My ambitions for today were really not very strong, really they were not. But this is ridiculous.

I arose late, feeling guilty but satisfied because I finally got a good night’s sleep (after several weeks of restless nights). And I went for a late, sloggy, sloshy, dance-around-puddles run in El Lago Kabah (normally a park, but recently a lake). But it was a run and a novel thing after days of having my run get rained out. And after that we decided to take the dogs down to Puerto Morelos for a romp on the beach (this would have been Lucy-the-invader-puppy’s first beach experience).

But it never happened. We got halfway there and then it started to rain. Again. More rain.

So hubby turned on the wipers. And the wipers went…up…up…and then they stopped…frozen…not moving…frozen at their apex…in the middle of the windshield.

We pulled over…and I proceeded to get a headache while hubby got wet checking both the wiper motor and the fuses. Then my headache got worse while hubby got wetter checking everything again.

We sat there on the side of a busy, dangerous highway, with cars zooming past us at high speeds, stricken, broken, unable to see out of the windshield…the sweet warbling of Coldplay coming from the speakers…and me slightly amused at how stupid it all was…and, frankly, enjoying the whole Impressionism rain-on-the-windshield thing.

We sat there for a while, trying to decide if we should make a plan…if we should call a tow truck and then battle the insurance company for a towing charge reimbursement…if we should try to drive slowly on the shoulder to somewhere…if we should wait it out…wondering how soon it would be before we actually would get in a real argument if we sat there waiting…

And finally the rain slowed a tiny bit and we could just barely make out a sign ahead…there was a gas station ahead…so we did decide to limp along in our Impressionist fog and blur until we reached civilization…not only a gas station but also a convenience store. Over priced Gatorade and MSG-laden potato chips. We’d been saved.

But the rain continued. And so did our dilemma. Do we call a tow truck…does one of us take the bus home to get the other car…but then what? Do we wait out the rain…but what if it gets dark…what if the fucking rain never ends? We punted…we walked the dogs.

My Neo-Impressionist view of my afternoon

And after that clarity came, not to the windshield, but to our feeble brains. Hubby removed one windshield wiper, wielding it like a weapon and decided that he would damn well wipe his own windshield while he was driving. Fortunately it wasn’t raining hard anymore so this was actually a workable solution.

Windshield Wipe Thyself!

We turned around and drove home with hubby wiping his way… By the time we got home we had honed a whole series of jokes about how shitty other cars were, except for their working wipers…and he would ask me if I could see something ahead…and I would reply “I can’t see shit,” but then I would warn him not to hit a pedestrian who wasn’t there…by the time we got home we were giggling like fools…

Today was my big day-o, mi cumpleaños, my big 4-one. Last year on this day I was nurturing grandiose thoughts about how my 40s would be the time of my greatest power, the time when I knew what I knew, didn’t take any shit, and could make it all happen. I was there. A little fat, but healthy and empowered.

But this year…guess what I was thinking…it was quite a bit more base than last year…this year I was thinking how nice it was that we are financially comfortable enough to just buy what we wanna buy and eat where we wanna eat…and I was thinking that it’s nice that my hubby had the day off so we could just hang…and I was thinking how nice it was that the puppy (se llama “Lucy”) is starting to “get it” about not peeing in the house…and I was thinking how much I hate the choices for buying bed sheets here in Cancun.

Not my most prosaic of days, I admit.

But hell, I made it this far.

In the end, my husband bought me dark chocolates, brought me bugambilia flowers from the yard and took me to a sporting goods store so I could buy myself (and him) some new running shorts. I think I got suckered into buying my own birthday present. But when you share your moola how the hell can you tell.

I rarely buy running shorts and will run in any falling-down pair of old-lady skivvies…so having two brand-new pairs of Nike running shorts…with the elastic intact and everything, is going to be heaven. I can’t wait to go running into my 42nd year.

It’s been raining a lot lately. And I mostly like it. Rain is special when you live somewhere that gets more than 200 days a year of sunshine.

But there is a lot of laundry that’s not getting washed because it won’t get dry if I put it on the line (about 10 times a year I think we ought to have a dryer). And the dog-faces are not getting enough walks because they are both whiny little putzes that don’t want to set foot out there if there’s a single raindrop in sight. And with all this rain the pets keep tracking mud in through the cat door, so we are having a bloody mop-fest here trying to keep the house from being overtaken by sludge.

