We are Very Different People

There are four of us here now, and, though we all work in medicine and all live in Portland, we otherwise have little in common.  So, for fun, we imagined what our days would be like were we all the same.  That is, what if there were three Jens, or three Mamies or three of me?  And now we have Nicola, who is Jen's twin.  So here goes:

So What If We Were All Like Them:   Part One: 
The 3 Jen-Nicolas

05:15 am We Jens:  we jump out of bed and stretch.  Then slam coffee.  Then stretch.  Then slam coffee.  Then go for a run.  Then stretch.  Then eat yoghurt.  Then lift weights. Then stretch.  Then go to the pool -- and swim laps. 

07:59 am We Nicolas:  we jump out of bed and stretch.  Then slam coffee.  Then stretch.  Then slam coffee.  Then go for a run.  Then stretch.  Then eat yoghurt.  Then lift weights. Then stretch.  Then go to the pool -- and swim laps. 
 10:00 Lay by the pool and discuss all the things that we would normally be worrying about.  Make lists of these things so that we remember NOT to worry about them.  Though the Nicolas amongst us DO NOT DO LISTS -- but she does have plenty of well-thought-out suggestions.  Then organize these into categories -- several times.  Swim some laps.  Stretch.


11:30  Back to the house for salad -- no dressing. 


12:00 (Noon)  Stretch


12:30 Back to pool.  Add items to the but-we're-not-worrying-about-these-now list.  Read a computer manual about how to more efficiently manage digital photos to save time (the manual ends up taking 58 hours to read).  Share tips on efficiency in general.


2:00  Hike in the desert.


4:30  Stretch


5:00  Chef arrives to cook for us.  We order salad.  (Nicola channels Portlandia and asks about the growing conditions and soil content in which the lettuce was grown -- as well as the possibility of contaminants in the ground water.  And exactly how many minutes ago was it all harvested.)  Lively discussion about the need to start a recycling program at the resort.  Someone gets a pad of paper.  Someone starts writing.   Pretty soon petitions are printed for distribution among resort guests (200 copies).


7:00  After dinner walk, turning off lights on the grounds "since no one is up this late anyway."


8:00 Discuss activities for the next day, organizing then reorganizing them to maximize efficiency.  (All the while doing ab workouts on our respective exercise balls -- Jens and Nicolas.)  Redo the list three times.    Alphabatize it for cross-referencing ease -- and upload it to our smartphones, (just the Jens).

9:00  Go to bed, smiling, "What a fantastic day!  We got so much done!  Man, why can't everyone be more like us? It's not that we're perfect but we just make so much sense!"

9:05  Get up to stretch.

9:15 Go to bed.

Mamie's Eye (aka JUST CALL RAFAEL!!!)

JUST CALL RAFAEL

When we arrived our gracious concierge, Rafael, introduced us to our golf cart and gave us a whirlwind tour which left us incredibly impressed and thoroughly lost.  He assured us that he could be reached at any time and to just call him if we needed anything.  He was graciously emphatic. 

As is our norm, we half-listened, smiling and nodding.  Then proceeded to try to do everything ourselves.  Jen and I spent 30 minutes at the wrong main entrance, eventually involving 3 increasingly worried Mexican valets chattering frantically on walkie talkies trying to find a rental car in their garage that didn't exist, almost certainly suspecting that we thought "coche" meant golf cart rather than car.  How long they spent looking for our golf cart, I do not know.  Finally we gave up, walked home and called Rafael.  Within the 5 minutes it took us to stroll to the correct main entrance, our car had been found, air conditioned and made ready.

Did we learn?  No.  Not much.

Next morning Mamie awoke with crusty eyes.  Time for antibiotics.  No problem.  After all, we saw a pharmacy on the highway close by -- it had huge signs in English advertising antibiotics, along with a variety of pharmacological happiness aids for the elderly.  I offered to drive her there.   We did CALL for the car.  Quick and easy.  Then headed off for the Mad-Max-highway dash.  Mastered that.  Check.  

Feeling flush with independence and confidence, we pulled up to the pharmacy.  Rats.  Not open for 40 minutes. Details.  Oh well. Check out the neighboring grocery store.  Drive around a bit.  Back at 9:50, hoping that the pharmacist might arrive 5 minutes early.  A groundskeeper (?) wanders by, hosing off the parking lot, sees us, stops and says (in Spanish), "It's not open yet."  "Yes," I reply, "10 more minutes."  He grins,  ". . . or 20."

