I did get interested enough to do a little math.  I figured that most people wouldn’t really appreciate what a day off is here.  People in real life ordinary jobs tend to work only 5 days out of 7 in the week.  That gives you 104 days off a year, right there.  Throw in 11 Federal holidays or generic holidays of choice and the total goes up.  Of course, we get those, too.  That said, sometimes people take them, sometimes don’t.  It just depends because we go from a 12 hour day to 8 hours paid when you take a day off.  On my first iteration out here in just over 2 years I only took 1 holiday.  I think we’ve taken most since then, excepting those occurring while we are on R&R.  Then I added in vacation time, assuming 2 weeks a year for normal people.  We get 2 weeks every 4 months, though the year end is 3 weeks.  All 3 of those are only 10 paid days off, not 14 and 21.  I assumed the normal people vacation is taken in one lump instead of being split up, and didn’t count the weekend days that wrap them because it’s already covered in the 104 days.  It doesn’t work that way for us, of course, as there are no weekends to deduct.

These totals come up to 129 days for normal jobs, and 60 for us, or being off from work roughly 35% of the time for you, and only 16% for us.  It’s kind of funny how the numbers can present odd views though, because while the average time you need to make it through for a day off is only 5 days, whereas for us it’s closer to 7-8 weeks or so.  I’m awful tired of it all, but we’re going to stay out here for just a little while longer to build up the coffers and enable us some flexibility.

BTW, I’m not being whiny about it, just wanted to point out why I did not ambitiously pursue anything on my day off.  Of course, there really isn’t anything to do anyway.

Taking the Oath

I would like to congratulate Guli as she worked hard getting all the paperwork together and done and studying the civics questions.  We put enough time in beforehand that things today went smoothly and quickly.  Hallelujah!

There I was (no shit, this really happened) in the office doing whatever it is that I do, I noticed a sudden increase in the amount of grit in the air.  I look up and back at the windows, and clouds of dusts are billowing out.  Now, a typical duststorm will easily penetrate this building, but usually it’s a gradual kind of thing.    When I say dust clouds are billowing out, it’s like it’s being pumped into the building, now seepage.  Then it gets dark out.

You may remember these pictures from a previous storm:

Well, it was heck of a lot oranger and darker than that time.  The building 40m in picture 2 where you see a dim outline and a slightly more obvious tree at right center?  Well, we couldn’t even see the other building that’s only about 8-10m from us!  At one point, the truck parked outside, 4m from the door was only dimly visible.  There was a heck of a wind blowing.  Usually these storms stroll sedately through and take their sweet time coating everything around.  This was shaking the doors.  Then it lightened up a little and the ground began to get slightly darker in spots.  Whoa!  That’s rain!

It was bad enough that all the comms went out, too. Sure, AFN dies if you stop praying for it in the first place, but AFN radio died about a half hour before the storm dropped on us. It may have been coincidental, it’s out probably a third of the time or so. AFN cable dropped when the storm hit, and then all the phones and network took a dive. Interestingly enough, Radio Sawa stayed on the whole time.

Now, in the real world, it’d be rain.  Here, it’s actually dusty mud falling from the sky.  As the wind continued to blow, the storm kept moving.  The dust went meandering off to the east, and the wet mud fell more and more.  30 minutes later, the only way to tell it actually happened is the high amount of dust all over the inside of the building that we need to clean up some, and the vehicles are all streaked with dustspots where the mud hit, splashed, and dried near instantaneously.  Total time of this strange weather experience?  15-20 minutes, tops…

Here's a shot from the ridge above PdC, which is out of sight to the right

We did some diving.  One day decent, the other day…I don’t want to talk about it. Visibility not so hot.

4 white tips and a moray eel

This restaurant had amazing marketing.  They wafted the scent of deliciously fried chicken all up and down the street.

Pollos Crispy, I love it so

Udderly Plantable

The next beach over, not PdC

Flying into Tamarindo airpo...airfie...airstrip. We scared the cows quite badly.

Our return flight's plane. I'm a little burnt.

We went back to Denver for a few more days, and rescheduled our return flight going through New York one day early.  It was nice, as we got to see Timur, who we know from Tashkent and is living there.

Nash Droog Timur

The next morning we rode the subway into town and wandered down Broadway for a while, checking out the places and the people.

He wears underwear. It's just not under anything.

We meandered on down the street, heading into Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.  Some of them were not so realistic…

Brangelina Guli

Some were actually really good.  Susan Lucci looked very real.

Susan GuLucci

Some were a little grabby, and had to be dealt with.

I kicked Clooney's ass after this. He didn't put up much of a fight. I'm fierce, but I expected more than that.

Superman's new sidekick, SuperGuli

I kicked Superman’s ass afterwards, too, just in case.  Justin Timberlake, too. (not shown here for brevity’s sake)  At least they all seemed to realize that resistance was futile and would only result in a worse beating for them.  After this, we subwayed down to Battery Park for a ride over to the Statue of Liberty.  It wanted to rain on us pretty much the entire time, but never did.  The air quality got fairly bad and this didn’t help any of the pictures with a long viewing distance, not one bit.

