Today was one of those days that is almost great, but then it just wasn't so great after all. Started out pretty not-great. An elusive lawyer that I've been tracking all week managed to slip out of my grasp yet again today, which is bad, because we REALLY need for him to finish a contract by the end of the week or there will be some financial pain involved for us. It'll work out, it always does, but it sure doesn't help any when the lawyers just don't get their work done on time. On the other hand, I'm pretty well accustomed to A) the fact that I'm a last-minute guy and B) Latin American culture doesn't thrive on timeliness. It'll work out. It must work out.
As the day wore on, at least I got to enjoy what is my favorite part of this job: driving around the absolutely fantastic countryside, touring property. Any time I get to put it in 4lo AND there is a spectacular vista (or several) is a good property tour. It even sprinkled a little rain, which is refreshing.

Unfortunately, the day ended with an hour or two meeting with my accountant. Any time your accountant starts out the meeting with "Ok, so there was a small error..." Well. That's a BAD meeting. I promise. It wasn't as bad as my stomach initially suspected, and by the end of the meeting I didn't even have a headache, which is a good sign as most of the time, accounting is an instant headache for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good with numbers and such, but understanding tax code in English, in the US, is tough. Doing the same in Spanish in Costa Rica, for me, is something more than difficult. I don't enjoy it.
Speaking of enjoying things, I did manage to just about finish up the switch panel on the truck. That was before Thanksgiving, actually, but I haven't had a lot of journal-writing time on my hands, so for the sake of brevity, I'll include a picture here on this journal. Yes, I know that there is one hole left. I'm waiting to get another switch that is not that easy to find. More details to come. Oh, and yes, I know that the red switch cover is a tad crooked. It is fixed now, but I didn't notice till after the photo. Just use your imagination.

Labels: landcruiser, photo, real estate

All sorts of good news this weekend. My dengue is much improved, we enjoyed a visit from some trans-hemisphere drivers, and attended a snazzy fundraiser shindig on Saturday.

I'm finally feeling mostly human again. I still run out of energy rather quickly and have been sleeping about two or three hours more per night than I usually do, but at least most of the time I feel good, which is a big step in the right direction.

John Paul and Natalie are driving a big blue fj60 Landcruiser from Rhode Island to .... somewhere south of here (maybe Argentina). They've been on the road six months and were effusively thankful for the paucity of information that they could glean off of our site and a couple of emails from me about the journey itself. Its a little funny, every time someone gushes about how wonderful our site is, I feel a pang of guilt at how much info I've *intended* to post, but never got around to doing. Still, it is great to see people using the site to plan their own dreams. We almost missed seeing them entirely, as they read about my dengue episode and didn't want to intrude. We insisted they spend a night with us anyway and the four of us had a great time rehashing travel tales. Since any long-distance journey involves some level of mechanical breakdown, I spent a little qt helping fix a few minor things on their truck. Couldnt' figure out a repair on their window lifter, so I donated the one from Sandy so that John Paul would have an operational window. I can't believe he has put up with the broken one for as long as he has, that sort of minor but pernicious failure is the worst: A total breakdown forces you to attend to the problem, but something that simply annoys you day in and day out without justifying a complicated repair, that's the sort of thing that really drives you crazy. I also donated another couple of little bits to help with their door locks and the other window. It feels good to know that while the parts/repairs where minor to me, they will enjoy the change on an ongoing basis. The look of sheer pleasure on John Paul's face as he ran the window up and down was a great reminder of how easy it can be to help someone out, and how rewarding.

Which leads to an important and interesting conversation that we had regarding how travel helps remind us all of how much a difference it can make when people invest just a little bit of time or effort into helping others. We've all been the beneficiaries of various degrees of help from absolute strangers (and friends and family, of course!). We agreed that being out on the road is a constant reminder of just how easy it is to give or receive a little bit of kindness, and how much better the world is for the small kindnesses all around us. It was a much more pleasant chat than the ones we spent bemoaning the abhorrent ignorance that typifies the foreign relations policies of the US these days.

Another fringe benefit of having some travelers around was that they were willing to invest the modicum of energy necessary to take a few pictures of daily life. Of course, we should be better at taking more snaps of ourselves, but we aren't, so getting some pics from them gives us a chance to see both of our mugs on the blog here, not once, not twice, but THREE whole times. Didn't I tell you this was a good weekend? Well, it gets better! We even got a picture of us dressed up (a little) for the fundraiser on Saturday night. Exciting, no?

