New Job, No Life

So, you see, I started my new job and now have no life. I know I am supposed to be happy that I have a job at all in this crazy, wacky economy and in many ways I am. It's just the no life part that is slowly sucking my will to live. On the bright side, I have so far kept my new job and they do not seem to hate me too much yet. I am not entirely sure what they think of me yet, quite honestly. They may think I am great or they may be thinking, "Great gobbly googly, what have we done?" Either way, they are paying me.

I am, however, working 12 hour days and sometimes on Saturday. My entire gym routine ... what gym routine. I eat dinner after 8 every night and by the time it's done and we have cleaned up, it's almost 9 and almost time to go to bed so that I can wake up and do it all over again the next day. The really scary part is the partners there work longer hours than I do. I do not know how they ever see their children.

I still wait to see ever week if they will tell me that I am just not working out and that they are looking for someone else. However, every week, I seem to finish and they do not say it. Granted it has only been a couple of weeks and they would probably wait until after the holidays anyway, but this is how my brain works. It all started with my first three miserable law jobs working for attorneys that were either crazy or inept (or both) and ever since then, I have become exceptionally jittery with new jobs. I was at my last firm for four years. I was quite used to it and sort of knew what to expect. Now, I do not really know what to expect. It lacks the stability I have learned to love.

And, so, this is why I have been so absent. The good news is that I still have a job. The bad news is that I mostly have no life and I do not know how my new job is going yet.

How I Spent My Holiday Weekend

Nighttime
Originally uploaded by -J:

I spent it in the Keys. I hope to write more here soon. Sorry I have been so bad about writing. I think with the job and everything else, I have just been overwhelmed and swamped.

Missing a Job, Finding a Job

So, as it turns out, the firm I work for told me last week that they could not continue to afford me. This has been very hard for everyone involved. On the bright side, however, I was able to secure two job offers at two very good law firms and am now beginning the process of transitioning out of my old job and into my new one. All of this is supposed to now happen before the end of the year.

I feel like this is all going so fast. A few weeks ago, I had a job and everything was peachy keen. Now all of a sudden, I am having to finalize things and turn my work over and it's all just going so quickly.

Deciding between the two job offers was extremely difficult for me. One of the offers was at a very large firm and the other was at a not so large firm. At the end of the day, I chose the latter because I felt I had a higher probability of happiness at the smaller firm, even though I may end up working longer hours there.

Plus, I am getting my new (used) Prius, which has been a planned purchase for a long while now but I had to move up the time line fairly rapidly so that I would more easily get approved when they looked at employment verification, etc, for the financing.

Election Results

So, it turns out Obama is our new President. Did you know he's black? I didn't know because I don't see color. (I'm like Colbert.) I had heard some people talking but I try to ignore the gossip. Newspapers? You want me to read? That's just crazy talk.

I, actually, somehow feel really proud of my country even though it's completely messed up and greedy and I may lose my job and all of the rest, we finally elected a black man as President. It just makes me feel proud. Throughout history, it has always been a black man to break through a glass ceiling on big issues before women. (This was why I didn't think Hillary would be the Democratic nominee - it just did not follow the historical pattern.)

I am very proud that our nation took this step, a great step, towards equality. However, there is clearly a whole lot of work to be done. Obama beat McCain partially because McCain made several mistakes, the economy is terrible and Obama outspent McCain in huge amounts. It was almost like some sort of supernatural affirmative action at work, and I am glad that it all came together like that for him. However, it should not have been that hard. And we still have not had a female president. I hope I get to live to see that too. (Although, she may have policies that I will hate and I may regret these words in a number of years from now that is divisible by four.)

I hope this is just another small step down the road of true change and acceptance. (Although, based on the fact that all the anti-gay amendments passed, I am not sure we did not take one step back as we took another forward.)

Vote!

Economic Impact

So, it turns out that all of this bad economic news is starting to hit closer and closer to home. Last week, Hillary said that she found out she might lose her job if the economy continues to deteriorate and I recently just learned that my firm may not be able to afford to keep me. for the same reasons. It's nice to have things in common with the people you know, but this was not one of the things I had in mind. I guess we will have to see how all the numbers work out and if they end up working out worse than I could possibly imagine, whether or not I could find another job quickly.

This did not, however, stop me from enjoying my weekend and my $650 a piece tickets to the tennis event in-town. I received the tickets for free from my friend who was involved with the event and have a bit of a sunburn now to show off from it, as I forgot my hat. It was awesome, though. I got to see Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal, Jon Lovitz, Alan Thicke, Gavin Rossdale, and Greg Norman play tennis with some really great tennis pros. It was really pretty cool, even if I do have a sunburn now. I brought my camera, expecting to take lots of pictures but it was too hard to time the perfect photographic moment. Instead, I just sat back and enjoyed the matches and the near perfect weather nature had served up. Get it, served? Heh. Well, I think someone may have a ball with that one. Ha ha ha. I know, $650 per ticket sounds like quite a racket. Not that funny, huh?

In other news, the election is tomorrow. I attempted to vote early two weeks ago but the lines were insane. Using the old noodle, I went ahead and requested an absentee ballot, which I was able to complete in five minutes in the privacy of my living room. Now I just have to trust the postal service to get it back to my supervisor of elections office. I considered taking it back myself but I leave for work before it is open and return from work after it is closed. See, if I didn't have a job none of that would be an issue. However, I will accept such issues in exchange for nice paycheck every week.

All My Wisdom is Gone

I know I have not updated in a while. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I have been in excruciating pain and unable to really eat for over a week or it could be just because I am exceptionally lazy. But let's go with option one to make me feel better. Ironic that my pain would somehow make me feel better.

The surgery to extract my wisdom teeth went relatively smoothly. I was in and out in about an hour and home on pain meds and icing within another hour. (I was only prescribed Tylenol with Codeine but I had some vicodin on hand just in case.) However, I did not - unlike what everyone told me I would do - sleep the rest of the day. I was tired for most of the day but was completely unable to sleep. I did, however, relax and lay around most of the day and try to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't eat. Overall, though, I would say the pain was not too bad. It was a lot like when I had my shoulder surgery - there was some dull pain and only severe pain when I tried to do something I really shouldn't.

Oddly, the pain in the lower left half of my mouth became worse a few days later and I developed a fever of over 100 and decided that I must have an infection. I was on aZpack ever since the surgery but I eat antibiotics like they are going out of style. What the hell does a Zpack really mean to my skewed immune system? So, I went back to see my oral surgeon and he decided I couldn't possibly have an infection, as the wounds seemed to be healing so well and everything else looked great. I still think I had a secondary infection. However, I was already on the Zpack. So, I left his office hoping that would be enough. Oh, and he also gave me more pain meds. Unfortunately, my stomach decided it did not really like pain medication anymore after a few days and I mostly played hurt.

As time progressed, I was able to isolate my increased pain to what felt like bruising of my jaw bone and lots of nerve pain, but almost all of it was contained to the lower left hand side of my mouth. It became a waiting game. A test as to how long I could survive on yogurt and applesauce, and it turns out I can do so for over a week. However, after all of that, I go on some crazy burger binge, which somehow seems to ease the pain. I have no scientific evidence to prove it but I will say I felt marked improvement after every day that I ate a burger. Just sayin'.

The bright die to all of this, other than the discovery of the medicinal uses of cheeseburgers, is that I never have to have my wisdom teeth out again.

The Dark Horse

The day before I went in for my surgery, I stumbled upon an interesting Website. The site has a series of questions that you answer and then it helps you pick the presidential candidate that most matches your priorities.

The shocking part of all of this was that when I finished, the candidate it had selected that most matched my ideals and priorities in this upcoming election was Cynthia McKinney. My first reaction was who the heck is that? My second reaction was we have another woman running for president? How have I never heard of her? Oh, but the plot, she doth thicken, as it turns out that not only is Ms. McKinney a woman, but she is also black and she's the Green Party's candidate for president.

Holy smokes! I was completely blown away. How is it that not one single media outlet happened to mention this? They have been tracking this Joe The Plumber guy for days and learning everything there is to know about him, but a black female is on a national party ticket for president and I don't hear a peep about it? What the heck is that? I know they have the time. I know because all I do is hear the same darn stupid stories about McCain and Obama every single day. It would be nice to break that up with something new.

I guess it's only exciting that a woman is running for president when it's Hilary and Barack is the only black candidate that ranks. However, it sure would be nice if the people were informed of their other alternatives.

Extraction and Race

This is it, folks. The week I go in and my four wisdom teeth come out. I am really not looking forward to this, as so many folks keep talking about how miserable and painful it is. However, at least one or two people have said it was not that bad for them. I just want the pain to be short lived, and not to have a month of infections afterward - like what happened with my shoulder surgery.

