?








McCaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnns!!

On living in a Swing State

This election year, it is our first real experience being in a swing state. Our time at WWU was always very politically charged, it can't even compare to the carpet-bombing that has become air-time in PA. Have you heard that Obama has bought out all the air-time that is available? It's true! We get network ads, some long scheduled car and phone ads, and then politics. If it isn't Obama versus McCain, there is a whole host of local elections that are in the same format. For those of us whose already made up our minds, this is like water torture. We've heard about the tax plans, we know the voting records, and we can recite all the topical incendiary misquotes from both parties. We know their rally schedules, we watch their speeches, we've seen the counter ads. For us non-swing voters, Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Matt is worried about long lines at the polling place, which is an old folks home at the bottom of the hill. Why is it that we can't guarantee everyone votes by making it a holiday?

Costa Rica, Day 3

Day 3: We had this morning to ourselves, so we did some relaxing stuff around La Fortuna. First, we went to the post office and mailed off some post cards, (successfully, in spanish!) and then we just walked around part of the city. There’s a large, central park that we strolled through, and a couple of shops selling typical tourist stuff. I got a nifty little pad, though, that I used to write down all the notes I’m using to type this. We stopped at another hammock shop, but decided not to get anything there. It was right next to a store that sold a plethora of wooden sculptures, from the tiny and cute to the massive and artsy. Also on the way back, we booked a boat trip, canoe, down a nearby river, for friday.

Back at the hotel with some time to kill, we hung out in the pool and jacuzzi and sipped pina coladas. Very vacation-y. We felt like real tourists.

Canyoning was up for the afternoon, and it was probably my favorite adventure of the trip. I wasn’t really sure how it was going to work, because according to the tour people, we’d be rappelling down waterfalls, and rappelling isn’t something, I thought, you could just go off and do. It turns out they had plenty of safety for us. When you rappel, you have a harness on and a rope looped through a simple, but very important, contraption at your waist. One hand guides the rope as it comes out of the harness, leading up to where it’s fastened. The other hand is behind you, and it’s in charge of controlling your descent. If you grip that line, you stop, simple as that. Well the first layer of safety was that there was a guy holding onto that trailing line at the bottom of the drop. All he has to do is yank down and he can stop you any time he wants. Further than that, there was another safety line that lead up to a guy who can just pull and stop you any time he wants. So we were safe.

They start you off by just hooking you up and having you sit down over the edge of the first drop. They don’t let you see how high up you are until you’re already too far out to do anything about it, smart. The drops were all amazing. The first one was a good 100 or 150 feet, right beside a huge waterfall. The view was spectacular, and rappelling is a heck of a lot of fun, once you get the system figured out. There were five drops, and four waterfalls, in total. We actually got to go down *through* a couple of waterfalls, getting soaked in the process. It was a ton of fun. Definitely my favorite highlight of the trip. We got to hike up at the end, soaked and happy, and even that little task was fun. Lots of nature, it was raining, (once you’re soaked, rain is nice!) and, as with everything in Costa Rica, all the plants and critters are strange and amazing.

We came back to the guides office at the end of the trip and watched all the pictures they took of us, some of which you can see here. There was a guy there whose only job was to take our pictures. The CD was extra, but it was nice not to have to worry about documenting everything. And yes, they did let us bring our cameras along, and even provided us dry bags so that we could keep them safe. Also, there were cookies!

We got back to our hotel, went to the restaurant for dinner and ordered pizza. Good pizza, finally. Also, we had dessert. Jess insisted.

Also, enjoy this hearty dose of movie.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 2

Day 2: We woke up at 6:30, which sounds early for a vacation until you consider that we fell asleep at 8 or so. Also, when the sun rises, it’s pretty much ‘go time’. We went to the hotel restaurant for the free morning breakfast. It was the same every day, but we liked it: fruits, tropical juices, sausages, pancakes, queso (a particular, soft type that is a costa rica staple), chicken and potato stuff and...rice and beans. Rice and beans is *the* food down here. We had it at a lot of different places. It does make a pretty good staple food.

We sat around for a while, and Jess got nervous that something might have been wrong with our first reservation, Sky Tram/Sky Tour. They were about 15 or so minutes late, but they did show up eventually, and after picking us up, along with a few other tourists, we drove off west to our first Costa Rican adventure.

Sky Tram/Sky Tour is a two-part tour. The first part was a tram ride up the side of a mountain covered in rainforest. We saw a lot of cool stuff from the tram. There were a couple of howler monkeys off in the distance, though we saw more of them later, and lots of interesting plants and trees. We even got to see a sloth REALLY close up, with her baby, too. That was a definite highlight. At the top of the ride, we got to take a quick break and check out the other side of the volcano.

