Countdown to Moving Day: 19 days and have I 20/20 vision again.

The cataract surgery yesterday was a complete success!  I went for a follow-up with the doctor this morning and I now have 20/20 vision in both eyes.  I will probably just need some reading glasses now.  I have needed glasses to see at a distance since I was 18 yrs old.  It will be so nice to be able to drive with just a pair of non-subscription sun glasses.

As usual, John is  taking excellent care of me.  He cooked dinner last night and then packed more boxes.  Today he spent  the day boxing up more stuff while I kept track of the inventory.  I swear stuff must be multiplying in the closets and cabinets when we're not looking.  I not supposed to lift anything more than 30 lbs for another week, so all the heavy lifting has been left up to John.  Maybe I'll get lucky and he will have everything packed before I go back for the final check-up with the eye doc.

Yesterday, we went ahead and booked our airline tickets on Continental for July 12th.  Tomorrow we are off to the vet to get the APHIS7001 health certificate for Randy, our dog.  The document has to state he is healthy and he has had all the required vaccinations.  Once the vet signs the document, we have to send it to Austin to have the certificate authenticated by the State.

Friends are planning a farewell party for us on July 9th and then we are off the Costa Rica 3 days later.
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Sedona and my "Man in the Maze"

On our recent road trip to the Grand Canyon we spent a day in Sedona, Arizona, taking in the amazing rock formations and visiting some of the shops. In one shop, The Humiovi, a "Man in the Maze" pendant caught John's eye. We went in and talked to the shopkeeper about it and found this piece was created by the Native American artist from the Hopi Tribe, Calvin Peterson.

The legend of the "Man in the Maze" helps us understand the meaning of life. The maze depicts experiences and choices we make in our journey through life. It illustrates the search for balance - physical, social, mental and spiritual. In the middle of the maze are found a person's dreams and goals. Legend says when we reach the center, the sun god is there to greet us, bless us and pass us into the next world.

We didn't buy the piece at first. We just continued to stroll on down the street, taking in more of the sights. For some reason, we were pulled back to the pendant in the window. We finally decided we had to buy it and I'm so glad we did. I know this will quickly become one of my favorite pieces of jewelry.
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Grand Canyon Road Trip - June, 2011

We scheduled a quick road trip to the Grand Canyon to scratch one more item off our bucket list before the move to Costa Rica. We drove out west from Houston and visited a number of places in New Mexico and Arizona. I sure am glad we live in a humid climate now and we are moving to a humid climate next month. We both suffered with sinus and nasal problems the entire trip. We got so tired of hearing, "But, it's a dry heat." I'll tell you what they can do with that "dry heat."

Here'a a slide show of some of the photos we took. (Hint: You can click on the slideshow to enlarge to full screen.)
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Countdown to Retirement: 6 Days to go and I just found out I'm NOT going blind!

Back in December, 2007, I had cataract surgery in my right eye and the difference was amazing. I actually had 20/25 vision and required no correction in the right eye. Three years have flown by and in the past 6 months I've starting to think I was going to be legally blind before too much longer. The vision in my right eye has become very blurry and my left eye sees double images. It has gotten so bad I won't drive at night, nor will I drive in an unfamiliar area regardless of the time of day.

Now for the good news. It took 6 week for me to get an appointment to see my ophthalmologist. I finally got to see him yesterday. They ran a battery of test and discovered I'm one of the 30-40% of post cataract surgery patients that develope a cloudy posterior capsule and it makes it look like I'm trying to see through a piece of wax paper. As far as the left eye is concerned, the doctor wanted to know if I'd been using Miracle Grow since I now have a fully developed cataract in that eye.

Tomorrow, I'm going in for a capsulotomy procedure to restore the vision in the right eye. It's about a 10 minute office procedure and the results are immediate. Then, in two week, he'll remove the cataract in the left eye. It sure would be wonderful to have my vision restored to that of a teenager without glasses. Glad we can get this fixed, just in time for our move to Costa Rica.
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Countdown to Retirement: 12 Days to go and we just sold the house!

Woo Hoo!!! The plan is quickly coming together.  We listed the house for sale on May 2nd, and here we are, 30 days later, with a signed agreement and a closing date on July 8th.  Costa Rica, here we come!

We just booked a 40' sea container for all the stuff we are shipping from the Port of Houston to Costa Rica.  We will have a few hours to load up on the morning of July 6th.  Then, we have another day to clean up the house for the buyer's walk-through and closing on the 8th.  I guess we're going to have to call a cleaning service to help us, since all the cleaning tools (vacuum, mops, brooms, etc.) will be long gone in the container.  It's just as well, since we will probably both be too exhausted from packing to actually clean the house too.

