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the eel was hiding in his hole

the Boxfish was hiding behind a piece of coral and I spent 5 minutes playing roun de round with him to get the shot.

and the green and red fish was hiding behind the elephants ear (orange) sponge.

The bad news is that a good friend of mine was killed in a car crash. She is the Carnival girl who was in my November post from Pirates week. Her picture is here. A couple of years ago, she was also the hostess of the talk show I do every Wednesday. I knew her really well and just saw her on Thursday and talked to her for a long time. She was looking for a job and I talked to her about getting one in our sales department. She told me about her boyfriend. It was her boyfriend who was speeding and ran into a parked car. She was one of the most perfect people anyone could ever imagine, only about 17 years old. It is a real tragedy.
Anyway…

Yesterday, we had a meeting with all the engineers from all the radio stations on the island. I felt intimidated, I felt like everyone in the room knew more about radio than me. I feel the same way when I get aroound a lot of scuba divers. A girlfriend once told me that I never needed to be intimidated around scuba divers because I was one of the most qualified, experienced divers anywhere. On one level, I can agree, and realize that she’s right. My feelings of insecurity come from within, and are mostly unfounded. But it is hard to stop feelings from popping up.
Yesterday, everyone except me was a college trained, experienced engineer, bragging “Oh yeah, I designed this station and that station”. I never designed any stations, I never went to college. I got out of school and went to work and have been working ever since. At my prevoius job, I was a “Communications System Technician” and I got promoted to “Engineer” but when I get around other engineers I don’t have the confidence I should have. I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll sound stupid. I’m not a real engineer, I’m just wearing his hat.
Anyway, last night and this morning I’m feeling kind of low. I can do my job OK. Most of the guys yesterday were traveling consultants contracted by the other radio stations because of some problems with the stations interfering with each other. My station doesn’t need any taveling consultants because they have me. I am what you call a jack of all trades, master of none. I feel intimidated when I get around a master of a particular trade. I am painfully aware ofthe things I DON’T know.
Life is too short for me to learn everything I want to learn, plus do all the goofing around and playing I want to do.
Yesterday the neighbors dog wrecked my cactus, I’m going out now to repot them. It was cloudy last night. I wanted to go look through my Binocs. Tonight the OI Girl arrives!

Woke up last night and went out to the front porch and was looking through my binoculars. I came back in to go to bed and the alarm was going off. I saw lots of cool stuff near Scorpius and Saggitarius. Nebula and I think galaxies. I’m having a little trouble navigating around on my chart. I look at the sky and pick a star, then look through the binocs and see millions, and can’t pick out the one I was looking for.
Today is day number 3 of taking the dog to work. It’s a little inconvienent today because I have an important meeting to attend away from the station and I am kind of leery about leaving the dog at work without me being there. Soon I will have him trained and HE can go to work and I will stay home.
I still don’t know if I’m working Saturday or not, I’m hoping I don’t but assuming I am.
I’m tired. I will be drinking a lot of coffee today!

I am glad it’s almost the weekend. I was dreading work more than I needed to. I thought the OI Girl was coming Friday, but found out yesterday she’s coming Saturday. I didn’t even protest when my boss asked me to work Saturday night.
I got my new binoculars yesterday! They are fantastic! I was at the beach till late and didn’t get to bed till almost midnight. I was looking mostly at nebula and star clusters. and the moon. I got up this morning and looked at Venus, I could see it fairly well, it’s showing a little more than a quarter right now. I’m going to need a tripod and more books…..
Ditto the dog is coming to work again today, The repairs look almost done to me, but I don’t know diddly squat. I was able to bring the dog home at lunchtime yesterday and that was very convienent. Hopefully I can do the same today.
I guess that’s it for today. I haven’t touched my 365 blog since I went on vacation, I am plagued with guilt.

Today I’m taking my dog to work with me. I haven’t asked my boss or anything, I’m just taking him, and I’ll tie him up to the satellite dish. They’re (who is they? nobody knows!) coming to do some repairs in my apartment, and the dog can’t be here, because he’ll be in his guard dog mode. today is also my split shift day, we’ll see how that goes…. I’ll NEED a beach lunch today, I can just tell.
Surprisingly, work wasn’t too bad yesterday. I spent most of the day at customs, clearing some equipment. One of the newscasters commented that while no one really notices while I am here and things are running smoothly, they notice when I’m gone because things really go to shit. That made me feel pretty good, in a way. But if I was better at my job, things wouldn’t go to shit when I was gone.
My Binoculars left Louiville Kentucky this morning at 3:15 am. I think they go to Miami then here. Maybe today! Probably tomorrow.

Well, the dreaded day is here. Back to work. I have never worked anywhere that it is more difficult to go back after a vacation than here.
I feel pretty negative.
I dislike my boss’s usual snide insinuation that since I’ve been on vacation, I should be supercharged and want to work twice as hard now that I’m back. Like I should actually enjoy it when he screws me over. My life isn’t about work, it’s about my time off. Work is merely what I do for money to spend when I’m not working.
Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as I anticipate.
Ugh!

