online JOURNAL

31 March 08
I love the Internet. Among other things, it's been a major force in both my social life and my lack of productivity since I first discovered it in the very early 90s.

Through email and Usenet I went from being an almost friendless hermit to meeting all sorts of interesting and wonderful people (plus many who weren't so great, but let's forget about them), and that was the start of something that completely changed my life for the better. Over the years I watched the Web become commonplace, virtually all of my friends became email-enabled, and then places like Livejournal became popular. I like the community that has sprung up around LJ, and I love that it is a way to stay in touch with people I wouldn't otherwise see (very often).

However, like any powerful tool, the 'Net has its dark side. I've lost countless hours - months, at this point in time - because of it. LJ is a two-edged sword because for every thoughtful, insightful, or otherwise interesting journal entry there are others consisting of drivel. And now that people have these Twitter feeds it means that every Twitter post is several nonsense one-liners that mean nothing to me and only waste more time.

I need to spend less time online but at the same time, I don't want to fall further out of touch with the friends that I do have. When I left irc because it took up WAY too much time, I pretty much lost contact with a whole group of people, which makes me sad. Still, I need to get better about moving away from my desk and doing other things. Non-computer things. Exercise should be one of them.

Hrmpf.

31 March 08
A couple of months ago my parents called and asked if we would like to accompany them on a trip to Washington, D.C. We said "yes" and during last week's spring break, the four of us had a very nice vacation wandering through some of the many museums in DC.

This was my first trip to Washington, D.C. I had previously avoided it because 1) I prefer to take my vacations outside the U.S., and 2) I am a fan of neither government nor politics. But I discovered that DC is simply rife with museums (most operated by the Smithsonian, and free!), and science is almost as prevalent there as politics!

During my five days in DC, I saw most of the Air & Space Museum which was pretty neat. I saw a little bit of the National (Art) Gallery, a multimedia exhibition at the Hirshhorn contemporary art Museum, and wandered around the National Mall (the mile-long grassy swath which many of the museums border). I spent a full day at the Zoo, which is big, well-maintained, and has very nice animal enclosures. And I spent two days at the National Museum of Natural History, which houses the best exhibit I've ever seen on bones, as well as a huge exhibit on fossils; I spent at least two hours in each because for someone like me, with a love for bones and skeletal anatomy, it was incredible.

I could have easily spent another week in the museums there, as there was quite a bit I did not see, both in the museums I visited, and in the ones I did not. And I'm quite happy to say that it is possible to spend time in DC and not be inundated with political foo. In fact, it's possible to be touristy there and completely avoid touring any governmental-type buildings.

Now I'm home and enjoying a holiday before I go back to school, yay.

16 March 08
Speaking of the Faint, you know why I like them so much? Part of is that undefinable "something." But just as importantly, they are excellent songwriters. The music is layers of different instruments and sounds, and it's all driven by a fairly complex rhythm section; the drums and bass are pretty sophisticated, especially compared to a lot of other popular bands. And if that wasn't enough, their lyrics are much better than the norm.

If I were to pick apart the music I really like to find a common thread through it all it would be 1) layers that play off one another, and 2) a lot of complexity in the bass and drums (I do have my roots in prog rock and metal, afterall). While a steady 4/4 beat has its place on the dance floor, it doesn't make for interesting listening. And that's part of my problem with the average industrial music - someone sets the drum machine to 4/4, they lay some synths on top of it, run the vocals through some processing, and call it a wrap. There's no substance and no complexity to it; it's boring.

You want to know what pop/alternative band has not only good musicians, but an amazing rhythm section? Big Country. Okay, let's just forget they ever did that "In a Big Country" song, and they're pretty great. Take a listen to "The Flame of the West" and maybe you'll have a new appreciation for them.

Hmm, I just realized Big Country has released more albums than the two I have. I guess I should find and listen to them.

15 March 08
I wanted to go past talking about the impact the club scene had on my life, and spend a few minutes explaining how leaving that scene had a positive impact on my music listening.

As a DJ I not only had to be up on the latest bands and albums, but I also had to seek out stuff people had never heard before and choose the best music for dancefloor play. Unfortunately, "best" in this context doesn't mean the "best music", but rather, "the music that a large percentage of people will find catchy enough to actually dance to." This meant that I'd sometimes have to play music I didn't particularly like because it kept people coming to the club, which in turn allowed the club to stay open. Being a club DJ meant I also had to play many of the same songs over and over (and over) again.

