Re-launch

Yes, gentle reader, I have been away for quite some time. I admit it...I got spooked. The blog started out as something of a journal, and a way to keep others up on what we are doing and what new and crazy turn our lives have taken. But I didn't expect that people would WANT to hear from me. When I discovered that people were actually reading the thing, I got a little bit of stage fright. It's the same thing that drove me away from playing the piano when I was 14...

Well this month marks two years of this Costa Rica living experiment, and life has certainly changed since I last blogged. After the McKnight family returned to the beach and to their own house (Suzette is fine and Eva is perfect), Tim and I moved into a house called Casa Loggerbarber (I know), where we lived for six months. It was a very cute place and served us very well, but it was so small I had to go outside to change my mind. After that we moved to Casa Destino Pacifico, where we spent the next six months. It was much roomier than Casa Loggerbarber, but had no real windows, no air conditioning, and no hot water for the first 2 months we lived there. It sat in the middle of a field, so we also had no cell phone signal except for a specific part of the yard; when we could get signal it was often too hot and sunny to stand in the field and talk on the phone. Our cell phone bill went way down, but our communication with friends also dropped off a cliff.

In April we moved into Casa Miramar, in the development of Tierra Pacifica, and life has been great ever since. The house is beautiful: 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, mountain and ocean views, air conditioning, telephone, wifi. How did we manage to pull this off? We are live-in property managers for the place. We act as caretakers for the house and property, and when there are vacation renters, we move out for the duration of their stay. I know it sounds like a huge deal, but keep in mind that we don't have any of our own furniture here, so we only have to move our meager personal belongings into the garage. It also doesn't rent very often, so to date it has not been a problem.

I don't want to go overboard on my first post back into the blogging world, so I'll save some of the story for another post at another time. There is lots of ground for us to cover, gentle reader, and I've got to start slow this time. Lesson learned.