Being kind, he walks behind the pharmacy and knocks on the door of an old car,  "You have clients.  CLIENTS!"  Door open, a disheveled, brightly tattooed young man stumbles out, stretching half-heartedly, and shuffles up, rubbing his eyes.  He unlocks the door, the alarm goes off, Mamie screams, alarm goes off.  Mamie grasps her heart, breathes rapidly and exclaims loudly,  "THAT SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!!"  No reaction from pharmacist.

Mamie walks up to him -- lets say, to be generous, 8 inches nose-to-nose -- "Conjunctivitees.  Infectionnaise.  My EYES," fully subscribing to the longstanding linguistic belief that increased volume = increased understanding.  

Looking slightly afraid and definitely awake, said very-non-English-speaking-almost-assuredly-not-a-pharmacist wanders off to the bar shelves and selects a small bottle of drops.  I look at it but cannot read the font 0.04 words. Mamie, though, can still see out of her left eye and says, "Oh, polymyxin -- PERFECT."  Turns to non-pharmacist,  "what's the dosage?"  No response.  So I help, "1-2 drops each eye q 6 hours today, then q 8 thereafter."   No reaction.  "Dos gotas cada seis horas . . ."  She looks at him, "dos drops?"  He nods most unconvincingly.  We leave.

Back at the palacio Mamie goes in her room and starts screaming.  "Narda, Narda,  put the drops in my other eye.  It hurts too much.  I can't do it."  Now Mamie is a person who screams  when her hair is pulled (really, \ask Jen), so . . . needless to say my reaction is badly blunted.  I put a drop in her other eye.  Now not only is she screaming, "IS THIS NORMAL!?!," but her eyes are streaming and she cannot open them.  No, not really normal, I think to myself, not even for you.  Squinting my best I examine the bottle and somehow, with atavistic xray vision, I read, "otica.:"  Hmmm, I bet otica is otic.  "Mamie!  These are for your ears!  It's the lidocaine."  

'Cause I'm sure you have other things to do today, I will not describe the "I'M GOING BLIND!! OH MY GOD!!!  BLIND!!! BLIND!!!!"  Narda reassurance, given repeatedly and repeatedly discounted, "WILL I SEE AGAIN?"  scenario.  Why do I even bother talking?  But the end result is that she wants to go BACK to that same pharmacy, get a refund and the correct drops. I refuse.  REFUSE.

"Let's just call Rafael."

An hour later, he delivers the appropriate antibiotic to Mamie -- now recovering in her lounge chair at the beach club -- and tells her that he's consulted with a physician who assured him that the topical lidocaine will definitely burn, but it will be a temporary effect and she'll be fine.  

Seriously, why do I even bother talking?

First Morning

Someone's in the kitchen making a Mexican breakfast, Jen is balancing on her neck with her feet on an exercise ball, and Mamie is sprawled asleep in the princess suite with strict instructions not to be woken before 8:30 -- which represents a compromise:  Jen and I 7:00 (sleeping in an' all),  Mamie 11:00.

Last night we had massages and water treatments  and so now look 10 years younger (in our own minds) and are actually daring to feel Relaxed!!!!  Though Jen is still runnng around turning off lights to "save the envrironment."  (Not that flying on fossil fuels to a resort resplendant with superfluous lights and extravagant water features -- damn the dessert -- impact anything.  There are pools, swim up bars, fountains and hot tubs every where -- we get totally lost and just jump in any ole place and trust we'll swim our way home somehow.) Hopefully, by the end of the week she will develop some semblance of humor over the issue.  

Mamie, "Good God , Narda, why don't you come here every year?  Or every 6 months?"  And honestly I'm just as baffled.


We have seen loads of whales spouting and leaping -- from our porch ----  tis the season.  Very considerate.  

Weather?  Perfect

Golf cart? Speed racer, baby, speed racer.  I mean I've floored that puppy and, swear to God, have pushed it beyond 8 mph!  (Another thing Jen is worrying about.  "We need to walk.  WALK.  WALK! ")  Now she's pointing her toes suspended over the exercise ball -- but I don't think she's working that hard because, damn the girl, she can still mutter and scold.  Whatever will we do when Nicola gets here? 

Well, enough of this,  I am extremely busy and must get on with the overwhelming task of doing nothing in particular,

WHERE YESTERDAY?

Okay -- left the country again -- so here I am!

Needed to escape the dreariness of rainy ole Portland (don't get me wrong it is THE best place to be July through October -- but this is not even close . . . . sigh).

