Let it be known

That on this day, the 10th of September, 2009, at 3:19 p.m., I did see the first Christmas tree of the season, and yea it was very large.

Twenty years ago today

September 9, 1989 was my first full day in Costa Rica.

I came here because, following my year in Kenya, Costa Rica seemed more manageable (read: closer to the United States, both geographically and culturally) than my originally-planned year in Japan. (A bit of backstory can be found here, for any what needs it.)

In other words, I came to Costa Rica more because of what it was not, than because of any particular thing that it was.

I'm not sure I actually knew much of anything about Costa Rica when I arrived, except that it was in Central America, and that the language was Spanish (of which I spoke 10 words).

Well, and I'm also pretty sure I knew it wasn't an island.

I certainly didn't expect to stay, settle, marry, divorce, have children here. Not that I had any idea about where, when or with whom I might eventually do those things, but I most definitely didn't think it would be here.

When people ask how long I've been here, and I tell them, they always ask if I "like it here," or remark that I must like it.

Which is funny. I guess some people do have strong feelings about where they live, but I tend to like some things about any given place, and dislike others, and you just live where you live. The various circumstances of my life to date being what they are, I happen to live here.

In today's world of relatively affordable air travel and email and VOIP and blogs and digital cameras and whatnot, the distance really isn't the thing. The culture is different, sure. Sometimes that seems like a non-issue after all these years, and sometimes it doesn't.

Culture was certainly an issue in my marriage, but not in the way you (any given one of "you") might imagine. There are ways in which it is easier to be with someone from another culture, because you don't expect them to share your assumptions or ways of doing things on every point.

On the other hand, some of those assumptions and ways of doing things may be deeply ingrained or very important to one or the other partner, and sticking points may crop up in unexpected spots.

I do appreciate the shared cultural cues and points of reference (and language) of being in a relationship with someone who grew up in the same country I did, but I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much significance to culture in either case.

Actually, assessing the affect of culture on relationships is rather like trying to express whether or not I "like" living in Costa Rica - no answer I would be inclined to give would do justice to the depth of the question, and most people who ask aren't looking for that much detail anyway.

(By the way, this year's post is all about me, but September 9 is still many things to many people. [Also, and unrelatedly, in looking for those two links, I happened across this post (and its follow up) from three years ago. It is amusing.])

This evening: A haiku in the present tense

Beat Bob at Scrabble
Protect pizza from the cat
Wait while Torchwood loads

Long day

It's been a long day - no holiday here (although we do have one next week); in fact I got wrapped up in a project and stayed later than usual today - enough to put me into horrendous rush hour traffic. And I've been busy at home as well, so I'll leave you with a quick "far from home" sighting of the day: A car with a dealer badge from "His & Hers Auto Sales, Zebulon, NC."

Got one

Well, not a do-over, exactly, but the damage has been contained.

The drive is probably toast, but Bob's brother had made him a bootable Linux CD that saved the day. You can boot from the disc on any computer and try out the operating system without installing anything at all.

My HD-less computer was looking for things to boot from, so I fed it the disc, which booted up fine.

I didn't know when I tried it whether A) The hard drive would be accessible at all, and B) Linux would be able to see files on a Windows-formatted drive, but the answer to both questions turned out to be a very happy Yes.

And Bob has a 16-GB memory stick, and it only took two trips up and down with that, and now all my files are safe on a combination of these two computers - turns out this new one only has a wee little hard drive, so all my stuff wouldn't even fit on it.

So now I need to acquire a new hard drive - we've already discovered that I can get about twice the Gigs for about half the price if I bring one in from the States (assuming the bringing itself doesn't get too costly), but I can also get one here if I get too impatient.

So: Long day, happy ending.

I want a do-over

So we had a massive lightning strike in the neighborhood and of course the power went out. The two computers downstairs just shut off, because they have surge protection but no power backup.

My computer didn't shut off, but my UPS only offers about a minute of power; just enough to save and quit and shut down, which I did.

Guess which one got fried?

