We are now the proud owner of a Wii. It was purchased through Craigslist in the parking lot of Target. It was a funny sight to walk through the condo door and see Vlad and Andy furiously punching the air and screaming.

The Summer of Andy continues.

I’m laying on the poofy white bed watching Andy program and looking at planes take off from the airport. The radio is on and I’m drinking a cup of overpriced Starbucks tea. Everything in this complex is about twenty percent higher than the normal outside world. Right now it’s a price I’m willing to pay to be insulated from El Diablo, Las Vegas. Looking down on the silent and sparkly city I can almost feel affection. Almost. When I get into the car and it takes me an hour and a half to go somewhere that should take twenty minutes, my sanitary, high above the city kindness, fades.

I had a hair debacle. But unless your a girl, and even then, probably only if you’re me, would you be interested. Let’s just say that the guy tried twice and another girl fixed it on the third try. I’m a red head again.

We had our first couchsurfer in the new place. I think I may not be updating as much as usual because I’m writing so many emails to surfers requesting accommodations. Shocking that travelers would want to say right on the strip with quick access to all Vegas has to offer.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here before, but this summer is The Summer of Andy. I was concerned when the idea was at first jokingly brought up. I had visions of all day television marathons, and a living room full of Taco Bell wrappers and empty mini bottles of Patron. Even though I had my misgivings, I kept quiet and decided to trust my husband and the direction he wanted to go. For me, The Summer of Andy is all about me not being such a control freak. To relax and relearn that if I let go a little everything is not going to fall apart. In fact, things might just go a little smoother.

Not only is The Summer of Andy not bad, it’s great. Andy is even going to the gym with me. Can you believe it! Andy likes the elliptical machine (please reassure him that it’s not fem). And really, it’s not even summer yet. Technically it’s The Spring of Andy. Just think of the greatness to come.

I shall no longer be updating my journal. Instead, I’ll just have other people tell the story and link to them.

I love this place. I didn’t want to. I resisted. It’s too much money. It’s too swanky. I don’t want to cave into comfort because I’m tough, because I’m edgy. Tough edgy people don’t live in swanky condos. But, I’ve succumbed. I love this place.

It’s really quiet in the condo. The kind of quiet you get when you sleep in the forest. I think out of almost everything spectacular here, I like that the most. I can just sit on the couch, look out the window and feel peaceful. There’s no air conditioner hum, no traffic noise, sirens or people. Silence is at a premium in this world and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

I love that when I’m done being silent and peaceful I can take the elevator down twenty one floors and be with hundreds or thousands of people. I can eves drop on their conversations or be friendly and insinuate myself. Yesterday when Andy was programming I walked two blocks to the Paris Casino Diamond Room. I sat at the bar for two hours eating water melon, talking to people from Chicago, Denver, San Diego and Puerto Rico.

I never thought I would hear myself say this but, so far, I’m really liking being back in Vegas.

I’m excited. We’re moving in here on Monday for the next six months. Everyone is invited to visit.

costarican cows
Originally uploaded by cindigodotcom.

more photos here.

< boring entry >

I finally got around to uploading our Costa Rica pics. I’m a little disappointed in the quality. Also, I didn’t take many pictures since I just wasn’t feeling like it.

We’ve checked in to Bally’s for four days. We had some comp room and Andy needed to get to work on baseball. April first is coming fast. We’re waiting to hear back from the condo guy.

Thanks for all the wishing of well. I’m feeling almost 100% again. We’re flying back to Vegas tomorrow evening and (I never in a million years thought I would say this) I’m glad. These last few weeks have really taken the travel bug out of me. I want to stay put and not move for awhile.

Poor baby Sara crashed face first with no breaks into the tile floor. We’ve been calling her “Unicorn”. The big purple goose egg on the front of her head looks nothing like a horn, but that’s the best we could come up with. Besides being sick and impressively hurling a banana Exorcist style across the room, she has to deal with a this. I feel for that kid.