During this time my musical tastes had narrowed to allow me to focus on what I needed to be playing; pretty much all I ever listened to was industrial music, and little bits of the related genres, and for years I wrote off anything else. Well, once I left the club scene I also left that singlemindedness behind. I started listening to other genres (gasp!), and as I started replacing old LPs with their CD versions, I also began re-listening to old favourites I hadn't heard in ten or twenty years. Cool!

It's because I stopped going to goth/industrial clubs that I had a chance to dance all night long at psy-trance events, and listen to fun music without having to worry about what other people would think if I admitted I was listening to non-industrial music. And it's because I stopped DJing at goth/industrial clubs that I was able to stop listening to so much crappy music, and just instead single out those few good industrial bands (pity there aren't many of them).

One of those bands was The Faint, who Susan turned me on to a year or two ago. I'd listen to their stuff and once it was done, I couldn't wait to listen to it again! I just love that feeling of "Ohmygawd this band is SO. GREAT. I just can't get enough of them!" It doesn't happen very often, but when it does I try to get as much mileage out of that feeling as possible. It's *exactly* like the early days of a hot & heavy love affair. Now I just need to find another band that gives me that same feeling.

12 March 08
It wasn't that long ago that I wrote about having to constantly deal with death at work, and now my personal life is filled with it.

A couple of weeks ago I heard that an acquaintance had died. He was a friend of a friend who I had only met a few times, and hadn't seen for a few years, but still. He was probably only in his early thirties, and just collapsed one night during dinner. I've had several friends who have recently lost dear pets, including one kitty who will be put to sleep tonight. And this morning I received news that a friend passed away yesterday, after years of battling lymphoma; he was several years younger than either Frederick or me. Save for my elderly Grandmother, this is the first time someone somewhat close to me has died and I'm still processing and trying to come to terms with it.

My own parents are aging, my cat's health is deteriorating. I'm starting to get scared every time I read email or answer the phone in case it's more bad news. On top of that we're entering into what may become a drawn-out legal battle; we're in the right, but that doesn't make the battle any easier. The mental drain is the worst part.

If you had asked me a year, or even six months, ago if I was able to handle stress well, I would have said "yes." Now I know I don't handle it well. If I didn't have such a headache I'd go have a beer or something. Instead, I'm just waiting for the ibuprofen to take affect.

I want my boring life back.

9 March 08
A recent post by Kingfish (via jwz) got me to thinking about the club scene, its impact on my life, and how it is no longer part of my life.

Although I've been going to live shows since I was 15 and dance clubs since I was 21, I consider the 90s to be my "heyday." For seven years I was DJing at the most popular goth/industrial dance clubs in the City, spinning 1-3 nights a week. On my nights off I would go to other clubs to dance, drink, and socialize. I was one of those people who always went out and knew "everyone" at the clubs I frequented. It was great, and it was this built-in social life; I never had to make plans with people if I didn't want to, and whenever I went out I knew there would be people there to talk to. It was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.

But things change. Eventually I got tired of doing the same thing, over and over. Of listening to the same songs, again and again. The good clubs and venues closed, the people whom I had grown closest to stopped going out or moved away, and it was no longer fun. DJing had become a job. So I quit.

Now it's many years later and the weird thing is I don't miss it. I hate using age as a reason or as an excuse, but I do feel like I've grown out of the club scene. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I had moved past the point where I needed it as a crutch, and I was willing to make the jump to find friends and social events on my own, rather than relying on what the clubs provided.

Making that jump was rather scary, as I no longer had an automatic thing to do on Saturday nights. But things worked out well, and it ended up giving me a sort of freedom I never knew I was missing.

It's just funny, looking back at the various paths life has taken me. I feel like I've come full circle.

3 March 08
Folks that know me know that I'm very interested in nutrition. Since I also like reading, I get excited when I see a new, good, book about the subject. Well, I just finished reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan, and I think there are other folks here who might find it interesting.

This is Pollan's follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma which showed us some of the harsh realities present in the world of food. For years I have studied nutrition. I've spoken with Registered Dieticians, taken science and nutrition classes, and read book after book after book. And I have to say, In Defense of Food does an excellent job of summing up everything I have learned in just seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The two hundred pages inside simply explain what he means.