But I do like the sound of the rain hitting the (flat concrete) roof. Right now the rain is that slow, gentle, consistent rain; the kind of rain that the Navajo call “female rain,” different from crashing, torrential, pelting “male rain” (which I also like and which we had this morning).

One challenge with all this this rain is keeping track of which windows it’s hitting. We keep the windows open as a general rule. But when the rain starts we need to rush around and determine which window is getting hit, and shut that window. This morning the north windows had rain hitting them. Now it’s the south windows that are getting hit. Sometimes I am late to shut a window and find that the bed is soaked, or that my shelf full of web development reference books is getting damp.

But it’s OK because no matter how much it rains here, it’s never cold. I can put up with a lot, so long as I’m not cold. (I’m seriously worried that I will struggle to adapt if and when we move back to a place with winter.)

A few weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and finally upgrade my aging Dell desktop computer. Call me weird but I really dislike moving into a new computer, it always takes a full week to download all the programs I want and set everything up the way I like.

I’ve been making my living in the computer industry since 1990, so it’s not like getting a new computer is anything novel anymore. Yeah, the new one is always nicer and faster and better than the old one. But after having so many computers I’ve come to just wish that the industry would quit with all the technology improvements and slow the fuck down. Just let me buy a computer that will last for 10 years! I do that with cars and blue jeans and household appliances and I want to do that with computers too. Enough with this faster all the time stuff.

And from what I’ve seen new PCs are shipping with Vista, which I’m just not interested in switching to yet. I’m waiting until people stop bitching about Vista before I think about using it. I’ve used Microsoft Windows since version 2 (!), I’ve put up with a lot in that time and given that I’m perfectly happy with Windows XP for now, thank you.

Also, next time I buy a new computer for work I will have to buy some expensive software packages because the versions of them that I own now are so out of date that I can no longer get upgrades. So my next computer will be accompanied by at least $1500 USD in software purchases. Needless to say that dramatically increases the cost of a new machine. But to do my work I need those programs, so that’s what it is.

So anyway, I bought a new monitor. And some RAM and an adapter card to help my old machine keep up with modern times.

The monitor arrived today from Dell Mexico. And when I opened the box I began to get really happy. Everything in the box was perfectly packaged. The directions were in English and MADE SENSE. There were little bits of foam covering all the cable ends, and they were held on with cute little rubber bands. It was all so perfect and so logical and so, well just so perfect.

Then I set up the monitor and plugged it in, et voila, it was just yummy right out of the box! So now I’m writing to you from my yummy new monitor. And I feel like I have a whole new computer. Nice, nice.

I complained recently that I have not been running enough lately. Well it’s not for lack of trying.

The other day my hubby and I went to the Parque Kabah to run. We got about halfway through our first lap when the sky started to get really dark. A storm was coming. As we neared the entrance to the park, completing our first lap, the sky opened up. But instead of taking shelter under the thatched palapa roof at the entrance we kept running (don’t ask me why). Within moments the path was flooded with 3 inches of water and my running shoes were soaked!

One thing I’ve learned over my 18+ years of running is that running shoes are never the same after they get wet. So normally I will run in any weather, but will run back to my car FAST if it starts to rain. This time I screwed up and soaked my shoes.

We got home and waited for the rain to stop so we could put our shoes in the sun to dry. But it rained for most of the rest of the day. The next day it was sunny, so I put our shoes out in the sun. And then suddenly, crash, flood, it was pouring! We had the single strongest downpour I’ve ever seen and it started all in one second. I raced to shut the windows in the house. And I didn’t collect the shoes from the rain until they were well-soaked through all over again.

The next day the weather cleared and I decided I wanted to run. But my shoes were still wet. So I dug out a pair of old running shoes from the closet. They were a pair of Sauconys that I had stopped running in about 3 years ago, but for some reason they had never been thrown out or donated, they were just sitting in the closet.

I donned these old cruddy worn-out shoes and figured my run would be less than ideal because of them, but at least it would be a run. I got in the car and drove to the park.

