Dr. Alison Marr

I can’t think of a much better way to wake up in the morning than hearing distant birds chirping, the splashing of a nearby waterfall, and a clean mountain breeze flowing through our little cabin.   The lodge is amazing (we haven’t eloped Andrea ) and Belize in general seems really awesome.  Speaking of awesome, after I got up, I was putting on my bathing suit and I felt a little something move down there, if you know what I mean.  Naturally, being a full blooded 32 year old American man I screamed like a 12 year old girl with a skinned knee and flapped my arms around wildly. Very macho, I know. This sounds totally made up but I assure you after tearing my trunks off I felt something scurry down my leg and let me tell you, if you were wondering, seeing much less feeling anything scurry isn’t pleasant.  Little did I know I had disturbed a new friend, a large preying mantis insect that had taken up residence in mis pantalones over night.  No joke. Good thing my brother Chris and his wife Miki are having a boy soon, this could have been a possible drastic end to the Noble bloodline. So I’ve heard some wild stories in my day but seriously you haven’t lived until you’ve gone toe to toe with a preying mantis… in your swimsuit… in a secluded mountain paradise, wait do preying mantis’ even have toes, I realize they do have large pincher type claws…. Yikes.

Creature from Jeff's pants

Hi everyone!

We’ve enjoyed a relaxing day here in Belize. We took a tour of some of the attractions of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest (where we are staying). We went to the 1000 foot falls (which is actually 1600 ft) and got to take some pics. It was very peaceful. Then, we headed to the Rio Frio cave. It was a big open cave w/ a sandy beach on the inside! We even got to be escorted by the Belizean defense force in case any banditos came to get us!! Yikes! Then, we went on to the Rio On pools where we got to cool off from the heat and play in the waterfalls.

After we had some lunch back at the lodge we took the long hike down to the Five Sisters waterfalls here at the lodge. That’s where I took a nice long nap in a hammock while Jeff worked on a blog post.

Here are some pics from today:

7/21/09:

I’m not sure what it is about airports but I think something about them could be responsible for  temporarily disabling peoples’ brains…. and my manners.  Giant families without a clue,  random lady complaining about taking off her shoes on the yucky floor, granny with her 17 gold chains (yes – you have to take those off), slow moving people, people walking the against the flow of traffic, loud talkers on their cellphones that I can hear over the music on my headphones (I can tell you are important), people trying to board in group 1 even though their boarding pass says group 6, and people that generally are too close and running into me.  I think I found  a solution though, what if you could just step into a giant human sized hamster wheel or zorb type thing and just roll over everything?  Step into your airport ball and start rolling folks!

Noble family fun fact: My brother’s hamster once escaped and we couldn’t find it for about a year, we eventually found it later – it had survived on an old bag of halloween candy that my brother had tucked away in his closet when our parent’s made us clean our rooms (aka throw everything in the closet) and was like double the size it had been.

From 7/21/09:

We made it! After a couple of flights and a bumpy 3-hour drive, we arrived at the Five Sisters Lodge around 6:15 PM local time. After getting the tour of the property and checking out our sweet cabana, we had dinner. Now, I’m sitting in my bed surrounded by a mosquito net to keep the few bugs away that we accidentally let in while opening/closing the door. Dinner was good…chips and salsa appetizer followed by Mayan Lasagna and Mango Pie. There are a total of 6 guests at the lodge tonight, so it’s very pleasant. Our view from our cabana is amazing! We have a little screened in porch and we look right out onto the waterfalls. We can hear the sound of falls right now.

Internet here is apparently slow…hopefully we’ll get a chance to post each day (we’re typing as we go along and may post a few at a time). Pics may have to wait until we’re back in the city (on Friday).

I’m tired and we already have plans for tomorrow, so I better get to bed. More to come soon.

If you are like most people you wait to accomplish a huge monumental goal and then reward yourself with a nice vacation as some sort of special treat for a job well done.  Well that’s old news and if you believe that you should be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you.  Shame. Shame.  I mean, wait no – that’s cool if you are into that sort of thing, but Alison and I don’t follow that method… you see we like to just go ahead and leave during the actual goal, you know, to spice things up and make things interesting, the details, important deadlines & documents are totally over rated.  Bah humbug is what I say to that nonsense, and nonsense in general, as I’m a very serious person.

Take for example, right now I’m pretty sure this is about as busy as I have ever been and I should really be focusing on the following list:

• Building all the CSS & browser compatibility testing for the next generation software at my job at NetQoS
• Technical editing two “For Dummies” web design/programming books
• Writing a chapter in another “For Dummies” web design book
• Working on not one, but two client websites

Meanwhile Alison, she’s in the middle of finishing up some sort of crazy math research (I believe she’s invented a new number – Tweleven but you will have to ask her) while going though a small task, buying her first house!  See pics!

Half my bag is packed, I’ve burned my to-do list, let’s roll.