I see quite a few bloggers I read are espousing the virtues of Obama. For them, education appears to be their number one issue. I think this is good. I think education should be everyone's number one issue, as one of the best ways to uplift a society is through education. On the other hand, I feel like finding quality educators and resources can be difficult. I think I feel dumber after reading half of whatever mainstream media has put out there, and I often think it is not just the inputting of facts and information into a person's head that is important, but also teaching them how to think and question and really get down and dirty with the facts. I do not feel that is done enough.

I also do not feel Obama supporters necessarily have the high ground in the debate. I think Obama is the smarter and better candidate. However, I have trouble viewing him as better or more honest. I have pointed this out before here. I was commenting to my girlfriend last night that I think it would be really awesome if a candidate decided one year to just be completely truthful and honest with the American people and the media about what they did and did not do and what their plans actually were. It would be interesting to see if the media picked up on this and there started to be some sort of contest as to which candidate could be the most honest. Instead of having to rely on factcheck.org to tell us what the truth actually is. The worst part is that I am not sure such services work.

I was listening to a news story recently discussing some scientific studies that have been done over the years and it appears the refutation of erroneous facts does not work. Hence, if someone tells you that the administration knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or that the president's economic plan will save our economy, often the subsequent refutation of those statements with facts will not change the your original opinion. In fact, conservatives end up believing the originally stated erroneous fact more vigorously when it is refuted. This heightened state of belief did not seem to occur with non-conservative participants in the study, but that may have been because the questions involved were hot button conservative questions. It is unclear. What seems to be pretty clear is that once bad facts are out there, it is really hard to unring that bell. Perhaps we should institute fines on any political figures that deliver erroneous facts. It really seems odd to me that we, as voters, do not demand more. We get Obama and we are happy. Somehow it does not seem like enough.

Has Obama lied during the last two presidential debates? Of course. Has John McCain? Absolutely. Yet, we would like to elect one of these liars into our highest public office. Because "everyone does it". It somehow just does not feel right. What, liberals have the moral highground when voting for Obama because he wants to teach children? What does he want to teach them? If you lie well enough and tell enough people what they want to hear, you too can be president? It frustrates me that this is even acceptable. Not only acceptable but there are people so fervent in their support that they will wear buttons and T-shirts promoting their favorite liar. And make no mistake about it - McCain is no better. He cheated on his wife, inflated his accomplishments, omitted important facts and has done all sorts of inappropriate things. However, I wonder if Obama's record would be any cleaner if he had been in office for thirty years.

Sorry, I wandered off the path. I guess it is all of that wisdom still stuck in my head. Don't worry, though. They swear they will take it all away this week. Although, I hear it is very painful.

Too Tired to Drive

So, apparently, I need a new bed. I also need a new car, and it seems the bed is going to cost almost as much as the car.

When I went to New York a few months ago, we slept on a Tempurpedic-esque king sized bed, which was really made by Isotonic. It was an amazing bed, as I have mentioned here before. In fact, I have not slept as well as I did there since I returned home to my nice queen sized bed. It may be because I am no longer on a semi-vacation or it may be because of the bed and either its age or size or comfort level. That part is not clear. What is clear is that my trouble sleeping is affecting everything, including my ability to consistently get to the gym, as I will find myself waking up at 3 in the morning and not being able to fall back asleep, which makes my body particularly displeased with the notion of exercise. I also seem to be experiencing back pain after sleeping in the bed and my girlfriend has a degenerative disc condition. It is quite the trifecta.

As to the car, my air bag light came the same day I left for New York and it never went away. I know something is wrong with my system restraint system - either the seatbelts or the airbags, but I also know that to fix it will cost at least one to two thousand dollars, and my car already has well over 100,000 miles on it because I drove it all over the state for years and years. Somehow, I have trouble justifying spending that much money to fix my car when I know I need a new one. Hence, I have been saving my money to get a new car. It would be cool if I could hold out until next spring and get the new Honda hybrid that is supposed to run a mere $18,000. However, I have been eyeing the Prius. Either way, I think I want a car that does not cost as much as most of the luxury cars, that keeps my gas consumption low and that makes an environmental statement. Plus, a hybrid will provide me with unfettered access to the HOV lanes. You really cannot put a price on that in South Florida.

This weekend, the girlfriend said we should go mattress shopping. This seemed like a good idea. However, when you walk out of the store and realize that you have actually just spent probably more than what your old car is worth just to acquire the new bed and you still need a frame and sheets, your body begins to experience what I like to call complete and total shock and the thought of how will I pay for this begins to enter your head. It is unfortunate that there is no way to really know if such a purchase is the right decision. While the bed is purchased, I have not yet authorized delivery, as we decided we should do some more research and ask around - I can decide on which bed we actually want at any time prior to delivery.

It appears that Tempurpedic beds can be great or not so great depending on the particular one that is delivered to your house. Some have more off-gassing than others (meaning they smell like chemicals for longer) and some have more indentation problems than others. Also, some people find them to be too hot to sleep on, as they have trouble ventilating. We also looked at latex beds, which seem to have different benefits and different issues. It is all very confusing. Who the heck thought buying a bed would be so confusing or so expensive? The two things that have been the most helpful is that we actually know people with the Tempurpedic that love it and we also found a really great Website for researching things like beds and pillows. It seemed totally unbiased and was very informative. I still do not feel it has removed all of our doubts but I think at this point, I would spend any sum of money just to be able to sleep through the night and get to the gym on a daily basis again. Now I just need to find the money for the car.

Come, All Ye Voters

Earlier this week, one of my good friends called me. I have been driving around with a huge bag of rice in my car all darn week so that I can give it to this guy, so that he can give it to Haiti (as part of his relief efforts). Hence, when he called, I figured he must be calling to schedule a meetup to get the rice. "Want to volunteer with me this Saturday? We need attorneys."

"Where would we be volunteering?"

"I'm not sure."

"What time?"

"I'll need to get those details."

"What will we be doing?"

"I don't know exactly. Something about felons voting."

"What?! Ok, well call me back when you know more and I'll see you on Saturday." I have a small collection of friends that if they ever needed me, I would drop almost anything to help them if I could. He happens to be one of them. For a period of time in law school, there were four of us who were completely inseparable and this still bleeds into our daily lives today. Granted, most of us now live at least three hours apart, but we are still there for each other as much as we can be. So, when one of these friends asked me if I would help him by volunteering some of my time, there really was only one possible answer.

Turns out I will be working with the ACLU this weekend to help convicted felons register to vote - seeing if their records can be suppressed or expunged and, as a result, become qualified to vote under the laws of the state of Florida. In some ways, it makes me a little nervous to be volunteering with convicted felons. However, at least with such situations, you know who to watch out for. In other areas of the law, you are never quite sure. I know one woman who spent years practicing real estate law in Florida, with an emphasis in home owners association regulation. She said she eventually started doing criminal defense because it felt much safer and she did not have to worry about as many stray bullets.

My Blog?

It has recently been brought to my attention that I have a blog. I know, I was just as shocked as you are.

Apparently, blogs, unlike books, have to be constantly updated in order to stay relevant and current. It does not matter the nature of the prior content in the blog, if it's not new, people do not want it. This must be why many bloggers blog about current events, politics, and the economy. There you can just talk about the next big thing. However, I have always tried to reign in any tendencies I might have of being political. I do not always succeed but most of the time, I like to think that my posts have been non-political and mostly about dating and relationships. This makes me more like an introspective self help blog. (Eww, really. This is terrible.) Unfortunately, unlike many therapists out there that just keep churning out books that say the same damn thing, I cannot bring myself to do it. I had some thoughts and view points, and as they occurred to me, I wrote them down. Then I moved on to other things. Plus, I stopped dating lots of people and started dating only one people. Talk about adventures in boring.

So, now what do I talk about? The awesome bread I made last weekend that complemented my homemade tomato sauce with meatballs and handmade sausage perfectly? Hmm, does not seem to have the same ring to it as "Let me tell you about this crazy chick I went out with last night." Plus, I have been trapped reading up on and creating a presentation on Medicaid and Social Security and planning for disabled beneficiaries. Let me tell you, this stuff is really exciting. I think my outline could put you to sleep in under five minutes. Although, it is terribly practical stuff. I even learned about these new long term care insurance plans that can help you keep your assets but still qualify for Medicaid. Crazy, right?

So where was I? Oh, right my blog. So, you see, the public demands that I update more frequently. Update with something, anything to appease the masses. One person said I could talk about how the divorce rate in the U.S. is down, but many attribute this solely to the fact that fewer Americans are even bothering to get married, not that our social fabric has become miraculously stronger. I suppose I could talk about the plummeting economy, but I feel so tired of it. Lots of very smart people knew this was coming and anyone saying this crisis is new or special, obviously does not remember the derivatives crash in the 90s. Know your history, folks.

One thing is for sure, my blog has been neglected and it, much like a puppy will become sad and starve without attention. Because blogs have a life of their own. Wait, what? Well, whatever this all means, I think I will be writing more. Although, I cannot promise a cohesive theme or even the most entertaining of topics, I will attempt to make words flow in some sort of coherent fashion. Certainly more coherent than this.