Seems my computer no longer feels that it has a hard drive. Best we can figure, it was probably the cable itself. The Internet comes in by cable, and it goes through a modem and a router before it gets to the computer. But before any of that, there's a splitter to divide off the cable TV part of the cable. And that goes directly into the analog capture card so we can watch TV on the computer. Which I've done maybe six times, ever.

I don't rely on stuff on the hard drive on a day-to-day basis, but I had years' worth of old photos and documents on there. I know who to ask locally if they can salvage any of it, and of course we've got the new computer down here, but come on.

I guess it has been over two weeks since I had to spend any money on the car...

It's a bullet-point sort of evening

• There is a plastic bag of orange plastic squares at work that looks so much like processed cheese that they decided to keep it in the refrigerator.
  
  
• The virtual turtles on my iGoogle page love me. The virtual tree frog on my iGoogle page loves flies.
  
  
• There's a tiny gecko in my bedroom. This makes me happy.
  
  
• There's a new burger stand in the neighborhood, and we tried it today. It's a 5 minute walk away, very small, very clean, very friendly, with reasonable prices. The food was okay.
  
  
• Julia picked the first guava of the year from the tree at school today. The principal turned it into a special event.
  
  
• Robin got 104 on her Spanish test.
  
  
• The joke of the moment is as follows:
  
  Q: Why did Tigger stick his head in the toilet?
  A: He was looking for Poo[h].
  
  You're welcome.
  
  
• Special bonus joke (from a different moment):
  
  Q: What's brown and sticky?
  A: A stick.
  

Seen

Letter to the editor titled, "Do something of importance instead of writing letters."

Alrighty then.

Twice is probably enough

Two days in a row, that is, of dropping the girls off at school in the morning and then not being able to start the car when I get back into it.

The first day, I messed with the battery contacts and it started up okay.

The second day I actually tightened the one contact that was loose to the touch, and then it didn't start. The "hey, Stupid, your keys are in the ignition and your door is open" chime came back on, but the car still wouldn't start.

My nice Nicaraguan neighbor who works on cars was dropping his son off too, saw me with the hood open, and came over to help. He messed with the contacts while I tried to start the car and it worked. (I do like me a small town.)

My working theory is that the loose contact prevented the battery from charging adequately while I drove the day before. I'm not sure how that theory fits in with the car-starting-on-the-second-try part of it, but I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning.

(Interesting side note: I stopped and started the car a bunch of times in the 24 hours between the two incidents. Maybe there's a force field around the school and I should just park around the corner.)

The neighborhood scoop

Our neighbor in the intervening house (between where we currently live and where we would like to live) knows the family that moved out and came back, and today I finally had a chance to ask her what happened.

She says the place they were all lined up to move into turned out to be horrible in an unspecified way; so bad that they turned around and came back. I gather the utilities were cut off (which is unusual here - water & power are normally in the owner's name and any quarrel over the bill has to be resolved or [not infrequently] absorbed by the owner when the tenants move on...but either way nobody would stand for moving into the place if the utilities are suspended because the only way to get them back would be to pay someone else's, probably considerable, bill.) And some other even less-specific things happened, including something possibly even vaguely threatening, and they turned around and came back. Happily, the landlord (who also owns the intervening house, which is its reverse twin) is a nice guy and had no reason to object to having the house inhabited for a bit longer.

My neighbor says the family is still looking to move, and is on a waiting list for some other place, so hopefully something suitable will open up for them, which will open up their suitable house for us. She'll let me know when she hears anything, and next time it looks like things might be moving, I'll go to the owner (who has a jewelry shop between here and town) and offer to put down a deposit so he won't be tempted if anyone else shows up.

I told the girls the whole story when they came back to me after school yesterday. Of course they recognize that it's another step for Bob and me, and that may take a little getting used to when the time comes, but overall they're very much in favor of it. The prospect of their own rooms and 24/7 access to the cat haven't hurt at all, and there's been lots of talk about who will get which bed and which room and what shelves and such.

It already seems very real to me; I can picture us all in there so easily (and I've never even been in farther than the living room) that I won't be surprised if it does come together in the fairly near future - a few weeks or a month or two, hopefully.