Week 2 post-defense

I'm trying to let my personal life take charge for a little while. Work is still challenging and confusing, but the point of all this madness is that I've paid my dues now, so I'm try to enjoy it a little. Manuscript #2 came back with requests for MAJOR revisions almost immediately, but I'm not going to let that get to me- I imagine the reviewer as some old curmudgeon with nothing to do but act as gatekeeper to the archives of science. We'll sort him soon enough. I've finished making changes to my dissertation and sent a draft of the 220page PDF to the formatting bureaucrats for their approval. In the mean time, ...

Beer club is having regular meetings again, I've been to the farmer's market and watched the the last Harry Potter movie. This is a good idea, because I am going to watch the next one at midnight tomorrow! Matt and I have been playing Little Big Planet like it's 2007, which is both fun, and sign of the fact we actually get to hang out now. I really like that, Matt is pretty cool.

The need to find a job is starting to feel pressing again. I'm trying to be open to opportunity, flexible about my requirements and proactive. So far, no interviews since June- and that job didn't get funded. Hearing the latest economic reports about the state of the economy is not encouraging, so keep and ear out for me people!

A brotherly response to sandlin

I enjoyed your movie so much...



-N

Trapeze!

So this weekend Jess and I went out to Austin Trapeze with one of our friends from work and learned how to swing on the bar and everything. Hard exercise, and really rough on your hands, but at least I've got this to show for it:



Pretty cool, eh?

You can also watch it by clicking on This Link. That way you can see the whole thing. It's a little truncated on this page.
-N

My weekend project

During the tourney last week, Jess had me at all the games with the camcorder. I told her that if they won, I'd put together a big highlight movie of all the footage. And they did! So I spent a lot of yesterday cutting this together and I thought I'd share it with all of you. I'm pretty proud of it.

Movie 1: The games

Here's part 2, the award ceremony and blooper reel.

Movie 2: Awards and Bloopers

I'd put them on the page, but they look better on their own page. And you can watch in full screen if you want. Enjoy.

-N

Up: Movie Review

Slate.com has had a leading headline for the last week or so "Turn off your computer and go see Up right now." They were not kidding, but do yourself a favor and pack a tissue. You can read the rest of the entry when you get back.

Seriously, I'll wait.

Now that you've all seen the movie, I think we can all appreciate that all the main elements of the movie were STOLEN from PAPA. At first I thought, the old guy has a certain similarity to Papa, and then some major personality traits in common. You know, retired adventurer, caught up in his habits and fondness for his wife. Pretends to be a grouch around kids, but is a total softy with a bit of a goofy steak. Who among you can't imagine Papa at least pondering the feasibility of a moving the house balloon? This is a guy who sewed his own outdoor gear, remembers life before the original Kelty Frame backpack, spied on the communists, is a world renowned TV and stage actor, and a navy man through and through. I mean, the cartoon old guy goes through his morning routine to Bizet's Carmen- how could you keep it together for that?! What really destroyed me was the end when he says "It's just a house," in deadpan, Papa-voice. This gives me renewed interest in writing Papa's biography (this is a group project, people), and makes me want to nail down the dates for my next visit to Spokane.

Papa, I am bringing my laptop and we are going to start writing. Maybe I'll get a tape recorder, too.

A Review of Start Trek, and Other things

My review of Start Trek:

It's very good, you should go see it.

We went to a beer tasting party on friday which was a lot of fun. People were trying to guess different beers that were given anonymously to us to sample. I, of course, don't have the beer palette to distinguish between different types, but I wrote down my impressions on each of them. Things I've discovered: 1) Most beers taste pretty similar. 2) I don't like hoppy beers. 3) I should try more Hefeweizen beers.

Ever heard of Free Realms? It's a "freemium" online game. The idea is that you can play the basic game for free, and if you want, you can upgrade your experience for cost. I've been playing it for the past few days or so, and there's a lot to recommend about it. For starters, there's a few different directions you can go, either beating up monsters and collecting money and leveling up, or trying out different jobs like racing, mining, farming or cooking. I think I'm pretty much done with it for now, but it's very pretty, totally free, and not bad times, in case you're looking for something to do with your browser.

Bedtime!

-N

Jessie's Highlight Reel

Okay, finished up the movie with some of Jessie's best, though very fuzzy, moments. There's some extra before-and-after stuff that wasn't in the previous movie, so give it a watch and just assume that if you see someone doing something awesome, and they're wearing a white shirt, it's Jessie.



-N

Jessie's Full Game

Hey,

So I decided not to make you guys wait anymore. Here's pretty much all the raw footage of Jessie in her first roller derby game. I split it up into two movies. In a bit, probably a few days, I'll finish up my 'highlight reel', if you want to wait to see that. Enjoy.

Part 1


Part 2


-N

ChristmasTime, ba da da baaa da da.

Behold, I have created a movie!


I don't know if you can tell, but this movie is in *WIDE SCREEN* mode. Tell me what you think of it. Unnecessary? I experimented a little bit on this one to see how it would look. It's also possible to do 'high def'-ier video on youtube, but I'm not sure how yet.

Next up will be the Jesta Menace Highlight reel. Probably sometime this weekend.

Also, my new years resolution is to start composing music this year. Which means I have to finish my book. So far I've put in at least an hour on my book every day. So progress is being made. Yay!

EDIT: Hey, check this out. Click on *THIS LINK* and you should be able to watch the video in HIGH(er) DEFINITION. Looks nice.

-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 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

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 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

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.



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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.



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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!



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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!



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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!



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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!



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