Arenal volcano is one of the most iconic sights in Costa Rica. It was dormant until the 1970’s or so, when it erupted and grew massively tall. It’s still erupting, and there wasn’t a day that went by that Jess and I didn’t see steam pouring off the top of the conical mountain. We’d get to see it glow at night, sometimes, too. Very pretty. From where the tour was, we could see the side with the most activity. You’d occasionally see snakes of steam running down the mountain. That was the lava.

So...zip lining. For those of you that have never heard of this, here’s how it works. You string up some steel cable between points, hook yourself up to a harness, strap yourself to a safety line and a wheel, and slide down the cable. This one was definitely exciting. At times we were 200 meters up in the air, and some of the cables went for nearly half-a-mile. And you would *fly* down those things at some serious speeds, too. Very exciting, very fun, and a blast to do. My favorite was the last one, over a half a mile long, and in the middle, the ground comes back up so you’re zipping through the trees. Very pretty.

We went into town for lunch, intending to eat at the burger king, but were lured next door by the smell of smoky BBQ. It was just a simple restaurant, but they made really good food. I had the ‘typical lunch’. Chicken, riceandbeans, veggies, potatoes, and a really good fried plantain. I think they candy those things there.

For the afternoon, we planned to go by La Fortuna waterfall, stopping at a hammock shop on the way. The hammock shop wasn’t there anymore, but the waterfall sure was. It took us about 10 minutes on an unpaved, bumpy road, but evidently that’s par for the course around a lot of places in Costa Rica.

One short, but steep hike down, and we were at the waterfall. They advised us that the water was safe for swimming, but not to swim *under* the waterfall. Check out the video, you’ll see why. It’s a serious waterfall. You’d really have to work at it, though, to swim underneath it. There’s so much water flowing down that it constantly pushes you to shore. Very pretty, though, and the water, while nippy, was good for a swim. Jess swam around behind the waterfall, her first attempt at terrifying me while in a foreign country. She seems to enjoy doing that.

We also took a little dip in the river beneath the falls. There were a bunch of little, tiny fishes that Jess thought would try and nip at her newly-painted toenails. The hike out was short, but tough. Very vertical, though the path had been well carved.

Also, on a side note, my new river shoes are really good. Keens, if you’re curious.

We decided to go to one of the places recommended by the book for dinner. Luigi’s pizza. Evidently they’re supposed to do good pizza, but let me tell you, that pizza was TERRIBLE. And if you know me, you know I’m not picky about my food, but something about that pizza was just intolerable. I couldn’t finish it. Yuck. Pizza, even. How do you screw that up?

Mooooovie.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 1

Day 1:
This starts off in Florida on a Monday after the wedding. We woke up plenty early, with all our stuff already packed, and got ready to go. We got to the airport without incident and checked in smooth as butter. As is traditional for these overseas trips, so far at least, we only had one backpack each. Most of that was taken up by clothes and a couple of things to keep us entertained on the flight. We felt very sharp when checking in and seeing people with huge bunches of massive suitcases. I can’t imagine what was in those things. Maybe they were moving to college. Worked especially well considering that Spirit airlines charges you to check in even one bag. It’s one of the reasons their tickets are so cheap.

The flight was quite short, Florida is closer to Central America than I thought, and before I knew it, we were on the ground! A foreign country, how exciting! Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze, we just showed our stuff and they let us right in. The boons of traveling to tourism-friendly locales. We changed a bunch of money from Dollars to Colones, the local currency, right at the airport, but I hadn’t figured out the conversion rate in my head, yet. When we walked out, we ran a gauntlet of taxi drivers, and mostly ignored them. We did ask one where Poas rent-a-car was, and he called for a guy. Someone with Jessie’s name on a board came over and escorted us over to where the shuttle would pick us up. He was very friendly, but I don’t think he actually worked for the rent-a-car place, and he was pretty explicit that he was just working for tips. Like I said, I hadn’t worked out the conversion rate in my head, so I tipped him 100 colones. I wasn’t going to do the dumb thing and accidentally tip him 50$ for carrying a backpack 25 feet. As it turns out, though, I tipped him roughly 20 cents. Oops.

