Work and Stuff

I have one fun excuse and one completely understandable, and entirely not fun, excuse for being gone for a while.

I'll let you decide which excuse is which.

We headed south of the border for a couple weeks, living la pura vida down in Costa Rica. The first week was work (for Mr. J), while the second week was pure relaxation. Costa Rica is gorgeous and full of friendly folks, but the highlight for me was our stupendous GPS. Not only did it have this guy who would pop up every now and then to fill us in on the geology, history, or silly facts of the region we were driving through, but the lady who directed us along our way knew EVERYTHING ... even when a speed bump was coming up on some obscure (to me) back road of Costa Rica.

OK, so that wasn't really the highlight of the entire trip, but it was pretty dang cool.

The other reason I've been quiet around here is I've been swamped with work. If it's not the High-Power Laser Handbook (zzzzzzz, huh? What? Oh, sorry. I fell asleep just thinking about it), it's sentences like this that have been keeping my brain swimming:

However, adequate answer to the question as to the extent to which aid to (a) economic infrastructure and services as well as such social infrastructure and services as (b) education and (c) health including basic health and nutrition is devoted to rural areas cannot be answered in the absence of detailed data on the location of such expenditures.

Wha?!?

101 pages of this is turning my brain to mush, causing my eyes to permanently cross, and leading to a ridiculous headache that is encircling my entire head from the neck up. I can guarantee that my hourly rate is not nearly enough to compensate for this one.