Costa Rica Dog Lover

Tomorrow is our last day at work forever – YAHOO!!!  I honestly can’t quite believe it.  This last two weeks has been a bit of a whirlwind.  Tom has been really winding down and I have been freaking a bit because I had so much to finish up.  Tom had a replacement to train so he was pretty much done as soon as that happened.  I, on the other hand, have been trying to finish up two major project (finished one) and remember everything that other people need to take over.  This afternoon I cleaned up my office and tomorrow I need to cull through my email and thousands of files and try to get them in order.  Guess what probably won’t happen 🙂 

We have also gotten together with many of our friends that we have made here in Moscow over the last few years and that has really been fun. Tomorrow I will tell everyone I work with goodbye (adios forever) and then we will head home around noon.  The people who have bought our furniture will be here starting around 2:00 to pick it all up and then we will be hanging out in an empty house.  We will sleep for the next few days on an air mattress and use camp chairs to sit in.  Tomorrow night we will really feel that our life has changed…………

We are just around the corner now from the big move.  In twenty five days we will be boarding the flight in Denver that will take us to San Jose for our new life.  These last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind – especially after I decided to quit work on July 23rd rather than July 30th.  I didn’t think that moving up one week would make much difference but it has.  It means that I only have five days to finish everything I need to do at work – good luck to me.

  Yesterday was a busy one.  Our “mules” (Rex and Susan) from Spokane came down and picked up the packed duffle bags that they will be taking to PV and we went to the farmer’s market and then had lunch before they headed back.  Rex has just been named the interim provost at Eastern Washington University and I was concerned that they would have to cancel due to his additional workload but that will not happen.  They know how to set priorities 🙂 .

Last night we headed over to our friends house, Ron and Denise, for some yummy ribs and beer.  It was a great time, much laughter and talk.  Ron was being very generous as he is the one who will take the brunt of my leaving in July rather than November when we had originally planned.  Anything I haven’t finished up as well as the responsibility for getting the financial statements done and the audit addressed will fall to him.  I should have had them to dinner.  Thanks RON!!!

  So today is the second to last Friday I will ever work at a job – pretty neat feeling.  We are done next Friday around noon (no need to stay all day) and then we will take the next four days to finish getting the rental ready for the landlords to move into and finish packing up everything we will need to take to Wyoming and Colorado.  The dogs are finally loving their crates so that concern is no longer hanging around.  They should be fine on the flight now. 

Things left to do are:  get complete vet history for both dogs; file paperwork for retirement at work and TIAA-CREF; figure out how to get pillows in the luggage; re-file all of our paperwork for Costa Rican residency and have it all go to Jordan’s house for him to finish up for us; eat all the food in the freezer (could be tough); un-archive all of my books that are archived on the kindle so that I can read them in CR (won’t have 3G in PV to download directly); get contact information to and from friends; gas up the truck; HIT THE ROAD!!!

  We had dinner Friday night with our friends Chris and Sharon.  They took us to Banyans, the restaurant at the WSU golf course and it was great!  Chris came to Moscow as the Director of Contracts and Purchasing from the University of Michigan about ten months after I came to Moscow. He came into a giant mess and has spent the last three years putting together a great operation.  It just so happened that he and Sharon bought a house just around the corner from our house in Moscow so we were able to get together fairly often – although not often enough :-)  They are just wonderful people and I will miss them.  I hope they will come see us but won’t hold my breath – Costa Rica is a bit out of their comfort zone. 

This coming week Joyce and Doug are hosting a goodbye party for us and have invited several of the information technology folks I have worked with closely over the last few years and I am really looking forward to that.  On my last day – July 23rd – there will be the traditional party at work with the people on our floor as well as those people across campus who work for and with me.  And then on the 24th, we will go to the final goodbye party in Lewiston hosted by Tom’s boss and another friend who works for me. This has been a very hard four years as I was asked to come in and fix many things that were wrong or not working well.  The people who will be at these parties are the ones who stuck by me when I was under extreme pressure from those who didn’t like what I was doing.  They are also people who have held their own in their individual areas against the negativity and good ole boy culture that permeates this university.  Bottom line –there are some of best and some of the worst people I have ever worked with in my 30 years or so of working in higher education.  I am glad to let go of the worst and will be very glad to be able to retain my good memories of the best.

I went to Coeur D’Alene with Joyce (Doug the mule’s wife) to spend the 4th of July with friends.  They live on the Spokane River and it was beautiful.  We sat on their deck and watched people go up and down the river in really cool boats and had great food and great company.  We took several rides on the boat and saw incredible houses although the one above took the prize 🙂  It was a very cool weekend and we had to wear heavy coats when we went to watch the fireworks on Lake Coeur D’Alene but it was worth it.  The show was incredible and something I will always remember.  We had a perfect spot sitting on the boat with the displays just overhead.  I couldn’t ask for a better last 4th of July holiday.

Tom has been in Puerto Viejo since Wednesday getting everything ready for the final move.  He and Doug left Moscow on Tuesday morning at 7:00 a.m. and arrived in Puerto Viejo around 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday.  By the time they got to bed that night they had been up for about 40 hours and were completely exhausted.  They have spent the last few days hanging around PV and recuperating and seeing the town.  I am so disappointed because Doug has not seen any birds or animals during his time there and that is part of the pleasure of being in Costa Rica – seeing all the diverse wildlife.  Hopefully he and Joyce will be able to come back some day and they can experience more of what we love about the country.  They have been able to eat at some really good restaurants and they have been able to walk on the beach every morning.  So it hasn’t been all bad 🙂

It is just forty days before we fly out and work is definitely winding down.  They had a failed search for my job and so are going back out to try again.  That means they won’t have anyone in place anytime soon and everyone reporting to me is feeling very unsettled.  I feel bad because there is nothing I can do to help.  All I can do is assume they will figure it out.