But as I was walking into the park I had the feeling that something was stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Then I felt the same on the other shoe. Then the sensation changed and it felt like the heels of my shoes were loose and were flopping. I looked down. All of the foam that made up the heel cup of my shoes was disintegrating! With each step I was leaving a trail of foam bits. The more steps I took the more my shoes fell apart!

It took me a few minutes to accept that I wasn’t going to run that day. I made myself do my normal stretching routine. But after 10 minutes of stretches I left the park and walked back to my car, trailing foam bits the whole way.

When I got to the car I realized that the floor area of the driver’s side was covered in foam. When I got home I saw foam in the driveway. And when I got inside the house there were foam bits everywhere (and I had just vacuumed too). My husband professed that he’d seen foam all over the house and had been wondering what the heck it was.

Here’s a photo of the crumbling shoes:

Since moving to the tropics we’ve noticed that lots of foam and rubber things fall apart, especially if you don’t use them. We’ve thrown out a number of nice pairs of shoes and boots that we had expected to last for many more years. Tropical heat somehow wrecks rubber and foam.

My regular running shoes have since dried out. They don’t feel as comfortable as they did pre-rain, but at least they are intact. I’ve got a good friend who is bringing me new running shoes from the U.S. in a couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to that (can’t buy my brand here)!

I’ve written before about the wonderful work that RAP Cancun Animal Rescue is doing to rescue and rehabilitate street dogs in Cancun. RAP is also working hard to provide accessible preventive health care for pets in Cancun and so last week RAP’s clinic was the host location for Cancun’s first-ever free Spay and Neuter clinic. The Spay and Neuter clinic was co-sponsored by Cats and Dogs International (CANDi) and VIDAS, which is a wonderful organization that travels the world sterilizing animals. You can read personal accounts of the RAP Spay and Neuter clinic on Cancun Canuck’s blog and on CancunTom’s blog.

On the last day of the sterilization clinic I went over to RAP to help out, but my plan backfired when Darci, the president of CANDi handed me a puppy to hold. The puppy is a female who is about 2½ months old, she had been found in the street. By the time I met her Darci had already spent more than an hour picking fleas and ticks off of her. Well, you can guess the rest. I walked around for the next few hours carrying this puppy and I couldn’t leave her behind when it was time to go home.

We have not named her yet. We’ve got a list of possible names, but so far none of them has stuck. Sam, the pre-existing dog, is adjusting in fits and spurts to this little puppy. He’s really jealous that she’s getting so much attention, but he also likes her and has been playing with her quite a lot. It’s good to see him with a playmate, he needs that.

The cats are mostly just annoyed. My old lady cat, Grace (who is 17) is having the worst reaction, she’s decided that the puppy is a huge annoyance and refusing to eat much. Emma-cat has attached herself to the puppy and follows the puppy around and then sits and watches her, she’s fascinated although it seems a bit like morbid fascination if you ask me. Moopie and Lilah just think the puppy is stupid, which is an appropriate and expected cat reaction. The other cats are pretty much just avoiding the puppy. I’m sure all of them will adjust as the puppy calms down and gets used to the rhythms of the house.

Here are photos of the little girl.

This puppy is a girl of action, she’s hard to photograph when she’s awake because she doesn’t stop moving. She will settle into your lap, if you let her. Otherwise she’s a-runnin’.

Here she is sleeping, or rather just thinking about waking up. She doesn’t sleep for long periods of time, but she does that cute puppy thing of running around and then suddenly falling asleep in one minute.

And here she is chewing, which is her favorite thing to do. She chews and chews and chews and chews whatever is available. It’s a full-time job chasing her to make sure she’s only chewing on proper dog chews. (I think my shoes are history.) Right now she’s chewing on Sam, who is chewing right back, so that works. More puppy updates will inevitably follow.

I haven’t been posting much lately because someone invented days that are simply not long enough. So sorry. Things are good though.

Work is flowing along. Have found myself noticing that my web design business has become stable and consistent, with no advertising. All my work is now coming entirely from referrals and I’m able to pick only the jobs I want to do. And I’m getting better at estimates and I make fewer mistakes in my estimates than I used to. And I’m more efficient and am making more money (even though I have not raised my rates, yet). So that’s all good.