I'd love to say that we took our camera with us and got dozens of great pictures of ourselves and friends at the swanky Pinilla Academy charity fundraiser event at which BBA sponsored a corporate table, but we didn't take the camera. Sorry. There were some shutterbugs present, so there is a non-zero chance we'll get some pics up later, but you wouldn't want to hold your breath on that one. It was a fantastic event, replete with all the "society" folks of Tamarindo, if you can call anything in this relaxed little town "society", which you probably couldn't, if you had any notion of what real "society" is like... but I'm blissfully ignorant of the reality of blue-blooded hoity-toity society is like, so I'm going to stick with the notion that Saturday's event was the closest thing to a society gathering that we've yet seen in Tamarindo. Of course, it is Guanacaste: we had some mud issues to deal with and some last-minute "oops, someone forgot to do that" issues cropped up, but overall the event was a great time for all who attended and it seems that the auctions raised a bunch of money for the incipient non-profit private school for which the event was thrown. I took special pleasure in watching local ladies bidding against each other for some jewelry that Jocelyn Broyles donated to the event. I think one piece actually sold for more than it would have cost to buy retail! Which is always a fun affirmation of the appeal of Jocelyn's creations.

Sunday was a slow day. Despite drinking at a rate that can only be described as miserly, I was pretty worn out. Jocelyn was doing better than I, but still enjoyed a nice lazy morning. We reluctantly bid farewell to our new friends Natalie and John Paul as they loaded up to head southward, then Jocelyn spent some time figuring out how we are going to seat 10 or more people next thursday while I got some more work done on Louie. Sharp eyes will notice that the snorkel is finally on (drilling a 4" hole in the fender isn't any easier the second time around) and I've finally got the rear locker fully operational. Oh, big thanks to Soop for the map light that is finally not only installed, but also wired in! I'll spare you the details on the other very minor things I finished (12v power outlet, switch panel in the dash, some LED lights, driving lights switched by hi-beams), suffice it to say that for the first time since buying the new (to us) Cruiser, the list of things to do has actually gotten shorter every weekend instead of longer. Nothing motivates me to get work done on my own cruiser more than doing work on someone else's vehicle.

Labels: 4x4, expedition, jewelry, landcruiser, travel

Thanks to everyone for your emails wishing me a speedy recovery. I'm feeling much better. Still weak, but on the mend. Did some more blood work on Monday- white cells were 3,600 and platelet count nearly 130,000. Still below "normal", but better than Friday's numbers.

Still raining around here, which is odd so late in November, but not unpleasant. Now I'm just eager to get back into the surf... which may still be a few days off.

Sorry no more journal entries this last week.
A week ago Sunday, Steve was feeling 'pooped'.
Monday, he took off from work early to catch up on some rest as he thought he might have a flu.
By Monday evening, he was on the couch, sweating through his clothes, popping tylenol, with a fever of 104 (40 c). Yuck.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday... all seem like one long day. No energy, fever in the low 100s (never over 102 after Monday), splitting headache, aching joints, no appetite.
Finally on Friday we headed to the doctor for some testing. Sure enough, Steve's got dengue fever.(The CDC has a nice little writeup on Dengue here.) As of Friday: white blood cell count is 2,100 ("normal" is 5,000 to 10,000 said the doctor) and platelet count was 107,000 which is just a hint over the "go check into the hospital" level of 100,000 (and well below the "normal" level of 150,000 to 450,000 per mm). We got those results on Saturday, by the way, and the doctor strongly suggested a follow-up blood test. Of course, they couldn't do the tests on the weekend in Tamarindo and we decided that a 3 hour round trip to Santa Cruz on bumpy roads was going to be worse than not knowing the status of Steve's blood until Monday.
It has been an overwhelmingly unpleasant situation all the way around, but now on Day 8 there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. We've just gotten back from giving some more blood and are looking forward to new, higher numbers as early as this evening. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oooh. The blank page. It's so much easier to design jewelry than to write, if you ask me.