Statue of Liberty (no, the one in the background)

And then of course, the vacation was over, and it was work time again.  I’d like to mention here that I am by no means a fan of JFK airport.  We flew in the day earlier on a 90 minute flight leg, and sat waiting on the tarmac 90 more minutes to get to a gate.  On the next day, we pulled out from the gate, and sat at various places at the gate and runway for THREE AND A HALF HOURS.  It’s all the worse when you throw a 13 hour flight on top of that, though they did it in 12.  I can’t say enough good things about Emirate’s new entertainment system, which has about a 9″ LCD with an amazing amount of movies, TV, games, music, etc.  And that’s just in economy class.  Looked like business class got stuck with a 15-17″ screen.  I literally watched 2 entire movies before we finally leapt skywards.  That system really makes a huge difference in chopping down the apparent time on a long flight.

The rest of the pictures are all here:

2008 07 Costa Rica

2008 07 USA

We went and hung out in Denver.  I didn’t take too many pictures but we did go to the aquarium with Hunter and Lois.  Curved glass tends to yield criznappy shots, though, so a lot didn’t make the cut.

Hunter and Guli at the aquarium

We went to Costa Rica for 10 days during this time.  We flew into Alajuela / San Jose and drove up to the Arenal Volcano area and did some hiking and adventuring over there.  I liked the canyoning, where we went rappelling and hiking through watery canyons.  We got rained on a lot.  It was a nice change.

Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

Waterfall at the Rio Celeste - note water coloration

Seriously, I wasn't kidding about the rain part.

From Arenal, we drove down to Playa Del Coco in Guanacaste, the region in the Pacific northwest of Costa Rica.  We stopped along the way at Las Pumas Cat Zoos near Canas.  I was somewhat frustrated at the fence, but it’s there for a reason.

Jaguar at Las Pumas Cat Zoo

Margay at Las Pumas Cat Zoo

A short drive later, we were off the road near Bagaces heading to the Llanos de Cortes waterfall(s).  A short walk and after sneaking through the gaurds, we found the waterfall.  I didn’t stay in the water long.  Something kept biting me.

The Bovine Brigada, Guardians of Llanos de Cortes

Llanos de Cortes Waterfall

Guli at Llanos de Cortes

I’m going to break the post right here for brevity.  The above pictures link to the individual sub-galleries.  The main galleries are here:

2008 07 USA

2008 07 Costa Rica

We flew into Tashkent and took the train down to Karshi the next day to hang out with family.

The next day we ambled up to Navoi to see Malika’s (Guli’s youngest sister) family and their place.

We went to Nurata Chashma, which is a spring near the remains of one of Alexander the Great’s forts. It was pretty crumbly.

From there, we headed up to Moynaq via Bukhara, some empty desert with super-bad roads and a small but loud mechanical difficulty, but easily repaired; and into Khiva overnight before we could get up to the nowhere that is Moynaq, an old Aral Sea fishing village that isn’t doing so well now that the Aral Sea is drying up and is 60km (?) or so away.

From there, we went back to Khiva via…some other places we hadn’t gone through on the way up there. There were some directional malfunctions.

In Khiva we wandered through the Old Town, which is not just museums and tourist knick-knack shops, but still a functional residential area.

From there, we went back to Karshi for a few days before heading back up to Tashkent prior to flying out. We went to the zoo and saw an old friend or two.

And then we had to leave. Bleh. Check out the 2008 03 Uzbekistan Gallery!

Type in your email address under “Subscribe Via Email” and hit the “Subscribe” button.  I will turn off the old method in the next couple of days.  If this page has shifted down, look at the top right column, it will be there.

It’s kind of dusty out today; the worst I’ve ever seen.

Even inside the office, the lucky are weary breathing masks. They’re a bit small for my face, but this storm is worse than the last big one last week, which was pretty rough, even inside.

It is visibly dusty inside; however it doesn’t show in pictures very well. Outside, it IS just that orange. I haven’t edited these pics at all. Headlights turn a bright blue shade, and are visible maybe as far as 50m in the mist. The vehicle itself won’t show up until about half that distance.

This building that you can not quite see is about 40m away. I could not actually see it when taking this picture, but I do know where it is. If you look closely, you can see the outline of the aluminum building, the darker shapes of the hescoes around it, and a tallish tree to the right.

This place blows.

Come and visit, but for Pete’s sake leave!

Special needs toilets — only 1 legged headless women or otherwise normal headless men allowed.

 While it may be in the depths of the parking lot, it WAS actually aboveground, at least.

For those of you who have not added your subscription via the “subscribe by email” link over to the right, this would be a good time to go ahead and do that before I turn off the old subscription form.

We went to Tokyo:

We went to Nikko:

…where we were on TV…

One mustn’t miss Mt. Fuji…

Went to Kyoto…

Met (not et) some deer in Nara…

Saw the floating torii at Miyajima…

Visited Hiroshima…

Marvelled at Himeji Castle…

And then we left, which was a bit of a drag, but isn’t it usually?

Check out the 2007 11 Japan gallery.