I’m about to release a web application that has been in the works for far too long. I designed it and had a good friend who is a master programmer write the engine to make it run. It’s one thing to build a web site that’s pretty and ranks high in Google. It’s an entirely different thing to design an interactive application that takes a database and manipulates the data in a new way. It’s cool. And it’s proprietary and password protected, so ya’ll can’t see it, you just get to wonder. I will tell you that it’s also pretty…I made sure it wasn’t just functional.

I’ve been taking a different multi-vitamin than I used to and it gives me more energy, it’s like mixing a cup of coffee with some endurance, it’s working. I rarely need naps and I can focus and I feel awake. Good vitamins make all the difference to me.

The only things that are really lacking right now are in the workout department (have not been running my normal amount) and in the housework department (house is a mess and I can’t be bothered). Will work to rectify the running issue over the next week. And will condescend to fold some laundry at some point today in a concession to the laws of chaos which seem to want to force me to think a messy house is actually worth my brainpower. Ahem.

Have been not watching my investments nosedive. Am repeating the mantra to myself that I am a “long term investor,” that I put that money there for 20 more years and there it should stay. Meanwhile husbandito gets all alarmist on my ass and says I will “lose it all.” Will certainly lose a lot if I jump out of the market right now…

And finally in an effort to not have to buy and move into a new computer I’m upgrading the old one. I detest setting up a new computer, I mean it’s fun in a way, but there’s so much starting over. I have at least 40 programs that I’ve downloaded that would have to be reinstalled. Too much work. So I’m making my old puter faster and updating it and am getting a nice new monitor. The monitor should make it so that I can spend 20 hours a day in front of my computer instead of my regular 16…fun, fun.

Not to bore you all with more Costa Rica blathering. But I took copious notes while I was in Costa Rica, in fact I think I took 10 pages of notes in 5 days. (I like to take notes, can you tell?) So I’m going to share some random tidbits from my notes with you:

• In San Jose, Costa Rica there are driving restrictions to cut air pollution. Cars with license plates that end in certain numbers can’t be driven on certain days within the city. We rented our car on Tuesday night and drove to San Jose for the night. But our car could not be driven in San Jose on Wednesday!! So come Wednesday we had to sneak out of the city without being seen by the cops (we made it).
• The car we rented was a 3-cylinder Suzuki. It wasn’t powerful, but it got great gas mileage, even in the mountains on those crazy windy roads. The only problem with it was this it wouldn’t go uphill when we picked up those hitchhikers…we had to only go down.
• Driving around San Jose the first night, looking for our hotel, we almost hit the same indigent crazy, half-naked woman twice. And once when we stopped for directions we saw her a third time, and she asked for money.
• Our hotel in San Jose had a Casino across the street. Casinos are common there. Our hotel also had a homeless woman camped across the street, near the casino.
• Just like in Mexico lots of people ride motorcycles and scooters in Costa Rica; unlike Mexico they nearly ALL wear proper motorcycle helmets (the kind that can save your life if you have a wreck).
• Most homes have metal roofs, even middle and high class homes. In Mexico metal roofs are usually seen only on lower class homes.
• Outside of San Jose we saw an old white-haired man holding two big bags of groceries and hitchhiking. We saw him get a ride too.
• While we were there the average temperature was 77°F (25°C). It rained each afternoon and was sunny the rest of the time. It was perfect.
• We saw lots and lots of wood, people used it in construction and they used it nicely. The quality of the workmanship was high.
• Over and over we told each other “Costa Rica feels like Hawai’i.”
• It was often hard to take a photo in a public area without getting a garbage can or recycling bin in the background.
• We couldn’t find any dust. There wasn’t dust anywhere in any of our hotel rooms, not in the closets, not on the louvered windows or doors. We don’t know if the cleaners are that good of if there’s really no dust there.
• We saw lots of U.S. restaurant chains, Denny’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, Church’s Chicken and others. But didn’t see Starbucks, which is the only big one I actually ever set foot into.
• We drank the tap water. We went 5 whole days without buying or drinking bottled water. We stuck our glasses under the tap and we drank that water. After 6 years of drinking only bottled water it was GREAT!
• One day we followed a little sign at our hotel that said Catarata (waterfall). Turned out the trail was more like a mud-slide. It was serious class 5 down-climbing on mud and wet leaves. We were surprised by how hard it was but did it anyway, me in my flip-flops no less. Never did find that waterfall, though we did get to the Arenal River and had a great workout.
• From what we could see in road cuts and such, the top soil in Costa Rica must be at least 50 feet deep! Compare that to Cancun where top soil is measured in inches when it exists.
• We saw lots and lots and lots of people mowing lawns. We saw no one cutting grass with a machete (the way they do here in Cancun).
• The paved roads we were on were in good shape. One day I decided to count potholes. We drove for over 4 hours that day, my count was 4, and all were in the town of Naranjo.
• Metal window protections (bars) are common as are metal gates over driveways. People have the culture of protecting against break-ins. Not sure how much crime there is there.
• Once we came around a corner only to find that half the road (one whole lane) had slid down the road in a landslide. There were no signs, you just had to notice in time to swerve.
• On the main highway we saw buses stop to pick up passengers. They did not have a pull-off area, they just stopped in the right lane. They must get rear-ended all the time.
• Every single bathroom I saw in Costa Rica was spotless, from the Burger King emergency pit stop we made, to the airport, to random restaurants, to our hotels. The first thing I did when I got to Mexico was to visit the bathroom at the Cancun airport…eww!
• The only garbage we saw regularly in Costa Rica was flower petals on the ground…

