Story

I've got nothing for today. Okay, something.

Once there was a little kitty cat who wouldn't be quiet. Now I have a nice pair of slippers...

Gregsta: Terrible

Biyaz

It's been another busy weekend. The good news is that my desk at home is relatively clean - important for that Monk side of my brain. The bad news is that we still have a shit-ton of work to do. Business ventures, wedding followup, homework, filing - oh yeah, the pile grows.

Since we got so much done this weekend, we're going to head out now and treat ourselves to some tasty cocktails at Vertigo and then go home. It's not glorious, but it at least gets us out of the house a little bit more.

Oh, and we did 2 bike rides this weekend, including going to breakfast on 2 wheels this morning. Good times. Hoping to continue the trend while the weather holds out for a few more days. Then, I guess it's time to invest in fenders and rain gear.

Gregsta': Out

Saturday blah

It's a whirlwind weekend again. Might go for another bike ride. Seems like it would be a waste not to with this lovely weather.

Gregsta': TwoWheelin'

Squishy

There's nothing better than a Sushi Lunch.

Maybe a Sushi Go-round with Indian Food, Thai, Sandwiches and Burritos. (a Gooch/Gregster collaboration)

Somebody stop the drooling.

Gregsta'

Blarg 2

I'm in a good mood today. Nothing can get me down. I am: Super Businessman...

Gregsta': Bumpin'

Unfortunate

I look forward to dealing with crappy HR issues about as much as one can expect. Today will be one of those days. I can say no more.

Gregsta'

Blarg

Day 2968: My captors are reeling me back in. I only have a few moments to write before their mind control causes me to get in the car and go to the internment camp. There's no turning back once I'm in the car. If I do, I'll get disoriented from abandoning the routine and then consequences will further indebt me to their henchmen... I... must.... go....

Whoosh

Day 2967: It's Monday again. The rat race continues to assimilate me. I work on my exit strategy when I have the energy. The rats drain me of everything I have. When I have a day where they aren't gnawing at my feet too much, I can read a few more pages and learn a few new tricks for escaping. They're letting me out now for the evening, only to consume that of which indebts me to their race.

Inner Sanctity

I think tomorrow, I may ride my bike to the library and spend some quiet time there in the morning. Reading might do me some real good.

Gregsta': Literate'ish

B.O.

I've been back to the office not even 2 days and I'm already burned out. I don't enjoy my job anymore. 8 years dealing with whining Architects and incompetent technology is making me sour. I miss the days when things worked and we're simple. Back then, being on the front line was fun. Now it's more like taking bullets for the team most of the time.

Other than that, life is great!

Gregsta'

529

As of this evening, I have 529 emails in my office inbox to go through tomorrow. Welcome home, indeed.

Bets' and I finished opening wedding gifts today. After realizing we had nowhere to put any of it, we went to Ikea and purchased shelving, put it together and put as much as we could away. We're still amazed at how much stuff people gave us for our wedding.

Finally getting tired and ready to go to bed. Might grab a drink and some nibbles before passing out tonight.

Ran into Gooch at Vertigo last night. Fricken' sweet. I was so tired from a long layover and flying that I didn't do a lot of talking or participating in coversation last night. I could barely keep my eyes open.

It's great to be home.

Gregsta'

Delay...

Just when we thought we would get out of here on time, our flight was Cancelled. Why? Something about a wind storm people are calling Ike. I don't know much about it. They shut down Houston airport, which is directly in the path of the storm, which was supposed to be our connecting flight to Portland.

In order to get home in time to get to work Monday, I had to spend $1,000 to take a different flight on a different airline (United). Continental is about the most worthless airlines in the world. They wouldn't put us on a different airline. Instead they gave us two options - refunded ticket or wait until Houston Airport opens again. Fuck them. I refuse to ever fly Continental ever again. What happened to customer service? Even the lady I talked to at United was appalled to hear that they wouldn't put us on a different airline.

Leaving the hotel at 3:30 to catch a 7:00 flight... ick.

Oh, and the 7 hour layover at LAX and miniature Regional jet that we take from LAX to Portland at 8 in the morning isn't exciting me either. I may get drunk for the first time in my life before 8:00AM. Hope it's the last time.

Gregsta': Out

Final Countdown...

Our Costa Rica vacation is coming to a close soon. Today, we take a bus away from the coast to a town nearby the airport. Tomorrow, we fly out. It's going to be nice getting home and seeing our family, friends, kitties, cars and home. All things we've missed while we've been gone.

In time, I plan to post all the pictures, videos and journal type stuff from our travels on the http://www.gigandbets.com website. Oh, wedding pictures will end up there eventually, too.

Gregsta': Travelin'

Costa Rica Adventures - Attempted Extortion!

One of the dangers of trusting anyone in a country not that of your own is the possibility that someone might try to take advantage of you. We almost got taken advantage of while here. Fortunately, Betsy can smell trouble a mile a way and I have a knack of keeping trouble from happening. The combination likely saved us from being out some money and possibly in a hostile situation.

We arrived at the airport last week and met a pre-arranged friend-of-a-friend at the airport, we'll call him Pedro. Pedro appeared to be nice and spoke very good english. He was supposed to help us out the first night find a safe place to stay or get us to our eventual destination of Manzanillo. After claiming that it was High Season and that he couldn't get us an Interbus on such short notice, we agreed to let him set us up at a hotel in town.

