Las Catalinas, Day 3: Sensoria Rainforest Hike and Thermal Pools, Scotch Tasting
It’s hard to pick just one day from our trip to Costa Rica. Experiencing New Year’s Eve on a beach, underneath a shower of fireworks was a contender here for sure. But this day (hiking, swimming in thermal pools, and enjoying a remarkable collection of scotch) is tough to beat.
Well, I can now cross off “Wake up at 3:40 AM to go to an Estate Sale” off my bucket list. With the goal of being first in line to purchase a
Cornufé 110 stove, Liz and I woke up crazy early, and camped out for a few hours like the crazy people that we are. All this for a stove that looks to me like it came out of a Dr. Who episode.
Birthday Dinner at Osteria Langhe
Little would I know that a week or so later, this would be the last restaurant we would patronize in 2020. The pandemic kicked in, full force, a few days later, with Liz and I both shifting to working remote full time. And like the rest of the US, staying inside and isolated as much as possible.
This wouldn’t be a day that would stand out normally, but in hindsight? For 2020? It was a pretty significant day.
I noodled around with Arduino a bit this year. And while I experienced a great deal of joy connecting with satellite GPS data, connecting multiple components together made me feel like a wizard. Despite me just following a lot of instructions from folks smarter than me.
One of these days, I’m going to make that reverse Geocahce puzzle.
We had our washer/dryer sitting ih the basement for some time, and I finally got around to installing both. The washer itself was fine and straightforward, but setting up the dryer involved a bit of pipe and gasline work. I’m happy to be writing this, months later, as that means I didn’t blow the whole house up. Not too shabby for a few wrenches and a can of pipe dope.
This photo cannot share the immense joy I experienced, watching our talented floor guys (Milton and Nick) replacing our old flooring with new plywood. We’d put in a lot of work pullling up an initial layer in all three rooms, and this day so a significant progression of our first floor: level plywood everywhere.
With so much time indoors, I’ve not interacted much with other people – Liz, Bob, our neighbors on occasion. I happened to be walking back from parking my car, and met Tanya, and had a fascinating converastion about her and her work for the city.
If I could fill the blog with days like this, I would. Encounters and conversations like today are the best examples of what I want to share with this site.
After a lot of delay and my usual hesitation, we decided to go all-in for Halloween and built a socially distant candy delivery mechanism.
Dining Room, Fireplace Discovery
While removing the tile from our dining room fireplace, Liz made an interesting discovery. A buried fireplace!
After a week of adding in new plywood, several weeks of our floorboards sitting and acclimating, and another week of adding stain… our flooring was done. While we have more work to do on this floor, it’s a tremendous milestone for us. It’s still difficult to process, after all this time.