Wordless

I have been a little stuck for what to write about on this blog for quite some time now. I keep meaning to write but when I have time, I find that I lack anything interesting to say. The most I have been able to do is Twitter and comment on other people's blogs. Becauise of this, I have decided that I will go back to writing meaningless little fictional posts like I used to do now and again. I also plan on using other people's photos as inspiration. I have been going through Flickr, finding photos licensed under Creative Commons and which allow for me the right to use and modify their work. I don't think I will be making any profit from any of this, as it's just my blog. However, I will link to where the photo comes from so that the person might get some props if you like it. This is the best solution I have been able to come up with, as I simply do not feel capable of writing constant interesting posts about my life to date. I know that now and again, they will creep in, as things still do happen and some of them are exciting. However, when I lack anything like that to write about, I will do this fiction stuff instead. I hope no one minds.

Candy Man

In junior high, my entrepreneurial spirit took hold and I began selling candy at my school. This was not the sort of sanctioned candy sale put on by one of the school's organizations or at the school book shop. No, this was my own sort of shop, where I wandered around the school with tons of (at the time) kids' favorite candies - Now and Laters, bubble gum, Lemon Heads, Fireballs, etc. The candy was concealed in my long winter coat. Through a twist of fate, the inside pocket of my coat had torn and I was able to use the entire lining of the coat as an enormous pocket for the stashing of my product. Sure, some kids at other schools sold illegal narcotics, but at our school, sugar was our students' drug of choice and I was their supplier.

The profits were enormous, as I was able to markup everything by 100%, and I had no real overhead costs. Sure, in some cases, I had to take the time to repackage everything. For example, when you buy a bag of 100 sticks of gum, you need to break it down into something more palatable to your average junior high consumer, like bags of ten. There was some effort involved, however, as the nearest store from which I could replenish my stash was about 10 miles away - 10 miles of insane, mountainous hills. Fortunately, my mother was supportive of my new found career, once I told her about it.

Unfortunately, my school was not as pleased with my job creation spirit and did not seem to feel I should be aiding the youth of America in their pursuit of a sugar fix and early onset diabetes. I guess they wanted to have the market cornered for themselves. In any event, after much back and forth, and repeated harassment, my budding career was brought to a halt. Mostly as a result of supplier difficulties. I guess the only people more upset with me selling candy to the masses were the ones supplying me with the product. Even though the store that supplied me was in a completely different town and they were incredibly unlikely to be able to sell to these people otherwise, they were somehow outraged that I was able to make such a sweet profit. They probably would have never known I was doing it but I guess sooner or later they got suspicious as to where the seemingly limitless supply of candy I was buying week-in and week-out was going and questions were asked.

Another bright future cut short. In retrospect, however, it was one of my favorite jobs. I set my own prices and my own hours and I never had to worry about someone else slacking off.

Bad Topics

We are not allowed to talk about the 17 year old impregnated daughter of McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin. I am told it is an off-limits topic, as how a family chooses to deal with such an event is personal. Unfortunately, the conservative position (and in this case Sarah Palin's position) of advocating abstinence only education, makes it a completely relevant topic. The fact that the nominee's daughter (Bristol) is pregnant seems to undercut the position that abstinence only education keeps children from having premarital sex. After all, if they ever happen to hear about condoms, they are all going to go crazy and start fornicating like rabbits. It is a tough situation because you do not want to have the daughter thrown into this political turmoil and quite honestly, I do not think she needs to be. What should be up for discussion is whether or not the candidate's position on abstinence only education works and I think you can address this issue without involving Bristol too much.

This weekend, I was at dinner with my friend and his mother. My friend's mother is a Democrat and her husband is a Republican. However, it sounded like she had decided that she may vote for McCain because he had picked a woman as his running mate. Something about this is disturbing to me because it is just reverse discrimination. Once again, we are not measuring a person for their own individual qualities that make them unique, but simply the immutable ones over which they have no control. If you put a male running mate with McCain with the exact same ideas as Palin, you would not find this woman voting for McCain, but because it is a woman, suddenly it makes McCain a viable option. I have the same problem with people voting for Obama because he is black. Granted, some black people may vote for him with the belief that he uniquely understands the black experience in a way no white person ever could (and the same goes for women voting for Palin and the female experience). However, it seems to me that one should really want to vote for the person that is most qualified and that has the plans that are most like what you want to see happen when the person is elected.

This is why I am completely disappointed with my choices this year, as neither candidate has very good positions in my opinion on most of the issues. And I fail to find either of them to be very qualified. McCain is an old man that is for sale to the highest bidder, in my opinion. It pains me because I liked McCain when he ran last time, but after watching him over the last seven years, I am really disappointed in him. Add to this the idea of electing a 72 year old man and having the real possibility that he could have medical problems and end up leaving the country in the hands of a woman that has never had the job of running a diverse society with over 1,000,000 people and no foreign policy experience, greatly concerns me. When I go to have surgery performed, I want someone that has done it multiple times and done it well. I would think when I go and select my next leader, I would want similar qualifications. I also do not agree with most of McCain's positions. Obama is largely untested. Sure, he can speak nicely but some of his positions lack real substance and some of them (like health care) are not anticipated to have any real impact for many Americans. I looked at other party's candidates but was even more disappointed with them, as many of them have incomprehensible positions or lack any clear position on anything except their key issue - like the environment for the Green Party.

I really would like to be excited for the upcoming elections, but I still have trouble finding someone that truly seems qualified. I guess maybe we should just not talk about it.

Delays

As some of you know, I went to New York two weeks ago to see the premiere of my girlfriend's play - the one she wrote, not the one she acted in, as she would likely never actually get on stage as a performer. She can barely handle the thought of people listening to her words being spoken on the stage, as she waits and hopes for signs of the audience's approval. Given that I was flying to New York, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to fly Jet Blue and see what all the hype was about. My own personal TV? How bad could it be.

My flight out was early in the morning, maybe 6AM. It was a fairly empty flight and everyone managed to get there on-time and board in an orderly fashion. Everyone that is, except one of the pilots. Good times. We sat there in the plane waiting for 30 minutes until the pilot managed to get to the plane. Once we were airborne, the Direct TV refused to work. So, they gave us free movies. Not bad. I watched Kung Fu Panda (something mindless that I did not have to give serious mental thought to) and because they build so much extra time into their arrival times, we easily arrived on-time. So, while I started out disliking Jet Blue and thinking they were incompetant, I left thinking maybe it was just an anomoly.

While in New York, I got to see two or three performances of my girlfriend's play, see and meet fun people, and sample delicious food. It seems like delicious food is everywhere up there, much like it is in Chicago. You generally do not have to worry about whether you will like the food at a particular restaurant because, one way or another, you are going to. (Except for the overpriced fish that I ordered that tasted a little too much like fish. Although, I have to admit, it and all of its accompaniments were cooked perfectly. Plus, I had tacos before I arrived. So, I was already well fed.) I also got to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and experience what it is like to be surrounded by hordes of rude, annoying people that I really just wanted to push over the side. It was also on this walk that I discovered that my digital camera was broken, with a huge crack in its LCD. Good times.

The house we were staying at had a king sized Temperpedic style bed. Except, it's a different brand called Isotonic. That bed was amazing. It was like I could sleep forever on it. You woke up and if you didn't want to be awake yet, you just rolled over and fell back to sleep. Absolutely fantastic. I have a terrible time sleeping - the act often aludes me, especially if I want to sleep extra, but I realize now it is because all the sleep has been hiding in this bed. Fantastic. Unfortunately, the owners of the house also had a dog. It wasn't there while we were, but as anyone who knows me and my allergies can attest, that doesn't matter.

Now, to be fair, it is unclear whether I had a cold or allergies or both. What is known is that by night two, I had a sore throat and I remained sick for the next two days I was in New York. To add to my feelings or terribleness, Jet Blue delayed my return flight for five hours (four in the airport and the next one on the plane). I met two seasoned fliers in the airport that explained it was not just bad luck, it was Jet Blue. In fact, as I looked around the airport, I saw that all the surrounding flights out were also delayed. I now officially hated them. We eventually filed onto our very full flight, and there I was sandwiched in-between two women - one young and one old. Like before and after photos maybe. (My girlfriend stayed for the following week in New York, as she still had more shows.)

I arrived home, and placed a call to my office, leaving a message to let them know there was just no way I could come in on Monday. My voice sounded awful and I had a fever. During the course of last week, I went from feeling like I was almost better to losing my voice and feeling like I was never going to be able to speak again. My doctor wasn't sure what I had, but he gave me antibiotics in case it was a sinus or respiratory infection, given the blood and other oddly colored fluids emanating from me, it seemed like a safe bet. However, I delayed in starting on the antibiotics, as he and I wondered, maybe it was just allergies, delaying my recovery. Finally, towards the end of last week, when my voice was almost completely gone, I started on the antibiotics, and then spent this entire weekend doing nothing but sleeping and reading. I think my voice if slowly coming back now, but it will probably not be until the end of next week that I am fully recovered. Somehow, I know this is all Jet Blue's fault.