We are so ready to start our next adventure together in Costa Rica.
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Countdown to Retirement: 45 Days to go!

Finally, the house is ready to sell! The "For Sale" sign goes up in the front yard in the morning.

This week we finished all the repairs and landscaped the yard. John power washed the deck and re-sealed it. I had the carpet, tile & grout cleaned. We cleaned out all the closets and I pulled together a large load of stuff to donate to a friend's garage sale. We continue to pack as we go and the stack of boxes in the garage keeps getting higher.

We've staged every room of the house for showing and I think a potential buyer will be favorably impressed with all the nice amenities in this house. This has been a great home and we've always been happy here, but it's time to let someone else enjoy it while we can get on with our retirement in Costa Rica. We are hoping for a quick sale so we can start our next adventure soonest.
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Packing and Geocaching

What a great weekend! We went bike riding for about 10 miles along Buffalo Bayou in Tracey Hershey Park. We took our time and made frequent stops to hunt for hidden geocache sites in the woods along the bayou. I actually startled a little brown bunny in the brush, who must have been getting an early start hiding his Easter Eggs.

Saturday we packed up everything in the kitchen that I think we can live without until we get settled in Costa Rica. Later in the evening, we went to a dinner party to celebrate our friend Susan's birthday. The conversation turned to our geocaching adventure the day before and a couple of the party guests became very intrigued with our hobby. We agreed to meet with them and introduce them geocaching. Instead of an Easter Egg Hunt, we spend a couple hours with Tammy and Danielle teaching them the techniques and tools of a geocacher. They're hooked and they are already making plans to go with us again in 3 weeks.

We will be meeting with the realtor later today and putting the house up for sale. We spent a good part of the weekend staging rooms for showing to potential buyers and packing more of our stuff for the move. We keep moving stuff into the garage and it is getting hard to move around all the boxes we've crammed in there. I sure hope a 40' sea container is going to be big enough to hold everything we plan on taking with us.

Donald and Wendy drove over from Alabama a couple of weeks ago and loaded up a U-Haul truck full of furniture and stuff as part of our down-sizing project. It was great to spend time with them.
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Kindle in Costa Rica - Will it work?

The short answer... YES, but there are a few caveats.

Recently, Google searches for the words "Kindle Costa Rica" puts our blog, Mi Chunche, in the top 10 results. Since we get so many of these "hits", I thought I would dedicate this post to a detailed explanation of how the various versions of Kindle actually work in Costa Rica.

Kindle Wi-Fi
Amazon's 3rd generation Kindle introduced Wi-Fi. This gives it the ability to connect to a wireless network, such as a home wireless or Wi-Fi Hot Spots. Once configured to connect to the wireless network, ebooks can be downloaded directly to the Kindle. While connected, Amazon's Whispersync automatically syncs your place across any other devices you have, so you can pick up where you left off. This version does not have a 3G cellular connection. You can download ebooks directly to the Kindle Wi-Fi device while in Costa Rica as long as the device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Kindle 3G & Wi-Fi
Another version of Amazon's 3rd generation Kindle supports both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular connection via Whispernet. The Wi-Fi on this device works exactly as described above. The 3G cellular connection, Whispernet, uses Sprint. Since Sprint is not a GSM network, the Kindle can't roam on I.C.E.'s (Costa Rica’s government-run, phone, internet and cable network), thus no direct internet connection. You can download ebooks directly to the Kindle 3G & Wi-Fi device while in Costa Rica as long as the device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Kindle 1st & 2nd Generation and Kindle DX
The earlier versions of Amazon's Kindles only support a 3G cellular connection via Whispernet. The 3G cellular connection, Whispernet, uses Sprint. Since Sprint is not a GSM network, the Kindle can't roam on I.C.E.'s (Costa Rica’s government-run, phone, internet and cable network), thus no direct internet connection. You cannot download ebooks directly to the earlier versions of the Kindle devices while in Costa Rica. However, if you have a computer, with an internet connection, you can still download any of your Kindle content archived on Amazon.com to the computer and transfer it via USB to your Kindle.

In summary, if you don't have a wireless connection, you will have to download ebooks to a computer and transfer them to the Kindle with via a USB cable connection.

I have a Kindle 2 and John has the Kindle 3G Wi-Fi. He downloads directly from Amazon through our wireless network. I have to download ebooks to the PC first, and then transfer them to my Kindle 2, but it is painless. We love our Kindles! If you're thinking about bringing a Kindle to Costa Rica, do it. You won't regret it.

Please read the comment section for further information.
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