We’re in Florida. We got in at 6 am yesterday. I felt a little nauseous in the morning. At noon we had to go back to the airport to pick up Andy’s sister, her husband and their little baby daughter that came in on a later flight. We had been sleeping on the beach until then since Tampa, where the airport is and Venice, where Andy’s parents stay, are a few hours apart.. by 10:30 or 11:00 I was feeling sicker, feverish, cold, hot and nauseous. We got to the airport and in the middle of picking up the family and the ordeal of trying to get the car seat anchored into the car, I extricated myself from my caccoon nest of blankets in the front seat and went into the airport to use the bathroom. When I came out…..they were gone.

The first thought that ran through my head was the correct one. Andy saw a mass of blankets in the passenger seat and assumed I was under them and drove away. Gary, my sister-in-law’s husband said from the back seat, “Aren’t we forgetting Cindy?” Gary is notorious for his deadpan humor so Andy thought he was just playing. He replied, “No, we’re meeting her there”, and kept driving. They didn’t get too far before realizing the truth. I was sitting on a cement slab bench when Andy came sprinting up the airport sidewalk to collect his wife.

After ten minutes in the car, I was doubled over in pain and quiet tears and asked if we could go to an urgent care clinic. It was ultimately decided to go to the emergency room. The wait wasn’t that long. I think it helped when I shuffled up to the desk in tears and delerium and asked the desk person, “I’m trying to get the, get the, some information, because I’m, I need some help”. When I went into the triage room where the nurse assesses how much pain you’re in, she didn’t even ask me to point to a face on the chart. If you’ve never been in an emergency room setting, there’s a chart that they use to gauge how severe your pain is. 0 is a big smiley face. 10 is a squinced up smiley face, somewhat red with tears coming out of the little stick figure eyes. I was the poster girl for illustration 10.

They put me on a bed in a room and started an IV and took some blood. They took my temperature. It was 103.5. I told them not to put me in the ice bath. I think they laughed. As I said before, I’m delightful when delirious. I told the doctor his moon and stars shirt was very pretty. I had a wet washcloth over my face so when a nurse clicked open a pen I said worriedly asked what was going on. Andy said it was a pen. I said “Oh god, I thought it was scissors. I thought she was going to take a biopsy of something.” They laughed, but a polite, lets humor the sick girl laugh. I said loudly, “Hey, I’ve watched House! Although it’s a bad show and I’m embarrassed to admit it”.

They gave me a bunch of things, the best being some narcotic that took all the pain away and let me sleep for an hour or so. I ended up needing two liters of fluid and retaining it all. Two liters. That’s a Pepsi bottle full of saline. They would have let me stay longer but they needed the room for a cardiac patient.

We got a hotel nearby Andy’s family and I’ve been sleeping and taking all the medicines prescribed. This was most likely caused by something I ate or drank in Costa Rica. I’m feeling much better and think that I should be back to normal in a few days.

We’ve made it to Tampa. We got in at 6 am, got the rental car and drove to the beach to sleep until it was time to pick up Andy’s sister and family from their flight at 12:30.

I’m not feeling like death anymore, but, I’m still sick, and probably will be going to the doctor tomorrow. It takes alot to get me into a doctor’s office.

Here’s the “sick” entry I promised from our last few days in Costa Rica:

I’m laying in bed. I’ve been here for sixteen hours. My sickness started with a slight toothache in the morning, leading to a sore throat going full blown at about eight pm with a fever and some delerium. Although I thought, and still do think, that I’m quite delightful when I’m delerious. Although Andy may beg to differ. For a while it was kind of fun until the pain really kicked in. I won’t go through the gory play by play of the all night sweating, puking, chills and searing hot pain that made it impossible to sleep or even get comfortable.

We were supposed to leave here to take the bus back to San Jose this morning. We changed our plans and are flying back to SJ tomorrow so we can fly back home in the afternoon. I can’t tell you how joyous I felt when I didn’t have to take that five hour bus trip this morning. Just thinking about that drive was literally gut wrenching.