So you get invited to a wedding in DC, and what do you do but make plans to spend at least a week there, which, by the way, is not enough. That is, unless you are a super-tourist and you pop out of your hotel, freshly rested, showered and fed by 7 a.m. and can walk and stand for six or so hours at a time.

Now, if you're me and Steve, you are much more concerned with late-night socializing than with early-morning touring. 'Sides, it's freezing at 7 a.m. in DC. Not that I would actually know, but the windows felt cold from the inside where I was wearing my thoughtfully-provided robe and slippers and rummaging around the room looking for the Alka Seltzer.

Why, praytell, the Alka Seltzer? Well, when you check into your hotel, slightly inebriated (we were still behaving quite well, thank you) at 2:30 a.m. or so, they call the manager.

Thankfully, and much to our delight, they call the manager to explain to you in pleading and very submissive tones that the inn is full for the night (since it's already morning, we presume), but since you're here (probably not much to their delight) they have arranged for a room at a very nice neighboring hotel and they'll send you and your luggage right over in a cab.

Prudently sleeping until 10 a.m. (note once again, that this is not the recommended start time for you uber-tourists), we heeded the night-desk manager's recommendation to check out the view of the White House from the Hay Adam's rooftop patio. We got a lovely, piping hot, to-go cup of coffee from the formal dining room and waited a short minute for security to come walk us up to the roof.

They weren't kidding when they said, "View"! As you can see from the pics, we were looking down directly at the front of the White House. A pretty fantastic introduction to DC. The Potomac was in the background and I have to say, I felt a surge of history sweep over me. After taking a dozen or so pictures and talking to the security guard, we gathered our bags up and walked the short block back to the Sofitel. The day was blustery, but the clouds were clearing and it was staring to look like a picture-perfect day for sightseeing.

Our new room checked-into and thouroughly checked-out and compared to the Hay Adams: robes not as good, view much better; we put in calls to Keith and David and got ourselves out the door to have lunch right on the corner at Lou's Deli. A seasoned order-taker with less than a full head of teeth took our tourist-daft (and slightly late-night, sleep-deprived, maybe-had-to-much-to-drink) orders and we sat ourselves down on a sidewalk cafe table in the sun to eat and wait for David to catch up with us.

The sandwiches were delish and David got to us just in time to split mine with me -- David's a bean pole and seemed fine with the half-lunch, while Keith probably could have eaten two more sandwiches and still look like he did in college.

The wind gusting, the leaves blowing everywhere and the sun shining in a gorgeous blue-blue sky, we headed off towards the Mall: first stop, the White House. Or, actually, the ATM at the imposing BofA right before the White House. We spent the rest of the day gushing about the fabo weather, taking pictures, trying to absorb the true meaning of the monuments we were visiting, and generally having a tremendously perfect day. David had to leave us around 3:30 p.m. to get ready for the rehearsal dinner (he was one of the groomsmen) so Keith, Steve and I took in the Korean War Memorial and the Air and Space Museum. Keith grew up in the area, and was a wealth of information about everything we saw.

Keith left us around 5:00 p.m. to go buy a shirt and coat for a formal dinner with a family friend, but would drop in to our hotel room a couple of hours later to iron his new duds and get dressed. In the meantime, I took a nap and Steve indulged in a little nature TV. The two of us, feeling tired but hungry, took ourselves out to a low-key, but delicious Thai meal about 10 blocks from our hotel.

We capped off the night with a cocktail (thoughtfully brought to our room by a returning Keith) and the view from the 7th floor of the Sofitel. Then, deciding we were being old-fogies, walked down the block to a local pub and ordered ourselves some oysters on the half-shell (did I mention, muck like myself, Keith is always hungry?), some fried calamari and another round of drinks. We called it a night around 1:00 a.m., Keith slept on our floor until 2:30 a.m. when he had to go catch a redeye to Phoenix, and Steve and I proceeded to continue with our 2nd day of uber-lazy mode of touring, starting promptly at somewhere around 10:00 a.m.

In case you missed the subtle picture link above, you can see some pictures and some more text by clicking here.

*Editor's Note: the pictures aren't as good as we normally strive to present, but due to some cross-platform/cross-software glitches, things got complicated. Thus, in the interest of getting this done in a timely manner, we posted it as-is. Sorry about that.

Labels: jewelry, photo, travel, vacation, wedding