Too Much Wisdom

I have never had my wisdom teeth removed. They just grew in with no pain or problems. Unfortunately, my jaw bone inhibits me from actually reaching them when I brush my teeth and I got cavities in all of them. When the dentist filled two of them, he found the cavities were deeper than he thought and decided that what I really needed was to get them extracted - an operation he wanted to do right then and there with just a little Novocaine and he said I would be fine with just some Tylenol after. I told him thanks but no.

Recently, about a year ... maybe two later, I just sat down with an oral surgeon to plan on finally having it done. I will be put asleep before it happens and be taking Percocet after. Although, I think it will still be a miserable experience, I keep thinking that just leaving them in and one day getting an infection in the nerve will be far more miserable because then I'll have lots of pain before the surgery, as well as all of the pain after.

Fortunately, I pay for dental insurance and it will cover most of the cost of this and I will only have to pay a few hundred dollars. Although, the amount I have paid for the insurance over the years may all equal it out. It's hard to say for sure, but it has also paid for lots of other stuff like preventative measures - cleanings, periodic X-rays - not the really good X-ray I needed for the the surgeon, but all the other ones.

One of the paralegals at our office has an illness and with all of the medications that she has to take, all of which our health insurance company indexed to the highest tier - $60 each. Plus the tests that she needs that require her to meet our $2,500.00 deductible before they cover her, she has been spending almost all of the extra money she makes (the money that exceeds her ordinary monthly bills) on her medical needs. The thing that gets me about this is she has health insurance. This reminds me a lot of what I went through last year with my shoulder surgery - I needed my entire Christmas bonus to pay for my shoulder surgery and physical therapy, and I had health insurance.

A few weeks ago, I watched Sicko. I did not find it the profound revelation of a movie that so many others seem to have seen it as. I thought it was interesting, but I really wanted to hear more about both sides. I wanted to understand what average people (not seemingly wealthy people) thought of their medical insurance in these countries with government funded medical insurance. I mean there simply must be disgruntled people in those medical systems, right? Because if not, I think we should adopt one of their medical plans today.

NPR did a series on most of these countries, trying to cover how each one worked. Often, they would find a family from the United States who had been forced to relocate to one of these countries so that they could receive the medical treatment they needed for their ongoing conditions. Clearly, these systems have their benefits. However, what about people coming here for treatment? I have heard that happens. Does it happen? How much does it happen? Are there lots of people in these other countries receiving substandard treatment? Does that happen here too? How long do they have to wait for their surgeries? What about at the ER? And what will the cost really be - yes, our taxes will be higher but our employers could also afford to pay us more.

One of my physical therapists had done her internship over in England. She had said the medical system was not so bad over there. It had its shortcomings, but it was not bad. One of the women I know who lives in Toronto always seemed to get all the treatment she needs. I don't know. The thing I find really unfortunate is how hard it seems to be able to find this type of information. You would think more news agencies would take the time to do a really thorough exploration of issues like these. Issues that really seem to matter. They may find that if they did more people would read them.

Not Enough

As you all have probably heard, Ted Stevens was indicted for receiving $250,000 in gifts from and oil company and not reporting them. They would have tried to indict him for bribery, but it's harder to prove intent with bribery than to simply show utter failure to report gifts. Personally, I have no problem with the man being indicted, but it really does not feel like enough. How many members of Congress accept "donations" and "gifts" from huge and not so huge corporations and rich individuals? I would hazard a guess that the majority of them do. After all, that is how you get elected, right? That is what I always hear - Congress cannot get anything done because they are always too busy fundraising to win the next election. That doesn't sound good. Why do we have such a policy?

I would think we would want some of the most important people in our nation focusing on actual work rather than how they are going to raise enough money or which political segment of the population they have to please to get enough money to win the office. There always seems to be a lot of strife and polarization in politics. The Republicans vote one way and Democrats the other, but I wonder how much of that is owing to each side's need for cash and which donors they are trying to please with their votes. If it's the latter then perhaps our system is just completely fractured.

There must be a way where we could structure our elections system where not so much fundraising was necessary. Maybe we could allocate so much money to each of candidate from tax revenue and that's all they can use. We could make it more like a board game where each player gets so much cash to use and that's it. Then they could stop worrying about how they will raise enough money to run. Not only that, it might allow more less affluent people to run - people that actually know what it's like to live on under $100,000 per year in our country.

It already is like a game now - a bigger more complex game where everyone is always promising campaign finance reform but no one ever actually closes the loopholes. One year they get money through one way and the next year, another. A never ending cycle. Obviously, our elected officials are not too unhappy with this current system. Maybe they like fundraising and all of their complaints about how they do not have time to work are fake. Maybe they just don't want to work. Nothing new there. I just do not see how this system helps us as a country. I am sure our leaders are making out on the deal someway somehow or they would change the laws. They are not trapped in the system - they created it. If they don't like the law, they can draft new law. However, I do not see how the bulk of this system helps the average American.

This is one of the reasons I have little to no faith that Obama will be the shining ray of light so many liberals have made him sound like. I don't like the idea of McCain because he really just sounds like Bush for another four years and I didn't like the last 8 years very much at all. Add to that the fact that before he was running for president, McCain had a very different message that he used to frequently espouse on the Daily Show. One that actually made sense. However, that message changed when he decided to run for president - I assume he needed money and the backing of the Republican party. Plus, the man is old. Really old. 72 years old. At the end of his second term, he would be 80. Eighty. That's old. I worry about that because a lot of my clients are around that age and I would not want them running our country.

When I look at the whole system and my choice of candidate it makes me not even want to vote, as my only real option is to vote for a candidate beholden to big interests. All of their money came from somewhere and my guess is it was from special interest groups, and it makes it difficult for me to believe that anyone I help to elect is really going to make any meaningful change to our country.

Your Regularly Scheduled Program

I am pleased to announce that I have completed all of my posts regarding my trip to Costa Rica. I am not sure how many of you enjoyed them or, alternately, suffered through them, but I am glad that at least some of you made it. The problem I now face is, of course, what should I talk about now. As difficult as it seemed to be to sort through all of my Costa Rican adventures, at least I had something to write about that was clearly defined. Now I feel stuck.

Last week, was a bit of a crazy week for me and I feel like I had so many things come up that could have been discussed here, but I was still in Costa Rica mode. For example, Hillary was drugged by some crazy idiot in a Canadian bar, on the night of her bachelorette party. Suddenly everything Michael Moore ever said about Canadians being less violent seems meaningless, as this poor woman got totally screwed over with non-violence. On the bright side, she is alive and still blogging, which provides me with something funny to read almost every day.

I saw Batman, which was really just an incredible movie. I think heath Ledger was so fucking amazing in that movie. I never once looked at him and thought Knight's Tale, and I tried really hard too, as this is what I often do when I go to movies - I try to see if I can separate the actor's new character from the character they played in the last thing I saw them in. Not once did my brain automatically make the connection, and his portrayal of the Joker was just fantastic. In some respects, I wish it wasn't so good because now I feel cheated with questions of what do we do now? Who could possibly step into that role in a sequel? It was good, however, to see such an amazing performance.

Unfortunately, we went during summer vacation and their were more high school kids in there than you could shake a stick at, and none of them seemed capable of containing their energy long enough to keep themselves from talking during the movie. What happened to the good old days where you went to movies to make out? Compounding the issue was the fact that the two youths next to my girlfriend were breaking up during the movie. As if there was not already enough drama on the screen.

I was reminded that all of this was why we have limited our movie-going recently. People simply seem incapable of keeping a lid on things. Cell phones, talking, breaking up, etc. And it's people of all ages. The disease of rudeness does not appear to discriminate, affecting all ages, races, sexes, and socioeconomic classes. For years, I thought this illness was limited to the region of Miami, but it is clear to me that it is now an epidemic and if it does not take you too, it will certainly drive you insane.

Monteverde - Life in the Clouds

Our last day in Monteverde was a little more of the same. We started out with another cloud forest hike, only this time through the other cloud forest. The only way you could really tell the difference, though, was by the muddiness of it all. The Santa Elena Reserve has a lot more mud and is not very well maintained. Probably as a result of this, however, there seem to be far fewer tourists and you can probably enjoy yourselves far more there than at the other reserve, if you can get over the fact that you're going to get muddy.

We hired a guide for this cloud forest hike, which ended up being a complete waste of money. First, the hotel sort of misled us regarding the cost, and it ended up being twice as much as what they had told us, as the price they gave did not include the cost of park admission. However, the tougher part was the family with us in our group had a little 10 year old boy who was acting very much like a little 10 year old boy, making lots of noise and splashing around in the puddles. If we had not already done so many other rain forest hikes and seen so much already, we may have been upset about it. There were also far more people on these trails, which I am sure did not help matters. We did happen to see a snake sitting way up in the forest - the guides had found it at the entry to the park and one of them had trained his telescope on it. Even still, it took some time to really spot it, as it camoflauged itself so well.