Andy’s worst fear of traveling in Central America came true in these past few days. Today he went to get more money and the one ATM in town is broken. He tried to make plane reservations at the internet cafe two miles away and the site wouldn’t work. He was going to make a phone call to Cyril our host in San Jose and the phone didn’t take money, only phone cards. All of this while I’m incapacitated and unable to help.

On a more positive note, we saw spider monkeys, most of them with babies. It was pretty cool to see them scrambling and jumping in the trees with tiny little baby monkey clinging to their backs.

I really, really missed mother internet. I can live without alot of comforts. The internet is not one of them. I’m glad we came here even though it was a poorly planned trip and I packed completely wrong and now have malaria or some other tropical jungle disease. I really thought I would like Central America more than I am. I guess it all is working according to plan because I’m actually looking forward to staying put in Vegas for a while.

We are back in Vegas. We missed our connection (not our fault) and spent the night at a Raddison in Charlotte NC. We were supposed to be back around midnight last night, but got here around one this afternoon. I won’t go into detail about the terrible service and comedy of errors. Not to mention the sickness that has been going on for about four days. I swear it’s a swiftly growing worm like alien that will eat into my brain and lay eggs while I suffer a distressing and ghastly end. Andy disagrees about these grandiose statements as usual, and I hope as usual, he is correct. I wrote about said sickness, but it’s on Andy’s laptop so you’ll be spared the gorry details until later.

We were laughing at the planning of our Florida trip so closely to the Costa Rica trip and what silly people we are. We thought the flight was tomorrow morning when we were laughing. I double checked just now. It’s at 10:54 pm tonight, getting into Tampa at 6:00 am.

I was so looking forward to sleeping in a warm, cushy familiar bed.

I was almost attacked by a monkey yesterday. Alright, that may be a bit dramatic.

We went to the park reserve with the nicer beach and forest. There were outdoor showers to rinse off the salt water. When the shower was turned on, the monkeys jumped down from the trees and ran onto the tops of the showers to drink. I thought they were done drinking so I went to turn it off. One of the bigger monkeys ran twards me on top of the horizontal metal pipe above my head with teeth barred and a noise that umistakably said, “Lady, if you turn that off, I will bite you in the face”.

I am burnt like a lobster. The last time I was sunburned, I think I was nine.

We met some more nice Americanos in the swimming pool of hotel late last night. I ended up jumping in while wearing my sundress and spending the evening chatting and drinking in the pool. They’re building a house in Arenal, a place we wanted to get to before we left. It sounds beautiful, but we just won’t have time to make it.

Speaking of going home.

TROY and HEATHER….

Our flight (US Airays #709) gets in 11:20 pm on the 7th. Can you guys (or one guy) come and pick us up? I don’t have my computer and am not completely sure of your email addresses. If you can’t or it’s a pain, don’t worry about it, we’ll take a car. We’ll be checking our mail several times before we leave.

I don’t really have much to say, but I thought since I have 14 more minutes of time in this internet cafe, I should say something.

We saw some monkeys today. They were dropping things on our heads from the trees behind our hotel. We’ve been hanging out at the beach and drinking cerveza (Cervaza para Andy, vodka and someting para mi). We went on a zip line tour above the rainforest canopy. It wasn’t that great. I’m glad we did it, but there were alot of touristas and much waiting. ten seconds of zipline and ten minutes of waiting for the next turn. Also, all the people screaming in fear scared away all the wild life. It really wasn’t that scarry.

We did meet some nice Americanos and had dinner in Quepos. I gave them my URL. So, Americanos, if you’re reading this, please do email and say hi. We enjoyed your company.

Swiming in the warm ocean and laying on the sand has been the best. Even though I ran screaming for the beach a few times after seeing a huge fish and being touched (I say bitten, nay, chomped) by a huge fish.

We were told before we got here that vegetarian food would be hard to come by. Not true. We’ve had some of the best food of the trip here. Rice, plantanes, beans, salad, salsa….it’s all delicious.

Must go, Andy (Andres) needs the rest of the time to look up important things like busses and flights.