Another day gone

It is unfortunate that time now seems to be spinning past with the acceleration that routine events bring to our lives: It does not seem strange to grab the back-pack and slog on down to the Luperon Supermercado for groceries, which is how I spent a portion of this early afternoon - or to slog back and fall thereafter into the pool. When the water pressure cuts out around ten and I'm still in the shower with champu in my hair, I am not surprised; it is merely the Mapache staff (Nicaraguans hired by the development company to do all the hard labour in this collection of vacation condos) enthusiastically watering the vegetation - as they have no doubt been directed to - so that we have green grass in the middle of the dry season. And it will happen again tomorrow. And it doesn't bother me.

Not so routine is the disaster currently befalling Geoff in Nicaragua, but as all I can do is offer suggestions from the gallery, it has to me a slight feel of a trainwreck happening to someone else. Of course, this is strictly false - but that's how it feels. For a while, I was coming in from the rancho every fifteen minutes or so for next dose of bad news - more routine.

The sight of a tica mother and two kids on a scooter, no helmets, is so normal as to be unremarkable. As is the sight of yet another twenty-five year old ToyotoLand Cruiser - if I was going to buy a vehicle down here, that's what I'd go for. Two of them actually, a six seater with a closed-in cab for hauling people , and a pickup for everything else. Life is loose here, not so many rules, or people to enforce them, and this too is becoming normal. Somewhere (update: here it is) we have a photo of a guy on a ladder in the middle of a street in Santa Cruz fiddling with the lights for some festival or other while traffic flowed in both directions around him. No problema. Sort of flowed. Everyone got past sooner or later.

Speaking of vehicles, Larry says that he thinks he can get the door for the Bongo fixed for 80 k... colones of course, about $160.CDN (or US, for that matter), which I hope is an accurate estimate. We shall see.

Grilled marlin for supper - now we are not talking about vehicles - with onions and tomatos and limes that are orange on the inside and taste like angry lemons with an identity crisis, and good old boiled potatoes and carrots, a walk on the beach after dark and a discussion with David on such astronomy as I can remember. Plenty of stars out for examples. Back home - and Sol brought over a pamphlet with Spanish to English translations of useful words and we had fun trying to understand each other again. I suspect that the short sentences chosen for translation were picked so that the Spanish reader could see both the similarities and diferences in how grammar works for each language - because they sure weren't chosen for sense. Unless you are looking for a bar fight, what good is "The short man was also fat and ugly." going to do you?

Or "I want a grand piano and a new rug?"