November at 2009 at The Observer's Log

Archive for November, 2009

Taking a pet from Costa Rica

28 Nov 2009

It figures, just when we thought we’d started to have everything figured out, we hit another snag. (There’s always another snag.) This time, it’s with Asia, our cat.

Our problem is not with Canada — all they need is a valid rabies vaccination, which we have. Our problem is not our airline (Continental) — we already have a reservation that allows us to take our cat. Our problem is with Costa Rica.

I’m so not surprised.

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Anyone want to buy a used car?

24 Nov 2009

That ticking is getting louder, I tell ya.

We’re officially out of the “long vacation” timeframe, and into the “standard” two week vacation timeframe. You know this one: enough time to fly to a distant land, see two or three different places, get really drunk in a bar and get robbed blind, realise you’ve actually got a funky disease you’re not sure if you got from the food or that person you swore looked like a woman the night before…

What? Why are you looking at me like that? You make it sound like no-one else has vacations like that.

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My favourite trains (so far)

21 Nov 2009

I rarely remember my dreams. I have to wake up in the middle of them to remember what they were about, and quite often I’m so tired that by the time I can get my mental faculties together to try and remember the dream, I already forgot what it was. Which is probably good, since most of the dreams I remember make very little sense.

This morning’s dream was an exception. I was talking with someone I know (admittedly, can’t remember who it was) about trains. (Believe it or not, this is not an unknown conversation.) They asked me what my favourite train trips were, and I had said something like “whoa, that’s a tough one, let me think”. Then I started rhyming them off.

Oddly enough, that was about when I woke up … and I kept rhyming. So I figured, heck, that just sounds like a blog post!

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To end, this shall

18 Nov 2009

Today
I watched the setting sun
Golden fringed clouds
Mustard streaks over the horizon
I thought

This, too, shall end

I count in weeks
Soon to be days
Soon to be hours
Then minutes

The arms swirl forward
Tickticktick-twirling by
Counting out
Running down
Dwindling

Time
The end of time
My time
My awful inevitability

This end, too shallow

I sit on Temporal Row
I struggle to draw out each breath
Consume my last meal
Crumb by crumb
Measure my last mile in
Millimetres
Dread the final flick

Things I
(W)(C)(Sh)ould
Have done
Wishes, dreams, chances, decisions, regrets
…if I could do it over?

To end, this shall

3 weeks remaining in Costa Rica

17 Nov 2009

Today marks 21 days until we leave Costa Rica. Three weeks. We officially enter a period of time that could be a “long vacation”.

Sadly, a vacation is something we’re not going to be having. Instead, we have a lot of things we have to do. Not just here, but also in preparation for our return to Calgary. In some ways, it almost makes leaving Calgary look easy…

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Overtime is not a solution

12 Nov 2009

Every project is defined by a schedule. That schedule determines when certain tasks start and stop, when people enter and leave a project, and ultimately how much that project will cost (because, after all, time is money). But as we all know, the schedule you start with is almost never the one you end with.

Schedules change. No-one can predict the future. No-one can see the out-of-left-field problems, the people unable to work due to sudden illness (or worse), or the sudden changes in project direction. When a project’s schedule starts to go sour, time management rapidly becomes extremely important. In a world where deadlines are fixed and resources are limited, one of the most common solutions is to work overtime.

However, overtime is not a solution. Overtime is a problem.

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Our last weekend away

9 Nov 2009

Well, Monkey, we’re down to less than a month before we’re back home again. In fact, a month today you’ll (hopefully) be sound asleep in a bed in our home in Calgary. It’s hard to believe that this is actually ending. It seems to odd to think that after all that we’ve been through, that this isn’t more permanent. Such are the joys of life…

Thankfully, one of the other joys of life are grandparents. You’re lucky — you’ve got four of them. And you were very excited when Grandpa and Granny came down on Wednesday. It’s Grandpa’s third visit since we came to Costa Rica, and Granny’s second. You might see them nearly every day on Skype, but there’s just nothing like seeing them in person.

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Alberta communications companies suck

5 Nov 2009

It’s about as official as it gets, now. We leave Costa Rica on 8 December. Which means that on the morning of 9 December, we’re going to be needing a few things. We’re trying to establish as much of that as we can remotely, so that it’s “in place” when we arrive. It just makes things easier, right?

Well, it would make things easier if we could actually set things up properly. Therein lies the problem — it’s not that easy to do! Especially when it comes to the Holy Trinity of communications services: phone, internet, and TV.

The term “rocket science” comes to mind…

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A trip to La Paz

1 Nov 2009

Our time is dwindling in Costa Rica, Monkey. Our little experiment draws to a close in just over a month. That’s five weekends (not counting the one we just had — that would have made it six). Our Costa Rica “bucket list” is a little longer than we’d like, and there are just things we are not going to get to see. It’s a little tragic, considering how long we’ve been here, but I guess this is what happens when the joys of life sometimes hold on a little harder than with others.

Being in good shape (namely, none of us was sick), we decided to take a little journey north to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. It’s listed in all the tour books as one of the places “you must visit”, and we’d waited more than long enough to go.

We kinda had to wait, though. It took them a while to rebuild…

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