A Few Things

Hi everyone!
Well, it's been a bit of time, but I've been busy.
Also, it rains here basically every afternoon this time of year, and I can't really use a computer too well to post a blog entry, since many hosues here don't have breakers and we're worried lightning will fry our appliances. Which actually happens here, I guess. But in any case, it's a bit depressing because the whole morning, it's usually sunny, warm, and beautiful, but right around 3:30 (the time I leave work), it starts to rain, usually till 8 or 9. I feel like I'm in this short story we read in elementary school. It was called something like "Summer For A Day," and there's this classroom in a colony on the planet Venus, where apparently it rains constantly, except for one hour every seven years. So there's this girl (Margot, I think), and it's the day where there will be an hour without rain, but some dipshit bully locks her in the closet and she misses the sun, and will have to wait another seven years to try to see it again.
Um, so I guess I'm Margot, and my closets are my classes full of complaining kids. Let's go with that.
Anyhow, just a few things you might think are interesting:
--I went to Panama. I went with Angela. I had to renew my visa again. I'll put up a few pictures soon, but don't worry, there won't be a long-ass story like the time I went to Nicaragua.
--Speaking of Nicaragua, Primitivo died recently. If you remember, he was the old man in the pictures. When I got back from Panama, Samuel was gone, and they told me he'd gone to a funeral for his father-in-law. So, just in case you were following that story, I thought you might want to know.
--Also, I've been working more on www.ryansitzman.com . I don't have the wedding pictures yet, because I'm still waiting on a disc of pictures to be sent from the U.S. But that'll be next. For now, I've got some Costa Rica pictures from 2006 and 2007, as well as a "mixed bag" picture page. Check them out sometime if you get the chance. Who knows, you might be in there!
That's about it for now. Sorry I've not written anything recently, but things have been pretty busy.
Take care.

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

Welcome to the 20th Century!

Well, well, well...
We got a telephone! As you know, Angela and I recently moved here to Berlin. We thought that nothing compliments a place to live quite like a telephone. So we ordered a phone line to be put in. To do that, we had to go to my by-now-nemesis, the ICE, or Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. We went to the branch in San Ramon, since we technically live in the area of San Ramon. There, the friendly agent told us it would take anywhere from a year to two years to install the phone, since the box in Berlin was evidently full. He pointed out, though, that some of the lines from the box were broken, and that the agency could possibly fix them, which would free up a line for us. Still, he said that it might take a long time for it to “occur to” the ICE to fix the lines, which is why he gave us the 1 to 2 year waiting estimate.
We left the agency, and I showered a flurry of profanity and anti-bureaucratic insults at the ICE’s door. I was a bit annoyed. I mean, a phone isn’t totally necessary, but it still kind of sucks to be cut off from the outside world. Angela does have a cell phone, but there’s hardly any reception here in the mountains, which makes a cell phone even more annoying and intolerable. Also, if you have a phone line here, you can at least get internet, even if it is dial-up (official motto: “Better Than Nothing, But Just Barely.”) That saves us a drive to town to use an internet café.
In the meantime, I also talked with Angela and found out something quite interesting. As it turns out, there wasn’t even a telephone at all in Berlin until about 10 years ago! Not even a public one. In fact, the ICE didn’t install a phone until the people from Berlin and two neighboring towns gathered together and demanded phone service. And this is like 1997 we’re talking about. It’s weird to think that my grandma grew up with a phone but my wife didn’t. In any case, I guess I should be happy that the ICE didn’t install a series of soup cans connected with string.
So, we weren’t sure what to do. Then it occurred to me: why the hell were we trusting the ICE? Those guys are so full of shit that it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had already had a phone installed in our house and just didn’t know about it. Well, that wasn’t the case, but we did try talking to the people in the branch in Palmares, a little city that I am beginning to like more and more. I went to the counter and told the guy my situation. I told him that the guys in San Ramon said it’d take up to two years to put in the line, and he said, “Oh, for God’s sake…” and pulled out a map. In about 3 minutes he’d found a different box in Berlin, and put in an order for the line. We had a phone two days later. So, the Soviet-style sons-of-bitches in San Ramon can suck shit (See that? Repeating the initial sounds of words? It’s called alliteration, specifically consonance, since I’m repeating the sounds of a consonant. I guess I do learn something by teaching my students about poetry…). And Palmares has another feather in its cap.
Now, we just have to get some decent internet. The guy at the agency in Palmares told us we should call their office every week until they gave up and installed it. Hasta la victoria siempre, I guess. But we do have a phone now, and if you ever want to call it, the number is 452-3357. If you’re calling from outside Costa Rica, the country code is (506). The website http://www.nobelcom.com/ has some good, cheap phone cards. So, let’s talk.
Also, I’ve finally been adding some crap to http://www.ryansitzman.com/, the flagship website of Sitzco Amalgamated Enterprises, LLC. The site is coming along nicely, and has a few new pages. I’m adding stuff every week, though, and I hope that people will check it out (and will someone tell Andy Parsons he can start checking it again every day?). You can start at the “What's New?" tab on the left, so you can see what’s been added recently.
That’s it for now. Hope you’re all well!

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook