Long time no write...

I know, I disappeared and I apologize...it's been almost a month since I last posted, but I have a very good excuse. I was busy doing lots of things. First, I had to put a presentation together for a conference that's luckily over. I was under a lot of stress, because I had to read about 30 cases on Social Value Creation and try to somehow categorize them and rank them. That's next to impossible because there could be as many definitions as to what constitutes social value as there were cases for me to read. But I finally managed to somehow organize them in such a way that it ended up making sense. It also made sense to the professor I was doing this project with and also to the people in charge of the conference. So I'm proud of myself :)

Other things going on in my life: I will be researching deeper in the area of "water for the poor" from the consumer behavior point of view. So, I've been keeping myself busy reading all I can about the subject. And there is quite a bit.

I've also adopted a wild pet turtle who watches me exercise on my elliptical trainer. No, I didn't go to the pet shop and buy a turtle. A co-worker had bought it to instill some sense of responsibility in her two young boys. Hmmm...how can I put it? They lost the turtle. It ran away...whatever. When I was told this, I tried to imagine how long it took this tiny turtle to run away anywhere without anyone noticing it. When mom came back home, she noticed the empty aquarium and vowed that if they ever found the turtle again, they would give it to me.

Mind you, I had never said I needed a turtle...I just commented once that my brothers and I had lots of different pets growing up (four dogs, cats, a falcon, a goat, turtles, rabbits, canary birds, parrots, and I must be forgetting other kinds).

Anyway, one day I was working hard in my office and in comes this lady with a pool-like turtle aquarium, a bag of food and the tiniest turtle, whom I promptly named Paula. This is the reason: Here in Costa Rica there are giant turtles in Tortuguero and other parts of the country. These turtles are called Baulas. Since this one is so tiny she could never be a Baula, I named ber Paula. But she's wild! I realized after three weeks, that it was not the boys' fault that Paula ran away. She did that to me, too! Worse, because I had her on a high shelf...about 1.3 meters high...about the height of a tall six-year-old and she just jumped off!

I had no idea this was going on, because I had been invited to a party in San Jose and came back around 11 pm. I went to feed her and I couldn't find her in the aquarium...I looked everywhere and found her under my guest bed with her shell all dried up.

When I set her back in the water, she didn't move. After 10 minutes she started moving a little, then I fed her and everything went back to normal. But she doesn't have such a beautiful view anymore because she's on a lower, safer shelf now.

I have been asked this week to please adopt Lili, the neighbor's cat, for at least 2 months. I'm considering it, because Lili and I have shared a few tuna sandwiches. YUK! No, not like that. She came to me, meeowing loudly, so I gathered she was hungry, I opened a can of tuna, gave her half and made a tuna sandwich for me with the rest :) So, we've already bonded. The problem is, Lili likes shelves. And I don't know yet if she likes turtles...so, maybe Paula will be re-adopted by another co-worker who decided she'd also like to have a turtle watch her when she's exercising.

I'll keep you posted! :)