After the tour ended, we decided to hike through the forest some more on our own. Almost immediately, we saw more monkeys. I think we also saw some other birds and such, as well, and located a little waterfall that was peacefully rushing along. Overall, I think we did better on our own than with the guide, which was really so different than any of our past experiences. It was this little tour that reminded me that you could have a great guide but you cannot always pick who is on the tour with you, and that can really affect things. However, it was still a lot of fun and we enjoyed ourselves.

In the afternoon, we went on a coffee plantation tour. The other folks that had signed up for the tour did not end up going. So, we had our very own private tour of the plantation, and got to pelt tons of questions at our tour guide about Costa Rica culture and life. He also lifted entire sections from the moview The Bucket List to give us a brief history of coffee, a fact we did not know until we happened to see the movie on our flight home. You gotta love an enterprising tour guide. Overall, this was a really awesome tour, and a nice alternative to all the purely nature/rainforest hikes we had been doing. Plus, we got to meet the actual plantation owner (Don Juan), who is this really old, short man who does not speak a lick of English. He happened to be walking the grounds and saw us there.

And with that, we ended our Costa Rican adventure. Yes, there are gaps (like our trip to the airport where we got stuck for probably 45 minutes because a tour bus in front of us had skidded off the road) and things I probably forgot to mention (like the fact that if you use your credit card to pay the departure tax at the airport, it's considered a cash advance and you get hit with an extra charge by your bank), but I think it covers a lot of it. We hope to go back in maybe a year or two, but that will all depend, I suppose on whether planes are still flying and if they so, how expensive ticket prices are, as will so many of our travel ideas. On the bright side, I was really glad I got to go here while it was still economically feasible and before it became even more touristed than it already is. I wonder how Costa Rica will find a balance between its tourist economy and their ecological endeavors. Hopefully, they are able to achieve it because it would be sad to lose such a beautiful landscape.

Monteverde - From the Air

Early in the morning, we got picked up from our hotel and taken to one of the cloud forests in Monteverde. Monteverde has two "cloud forests," one on either side of the Continental Divide. The clever name for these eco-wonderlands is derived from the fact that they are literally in the clouds. As such, you are generally always walking through a fine mist while you are walking through these areas.

Today was to be our day of breezing through the upper canopy on zip lines like crazy tourists. This notion was completely petrifying to my girlfriend, but I was too tired to be scared. For anyone not familiar with zip lining, there is a series of cables and platforms (about 18 where we were) through an area (in this case a rainforest canopy) and you sort of slide along these cables, from platform to platform at really high speeds. Some systems provide you with a braking lever. Ours, however, left us with only our hands to stop us, as they gave us thick gloves and explained how we had to grip the cable when we needed to stop or slow down. This was by far the hardest part because you never knew if you were going too fast or not fast enough, or when to start braking. As an added bonus, about half-way through, there was a very tall platform where they handed you a rope and they pushed you off, and while it looked and felt like you were plummeting to the ground, the rope you were holding would catch you just before the ground and swing you out into this large clearing. They call it a Tarzan Swing. I called it excitement with gravity.

Zip lining was a nice experience but certainly nothing too exciting for either of us, unless you count the adrenaline rush. However, we were glad we did it so that we could say that we did it. After that little 1 or 2 hour adventure was over, we got to go on a self-guided cloud forest hike, which included (you guessed it) more hanging bridges. By now, though, we had become connoisseurs of these contraptions, comparing and contrasting them. "These seem more stable." "The last ones looked nicer." Etc. We are not sure if we did not see much wildlife on the self-guided hike because all of the nature blended into itself, which seems completely possible, or if it was because only a scant hundred or so feet away crazy tourists were flying and screaming through the air, zip lining their little hearts out. It was probably more likely the latter, or at least a healthy mix of the two.

Next we got a bite to eat, followed immediately by another butterfly garden. However, this one was much larger and had a guide, which was really helpful. The other helpful item was that it stopped raining when we entered the garden and the butterflies became far more active. We learned all of the things we had learned (and forgotten) about butterflies in grade school, as well as a few things we had never known before. For example, some of the design patterns on the backs of butterflies make them look like owls or snakes, or the fact that butterfly wings are covered with scales and they reflect the light and that's what gives them their pretty colors.

After we were finished here, we went up the road a little ways to the Santa Elena Reserve, which is a huge park-like area run by a school, and did some hiking through there for a couple of hours, returning afterwards to where we had gone zip lining to catch the last shuttle out, which we had drop us off in the downtown area so that we could grab dinner, use an ATM, and get some groceries.

According to our handy guidebook, and the map our hotel gave us, Monteverde only has one bank and ATM. Unfortunately for us, the bank closed at 3PM and the ATM had decided it no longer wanted to work. Fortunately, however, we ran into two American teachers on a mission for cash, who had been asking around town and thought they had located a secret ATM. We followed them along in their mission, which ended up proving successful - as we found a little ATM tucked away in a super tiny nondescript room of a strip mall. Cash in had, we went to try and find dinner.

It seems many of the restaurants in the area had changed since the publication of our guidebook, and so, we just found somewhere that looked nice and clean and had dinner. It was nice that the place we picked was across the street from the grocery store and also right next door to the local ice cream parlor, which we also decided to sample.

Tired, well fed, with groceries and cash in-hand, we took a taxi back down the long and bumpy road to our hotel and turned in for the evening.

Arenal to Monteverde

The next day was our trip over to Monteverde. The two towns are not that far apart, unless you count vertical distance. The main problem is the roads between the two places are really rough and difficult to navigate. However, there are some horseback tours that can get you there and another service called jeep-boat-jeep that can easily get you there quickly, and shave at least an hour (of really rough travel) off the overall trek. Its clever name is derived from the fact that a jeep or taxi takes you to a boat that transports you across the Arenal Lake, to another jeep or shuttle, which drops you off at your hotel.

The boat ride was gorgeous and would have been very enjoyable if it wasn't for the two insane annoying teenagers behind us. The woman was from London, I think. I was not quite clear where the guy was from. They were maybe sleeping together but it was hard to say. Based upon the conversation, it sounded like they had been backpacking and staying in some hostels and that she had a boyfriend somewhere. All I know for certain is the two would not shut up for the entire one hour long boat trip and the conversation wasn't even fun to listen to. So, it wasn't like you could just sit back and enjoy a nice eavesdropping session. Instead you just felt trapped with this overwhelming hope that these two would somehow pass out mid-sentence and end your suffering.

Fortunately, the boat ride did have a terminus and we were not on the same shuttle with the non-stop-talking duo. This is where things got even more beautiful. Basically, this entire end of the drive is uphill and you find yourself looking out the window at seemingly never ending countryside with rolling fields and farms and just natural beauty that your brain has trouble processing. Within the span of the drive, the temperature drops about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the roads continue to get increasingly miserable.

Finally, we got to our hotel, which was only about 500 meters down the road from the Cloud Forest Reserve. Along the road to there, is the Hummingbird Museum, which is basically a little shop. My guidebook recommended going to this shop for some free hummingbird observation. So, we headed up the road and were astounded with the hummingbirds zipping around the little outdoor area, whisking in-between the feeders and trees. They went so fast and so close, you often worried that they were going to hit you. However, they were much too smart to do something stupid like that and easily negotiated their way around any innocent bystanders. Afterward, we briefly checked out the Reserve, which was closing and headed home to our hotel to get to our night tour.

This was pretty cool, as we got to walk through the rain forest at night and see lots of nocturnal animals, even tarantulas. It had its moments of being a little scary, like when everyone turned their flashlights off and you realized how dark it really was and that anything could be crawling on you, including that huge spider that was only 3 feet away when you initially turned off your light. It was really a great experience.

Arenal on the Water

For our last full day in Arenal, we booked a canoe trip. We had a tough time deciding between a canoe trip or waterfall rapelling, but in the end we decided the canoe trip would be calmer, easier, and more peaceful. It was a half day trip down a Class II or III river. Given that we had never really been on any river with a real current, this was an entirely new experience. It was a fun trip. It was a little difficult because it was the first time my girlfriend and I had ever acted as a canoe team and I would have trouble understanding why she was doing what she was doing. Plus, sometimes, we would row the wrong way with our correcting strokes or whatever so the other one would be rowing so much harder not understanding why it wasn't working, but we learned a lot both about canoeing and about each other. For example, she learned that I could not always see the obstacles ahead of us that she could, as she was in front, and I learned to just trust more that she knew what she was doing and just offer her as much power as I could, and try to remember which way I was supposed to be rowing. Eventually, we seemed to get a lot better at it and even the guide said we were doing really good at one point.