That being said, I have to state that I'm not a total Pollan devotee, and everything he writes is not perfect. For example, this book is divided into three sections. He spends the first section discussing what is wrong with the state of "nutritionism" today - how so many present-day food "facts" (like how many servings of a certain food we "should" eat on a daily basis) are based on studies biased by the organizations which funded them, and how so many nutrition studies are contradicted by other studies. Those are valid points. However, reading that chapter leaves me a little gunshy about believing any other nutrition studies. So when Pollan cites other studies in later chapters, I can't help but wonder if I can trust them.

If you're going to read just one section of this book it should be the third. This final section tells you, in plain and simple terms, what you should eat to stay healthy, avoid diet-related illnesses such as diabetes, and circumvent the psychological distress that comes from modern-day Western culture ("eat more food", "diet", "eat", "you're too fat", etc). Highly recommended.

25 February 08
Random bio-related thoughts instead of studying:

Biologists sure talk about sex a lot.

It's only been in the past year that I've realized how closely related the Fungi are to the animals. They're quite closely related, considering. Our most common shared ancestor was a single-celled organism existing about 1.2 billion years ago. (Compare to the animal-plant split ~1.6 billion years ago.) Ew.

One phyla of fungi, Ascomycota, produce asci. Unlike ASCII, these are sac-like sexual structures (see? there they go talking about sex again) in which meiosis occurs.

I tend to post here while I should be studying for tests. Oh well.

18 February 08
Like lots of couples, Frederick and I keep a running list of names for our children. Unlike most of those couples, we will never have children. Which is too bad, because we have some great names.

First, there are the two sets of twins: Experiment & Control, Pete & Re-Pete.

Then there are the girls: Margarita, Brandy, Sherry.

And just now I decided I want to name a child Axolotl, simply because I like the way it sounds.

18 February 08
Just a little update, talking about some good books I've read this past month...

Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik - This is the fourth book in a series of historical novels set in Europe around the turn of the 18-19th centuries. However, this novel has a fantasy twist in that dragons exist and are used by the military. I feel this book is a turning point in the series; it would be so easy for Our Hero to go on to overcome all odds and recover from his current dilemma, yet that would probably ruin it for me. I guess I have to stay tuned and see what happens.

Dateline Mongolia by Michael Kohn - Part travelogue, part memoir, this book was written by an American who spent three years working for an English-language newspaper in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He writes about the many things that he researched in the course of his reporting, and provides a wealth of information that the average Westerner wouldn't otherwise know about past and present-day Mongolia. I just wish he had written more about his experiences acclimatizing to Mongolian life.

Running with Scissors and Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs - I've heard him described as a newer, better version of David Sedaris and I'd have to agree. The former book chronicles his childhood, and reading about it is like watching a train wreck; the latter are stories from his adult life, and I found myself laughing over and over. Both were books I had a hard time putting down.

11 February 08
I like cows.

So as we were driving around Point Reyes yesterday, I stopped next to a cow pasture to take some photos of the dairy cows out at pasture. I stopped the car across the road, rolled down the window, and snapped a couple of pics. But then I wanted photos without barbed wire in the way, so I crossed road and walked over to the fence. One cow in particular looked quizzically at me and took a step away. I wanted to calm the cows down so that they didn't run away, so I did what anyone would do when presented with a pasture of cattle: I mooed at them.

My moos received one or two response moos, plus several interested looks. I stood still, made no sudden movements, and continued to moo at the cows. After a few minutes a semicircle of curious cows had gathered around me, trying to figure out what was going on. (I also had a husband sitting in the car, most likely shaking his head at his cow-whispering wife.) It took all my self-control to not burst out laughing at the whole scene!

11 February 08
Aaargh! I'm starting to see a pattern here: I get frustrated/angry/stressed about something school-related, and then I post about it here. Really, I'm not as much of complainer as it might seem from reading my journal! And life outside of school is pretty good :)

I'm just one week into Calculus class right now, working on my second homework assignment, and I'm already getting lost. I'm no dummy - Algebra was a piece of cake, and I've done very well in all my other subjects - but looking at this Calculus stuff makes me feel like I was handed a book written in Latin after only learning what "Caveat emptor" meant. (Calculus should come with a warning label saying "Student beware"!)

What do I do? I can't ask Frederick to help me with *every* question. I really think one needs to have a particular type of brain and be able to think in a particular way to do certain things, and I just do not have Calc-compatible neurons.

My life could be improved 100% by simply dropping this class. And right now, I will go look at photos of cows...

2 February 08
Today, two weeks after school began, I finally have nailed down my schedule for the semester. Good news and bad news - I was able to add the Biology class I needed. It's bad news only because an ever-growing part of me was hoping for more free time this semester, but on the bright side, this class deals more with macrobiology and animal-related stuff, yay!

