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

E. Normous Bowls

I may have mentioned that I signed up for a second Semester of Ceramics. I have made a LOT of stuff so far this semester, some of which I am really pleased with. This actually makes me a little self-conscious about glazing them because I still want them to look nice when I am done.

This week, we got back some bisque fired pieces (terra cotta like, now it is ready to glaze), and I got to look at some other things then came out of the kiln. Someone had made these REALLY huge bowls. It got me thinking, when I started, I thought if I wanted make just one giant bowl, but that turned out to be an unrealistic goal. Now, however, enough of my pieces are coming out how I want them now, and we are going to be hard pressed to find enough places for all the vases I made, why not spend some time on something that might be a complete failure- nothing wasted, right?

So I asked Joe, the teacher, how to go about it. He said, just start with a lot of clay, and be patient. I pulled out a 20 lb lump of clay and tried it. It was hard to work with, and the scale of it means it is very thick, but I made what will be a very serviceable centerpiece.

And then I made another.

I made two E. Norm. Ous Bowls that I am very proud of (we'll see if this holds up next week when I see them again). It feels like I've really conquered something- I went form being completely clay-tarded to making something very functional and potentially attractive, without ever getting so frustrated I hate it. It's been a good exercise in learning how to learn with grace.

NYorker in Juneau

I don't imagine you've all seen the New Yorker article about how John McCain picked Gov. Palin, but it has a fair amount of Juneau atmosphere that you all might remember, including mention of Douglas High's moment in the Supreme Court sun.

Have fun, and yeah, the Peace Corps would be an interesting place to start life-after-college . . . Jane and I flirt with the idea of starting life-in-retirement that way, but that requires defining "retirement" a bit more carefully than I've managed so far. That and a 401(k) not in need of emergency resuscitation.

Peace Corps?

So I've decided I have no idea what I'm doing with my life....and I've been trying to figure that out. I'm going to be graduating eventually here, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for the workforce, or if I even know what workforce I want to enter.

I like traveling, I like exploring, I like helping people, so maybe I should join the peace corps? It's not definite, obviously, but i figured you might care that I'm thinking of it as an option.

Aaaand here's a random picture of me and the fresh tattoo. I love it, and I think it turned out pretty very well.

Boogerface in the Kitchen

After having a couple of full weekends this month, I am grateful to have a few days with nothing planned to recoup. Especially since I've got some kind of a bug- nothing horrible, just a congested head and an affinity to sweatpants.

Being homebound helped me make two breakthroughs in the kitchen. First was a pork roast to use up apple butter- I want to believe a pork roast can be as good as a beef roast. With enough rosemary and garlic, even the potatoes were a savory delight. Topped with apple butter mixed with evaporated milk, I felt like some kind of executive chef. Second, was to conquer Black Bean Soup. This turned out to be an incredibly yummy way to clear out the veggie drawer, and it tastes right too! The trick was Trader Joe's black beans and taco seasoning- Matt hopes I can do it again. The fridge is now stocked for a week of hearty eating, which sounds like a productive weekend.

Our Wedding, Part 7

The final piece! The ultimate movie! The last thingy I'm going to make with iMovie this weekend. The transformation of this website from 'Preecs Place' to 'Noel's Movie Heaven' is complete, and I still haven't caught up to Sandlin's post count!



-N

Our Wedding, Part 6

Okay, just a few more. There was so much dancing and other celebratory acts that I had to make it into two more. The last one is actually finished, though, so I'll post it in just a second, giving you the complete set!



-N

Our Wedding, Part 5

This video is just the toasts from our wedding. We really liked them, so we just posted the whole darn thing. Enjoy!



-N

Our Wedding, Part 4

Another! This one is wedding part 4, but only reception part 1. The toasts were so nice that we thought we'd just post the whole darn thing, so that will be part 5, up in just a few more minutes. It's like LIVE TV out here!



-N

Our Wedding, Part 3

Here's the actual wedding, the part with the walking up and music and everything. You know, the *serious* part. More coming, probably more even today! So keep checking back.



-N

Our Wedding, Part 2

Hello,

Here's the preparations for the wedding, at least all preparations caught on our video camera. It's really nice to go through all this again, I'll have to watch these videos every once in a while to remind myself how awesome my wedding was. Thanks again to everyone who helped out and showed up. Hope you enjoy the videos.



-N

My Weekend

It looks like my weekend is going to be pretty full. First, my nursing class got cancelled which left my Friday afternoon open, so I've decided that now is as good a time as any to get that tattoo. So that's happening, fyi....
Rhonda Cruz got a hold of me and asked if I'd be available for doing music at a church in San Francisco this Saturday, and it turns out it's a paying job. I feel a little jipped now that I realize people have been getting paid to do what I've been volunteering to do for the past 15 years. But it sounds like I know most of the music, it's a little extra cash for me, and I get to meet up with Rhonda, so no complaints here.
I had a quiz today in PR which I feel went pretty good. I have a test in my other COMS class on Monday, a paper due Wednesday, and another paper due Friday. So the rest of my weekend will probably consist of working on that stuff.
Anyways, I'll update you more on that stuff as it happens!
LOVE

Wedding Movie, Part 1

Hey everyone, check this out:



It might not show up for a little while, but that should contain part 1 of the wedding video, the preparations, meeting, rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Simple, but effective. Enjoy!