Tom and our friend Doug (aka “the mule”) left this morning to take four duffle bags, a TV, and a projector to our house in Puerto Viejo.  They also had carry on bags 🙂  They are now in Denver spending the day with Tom’s daughters and granddaughters since they will fly out tonight at 12:10 a.m. and land in San Jose a.m. tomorrow morning.  A van will be waiting to pick them up at the airport and then they will go pick up our SUV that has been garaged since February, and our new cell phone.  Then off to PV – should take about four hours unless the main road is closed from landslides and if that happens it will take around six hours.  They will unpack and then hopefully have a great time!!!  That actually is a no brainer.

The people who sold us our house and who have been living in it and taking care of it will stay at the house next door that they have also built for a couple of days and will then go to Bocas del Toro in Panama to have a brief vacation with some friends of theirs.  Tom and Doug will watch Sascha – their dog.  This arrangement has worked out so well for all of us – we haven’t had to worry about the house and they have had a place to stay.  They recently sold the house next door so they will be renting for a while in town while they decide where their next house will be.  They are a young couple – mid thirities – from Canada who had the courage to live their dream early in their lives.  Pretty neat story. 

Tom will be finalizing the things he can for our final move in August.  He will set up our bank account, buy some dishes, maybe get a barbeque, and will talk to the carpenter who has done such amazing work for us and who we want to build a few more items.  He will also pay the insurance on the house and touch base with with a few people we have met in our prior trips.  I am still hoping that they can get to Arenal (the active volcano) – I know that Doug would absolutely love it and would get some great photographs.  If they can’t though, they will be able to have other adventures that will definitely keep them occupied. 

Yes – I am jealous that I am not there but I only have 44 days until I am!!!

We had developed a routine the last few years where we drove to Lewiston (30 miles away) every two to three weeks and shopped.  We would get gas (MUCH cheaper), stop by Petco and get dog food that we could only get there, sometimes stop at Home Depot, and always go to Costco to stock up on food for the freezer.  Today was our last shopping trip to Lewiston – we won’t need to go any more.  I am completely certain that we will not be doing anything like that in Puerto Viejo.  The nearest Costco like store is in San Jose which is, on the best days, four hours away.  Limon, which is the nearest large town of around 50,000 people, has very basic shops.  Most of our food shopping will be at the Saturday farmer’s market and at the fish shop on the beach that sells fish fresh from the ocean every day.  I guess I can deal with that. 

We also will write our very last rent or mortgage check tomorrow – now THAT is something to celebrate!!!  For almost forty years I have paid someone else – either a bank or a landlord – every month for the privilege of living in a house or apartment.  It is the most amazing feeling to know that I am done with that forever!!!!!

  Today we took Kaya and Wiley to the agility dog trials being held at the Latah County Fairgrounds so that Kaya could see Tracie who is the person who rescued her.  Tracie has dogs who compete in the agility trials but she is also the wonderful person who runs the Adopt-A-Husky rescue center in Spokane where I saw the picture of Kaya and ended up adopting her even though I had vowed that two dogs were enough.  Even though the normal adoption process for the rescue takes up to six weeks, we were able to get Kaya right away because a friend (Sharyl) vouched for me  and she also happens to be a friend of Tracie’s.  Funny how things work out.

When we got Kaya her name was Justice.  She was named that because it was her ordeal that ended up causing the humane society to go in and rescue 54 dogs at a place where the owners had decided that they would breed “sled dogs.  She was only three months old when neighbors adjoining the dog property noticed that she could not walk and was dragging her hind quarters behind her.  They called the humane society who found that both of her back legs were broken – probably by the older dogs who were fighting for food – she just got in the way. The Humane Society eventually rescued all 54 huskies and the woman who ran this monstrosity ended up serving time in jail and paying substantial fines.  We renamed her Kaya, which means “resting place” but Tracie has trouble calling her that so calls her Baby J (for Justice). 

Kaya immediately was all over Tracie – licking and jumping and talking to her.  Wiley was a complete gentleman and just stayed close to me and barked occasionally at the dogs who wandered near.  This is the last time that Tracie will see Kaya as we will not be bringing her or Wiley back to the United States.  I got a bit emotional about that though not around Tracie or anyone. It is the first “last” thing that has made me a little bit sad.  However, neither Kaya or Wiley will be deprived in any way in their new country 🙂

   Yesterday I heard that my friend Rex was appointed the interim provost at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.  He and his wife Susan are two really remarkable people.  I met them when I worked at Colorado State University in Pueblo where he was the Dean of Business.  I have been in higher education long enough to know that Rex was one of those rarities in the field who could gain the strong support of his faculty, students and the administration, but who could also make a decision, even if it was a difficult one.  He will be a great provost. 

Tonight we watched “Invictus” – the film about Nelson Mandela and the South African rugby team who won the world championship in the nineties.  What a great film!!!  Definitely one that I will buy and watch over and over.  The message is clearly one where forgiveness triumphs hate and I can listen to that message forever.