My Calculus class began yesterday. It's an online class, so I logged in for the first time today only to find that I was already late to turn in a pre-test. Since when does a class have anything due on the first meeting day? Of course, as soon as I saw that pre-test (which covered stuff we should already have known) my math anxiety kicked in full-force. I got upset, felt stupid because I didn't automatically understand what they were talking about, and got a weird feeling in my stomach. I was ready to drop the class then and there, and forego that Biology degree altogether, but my lovely wonderful husband came to my rescue. He calmed me down, helped me get a handle on the problem, and set me back on track.

My math anxiety is no secret, but neither is it something I'm proud of. I'd like nothing more than to study ONLY Biology, but if I ever want a degree I'll need to pass this class. And I found some encouragement in an unlikely place this evening...

We were watching the documentary "A Seal's Life" about the northern elephant seals (one of the species with which I work), and one of the DVD extras had a scientist mentioning something about how he loves studying the sea. And I realized that I really want to be a scientist. (I have no idea what I'll do with my degree, but I want to be able to say "I'm a Zoologist!") So I am going to try and pass this Calculus course, and get a little further down the road towards being a real scientist.

5 February 08
Wow, it's amazing how having this wonderful weather today has put me in such a good mood! I love seeing the sun and the blue skies, even if it's not warm.

It's been very slow at work for the past couple of months. Mid-December to mid-February is usually our slow season - we had a few weeks off in late December and since then we've only had a skeleton crew going in because we've had so few animals; we had nine patients today, which is the most we've had since early December.

I had a nice morning. No one died, everything went smoothly, and we were done by 10:30. My co-workers were talking about a wine bar they went to and that had me craving a nice glass of red wine, but afaik, there are no wine bars open before noon. So on my way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought some bread, cheese, and a little bottle of Pinot Noir. Guess what I had for lunch? Hee!

To top off my wonderful morning, as I was leaving work I saw my first wild river otters! I saw an otter-like critter swimming in Rodeo Lagoon so I quickly pulled over, grabbed my camera (and of course it was a day when I only had the point-and-shoot, and not the SLR+telephoto lens), and ran over to watch them. There were three otters that kept diving underwater, then popping up to look at me (sometimes surfacing with something to eat). They were very cute.

30 January 08
I vividly remember the first time I watched an animal die. It was July 1997, and I sat crying on the floor of the vet's office, holding my dog as she drew her last breath.

In the two years that I've been working at The Marine Mammal Center I've lost count of the number of animals I've watched die. It's easier in that I don't have the emotional attachment to them that I did to my dog, but never ceases to affect me. I try to watch euthanasias with a detached, medical mindset ("So that's the best way to find the subclavian artery...") only because it makes it a little easier on me, but I never want to get too detached from it; as soon as death becomes too easy to deal with then life has less of a meaning.

Yesterday I watched another California sea lion be put to sleep. He had been admitted a day or two prior and had at least three severe seizures within that time. Tuesday morning we found him seizuring* in his pool, completely unconscious and unresponsive, yet his reflexes still brought him to the surface to breathe. (Diving mammals have incredible physiologies.) And last night I discovered that another animal, a yearling Steller's sea lion admitted late the previous evening, was dying and had to be euthanized.

I often wonder how the vets handle this. They are the ones administering the drugs, and they are the ones that have to make the final decision. I know that whenever we get a new vet on staff, it takes them awhile to become comfortable with deciding to euthanize an animal. That's something doctors never need to deal with.

It's odd, watching life drain away so quickly. Life is so fragile. And death is so ... permanent.

* A large number of the sea lions we admit are suffering from domoic acid toxicity (aka "red tide" poisoning). The Pseudo-nitzschia toxins increase as you move up the food chain, and in apex predators such as sea lions and humans it can cause damage to the hippocampus of the brain, resulting in hippocampal atrophy, short-term memory loss, confusion and erratic behaviour, seizures, and death.

25 January 08
Rain. There's been a steady downpour here since before I got up at 6:30 this morning. I kinda like it; I haven't had a good rainy day for awhile. (I'm a bit sorry I missed our big storm back at the beginning of January.)

Yesterday was the first day of school. I currently am enrolled in Calculus, plus a Nature Study elective class taught by an oceanographer/marine biologist who will be concentrating on topics of marine biology! But I'm also trying to add the second semester Biology class I desperately need; that class is taught by two men - one who specializes in fungi and the other an entomologist currently studying arthropods.

