This is a combination of a few day’s worth of logs that weren’t substantial enough to stand on their own.

Travel Log: Day 21 (7/18), Costa Rica

I barely went outside today. At one point I took a single step outside and realized how muggy it was and came back in. That was after I had done a full workout, which felt nice but very exhausting. I’m not sure if the effort that took is a result of not working out fully over the past two weeks, not having creatine and protein, or because we were all run down a bit. The workout was my big accomplishment for the day. We had FAC and watched Rocky I which the kids seemed to like.

Travel Log: Day 22 (7/19), Costa Rica

Another very low activity day. I browsed around at airfare to Guam from Japan and at Guam AirBNB’s. We went for a short walk as a family. JC and I went on a date night to a nearby soda (Soda Tita Rosa) which was pretty good.

Travel Log: Day 23 (7/20), Costa Rica

Device Usage

Today (yesterday actually, this is written 7/21) JC burst into the bedroom and said “let’s have a day with no electronics”. I was immediately on board. I think we have both been disgusted with the kids and our own usage of devices lately. AC was surprisingly receptive to the idea as well, with BC being the only objector. This turned out to be a pretty easy task through the day. When the option to use a device is off the table, you don’t spend any mental energy on things that tempt you to use the device.

Normally I’d be scrolling news a few times a day, reading some reddit, etc. Instead we ended up playing some games like this little physical tetris-like game where you have to make the pieces fit. We also tried to play volleyball but the court was in use. I drafted two communications to our airbnb host on paper. Also made a list of required and non-required device usage to see if we could find a schedule to reduce our device usage.

The hardest part of the no device day was bed time. I have a routine of reading news/reddit and then I find something interesting to listen to on low volume to fall asleep to. Even this turned out to not be an issue. I fell asleep fine and it was nice not to manage an ear bud. The kids took on this same challenge as they usually listen to something as they fall asleep. Removing the sleep listening is something we are going to change permanently.

Power Outage

Toward evening we were discussing having a no artificial light after dark night, just for fun. Coincidentally, right as the sun was setting the power went out and stayed out for a couple hours. It was kind of fun for an hour and then we were over it, especially since we had no AC. The power mercifully came back on about 30 minutes before bed time to cool things off and allow us to shower with hot water.