(I would say that was probably the biggest part about this trip - learning about each other. With all of this hiking and canoeing and everything else, we seemed to learn so much about what and how the other person thought and how to communicate better. I had not expected my girlfriend and I to learn so much about one another on the trip but we did. The canoe trip was probably the pinnacle of all of this because of the way people experience it. It was seemingly the hardest and best part of the trip for me, but not in the way you would expect. I would say my favorite day in Arenal was the 13+ hour hiking day, but the day that probably made the most lasting impact in my relationship with my girlfriend was the day of the canoe trip.)

After we finished our trip, they made us lunch by the river. It was good and we got to talk to the three other people on the canoe tour with us, who were all really cool and around our age, probably a little younger. They were staying in-town and were leaving for Monteverde that day. We were able to recommend a couple different things they could try before they left and it ended up being really helpful to them.

That afternoon, we went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, which is a hotel but also one of the best places to be able to see the volcano lava flows at night. It is really out of the way. So, if you intend to go into the city at all while staying in Arenal, I would not recommend staying there. However, if you are good with staying on-site the whole time you are there and just book lots of tours that include transportation, it is really a nice place to stay. We walked on some of their private paths, one of which led to a little waterfall, which was really nice, but the paths are not maintained as well. On our way back up we saw, you guessed it, more monkeys. (We saw monkeys pretty much every day that we were there. In fact, even when we go out hiking or kayaking now that we are home, we constantly think we are going to see monkeys in the trees.)

After the little hike, we made our ways back up towards the lodge, after another small hike through some gardens. Somehow, while waiting for the night to come, my girlfriend and I got separated. She had decided she wanted to go sit on another area of the deck and when I went to find her, I couldn't. So, after looking for her for a while I decided maybe she had gone back to where had been hiking before in the gardens. So, I went back but I couldn't find her. I did find a really awesome place for us to watch the volcano and it seemed no one else was there. I went back to try and find her and ran into her. She was so upset. She had no idea where I had been. I guess I had somehow just failed to see her back on the deck because she was sitting in a different area with some random people. Reunited, we went to the place I had found to watch the volcano and the clouds cleared a little so that we could see the top of the volcano and the lava. It was amazing. However, the best view came on the cab ride home when the clouds completely cleared and we could see lava just pouring down the side of the mountain. It was amazing.

Hiking Arenal

This was probably one of our most active days of the entire trip, with activities beginning at around 8AM and not finishing until 11 that night.

Once again, it began with a delicious, but early breakfast, which we finished in-time for our early morning pickup to get us to our 8AM hike through the rain forest. There were an abundance of hanging bridges there, as well. Again, our guide was really cool and our group was fairly small. There was a family of three women (a mother and her two college-aged daughters), two other girls (probably in college) and a third girl from Germany. The hike was kind of long and there were a lot of inclines and declines. Our guide took us the opposite direction that a lot of the other groups were going (its a circular route). This reduced the amount of other groups we had to deal with along the way and made the hike slightly easier. He had recently injured his foot playing soccer and wanted to take it a little easy.

After finishing here, we dropped off the two college girls but kept everyone else and went on our hike down to see the La Fortuna waterfall. It is about 500 steps down, on a pretty steep decline. Once you get there, though, you get to swim in the absolutely ice cold water, just beneath the waterfall. The German girl had absolutely no issues with it and jumped right in. My girlfriend and the mother of the other two girls made their way in pretty easily. Then one of the daughters went in, which left only the other daughter and me. It was during all of this that I learned that this (Colombian) family was from Miami. So, we all bonded, learned what they did for a living, where they worked, etc. The mother was a teacher and the two daughters were in college. One of them worked at a restaurant I know. Eventually, I got in but the last daughter was having a rough time. Finally, I convinced her to come in with the logic, how often are you going to get to do this. Bam, she was in.

Once we got out and managed to get our shoes on - fortunately, we had brought a couple extra towels and we shared them with the others so that they could dry off and get their feet back into their shoes. Then there was the difficult and strenuous hike back up the mountain. During all of this we also learned that the German girl worked for a company in Germany that was going to begin offering tours to Costa Rica for older/retired people. So, she was trying to try out all the activities to determine which ones were appropriate for that age group. We all seemed to feel this was not one of them.

We, eventually, made it to the top and then they dropped us off for lunch and we were told we would have a different tour guide for the second half of our trip. We were all sort of disappointed by this because our guide had so far been great, but whatever. Our lunch ended up being at the same restaurant we had gone to dinner at the night before. Again, it was absolutely fantastic and it included dessert, which was the awesome ice cream with hunks of brownie in it. The entire meal was quite good and the vegetables were just as fresh as the fruit.

Refueled and rested, we did a little souvenir shopping, but the rain had started and it was pouring by the time we got onto our tour bus, heading towards the Volcano hike. Along the way, we picked up a group of about three or four Cubans from Miami. It was hilarious. So, everyone was speaking some form of Spanish. The guide wasn't sure he wanted to do the hike because of the rain and asked us if we really wanted to go, but we were all insistent that we just had to go hiking. So, we got out and began the hike. The first five to ten minutes were miserable and wet but then the sky inexplicably cleared and we were able to continue our hike. It was really cool.

The day we landed, the volcano had begun to be more active and there was a lot more lava coming out than normal. So much so that they had closed off part of the path which takes you right to where the lava rocks are from the last large eruption. However, the Cubans being shrewed negotiators convinced the guide to let us go up unaccompanied and we got to stand on the lava rocks. It was staggering how far the rocks had been blown out of the volcano, and a little disturbing that it could easily happen again and this time hit us. Fortunately, the guide came up and stopped us from going too far and we headed back to the bus.

Next stop, hot springs. We went to the Tabacon hot springs and it was really pretty. The springs there all sort of flow through these man-made gardens, with rocks and such there that you can sit on as the water rushes past you, or there are pools that you can wade through and a waterfall that you can stand behind. The water is around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and it was just what we needed after such a strenuous day of hiking - it was about 6PM when we got there. Dinner was at 8 and then we were scheduled to go home. Our guide, however, took us all back to the volcano to try and get some night lava shots, but it was fogged over and we ended back at home, at around 11PM. What a day.

Arenal From Above

For our first full day in Arenal, we had breakfast at the little dining area - a huge buffet included with our room. The fruit was incedibly fresh and delicious every day. If you like pineapple, papya, and bananas, you are going to love Costa Rica. After supplying ourselves with food, we went on a Sky Tram ride up to the top of a platform that offers some absolutely beautiful views of the active side of the Arenal Volcano and the man-made Arenal Lake. The shuttle that took us there seemed to be filled with trendy older-hipsters. Somehow, we just did not seem to fit in with them, as they discussed their new cars and all of the money they were spending here and there. Fortunately, we were separated from them upon our arrival, as they wanted to zipline down the mountain and we had already decided we were going to do that in Monteverde. So, they matched us up with another group of folks that were pretty nice. We had two guides - one was very new to the area, she was from Bahli and I think the other one was helping her out.

After we got to the upper platform and took lots of pictures, they took us on a small rainforest hike and explained lots of nature to us. As our first tour and nature seminar, it was really good. They refreshed our memory of epiphites and bromiliades and were really nice. After all of that was done, we made our way back to the platform for our ride back down. It was a really nice and easy trip, and helped get us oriented.

One thing I noticed that was different from my trip to Italy was it seemed like absolutely no one had done any preparatory work in anticipation of the trip, let alone thought to carry a guide book around with them. I could not seem to get my head around this, as I seemed to use my book even more once I got there. It helped us find our way to a local ecological park that is affiliated with the local schools - teaching lots of nature classes. For only a few dollars, we got to wander around the whole park that was completely devoid of tourists except for us and see a sloth, iguanas, herons, poison dart frogs, a butterfly garden, and all sorts of other stuff. It was really awesome, and so incredibly inexpensive. An entire experience I would have missed without my guidebook.

Afterwards, we made our way into the town, had lunch at the great inexpensive place recommended by my guidebook, found a couple of ATMs and a grocery store. Once again, nearly no tourists were to be found in our restaurant. The grocery store was really helpful for getting water and snack food. As is to be expected, water can be really expensive in the hotels and gift shops. All the money saved could be put towards activities, food, and souvenirs.

That night, we had planned on going to a steak restaurant recommended by my guidebook, but our hotel concierge said that we would like this other place more. So, he had us go there. It really was good. I had this half of chicken cooked in banana leaves with this delicious sauce. Fantastic. And my girlfriend had some steak, which was also really good. Even though this was probably one of the nicest restaurants in the entire town, it was probably about as expensive as going to Chili's here in the US. Completely ridiculous.

It was a very productive day and just what we needed in anticipation of our long day coming up.

Costa Rica Photos

As promised, here are my photos from Costa Rica, with captions, and a couple of short movies of hummingbirds. Some of the shots did not come out very clearly, but many of them I think you will enjoy. There's close to 200 of them.

Our First Cabin

Early the next morning, we awoke and experimented with our shower - trying to make it hot but not scalding. The place we stayed at in San Jose also had a shared kitchen area, with free coffee and lots of different teas. It was really a cool little place and relatively empty. There seemed to be about three college-aged girls staying in another room just down the way from us, but I think that was everyone in our particular building. So, it was nice and quiet. I imagine a bunch of college kids could have a blast there ... except, it is in downtown San Jose.