If I get into the Biology class I will have to drop the Nature Study class. How's that for a Gina-centric dilemma? The class that centers around things I want to study, with field trips to places I want to go, but I'll probably have to drop, vs. the class I really need to take taught by two guys who study things I can't stand.

In other news, the housecleaner just left (so the place is nice & clean), I'm full of a yummy lunch, and I have no pressing matters to deal with the rest of the day. Yay!

24 January 08
What is a bigger curse - always having things you want to do but never having the time, or always having time but never anything to do?

I've been in both situations during the past months, and they both suck. For the past few weeks I've had time on my hands, but no drive or impetus to actually *do* any of the many things on my mental list. I am currently a model of inertia and I'm not moving.

Would things be better if it were sunny? Is this a result of too much crappy weather? (We're also having some work done on the house which has resulted in many of our windows being covered, and as a result get almost no sunlight inside no matter what the weather.)

Le sigh.

21 January 08
I've never been into video games. I have plenty of friends who play them, and that's fine, but they're just not my thing. Well, there was Tetris back in the day when the game was black & white and came on a floppy disk, but that's not really a video game. And I tried playing Starcraft once (I actually played it for a few hours), but got bored and never wanted to play it again.

Years ago I used to love playing D&D and would have those Saturday eat-pizza-and-drink-Diet-Coke-all-night playing sessions. Although those are long past, I did miss playing D&D. A year or so ago Ashley told me that there was a D&D videogame out called Neverwinter Nights, and he thought I might like it. And he was right, I did! So, with the exception of NWN, I still don't play videogames.

And since I don't play videogames, that must not have been me singing along to Rock Band and SingSong until 4am the other night. Nope, it was just Frederick and Susan and Ash. I must have been busy doing something else.

16 January 08
What I Did During My Winter Holiday:

First there was Xmas with family (which was nice), then vacation in Costa Rica (which was very nice). Then there were a couple of weeks spent at home, with nothing much on the calendar. And you know what I did during those couple of weeks? Nothing! And you know how much I enjoyed it? Lots!

Okay, maybe I haven't been doing "nothing," exactly. I've worked on a couple of little projects around the house, went grocery shopping, paid the bills, and played a lot of Neverwinter Nights. (I set iTunes on random when I play. It's a little eerie how often the music just happens to punctuate the on-screen action.)

School starts at the end of next week and I can already tell I'm running out of time. Not only have I not done all the little things I wanted to do, but I haven't yet had enough time to do nothing. I know from prior experience with unemployment that it takes me a couple of months to get tired of the "nothing to do" and really get productive. The trouble is, I don't have a couple of months.

Time to hurry up and get bored ;)

12 January 08
Costa Rica-related photo geekery:

While in Costa Rica I took about 600 photos. That doesn't sound like much for a week of shooting digital, but it translates to almost 17 rolls of 36 exposure film. Would I have shot that much on film? Almost certainly not. Just one more reason why I have fallen madly in love with digital photography.

Of those 600 photos, 400 were taken with the SLR, using three different lenses. I used my 100mm f/2.8 macro for just a handful of pics; I meant to spend an afternoon doing just macro photography, but ran out of time. Fifty or sixty pics were taken with the 16-35mm f/2.8, particularly those where I wanted to capture a sense of surroundings, rather than focus on an individual element.

Eighty-five percent of my SLR photos were taken with the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 lens. I've always loved long zoom lenses, and they are indispensable for wildlife photography. However, shooting on this trip only confirmed that this lens is neither long enough nor fast enough as I wasn't able to close in on my subjects as much as I would like. In addition, when shooting up into the forest canopy subjects are often semi-silhouetted against their backgrounds. With the lens at 300mm and f/5.6, there wasn't quite enough light coming in. To take acceptable photos I had to up the ISO to 1600 and overexpose by a stop or two to compensate for the backlighting in the canopy, but then the photos turn out more grainy than I would have desired.

All the time I was shooting I was daydreaming about the 400mm f/2.8 telephoto lens. But, exorbitant purchase price aside, do I really want to carry around a $6000 lens? (I'm not the most graceful of people, afterall.) Plus, it weighs almost 12 pounds and I already carry so much when hiking (backpack, additional lenses, water, etc.) that I think my back and shoulders would really suffer. Still, I'd like to rent one and take it to the zoo for a day just to experience the glory.

