Costa Rica!

Here are some Costa Rica pics for those of you who have stayed strong and resisted the commodification of personal information known as Facebook....

 Here is the first place that we stayed... right on the beach!  This also also the beach we went running on in that last post.

 We went caving.  Here is Sara climbing down into the caves...

 which were lovely.

 The last night at this beach we staying in one of the 'tree house' rooms that you can see in the first pic.  It was nice.

 Beach.

 Breakfast was included.  And breakfast was good.  Everyday.

 Then we went to the rain forest.  This is where we stayed there.  On a ranch.

 Then we went to stay near Arenal volcano.  We went on a hike to a lagoon at the top of a dormant volcano, and it was super rainy, steep, muddy, and fun.

 But it was also anticlimactic as visibility was terrible.  But we brought mangoes up with us and that helped.

 Here is Arenal.

 And our trusty little Jimny.  He got us through some tough times.

 Beach at Manuel Antonio.  It was also lovely.

 And we got to see three-toed sloths in the wild!

 And this beach was also very nice.  I am a much happier beach-goes when we have our hammock along.

 There were wild monkeys all over.  Sara was super, super excited about this.

 Sunset dinner and drinks...

 We rode horses to a 'waterfall' and a swimming hole in a river/creek (dry season).

 We also went to Irazu volcano.  It was pretty neat.

And the countryside was also really nice.

I am sure we will have some more pics when Sara gets home with hers.  These were just some of the pics that I had on my camera.

Homecoming

Just a quick snapshot I thought I would share.  When I got home from CR our rose bushed were massively laden with roses.  I trimmed them back in the fall but was going to prune them more.  Weather must have been nice for then when we were gone and it looks a bit late for pruning now.

Runnin'

Uploaded the tracks from the watch this morning and thought I would post a map of this one.  Sara always likes to go for runs on the beach when we go places.  I sometimes don't mind running on the beach.  This one on Playas Samara in Costa Rica was nice.

perfect word count

Check out the word count on this paper I am working on.  I feel like that is a sign that it is done and I should stop editing it.  That has to be good luck or something...

late christmas

My new headphones just came in today.  Pretty excited about them.  I have been looking for some that I can wear for like 6 or 8 hours a day and not be too painful like earbuds or 'on the ear' headphones can be. So I was looking around for some that had some noise canceling/isolating powers and were 'around the ear' so my delicate ears didn't complain.  So far so good.  These are from Panasonic.

(mom and dad - this is what I replaced the others with...)

Dissertate

This week I heard back from some peeps at the U. of Chicago that they are going to let me use a data set that they have.  Kind of big news.  As in, I can now start working on the dissertation big news.  Only downside is they have already published a lot off of it, but I think I can make something work out of it.  

So, now I am all excited to really dive in on the reading and what not.  I was holding off a bit because it would be sad to do all the reading and never have data to run stuff with.  Thus the study couch for the night.  Sara is working, so it is just me and the beautiful coffee porter reading about physicians, beliefs, decision making and everything that will solve the world's problems.  Cheers. 

students

so there are a few funny things about teaching.  I just gave an exam this past week and there were some short answer questions.  One of the students drew me a picture of a ninja and wrote: "this is a ninja holding nunchucks, fighting off your red pen from marking this question wrong.  Proceed with caution.  Ninjas are an example of a counterculture."

I almost gave him like .05 points for creativity.  but then the questions was not about countercultures, and ninjas are likely a subculture and not a countercultre anyways, so I decided against the .05 points.  So close.  So close.

New lens!

I have been saving Christmas and birthday money up for a good bit of time now to get a new camera lens.  We went and got it last week and here is the first picture with it!  Excuse the messy kitchen...

'friends'

Recently a facebook 'friend' went through his entire friend list and wrote something about each person.  This is one of those friends that I never got to know very well but we had some meetings because of a project we were working on together.  Great guy.  Anyways, he did this with his whole list of facebook friends and my first thought was that I was really impressed he was able to do that.  Then my second thought was that it is very sad that I was impressed he could say something about all of his 'friends.'

I hope that the facebook meaning of 'friend' only becomes a term for something specific - a network connection on facebook - and not something more general - real life friends.  Sometimes technology has a tendency to shift our values and perceptions of reality, but I hope that I never am impressed that a friend of mine is able to give a short one sentence description of who I am.