Eastern Standard Blog

So, yesterday, I put my wife on a plane for Ecuador. She’s going to be gone until March 13th. Holy yipes! My daughter and I are leaving this Friday to spend 12 days there, returning on March 5th. Since my wife will be in school during the days, I’m pretty much on single dad duty until then. Holy yipes! Hopefully we can avoid any repeats of the zoo…

I am very excited to visit Ecuador. I have never been and of course the idea of going to the actual equator appeals to the nerd inside me. There will be pictures of me standing in both hemispheres! We were hoping to visit Banos, but due to volcanic activity this is probably not going to happen. Instead it sounds like maybe Mindo is where we will go.

Yesterday was a rough day for both of us since we had to get up at 4 am to head to the airport. Not many 3 year olds I’ve met have very good days when they start at 4:30 am…hopefully this week won’t be too bad.

So, I survived another trip deep into the heart of the Tribe. Over all it was a good trip, work-wise. Most of our challenges were of the straight forward, Dilbert type.

We ate amazingly well, and I hope this continues to be a recurring theme of our trips. The Reading Terminal Market, across the street from our hotel, rules so completely that I wish I could just sleep in there to make it that much easier to get my meals. The list of yummy this time includes: By George!, Kamal’s Middle Eastern Specialties and Dutch Eating Place.  While there we also tried an Afghan restaurant as well as a Moroccan  restaurant. Both were super yummy, and I had no idea you could do that with pumpkin, but wow!

I also have a few foto highlights from my trip, including a special pilgrimage to the Amtrak train station, but more on that later

While we were there I also had my first hands on introduction to the Nintendo Wii. I can see why everyone wants one of these evil little devices. They are a lot of fun, and very social for a video game console. We had a great time playing it in the command center after all the ‘real work’ was done and we were just babysitting recovery efforts.

I even watched my first Super Bowl since I was about…12 years old? *yawn* I was actually an exciting game in terms of being tightly controlled by both teams I think, but I’m just not a fan of organized sporting events. Tom Petty even managed to be pretty lame, playing of course the cream of mass consumption and predictably ending with ‘Running down a Dream.’ Somebody paid good money for that 4 year degree so they could figure out that one!