-N

We had a visitor!

This weekend we had our first friend come to visit. Shaoshu took a red eye to spend a three day weekend with us. We knew this was a lot of pressure- if Shaoshu had a good time, he would come back, but also tell our other friends that they should come too. We went shopping in the Strip District and to the East End Brewery to get supplies for hotpot. We went to the museum, we saw Pittsburgh Light Up, Point State Park and the Zoo (baby tiger!!). We even got to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving! It was a short, full, fun weekend. Shaoshu left just before I got sick too. I'll be spending the rest of the week sucking cough drops and Advil.

An album from the weekend is posted here, for your viewing pleasure.

Sunshine in Seattle

It's a beautiful day in Seattle . . . the weather is sunny, but cool, the sort of day I expect (and love!) from September, but am happy to take anytime Mother Nature obliges . . . Both Jane and I had medical concerns that turned out to be inconsequential cyst-things . . . work is going well, if busy.

I went to a fund-raising dinner for the Church Council of Greater Seattle last night, got bumped from the table I was supposed to be at, and ended up sitting next to a guy from Spokane I hadn't seen for perhaps 20 years. He's now working for the Seattle Archdiocese on "adult formation for Catholic social teaching. " Which he promised to explain to me, if I followed up to chat with him again.

Met a judge candidate, talked with a couple of other people I hadn't seen for a while.

If the weather holds, I'll be biking home from downtown . . . always a joy. Glad to hear Noel & Jesse are back safe . . .

- - Bart

Yes, we're home

Hey,

Just so everyone knows, we're back from our extended holiday of marriage and honeymooning, safe and sound. Overall, the wedding and honeymoon were an enormous success, with one notable and kinda scary exception. But we're fine, hale, hearty, and happy to be home. There will be videos, pictures and stories upcoming, but I'm tired, catching up on news, and my Mac is still chewing on the camera data. It's coming, though.

-N

Love Fest!

There's a festival that's been happening for the last couple of years called Love Fest that's held in San Francisco, which was pretty awesome. It's basically a gay rights parade, but really is just a 16 hour dance party. We went and danced around a lot, ate some food, people watch (which was crazy because people basically wear whatever they want...or don't wear anything at all....), and I even got to meet up with my friend Codi from Semester at Sea, who flew from Michigan to hang out with us. It was really fun, and I think everybody should have a love fest!

Pittsburgh turns 250!

It's true, 250 years old! The city has been celebrating on all fronts all year long, with robots galleries, and concerts. This weekend, we celebrated with the city's biggest ever fireworks display. For a city that shoots off fireworks regularly after baseball games (for the Pirates no less), you can imagine this was a big to-do. We took some hot cocoa and friends to a hill overlooking downtown in the park and watched fireworks launched from boats, bridges and buildings for almost 45 minutes! It was a great display, and we didn't get caught in traffic, since we walked.

We also swung by the zoo to check on the TWO baby elephants. For 300-lb tubbos, they are cute as can be. One of the little ones seems to be teething, she was rubbing her lips on the bars of her enclosure, and also had hand in the shovel incident. Matt and I went to the zoo just to see these guys, so we were hanging out while a care-taker came to muck the stall. When he took the wheelbarrow away, he left a shovel, which the elephants promptly disassembled to its component parts, and each had a bit to chew on. The little one got the plasticy end, her mom had the whole handle- which she chewed like a toothpick- and their roommate kicked around the metal part until the zoo-keeper came back. He walked into a room of guilty looking elephants and took away all their toys. He was smirking.

Looking Better!

Sometimes it takes the powers that be to lift you out of a funk. I've been in a major funk, between contamination, our paper being rejected and being too busy teaching to truly deal with any of these problems. This week was our local meeting, Science 2008. This is a great meeting, very diverse and local, but we invite some great speakers- the last two years running we invited guys who won the Nobel prize within days of our meeting. I'll mention by name (in case you hear it again Monday when the Prize is announced) Randy Shekman and Peter Walter.

But, the thrill of the week was being invited to lunch with Peter Walter (since he wanted to meet more people, and I was in the right place). Peter Walter is like a German Santa Claus with a brain like Stephen Hawking, but such humility you would never know. And he, like Santa, has a warm temperament and a great sense of humor. He has some great things to say about 'digging deep' and serendipity, which were just what I needed to hear.

This put me in a very receptive mood to hear that two of our cell lines are NOT contaminated with mycoplasma- if the third comes up positive no big deal. That is less like an epidemic. Hopefully you can hear the swish of the bullet we missed wherever you are reading this from.

We are celebrating by buying Matt a PS3 (which means I can sit on the couch in my PJs and he thinks I spoil him- Thanks Noel!). Hope to get in a little more fun this weekend before scaling up for a science heavy week next week.