Tag Archives: coffee

A week without coffee

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A week ago, I sat in one of our meeting rooms at the office, discussing the current state of one of our projects, when I felt the all-too-familiar and sickening sensation of a rush of fluid in my nose. The generous drop of blood hit my finger a moment later.

It took nearly 20 minutes for the bleeding to stop. It freaked me out a bit because I had no real reason as to why it had bled. By the time I got home, there was no indication whatsoever of any issue, either. But it was Alex who got me thinking. Her thought?

I’d been drinking way too much caffeine.

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12 things I miss about Costa Rica

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It’s just shy of three months since we left Costa Rica. Many people still ask us what it’s like to be back, if we’re happy to be back, and if we’ve acclimatised yet. There’s no quick or easy answer to all of that, as we’re not dealing with something as simple as changing from one temperature to another. As anyone will tell you, moving to an entirely different country (outside of North America) involves more than a physical location. Costa Rica was more than just a place, it was a way of life, and an experience that has changed the way I live now.

Almost right away, we missed some things, though most of that was due to the roughly 40 degree Celsius shift in temperature. Other things soon made themselves known, each time with the all-too-familiar pang of loss and regret.

But like when we moved down to Costa Rica, this is just something we’ll have to get used to.

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2009, A Year in Review

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The year past was one of the toughest ones I can remember. It’s been a year of extreme highs, some pretty darks depths; my share of awesome joys, mixed with an unhealthy dose of stress. And that’s not when you consider the economy, I might add — things are even worse when you roll all that in.

The year closed out on a more sombre note for me, in many ways. Much quieter, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family (which I cherish now, and cannot regret in anyway), but the future is a little less certain. I’m less concerned about that fact than I thought I would be, however.

On with the year that just was… Continue reading →

Our last weekend away

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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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Snot and coffee

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Well, Monkey, the last week’s been quite the slog. Last Saturday, you started showing signs of being sick, having caught something from one of your schoolmates. It basically turned you into a bonafide snot factory. (One upside: you’ve learned how to wipe your own nose. Now if we can just figure out how to make you blow it, too.)

The bug hit me next, kicking in on Tuesday, and then taking me down on Thursday and half of Friday (I didn’t sleep at all Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, partly due to your coughing and partly due to feeling so crappy.) Mommy caught it next, and her illness really kicked in on Friday, and is just coming out of her illness today.

The group of us effectively played “Sick Family Robinson”, holing up and trying to keep our wits, all the while trying not to spread the sickness to Grandma.

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25 Coffees

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For those of you keeping track — and I know there are those of you who do (you freaks!) — I’ve officially reached coffee #25. I’m drinking it as I write this, in order to combat a serious lack of sleep brought on by windstorms we’re having here at the moment.

This is a milestone in a variety of ways. First, it’s proven that I am, in fact, a coffee drinker and likely on my way to coffee addiction. I’m comfortable with that, provided it’s good coffee. I dread having my first bad coffee. It’ll happen, I’m sure, and I’m not going to enjoy it. But I have to brace myself.

The second part is that I am no longer counting how many coffees I drink. Not for any real reason other than I’m just too damn lazy to keep it up.

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14 things I love about Costa Rica

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Well, I’ve been in Costa for nearly two straight months now — this is the longest continuous time I’ve ever spent outside of Canada — and I think it’s high time to answer the two most often-asked questions that I get: What do I like about Costa Rica, and what do I hate?

I’ll answer the latter in a separate post, but like all reviews, there’s reason to start with the positive stuff. Of course, these are not in any order whatsoever — they’re just as they come to mind.

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First weekend in Costa Rica

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Last week was a rough one. It’s almost hard to believe we’ve only been here a week now. (A week ago right now, I was in the lobby of our hotel, chatting with Jason and Javier, waiting for our realtors to come and whisk us away to our condos.) Since then we’ve gotten our places, bought the things we need to make life reasonable (note: not “comfortable” — we’re still working on that), moved into a temporary office, got connected (still need cell phones), started working on new work, and had a surprising number of meetings given that there’s only four of us.

So when we got to the end of the week, we had pretty much declared ourselves “beat”. Had we been a lot more set up than we are now, we’d probably have just gone home to our respective places, kicked back, and relaxed. But it’s hard to do that when you have to flag down a cab. Which you can’t here, for some reason.

We rented a car instead.

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