We checked out and left our luggage with the hotel front-desk folks while we went to grab breakfast at a little place down the road. This was the first time I was to have black beans and rice for breakfast. What a trip. The traditional food there, though, is far more bland than many other Latin areas. Quite different than what I expected, but good and cheap.

Our shuttle out to Arenal got to our hotel almost as soon as we returned from breakfast and whisked us off to our first private cabin. The trip out was really easy after you got out of the small and busy roads of the San Jose area. Pretty soon, most of civilization fell away and you were driving through much more rural areas. It was really cool. The cabins at our resort were sort of like little duplexes. So, there might be someone on the other side of your duplex but you would never know it unless you saw them. There were trees and shrubs everywhere making you feel more secluded. The showers were also really cool because they were sort of open in the ceiling, providing you with daylight in there, and there were plants set into a little alcove just beyond the shower. We also had these really cool rocking chairs on our front porch. So, you could just sit and relax and watch the humming birds.

We spent a lot of that day just enjoying our cabin and trying to make the AC work. We were, unfortunately, unsuccessful with this latter task and they switched us to a new and bigger cabin. We were somehow not as happy with the second cabin as the first, but they were both really fantastic. The view from both rooms was of the pretty landscaping that dominated the area that was our resort and then the omnipresent volcano beyond. Really, really pretty.

This was probably our least active day of the entire trip. We walked a little while out to the road (our resort was set off from the main highway in Arenal), and determined that walking into the town or anywhere else really was not something worth undertaking. The streets there were not really laid out for pedestrians until you got into the actual town, and given the driving down there, you were really risking an awful lot by attempting to walk.

Deleted Scenes

I realized that I forgot a couple segments from my last post. Probably the most significant one was that the server in our office went down just before I left on vacation. I am not, technically, our IT person. However, I do have a long history of fixing stuff that is IT related and we have a service contract with Dell for IT support. Hence, armed with a couple of cell phones and a sense of adventure, I worked with Dell to determine that at least one of the server's hard drives was bad and got it replaced and then determined that the remaining hard drive was corrupted and I needed to destroy and rebuild the entire array.

In theory, this should have gone more-or-less smoothly, as we had a complete backup tape that had gone off the night before. We backup every night and the backup was good and the tapes were brand new. So, I had a lot of positives in my favor. Plus, we have high level technical support at Dell. As such, you only work with the folks in the U.S. that speak English and really know a lot of stuff. I had a huge negative, however, Windows 2003 Small Business Server, which ended up being a thorn in my side and kept me in the office from 8AM Wednesday until 6:30AM, the next morning (Thursday). (This was the Thursday before I flew out to Costa Rica, and I still had not packed.) Who needs sleep, right? Apparently, I did. Because I distinctly remember going home and leaving a message for the person I knew would come in first that morning - not very long after I left, actually - to call out IT guy, with a detailed description of what I had attempted. I also had Dell notate the case file.

The heart of the problem was that Windows was not restoring correctly and nothing we tried seemed to be working. I kept having to start from scratch each time, and that usually took about another 40 minutes or so, to get to the point where I could try to restore again and then that part took about an hour. All of this led to some interesting comments and Tweets in the middle of the night that night. So, for any of those people that received comments from me at around 3 or 4AM that night/morning, thanks for writing - you gave me something to read.

While this was going on, I was still on decongestants and antibiotics for whatever odd sinus thing that had infected my body right before my trip. I am guessing lack of sleep was not the best course of treatment for all of this, but.... I did refuse to go to work for the remainder of Thursday and left the rest of it up to our IT guy. I felt a little vindicated that it took him a long time to fix it, as well. He spent all of Thursday in our office and when I cam in Friday morning, it still was not completely working. In fact, he ended up having to take it back to his office and work on it there. While I was in Costa Rica, however, I received an email to let me know that the server finally came back up.

I am still not fully convinced that the server is operating at 100%, but it is definitely functioning. I have us calendared to buy a new server in the first half of next year. Heck, for the amount that we ended up having to pay the IT guy, we probably could have just bought a new server.

Given my ability to become completely consumed with IT, it has been suggested that I consider taking a class or two in it. So, I am considering it. That and Spanish. I am horrible at foreign languages, but I feel like in South Florida, I have a better chance of being able to practice it and use it on a more frequent basis, and I think it would help me in my future travels.

Takeoffs and Landings

As some of you know, I was in Costa Rica last week. However, in order to get to Costa Rica, I had to fly. I suppose I didn't have to fly. I could have taken and boat, but that would have gotten me there far too slowly and I would have missed all my other reservations. In an attempt to minimize any angst over possible hurricanes that might occur between the time I booked the flight and the time I actually took the flight, I acquired travel insurance from AIG. The insurance was also taken out to cover possible lost luggage (that never happens, right) and the potential need to be evacuated in the event my girlfriend or I developed some rare disease or had an injury and needed to be airlifted out. We were happy to learn how ridiculously cheap this insurance was. For all of that, covering lost luggage, all hotel and airline reservations that might be lost and getting airlifted out in the event of an emergency, and a whole bunch of other stuff I had never even considered, it was under $100 for both of us. Totally worth it. However, no insurance policy that I took out could have possibly protected me against the flight I had to Costa Rica.

It all started simply enough. The flight was in the afternoon and I was rushing to get to the airport after getting hung up at an estate plan signing because the couple failed to tell us that they had multiple aliases. Not only that, but as we revised the documents further, more and more names came out of them. For example, after revising them a second time, we were about to sign and the wife said, "Does it matter that I have a different name on my driver's license?" Nah, who cares about silly things like names. My girlfriend was worried that they would close our flight because we would not be getting there two hours in advance. Having never experienced anything like that, this thought had never occurred to me. Now, I was suddenly stressed and concerned that I would not even be able to get on my plane.

We dropped off the car and, eventually, got on our shuttle to the airport. Upon getting to the ticketing area, we learned something really cool. At the airport, we were able to self-check-in for our international flight with checked luggage. Brilliant. It was the coolest thing ever. We just scanned our credit cards and passports and the the luggage tags printed out at the counter and they would call us over, stick the luggage stuff on them and off we went. One hurdle cleared. Next we went through security and grabbed a quick sandwich before heading to the gate, where our flight had almost finished boarding - no waiting around for us.

My girlfriend was excited that we were to have a female pilot. I was excited to just be on the plane. As we took off, and the beautiful ocean spread out around us, and my girlfriend started snapping pictures of the Keys and Cuba, as we quickly wizzed past them.. Before we knew it, after some heavy turbulence, we were over San Jose. There was a slight problem, however, the airport was closed. What?!

See, that heavy turbulence we passed through on the way there was owing to heavy thunderstorms. Well, evidently, some were still lingering over the San Jose airport and the entire airport had closed. Worse still, the pilot could not raise the tower on the radio to determine how bad the conditions were on the ground. So, with 20 minutes of fuel left (the pilot provided frequent updates of such things), we began to circle the airport. About a half-hour later, the pilot explained that we would be attempting to land now, as the weather had slightly improved. If this did not work, we would have to divert to the other airport in Liberia.

As we broke through the clouds, on our final approach, just as we were able to see the earth below us, the pilot veered off and hauled ass to Liberia, explaining along the way that the landing was not going to work and we barely had any fuel left so we would have to fly through some storms, expect some turbulence, sorry for the inconvenience.

About 18 minutes later, we landed in Liberia. Go us. Several of the passengers were more than willing to simply get off here and arrange for transportation out from this airport, but they wouldn't let us deplane. They tried to blame it on the fact that the airport is not equipped with immigration. Unfortunately, for them, a few of the passengers knew better and voiced their displeasure with being lied to. Yes, I was one of those passengers, but it's not my fault. My book on Costa Rica clearly indicates that their airport in Liberia accepts international flights and that there is a massive effort underway to try to expand it to accommodate more direct flights. Not to mention the fact that I actually looked at booking a direct flight into Liberia when I bought the tickets to begin with, but the cost was too high.

They refueled our plane and about 30 to 45 minutes later, we were back on our way to San Jose. This time, we landed. Wooo! Not only that, we finally got to get off the plane. For reference, our flight was due in by 4PM (local time, that's 6 EDT). It is now around 6 their time. We are hungry. We hurry towards immigration and stand in-line. And stand in-line. The line seems to be moving, but we cannot tell where the people are going. It becomes clear that the line is only moving because they are changing the number of rows in the labyrinth that is the rope line. After about a half-hour, we learn that immigration is closed for everyone that is not a Costa Rican citizen because the electrical storm brought down their computer systems. They estimate that they will be restored in about 2 to 3 hours. Joy.