After paying for a cab ride and dinner for Bets', Pedro and myself, we arrived at the first hotel. It wasn't that nice, but we were led to believe it was our only option. Little did we know we could have easily taken a cab to somewhere in the outlying area and stayed in a much safer location. Fortunatly, it was only $37 for the night including breakfast the next morning.

The next morning, Pedro offered to get us setup for our second stop, La Fortuna. His uncle supposedly had a place out there. I handed him my credit card, he made the reservation in our name. We left knowing only the name of the hotel and that the Interbus drivers (private charter buses in Costa Rica) would know how to get there just fine.

After spending a few days on the Carribean coast, we scheduled our Interbus to La Fortuna, only to find out that nobody had ever heard of the place we were supposed to stay at. They thought they had it figured out at one point and we paid for our tickets. The next day, we traveled out there (a 7 hour ride in a crappy old bus with broken A/C) only to find that nobody had ever heard of the place.

The driver, not wanting to spoil our travels was kind enough to discover for us that there were ample rooms available at another hotel. We tried in vein to contact Pedro and the Hotel. Pedro was nowhere to be found, the Hotel we were supposed to be staying at had nobody who spoke a lick of English. It was late, we had a safe (and really nice) hotel room - we gave up.

The next day, we got a call from our friend in the states that had referred Pedro to us. She was freaked out as Pedro claimed he had called the police on us for not showing up at the hotel, costing him money. He claimed to have personally made a deposit with them on our behalf.

We made some phone calls and found that Pedro wasn't taking our calls anymore. We now got an answering machine. We smelled a scam at this point. When we headed out the next day to go to our next stop, Quepos, we finally got into Betsy's email and looked at what Pedro had written to our friend in the states.

It was pretty funny - he claimed to have contacted his friend "Officer Mark" to have us arrested - and even included officer Mark as a CC on the email unless we deposited just under $250 into his personal bank account to cover our missed reservation. Oh, and he decided to mention at this point that he has alegedly setup a big party for us and bought wine. Right. Further examination of Officer Mark's email revealed that the domain was for sale. Further investigation discovered that officers do not have emails, only detectives. Officer Mark didn't exist. Nor did his claim to have called the police.

We responeded back, contacted the US Embassy and let Pedro know that we were on to him and he was essentially messing with the wrong people. We emailed the hotel we couldn't find and authorized them to charge my card for a night stay as a cancellation fee. Immediately following, he responded with a plesant "that's fine".

There's a lot more detail, but I figured this is what is palatable for the time I have to write. I might flesh out the details more when I get back to the states.

Pura Vida: Gregsta'

Costa Rica Adventures

It's Saturday. Today Bets'and I took the Canopy Tour. This involved riding horseback to a platform up in the jungle (about 20 minutes), hiking a very long way up hill and proceeding to take a series of 9 zip lines through the trees. Holy crap. That was like nothing I've ever experienced. Bet's was scared at first, but in the end had a lot of fun. I think it went completely outside of her comfort zone. Yes, it's a little touristy, but it's fricken fun.

Tomorrow we head to the Pacific side of the country for some more beach time. We'll probably end up signing up with a tour guide for our hike through the Manuel Antonia park. Fricken sweet.

We are both really glad to be in an area that caters to Gringos rather than trying to pick pocket them. We got lucky, only one guy tried to trick us out of money (the whole "Do you have change for $1" trick). Of course it didn't work. We very kindly let him know we had nothing.

The only thing we don't like in Fortuna is these cars and vans that drive around with speakers on top playing commercials really loud. Fricking annoying. Think of the ice cream man, but no ice cream and instead of Greensleeves, it's an advertisement for some event in Spanish. Bastards.

Off to find some beer...

Gregsta': Buenos Dias

Greetings from Costa Rica!

Costa Rica - Puerto Viejo

We did it. Got hitched, headed south to Central America and are enjoying our little adventure in Costa Rica! I'm sitting in a great little coffee place specializing in organic/fair trade (not common in this area) coffee and chocolate. We've been staying on the Carribean coast and enjoying the sun, occasional storms and hospitality of the locals (for the most part).

It's not much different being married, except for the whole referring to each other as "husband" and "wife". Then there's the occasional "Honey-Do's" like "Can you tie my hair band?" or "Could you turn the hot water back on?". Other than that, business as usual.

Speaking of Hot Water, most of Costa Rica doesn't have Hot water as a standard accomodation. Some places simply have this diabolical looking electric heater as the shower head. We're too afraid of the wiring to try it. Other places have an inline water heater on the outside of the cabin that uses some sort of weird propane-like gas to heat the water.

Another luxury that we miss: Flushing TP. I'll say no more. Go back to eating your lunch.

The coast line here in Puerto Viejo is pretty, but much of the beach is littered with trash. It's gross, but there are spots that are clean.

We head tomorrow to Fortuna, which is at the base of the Volcano Arenal. It should be interesting! We've got a room at what appears to be a really nice lodge. It better be, I recall it was a little on the spendy side.

Gregsta': Pura Vida