Costa Rica and Crankiness

I got to take a ride out west to Clemson Univeristy this morning. Our assignment editor gave me one of my favorite photographers...a man who I'll call Mr. Efficiency...or Mr. E for short.

The ride was great. After we skirted through the mid-level traffic mecca of Easley, SC, we rode along Highway 123 toward the university. The fall leaves are still on the trees and occasionally fall down toward the truck's windshield like mother nature's version of Asteroids.

It almost always happens this way. Mr. E and I get in the car, talk about caffeine, then start talking about our lives. It generally eats up the entire ride. Today we talked about Costa Rica.

Mr. E wants to move there. He wants to own a coffee plantation or a mountain biking lodge for tourists. You don't hear people talk about those kinds of things very often. It's hard to get people to think about what they want to do this weekend, let alone what they want to do in Central America.

He said something like...and I can't quote him exactly...but something like...I wonder how many people don't do what they really want to do because they won't let themselves think about doing it?

Right now, I think I'm sort of in that position. When I signed my three-year contract back in April of 1999, three years seemed like a lifetime. But it is almost over and it is forcing me to consider my future. I don't realy feel like it. Almost everyone I know who IS considering what they are going to do in the next few years is really upset about it. It runs the gamut. Family life, professional life, hair styles...

When I got back to my desk, I started looking at Costa Rican real estate. You'd be amazed at how cheap it is. I wouldn't mind running a lodge in Central America. Hire me a guide, put up rich tourists for a week, cook them breakfast in the morning, hop on an ATV around lunch time, run them out a bowl of soup, then go back and cook a monsterous dinner for them. Live in the mountains, sandwiched by two big oceans, ride a horse (or maybe a mule) though the mountains.

Alas, that is Mr. E.'s dream. I have to come up with my own.

The good thing about all of this is...I feel very balanced right now. Nothing is overwhelming me. I'm living in a blissful state of apathy that is taking care of my heart and mind quite nicely.

Before I go...a dispatch from the world of cranky wives (and I add this only because it cracked me up when it happened)...

My little lady has been taking early morning Spanish classes and hence goes to bed a little early on Monday and Wednesday nights. Last night she went to bed and locked the dog out of the bedroom (which I've told her is a bad idea...because the dog won't stand for being locked out the bedroom). Sure enough, within two minutes the dog is yelping outside the bedroom door. I don't do anything except continue watch the documentary on the TV. Because as sure as I go up and get the dog, she'll run back upstairs and yelp. After a full hour of listening to the yelp and watching TV, I hear the bedroom door open and a cranky yell from the top of the stairs:

"Could you turn up the TV? I can't hear it over the dog barking!

The door slams, but it sounds like the dog made in into the bedroom. Then all is quiet.

Costa Rica, huh?