While we were in Costa Rica local Cancun TV show host Oscar Cadena was there as well. He and his film crew visited Arenal as well as other areas of Costa Rica. This week they are editing their Costa Rica footage and, so I’ve heard, will put their Costa Rica show on the air next week.

We were told the show will appear on Unicable in Cancun (often channel 10) on Monday, September 29th at 5 pm. I have not been able to confirm this airing on any published TV schedules. But we heard this from someone in Oscar’s crew so the rumor source has merit. If any of my readers finds confirmation of this airing schedule please post a comment. I’ll be looking for the show next Monday at 5 pm.

Until recently in order to fly to Costa Rica from Cancun you had to make a connection at another airport, but now you can fly direct from Cancun to San Jose, Costa Rica. The flight is less than 2 hours long.

The company behind these direct flights is a Costa Rican charter tour company called Destinos TV. Destinos TV is bringing Costa Ricans to Mexico for vacation and also the reverse, they are bringing Mexicans to Costa Rica for vacation.

Destinos TV arranged our trip for us including hotels and transportation (you can buy only a plane ticket from them if you wish). It took a little doing to get everything set. But in the end we decided to rent a car through them and drive ourselves where we wanted. Destinos TV also can arrange for group transportation (the group tour route) but we decided against that.

Because our trip was so short (5 days only) and because of our flight times we spent the first and last nights in San Jose, which is close to the airport. Next time I do a trip like this I won’t stay in San Jose proper, instead I would stay closer to the airport in Alajuela.

Our hotel in San Jose, the stately Hotel Balmoral, is smack in the middle of this busy city and is surrounded by one-way streets. Had we come in on a package tour, with a bus driver who knew his or her way to the hotel I think we might feel differently about staying in San Jose again. But we rented our car and set out for the hotel in San Jose thinking we had maps and the hotel address and that we would find the hotel without trouble. HAHAHA! We drove in circles for over an hour, always close but never quite finding just the right one-way street. The hotel itself, when we did reach it, was nice and comfortable. It has a decent restaurant/bar and the staff is really attentive. But I do think that next time we won’t brave the streets of San Jose.

View of Arenal Lake – taken as we were coming down from the Hanging Bridges

Our second day in Costa Rica we drove to San Ramon and then up into the mountains to La Fortuna and Arenal. The drive is lovely. Even though it was rainy and overcast it was absolutely gorgeous! We were completely in love with Costa Rica after just a few minutes on this road. Once near Arenal we found our hotel, the Hotel Arenal Paraiso. We would stay in this hotel again, and again. There was nothing not to like about it. It has hot springs on the property. It has a good restaurant and we enjoyed all of the meals we had there. And the view from our room, well, we came home with so many photos of that same view that I’m embarrassed. Every room at the Hotel Arenal Paraiso overlooks the volcano. And the volcano changes every minute. The clouds descend, then they lift; the light changes, then changes again; the volcano smokes more and then less. We had no choice but to take photo after photo of that volcano.