My diehard girlfriends said, "Hell YES!"
And so we find ourselves in heaven!   AKA Auberge Private Residences @ Esperanza -- Cabo!  (Baja -- muy baja -- Mexico).  We have an "in" cuz this place would otherwise be way above our pay grade.  So we are using our very best grammar . . .

It's going to be a LONG day! Gotto fuel up for this one!

Wow! Welcome!

I can now add:

Singapore

Bulgaria

New Zealand

to the list of places where people have looked at this blog.  Maybe I'll have to start writing again.  I have two trips (local) to describe, but it is VERY HARD TO DO when it is sunny and 85 degrees out!  Speaking of which, I'd better get back outside -- who knows how long our mini-summer will last!!!

Today? Working at Home

All the World and Gresham, Oregon (aka Campground)

Just reviewing my "in hiatus" blog and was stunned by the location of many of you who have looked at it (accidentally or on purpose -- no way for me to know -- and notice I didn't say "read").  In descending order:

USA
France
Netherlands
Belgium
Sweden
UK
Germany
Thailand
Italy
Guatemala
Denmark
Romania
Malaysia
Canada
Saudi Arabia

Wow!  Would I could visit every county on the list and blog it.   Sadly, no immediate travel plans.  Though I do have a 25 minute commute most days (Got a job!!!!  I mean one that requires more than 4 hours per week.  Need to pay for my idle ways) -- in the glorious metropolis of Gresham, Oregon . Google says:

The city of Gresham could not establish itself as a city unless given a post office and postal code. A local storeowner offered to use his store as a post office and offered to name the city after Postmaster General Walter Gresham  if a post office was granted. Until that time, the city had simply been known as Campground because this forested site was where pioneers often stopped to spend the night and compose themselves before moving on to Portland.

Smelly, skinny, exhausted, ragged, traumatized -- possibly maimed, possibly diseased --  pioneers COMPOSING THEMSELVES?  The images are  . . . well, let's see.  What would that look like?  Washing clothes (with what?)  in a river whose borders are thick with thorny blackberries, hornets and poison ivy?
Rearranging rags?  Using dull pick axes to chip off years of tartar?

And all for what?  To limp in to Urban Portland?

Not all agree with Google -- an actual historian wrote:

The history of Gresham, Oregon, is rooted in the pioneers who trekked along the Oregon Trail in the 1800s. Traveling down the Columbia River or over the precipitous route by scenic Mount Hood. They found trees that were unparalleled, tall, and straight, which they used to build their first communities. The rich, fertile land was cleared to grow an array of crops that would eventually make the area well known for its agriculture.
Eventually there were many berry growers, fruit and vegetable truck gardeners, nut farmers and nurserymen. There were dairymen and cattle ranchers as well.

I'm not sure about all this -- there is rumored to be an historic downtown but all I see are highways and strip malls.  When it's clear, I can see Glorious Mt. Hood -- but only from the highway. 

Amy Winehouse Live Grammys 2008 You Know I'm no Good & Rehab - www.iamth...

Amy Winehouse - Love is a Losing Game

We Had a Few Unexpected Travel Plan Changes -- BUT WE MADE IT HOME!

Modern Tech!

I have Wi-fi on this flight (Detroit to Seattle -- the same route that Ulys and Zahra took a few hours ago)!  And so I am, squinty-eyed, lurching precariously,  sending out this update.  Tai is unconscious -- trooper that he is.  Hopefully he and I will be able to crawl to our Seattle-Portland flight.  If not,  look for us crashed out on the concourse floor of the Seattle Delta wing . . . zzzz . . .

WE GOT A FLIGHT!

I never, never, never thought I'd say this.  Never.  B UT   we are all thrilled to be going to Detroit today!!!

At least we are in "One of the Five Best Airports to be Stuck In" !!!

Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The only place in the world where you can literally get married while in transit, Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport also sells psychedelic chocolate. A popular spot for connections to all over Europe, the wedding chapel isn’t the only reason Schiphol is a great place to fly through (if you do end up marrying a recycling bin while on shrooms, we’d love to see pictures). Get cultured and visit the layover library, housing books in over 29 languages and iPads full of Dutch multimedia, giving you a chance to see a little more culture than the smoky dens you’ve been frequenting during your visit to Amsterdam.  (From:  Offtrackplanet.com)

Trying out a Cool Airport Hotel Concept: Still in Amsterdam

Floating Dutchman Promo: We saw the Inaugural Ride! The one that is actually shown below!