In looking through the Canon site to get links for these lenses, I see they have a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens; maybe it's new as I don't remember seeing it before. It's much slower than the drool-worthy 400mm, but it's also 1/4 the weight and less than 1/4 the price. Hmmm...

The approximately 200 photos that were not taken with the SLR were taken with the point & shoot. Not only are there a lot of situations where you don't want to bring your SLR (like on a dive boat where the camera could be splashed with salt water at any moment), but there were occasions where both cameras were used side-by-side (like taking point & shoot photos through the spotting scope, while taking telephoto pics of the same subject with the SLR). When out and about, I always bring both cameras and it's always been worth it.

10 January 08
I have finished uploading photos from our recent trip to Costa Rica, and they are now online for your viewing pleasure. I was going to write a travel journal to go along with it, but I'd really just be duplicating what I wrote after our first trip there, so I scrapped that idea.

Although Costa Rica's dry season is supposed to begin in the middle of November, unseasonably late rains came down until the last day of December. But the new year dawned sunny and warm, so we were able to experience some nice weather. Living in the jungle as we were, you rise with the sun and the birds at about 6am. The sun goes down around 5:30, then you have dinner, retire to your cabin, and are asleep by 9pm. It's a very natural schedule, and once you realize the numbers on the clock are just arbitrary, you have no problem getting up so early.

Most of our time in CR was spent diving, and I did ten dives in four days at five different sites. One site was an underwater seamount only recently discovered by park rangers, and one of the rangers was nice enough to show us the site and accompany us on our dive. It was gorgeous, with steep rock pinnacles covered by soft coral polyps, and swarming with countless large fish. Our last full day was spent hiking through the beautiful primary rainforest (and streams, and mud) of Corcovado National Park.

Firsts for me on this trip included seeing: a boa, several toucans, two harlequin shrimp (most likely involved in a courtship display), a tapir, a bull shark, and an up-close encounter with a booby. I also did my first dives in the rain - it's really neat being underwater and seeing rain hit the surface.

We had a wonderful trip, and now I'm just enjoying relaxing here at home.

9 January 08
I have a couple of weeks at home with nothing to do, and I am enjoying it soooo much. The last month has been busy - finals, holidays, travelling - and I really need some downtime to relax and recover. (Our vacation, while wonderful, was spent being active and busy, and there wasn't enough lying around in hammocks.)

This past semester at school has been particularly stressful for me, and I'm not quite sure why. Yes, it was the most units I have taken at once (12), but it wasn't that many. And I've had 10 and 11 unit semesters in the past which haven't been as hard on me. I suppose it was a combination of difficult material and a lot of it, plus some math anxiety and too much worrying about grades.

[Note: I just checked my grades for last semester and discovered I got an A in my Pre-Calculus class! I was sure I had done poorly on my final, and expected to get no better than a B. I feel so much better now.]

Next semester will be better. Although I don't yet know my final schedule (I will be trying to add a class I need to take), I will be taking no more than 9 units total. I want to make sure I have some free time to be able to spend with friends. And I have to be careful about not allowing myself to turn into a stressful ball of worry.

6 January 08
I'm having a lazy day and quite enjoying it. We got home about 1am this morning after a lovely week spent in Costa Rica. Apparently there was a big storm here. While Bay Area folks were dealing with high winds and power outages, Frederick and I were frolicking in a tropical rain forest, looking at critters. Oh well ;)

Yesterday morning we were awoken at 6am (Central time) by the dawn chorus. After breakfast we walked down to the dock, and took a boat across the bay to where we met the four-wheel-drive truck, which drove us down the rutted dirt road and across a couple of rivers to the dirt airstrip. We then took a small plane to San José (well, F took one plane that went directly to San José; I had to take another which first headed south to Puerto Jimenéz, then northeast to San José), got in a taxi and drove across town to another airport, and boarded a larger plane to Houston. After clearing customs and immigration in Houston we headed to the gate just in time to board our connecting flight to SFO only to find out the flight was delayed for 30 minutes. We later boarded the plane and had just sat down when we were told the flight was going to be delayed an hour, and we had to get off. We did, confusion ensued, and eventually got back on again and were told to wait on the plane. After awhile the plane left the gate, taxied to the runway, and waited. And waited some more. And returned to the gate. Apparently, the plane's altimeter and back-up power were not functioning, and they needed to replace the on-board computer.

We did make it home last night, albeit 2.5 hours late. And 19 hours after beginning our journey. That's why I haven't yet changed out of my jammies.