What I didn’t realize until I got to Arenal was that the volcano is active, as in actively making noise. We kept hearing what we thought was thunder and finally found out that the noise we were hearing was not thunder, it was the volcano rumbling and rumbling. I’ve seen active volcanoes before (and I’ve even seen flowing lava from 5 feet away, which is an amazing experience), but I had never heard a volcano rumble before. All I can say is “Wow,” it’s really something to have the earth make all that noise, makes you feel like the insignificant speck in the universe that you are!

Orchids being grown at the Butterfly Conservatory near Arenal Volcano

The next day we set out to see the area. We decided to visit the Hanging Bridges first. We took the 2 mile hike that crosses all the bridges and fell in love with Costa Rica all over again. We saw no one else while we were on the trail, which made it more intense, it was just us in that rainforest.

The hanging bridges are wonderful. Neither of us is scared of heights, I think if you were you might have trouble crossing the high bridges, some of them are way up in the rainforest canopy. I have a touch of vertigo and it came on while I was on the bridges but I found that if I kept one hand on the railing of the bridge that I didn’t get that vertigo disorientation thing.

Howler monkey at the Butterfly Conservatory – he was howling at us like nobody’s business

After visiting the hanging bridges we set out for an Arenal Volcano observation area, but soon decided it was cloudy enough that we wouldn’t see much. So we bumped our way up a steep, windy, bone-jarringly bumpy dirt road until we got to the Butterfly Conservatory. There we learned exactly how completely impossible it is to photograph butterflies. You can be looking at 20 butterflies but by the time you take the picture they have all left the photo area or closed their wings for a second, effectively disappearing from your picture. Christ, you could not pay me to photograph butterflies!

We also saw the howler monkey in the photo above at the Butterfly Conservatory. He did not like us, not one bit. I think he is not so used to strangers. There were a few folks there while we were there, but they all worked there. I think the monkey knew we didn’t belong and wanted us out of there. So we obliged him and left shortly after he started haranguing us.

Another view of the Arenal Volcano

On the way down from the Butterfly Conservatory we drove into a heavy rainstorm. It was pelting down rain so hard it would hurt your head if you were out in it. And then we came around the corner and saw two figures out in the rain with ponchos on, they were hitchhiking. We stopped for them (I have a serious case of rained-on hitchkiker sympathy). It turned out they were from Europe and were both backpacking around the Americas. Both of them were involved with CouchSurfing and after spending a few hours with them, and eating lunch with them we’ve decided to looking into CouchSurfing ourselves (I’ve been hearing about it for a while, so this was my tipping point).

A plains view from the area southeast of Fortuna – we saw cows everywhere in Costa Rica

After meeting up with the CouchSurfers we headed back to soak in the hotel’s hot springs. I adore hot springs, having once gone on a hot springs tour of Colorado that took me to at least 10 different hot springs. There’s nothing like a good soak. And hot springs are great regardless of weather, it came be raining or snowing on you but if you are in a hot spring the weather is fine.

The next day we made our way at a leisurely pace back to San Jose. This time we took the other road down, going through Quesada and Zarcero and finally spending some time in the town of Sarchi, which is known as a hub for crafts. This road was not quite so windy as the road up from San Ramon. But this road had something the other road didn’t have, trucks. It had big huge trucks and little trucks and busses and more trucks…and even cars. At least 7 times we came around a corner only to find a semi-truck bearing down on us from OUR SIDE OF THE ROAD! Husbandito remarked over and over that “the car accidents in this country must all be head-on collisions.” But he’s a great driver (learning to drive in a taxi cab in Mexico City will do that to you) and we were never actually in any danger, though I did scream a few times.

All in all we absolutely loved Costa Rica. It’s infrastructure around cars and roads is not the best. The roads need shoulders. The trucks need emissions testing (they ALL stink). There are not enough road signs. But these things are minor compared to the enormous natural beauty that Costa Rica has. We will be going back, hopefully sooner rather than later.