Poas rent-a-car was pretty nice. They spoke english, which was true of most of the tourist-y places we went to. They got us hooked up with our manual, 4-wheel-drive jeep and a GPS specifically for finding our way around the country. The GPS was great, because most of the major, country-crossing thoroughfares look a lot like nearly-abandoned mountain passes. The GPS never steered us wrong.

About 25 minutes after we left, though, the car started acting up. It started off being hard to shift into gears. Jess would tell me, and I’d have to use both hands to get it into position. After a while, though, we couldn’t even do that, and whenever we downshifted below 3rd gear, the car would sputter and die. And then we couldn’t get it started again.

So there we were, in the middle of San Ramon, unable to speak any Spanish, with a dead car, and still about an hour away from our hotel. I was about to go out and brave the wilds of Costa Rica to see if I could get a telephone and call Poas and tell them to bring us a car that worked, but Jess recommended we wait for a while. After about 10 minutes, we were able to start up the car again, but it still wanted to die every time we dropped below 2nd gear. So we did pretty much the entirety of the drive in 3rd gear or above. Which was exciting on those tiny mountain passes. At least we could coast on the downhill stretches.

The drive was gorgeous, though. Costa Rica is as green as any place I’ve ever seen, and it’s filled with so many amazing sights and strange plants that even the drive was a nice opportunity to see plenty of rainforest countryside. Well eventually, on our drive, we discovered that the clutch wasn’t as loose as Jessie’s truck, and we had been leaving it ever-so-slightly depressed while we drove. Evidently, the clutch didn’t like that, and as soon as we stopped riding it, the car gave us no problems for the rest of the trip.

The GPS drove us right to our hotel. We checked in, mostly, but the front desk informed us that the power was out to the entire hotel, so they couldn’t run our credit cards yet. Well it was still daylight, so we walked off to our room. Pretty much the entire hotel was a series of bungalows, all of them with a beautiful view of Arenal Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Also very conical and Iconic. Our private room had an awesome view, and we just spread the windows wide and drank in the view for a while. After that, we had some dinner at the hotel. We really ended up liking that restaurant. Jessie especially liked the dessert, ‘Baccio...something’. We never got the name down, but it was a puff filled with nutella and nuts and cooked in a fire stove, and served with ice cream and chocolate. We intended to share that and the Tiramisu, but Jess ended up eating most of the Baccio.

As with most nights, we ended up going to sleep early. The sun set at around 7, and it set fast. After that it was so dark that sleeping was really the only thing to do. So we did.

I'll be making little videos to accompany the text entries. Enjoy!



-N

Intermission: Update

Right,

So I'm about to get down to the business of blogging about the honeymoon, much like I did for the Japan trip, but I wanted to do a quick update about us before diving back into the past again.

We've been home and married for about two weeks, and we've flipped over from being contract-to-hire employees to actual employees. Our salary...did something, I can't quite remember which direction it went, but our benefits for being properly employed are spectacular. Bonuses and 401k stuff and everything. They even pay for our health club membership. How nice!

Nagano continues to grow. He was a BIG kitten when we came back from Costa Rica, and he continues to grow in tiny little steps. Being older has calmed him down, too. I'd post pictures, but it's a big process to get stuff on here and then posted, so I'll do that later.

Tigger had a rough day yesterday. We took him into the vet a few months ago and the recommended bringing him in for a teeth cleaning. It's a pretty serious thing where they put him under and get at his teeth. In Tigger's case, they actually pulled 6 of his teeth because they were too rotten. We were worried for him, but he seems to be doing just fine. We have some antibiotics and mouth-morphine to give him for a few weeks and days, respectively, and he ate hard food right when he came back, so that's good. He seems to be in pretty high spirits, but that might just be the drugs talking. He was very affectionate, as soon as we picked him up from the vet, we had to reach in and clean out his carrier some, and he was nuzzling Jessie all over when she put her hand in. The vets say that pets seem to really like having bad teeth out, because it hurts less. It certainly seems to have put Tigger in a good mood.

Also, we're going house hunting! We went to a couple of 'open houses of opportunity' last week, and weren't terribly impressed with what we saw. We've seen some better houses, though, and talked with our real estate guy who will be showing us eight of them tomorrow. So that'll be fun. We'll bring the camera, any experienced house-shoppers want to warn us of what to look for?

Video games! Tis the season where all the big stuff comes out in preparation for the holiday shopping season. I'm currently playing Little Big Planet, ahead of schedule, he he, and Rock Band 2 with Jessie. We make a pretty great band together. It's called 'Doomsday Not Included'. We took that one from the 'random band name generator' in the game, which is awesome.

Right, let's talk Costa Rica...

-N