At about 9:30 (local time), immigration begins to show signs of activity again and we are all rushed through. We grab our luggage, which is fortunately, still sitting there in baggage claim and rush to find our ride to the hotel. After trying to make the phones work for a while, my girlfriend finds a man that has a sign with my name on it. He locates a shuttle for us and we are whisked off to our hotel, in the rain. We arrive at the hotel at 10PM (local time). We are starving and without any local currency. Plus, it's pouring rain, very dark, and San Jose is sort of a sketchy place to hang out in after-hours. Fortunately, we are just down the road from a 24 hour Shell gasoline station, with an ATM. Score one for the petroleum company. We go and get local currency, after taking some time to figure out that 10,000 colones basically equals $20, not a $200, and we dine on scrumptious peanuts and pretzels. Hence, ended our first day (and adventure) in Costa Rica.

Oh, one of you asked if I will be posting pictures of the trip. The answer is I already have, and you obviously do not keep up with my Flickr page, which is not surprising, as I do not think many people do. There are some photos of the trip over there. I have more that I am working on uploading to Picasa and once they are on Picasa, I will provide another link. For now, Flickr is what's available.

People Are Rude

This weekend, I finally dragged myself to go see the second Narnia installment. I am still not sure what to make of the movie, as a whole. I think the ending to the movie left me a little confused or disillusioned, I am not sure which. However, I do know that I am sort of getting tired of going to public events because people are just rude, and often the rudeness comes from directions I never would have expected. For example, I thought for sure the little children sitting down the row from us were not going to be able to sit quietly for a movie with a running time of over two hours. I was proven wrong, possibly owing to the vigilance their father. Although, the 20 or 30 something year old couple that sat at the other end of our row were incredibly annoying - talking and giggling throughout.

I, personally, do not care if you talk or laugh or do whatever you want to do during a movie, as long as I do not have to hear it. However, they were too loud to ignore and they had no sense of volume - they did not get quieter during the softer parts of the film or only try to speak when the louder parts came across the screen. I felt like demanding that they pay me back for my tickets. Apparently, they needed their parents to take them to the film.

I found that most of the theater audiences at the Orlando Fringe Festival were generally quiet and attentive, but there were still some tense moments at the production put on by the youth theater group. We got lucky enough to sit directly in front of some proud parents with every sort of recording device imaginable. I kept hearing one of their digital cameras make its "I just took a picture" sound, and my experience would not have been complete without the mother suddenly freaking out saying, "Oh no, I am out," of film or tape, I presumed.

I am all for people having a good time, but not when it comes at the expense of everyone else around them. If you really needed to talk to one another that badly, you should have rented a DVD.

Antibiotics Are Your Friend

So, the doctor decided that whatever I had was not getting better and that he may as well throw an antibiotic (Levaquin, a particular favorite of mine) at it. Right or not, his approach seemed to work, as I felt noticeably better yesterday and a little bit better today. I would still place myself at somewhere around 70% health, but much better than I was. However, the cost of health was still expensive, and I have insurance. I cannot imagine how much it would be for someone that didn't. I suppose, a good amount of the cost, spent in over-the-counter medications, was not even reduced by the health insurance factor. In any event, I am now medicated and on the road to what I hope is recovery. I sure hope recovery is like a kitchen with the smell of bacon, french toast, and maple syrup wafting through the air.

Fortunately, while I was sick, many bloggers were still writing and when I didn't have any of them to read, I still had my trustee book. Currently, I am reading a novel called Arthur and George. It is quite good, but it feels like I have been reading it for forever, as I so rarely get the chance to make any real progress in it. That all changed over the past couple of days and in-between my blog reading and serious napping, I was able to almost entirely finish it. I also have to select books that I want to bring to Costa Rica for the plane flight and shuttles. I figure one or two books should be sufficient. I would get a Kindle, but they are still far too expensive to be worth it. Even if I ruined the two books I brought and had to replace them, it would still be cheaper than the Kindle. Stupid technology, how you tempt me so, with your flashing lights and cool buttons.

Another Orlando Weekend

The trip began easily enough, but was quickly interrupted by a near-collision I experienced. This ended up requiring that I have all four of my tires replaced. Apparently, when you slam on your brakes, flat areas can be created on portions of the tires, which explained why my car was making funny sounds and additional vibration as I drove afterwards. I also had to locate my girlfriend when I arrived. She was at a Books-A-Million. So, the thought was she could ask the employees how I should get there, as it is located just off of I-4, which is the road I was on. As it turns out, no one at the store had the slightest clue how to get to their store. I ended up having to drive around for over an hour to find my way to the store. Absolutely insane.

I got to see several more plays while I was at the Fringe Festival this weekend. It was really cool. Some of the performances I found not so appealing but a lot of them were quite interesting. We also got to experience 5 Guys Burgers and Fries. It was really good. However, it was about 3 o'clock before I actually got to eat anything that day and that was it, so I may have been slightly biased and just overjoyed to be able to finally eat anything at all. However, I will go to another one soon and test this theory.

My girlfriend's final performance went quite well. Some of the audience members even stood when they applauded. One item I should probably clarify is my girlfriend's role in the play. I think some folks may think she is starring in it, but she is not. Instead, she wrote, produced and directed it. That probably does not make a huge difference to many of my readers, but it may make a difference to at least a few of you trying to get a clear picture of the whole setup.

While we were in Orlando, we went to the Dandelion Cafe, which was a new and exciting experience. Their menu had probably about two pages filled with different types of teas and the decor was very different - a little 70s-like or something exhibiting that laid-back and independent vibe. We got to try some hummus and some of their other culinary delights. It was probably the first healthy meal we were able to enjoy while we were there. Thank goodness for local kindness.

I also managed to get sick while I was in Orlando, which I am still trying to recover from. Hopefully, my doctor will quell everyone's fears today and say it is just a small cold with fever. I will be quite happy to be well again.

Online Presence

This morning, I remarked to my girlfriend that I was surprised no one had developed an online presence reporting agency. You may be thinking, what the hell are you talking about, and that would make a lot of sense because I do not think that title is accurate. I think I can better explain what I am talking about than give a title to it.

Every year, lots of people pay for someone to keep track of their three credit reports, which are known to often be filled with inaccuracies but that can meaningfully ruin your life. For example, I have had to remove incorrect information on my reports at least twice and it was a nightmare. If I didn't get it removed I couldn't do other important things, like get loans approved for college or something, and you had to jump through so many hoops to prove to the agencies that the data they had was wrong. Unfortunately, you usually did not learn that there was a problem with your credit report at all until you were suddenly denied for something. Now we have credit monitoring systems, some of them even marketed by the same credit reporting agencies that so often seem to be getting the information wrong. Doesn't it seem they should have to have this type of system in place (for free) before they are allowed to hold that much power? But, I digress.

Later in the morning, a news report came onto NPR discussing how many people are using MySpace and Facebook to find jobs, in this the 21st Century. However, they noted that a lot of people do not think about what they put out on the Internet before they begin applying for jobs and that most of today's employers now Google all of their applicants to see what it out there in cyberspace about them. Once again, there is this thing where your past could come back to haunt you - even if it is inaccurate or an ex-lover decided to post pictures or video of it after you two broke up, after he promised the images were destroyed. It really seems that someone with a bit of a grudge against you and a little free time could wreak some serious havoc on your life, and you may never know it before it was too late. Given all of this, I am surprised that no one has derived a method for ferreting out such derogatory details on the Net and charging folks a small fee to monitor their information and to help them get it removed.

I suppose, for all I know, someone has already derived a method for doing this. Although, I imagine it could be difficult. What if what you publish now belongs to someone else? How do you force that company to remove it? I am not really sure. In either event, at least three lessons should be taken from this: Google yourself ... often, be really careful about what you put out there because it might be out there for forever - those emails that you write back and forth can be discoverable in court, and can also easily be posted to a Website, later, and if you are crafty enough, there is probably money to be made upon other people's precarious positions.

Another Blog

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I got roped into becoming a member of the creative team for a new blog. It sounds exciting when I say "creative team" doesn't it? It sounds like I am working on some super-awesome thing doesn't it? Well, maybe I am. One never knows. In any event, the new blog is all non-fiction and wholly related to the arts and advertising (what a combination). We will have to see what develops from it.

One thing I have realized is that Blogger is the home for me, for now. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking of switching over to Wordpress because I think their themes are snazzy - especially the three column ones that Blogger does not seem to offer. However, I learned while I was helping on this new project that Wordpress has some limitations as well. For example, embedding with iframes is so not happening there and do you see that new Creative Commons icon on my blog - in the left hand column? No? Well, trust me, it's there. It took me a half hour to figure out how to get it to appear in Wordpress.

Wordpress does have some cool stuff going for it. For example, integrating your domain name is fairly easy and you can easily create separate pages for your blog, which can make it a more multi-purpose portal, with some open ended growth potential. However, I think the restrictions were enough to keep me around on Blogger, at least for a little while longer.

In other news, American Airlines will now begin charging you to check any bags at all. No, I do not mean any bags after the first one. I mean all of your checked bags are going to cost you. Fly safely.