I’ve been itching for a pair of astronomy binoculars for a long time. Now I think I’ve found a pair.
Nikon Astrolux 10×70’s for $650, regularly $1200. They’re big! 12.0 x 9.3″ (304 x 235mm) WxH
Spending so much money is scary for me! I feel nervous!I can’t stop myself from getting them.

I’m Home! I got home around 2PM and just got unpacked and all my email done. I had a great time and I’m glad to be home! Here’s my posts from the past few days. I had NO internet access at all! thesse were typed on my cell phone then transferred to my computer, then pasted here.

23Feb06 6:25PM
Today was OI Girls Birthday. We went to the hotel where her father is the manager and had breakfast and looked around a bit. We went out to lunch with some of her friends. then we went to a big shopping mall in San Jose and looked for jeans for her (but didn’t find any) I got a new bag for my laptop and some pants.
Now its dark and we just got home.
Tomorrow we are going to the rainforest and day after that to a beach even more remote the the one we were at a few days ago.
I am tired right now.
I’m looking forward to the beach.

24Feb06 4:34 PM

today was a kind of lazy day. The OI Girl slept late and I read. We went out and got pizza for lunch. then we went to this huge Agricultural market. We just now got back. Tomorrow we get up super early and vamos a la playa.

26 Feb 2006 7:04 am

Yesterday we got up at 4:30 AM and came to the northwest coast ofCosta Rica. we are at the IO Girls aunts property. It is a nice 2 bedroom place on a huge cliff and a 40 minute walk to the beach. My GPS shows us at 894 feet above sea level. the living area is outside and the master bathroom is designed with no roof! It is super-nice. the only electricity is from a generator. the stars were fantastic last night.
Yesterday I met Chang Diaz, a Costa Rican astronaut who works for NASA amd has been in space several times.
Here I saw my first scorpion and there was a poisonous snake found by one of the girls in a closet. this is called “dry forest” and it is very desertlike, lots of cactus and bees and eagles and wildlife. This morning, there are millions of small yelllow wasps that apparently, dont sting.
Today is my Moms Birthday and I plan on callng today. I expect max roaming charges as we are far from civilization with only a weak phone signal.
tomorrow morning we leave and go diving.

26Feb 06 4:29PM
We just got back from the beach and town. the beach was very nice and it was almost exactly a mile long. We saw whales out in the ocean from where we were on the beach. (We also saw them yesterday from the clifftop.) We went to town to get ice and coffee. Apparently last night there was a small confict between the OI Girls parents and her aunt so her parents left first thing in the morning, inadvertently taking all the coffee with them. So this morning we had some old thermos coffee and that was it.
The longer you drive here the better the roads seem. Im 4 wheel driving pretty good now, beating our poor rental car to death!

28Feb06 6AM
right now we are in Playa Del Cocos. Yesterday we went diving at Catalinas Islands. It was pretty good. The viz wasnt great but we saw mantas and sharks. There was a nudibranch that stuck itself to my head and everybody was taking pictures.

29 Feb 06 504PM
Aranol volcano
Wwe left Playa Del Coco this morning and came to the Aranol Volcano. i got a ticket on the way. We are at a fancy hotel called Tabacon. Our room has a view of the volcano. Soometimes you can see smoke rolling down the side and hopefully when it gets dark we’ll see some lava. This afternoon we went to these hot springs. It was like being inside a terrerium. The water is very hot from the volcano. Tomorrow it’s back to Alajuela. we left some of our dive gear at the dive shop and have to get it from San Jose. One of the divemasters is coming to San Jose and will bring it. Lucky.

2Mar06 504AM
came back from Aranol yesterday, it was a great drive’ through the rainforest then through a cloudforest. (rain then fog). There was very low visibility through the cloudforest. Then we stopped and got souvieneers and picked up our dive gear from the bus stop. we got to OI Girls parents house about 4 PM. I stared packing because I’m leaving tomorrow. Then we went out to a nice dinner with OI girls parents and brother and sister in law.
We were very tired when we got home, both from Aranol and from dinner.

3Mar06 0517AM
I am now at the San Jose airport and not too happy about it. I am sad to be leaving.
Yesterday, OI Girl, her brother and sister-in-law and I went to La Paz waterfalls park. It is a super nice park on the way to the Poas Volcano. we saw a lot of hummingbirds, frogs, snakes and of course, waterfalls.
Last night we had dinner and after dark the dogs started barking. 0I Girls father went out, came back, got a gun and went out and fired a few shots into the air. The neighbor fired a few shots in the air too. Apparently, there was someone down in the woods and they needed to be scared off.
Then we went to bed and woke up at 3:45 to take me to the airport. Right now OI Girl is having breakfast with her father and returning our rental car. In one week she’ll be returning to Cayman. My baggage was 11 pounds overweight and it costed me 25 US dollars. Bastards!
I’ll be home in time for lunch.