Her "big" Christmas present this year was a digital camera, and I am hoping that she will come back with hundreds of pictures to share with her Facebook friends and others. The only way I've managed to keep abreast with what she has done is through her rather terse Facebook posts. (I let her take her Nook down, mainly so she could play Angry Birds on the flight, but did not want her taking her laptop on this journey.) She has gone kayaking, played soccer with some kids at a school in Monteverde, enjoyed the best strawberry milkshake of her life, and gone horseback riding and zip-lining. (She was determined to skip the zip-lining, but did it and, despite being scared to death, loved it. I am glad I did not tell her that one of the synonyms for it is death slide.)
Susie is the first in our family to leave North America. My "overseas" travel is 15 minutes in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in 1987, en route back from San Francisco. I walked from downtown El Paso, crossed the Rio Grande, bought a fifth of tequila, and came back to the U.S. (This was in the pre-9/11 days, when crossing to Mexico or Canada required no passport, and also before Juarez became as dangerous as it is now.) Steph lived in upstate New York until she was seven or eight, and therefore crossed back and forth in and out of Canada with her family quite often when she was a child.
Susie's Graham School group left Port Columbus at 6:30 Monday morning. Neither Susie nor I slept the night before. She was too keyed up about the trip, and I knew the only way to be up at 3:30-3:45 was not to go to bed. The mother of one of the girls going on the trip picked us up a little after 4 a.m., and we drove to the U.S. Airways terminal. Columbus was dark and pretty quiet at that hour, and even the airport seemed to be more peaceful than I usually see it. (My last trip out there was to buy $150 worth of colones for Susie's journey.) The kids (and two teachers) going on the trip were full of energy and excitement. Nevertheless, three or four of the kids went off en masse to Cup o' Joe to buy coffee and espresso.
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| Susie and Flannery after going to get caffeine.
I didn't stay to see Susie off. Check-in at the baggage counter began around 5 a.m., a full 90 minutes before takeoff, and the teachers assured us they could take it from there. I marveled at how efficient Susie had been with packing. Her suitcase was still small and light enough to go as a carry-on, which saved me a $25 booking fee. Flannery's mother and I left just after the attendants scanned and approved passports, and it was still dark when I fell into bed. There was a text message from Susie on my cell phone when I awoke late Monday morning. It was time-stamped 8:03, and it said In charlotte. (They were changing planes in Charlotte, N.C., so I had asked her to text me once she arrived there. I wasn't sure about her cell phone service in Costa Rica.)
Back here in Columbus, I've kept myself occupied by nights at the bookstore, since the winter semester at Columbus State is in full swing. This semester, us "old-timers" at the bookstore have been blessed with some very sharp, very hardworking, and very fun rookies. You always come away from some customers wondering, "Just what is this person doing in college?", but even they have seemed less than before.
So far, the most noteworthy event that has happened in Susie's absence has been the end of my years-long quest for a Cisler brick. I posted an eBay alert for "cisler brick" last year, and finally received an email saying one was available. (I have written extensively about the significance of this brick in this entry, when I still used LiveJournal as a platform. This article goes into even further detail.) I made the payment online, and yesterday, when I came home from work, there was a Priority Mail box on my front porch. I knew what it was, and my neighbors were a bit puzzled as to why I was so happy about getting a brick in the mail. (One of my Facebook friends did point out--correctly--that getting it in the mail is better than getting it through the front window.)
The much coveted Cisler brick.
We are heading into a long weekend. Both the State of Ohio and the bookstore will be closed Monday, in honor of the Martin Luther King holiday, and today is supposed to be the only day with decent weather. Although I went to bed around 11:30-11:45 last night, I tossed and turned until nearly dawn, so I called off working at the bookstore today, which will definitely be a blow to my pocketbook once that payday happens.
But I did not regret it. I awoke early in the afternoon, and when I saw that it was in the low 50s, I brought the trike out of drydock (i.e., my dining room), since next week the temperature is not supposed to exceed the mid 20s. I rode around Olde North and the Ohio State campus area, and ate lunch at Five Guys. My infirm Dell laptop is not up to my typing speed, so I have made a pit stop at the OSU Library to type this blog entry.
Susie will be back late Wednesday night. Her plane lands around 11:45 at night, and I will be at the U.S. Airways gate ready to meet her.
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