Pictures of the Day, September 24 and 25, 2010

Here are the Pictures of the Day from yesterday and the day before:

September 24th: These are two of our nieces, Guadalupe and Veronica. They're in the 11th grade, so it's their final year of school, and the school year's wrapping up for them soon.

So, most schools have a tradition where the 11th graders wear costumes and go on a parade. Lupe (blue dress) was the tooth fairy and Vero was Cupid. They're both very lovely and beautiful and everything, but it was also pretty funny to see them both in diva form getting ready.

My sister-in-law Antonieta called us early in the morning (OK, not THAT early, since it was only about 8 am, but we definitely weren't up yet) to ask us if we wanted to see them in their costumes. Well, seldom does a Picture of the Day opportunity present itself before I've even gotten out of bed, so we simply HAD to go over.

Thanks to both lovely nieces for letting me take their picture!

As the fairies left, our dog-in-law Bon Jovi watched them go.

September 25th: We went to Angela's folks' house for dinner. These are some butterfly magnets on their refrigerator.

Thanks for checking out the pictures... have a great day!

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Pictures of the Day, September 13-23, 2010

Hi Everyone! It's been raining like mad here, and I've been spending a lot of time on and in the roof. I've still taken the Pictures of the Day, but I didn't have time to post them... until now!

September 13th: Our cat Chubby has been systematically destroying these slippers that Angela has. He'll regularly attack them and try to drag them off to the garage. He mainly goes for the eyes, the little creep.

Also, the other day he actually got into Angela's purse and took out her wallet with his mouth. What's going on with our sweet little cat?

September 14th: My coworker Marcia's shoes. I know that I also took a picture of Monica's shoes earlier, but it's not because I have a foot fetish. It's just because my coworkers wear shoes that looks like leopard skins or whipped cream. When you've got 365 pictures to take, then they seem like a good subject!

September 14th: This is a horse trailer that I saw in Palmares, and although I'll say it's "Picture of the Day," I didn't put it up on the SeeVida group because of the breasts. But still, it's a pretty funny picture. Nothing says "I'm classy" like airbrushing a naked woman with big boobs onto your horse trailer, and then parking it on your lawn in downtown Palmares.

September 15th: It was Independence Day, so we had a barbecue.

September 16th: Cows are cool. I took a walk around Berlin and came across a couple of them.

September 17th: Remember Childcraft? They have a set of those books at the lending library at work.

September 18th: A butterfly on the bathroom wall at the school where I teach. It's weird having a camera in the bathroom... it's like that episode of Fraser where they were weirded out by food in the bathroom.

September 19th: Even though they're stainless steel scissors ("Rostfrei"!), they still got rusty. Costa Rica will blow your mind and break your heart.

September 20th: This is the first part in my "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. This bucket and mug were catching the stream of water dripping into my office.

September 21st: The next picture in my "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. This is a sort of polyurethane sealant. I basically tried to cover as much of our house as possible with this crap.

September 22nd: Some nice clouds on the way to my Wednesday class in Guanacaste.

September 23rd: Next in the "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. I had to put all the crap in my office into big plastic bags since water was coming down the walls and also streaming from the middle of the ceiling. Ugh.

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

Pictures of the Day, September 3-12, 2010

Hi Everyone!
Here are some Pictures of the Day from the last week or so:

September 3rd: This is a water tank near our house.
Angela and I went for a walk on the road into Berlin to check out some of the new landslides. (Note: This is a very poignant example of how there's nothing to do in Berlin).

September 4th: Independence Day is coming up soon, so there are decorations all over (including ones that take up a major chunk of my white board when I teach).

Living in another country can either promote or kill your own personal patriotism, and for me, I think it's done the latter. Sort of like religions that have heavens that are mutually exclusive to other beliefs, it's hard to get pumped about any country, when you realize that all countries have good and bad things.

Plus, Costa Rica is also home to the "red, white, and blue."

September 5th: Our fenceposts have finally started sprouting! Ha ha!
Compare it to this picture.

September 6th: The pay phone at work. I had this in mind for a while as a "backup" plan for a day when I'd not found a good Picture of the Day.

I like this phone. The last time we went to the US, there weren't any pay phones anywhere, and it was a pain in my ass to try to call home. Finally, our cool waiter at the Irish restaurant at the Dallas airport loaned me his cell phone.

Damn cell phones.

September 7th: A street lamp near work.

September 8th: The bridge over the Tempisque River in Guanacaste. It was donated to Costa Rica by the government of Taiwan, and was called the "Costa Rica-Taiwan Friendship Bridge." Then, of course, Costa Rica dropped Taiwan because China offered to build the country a new National Stadium, and sweetened the deal with some shitty new police patrol cars.

So now the bridge is referred to as the "Stab in the Back" bridge.

September 9th: Actually, now that I see this picture, I realize that I don't know what these things are. Surely, they go into the ocean, but beyond that, I'm not sure what they're called. I taught my Wednesday class at the resort again, and I had Thursday free to check out the beautiful beaches.

September 10th: The market in Palmares. We were waiting on some tires, so we walked around town a bit.

September 11th: This is a sort of sculpture made out of mufflers. The sculpture is a man with a bazooka riding a motorcycle. It's on the roof of an auto repair shop in Quebradas, which is one of the few places on Earth I genuinely dislike. It's a small town in the hills between Berlin and Palmares, and I have to drive through there every day to get to work. The narrow road is always filled with cars, kids, chickens, dogs, people walking or sitting in the street... you name it.

In any case, I'd meant for a while to get a picture of this bazooka guy, but it's in an area on a sort of incline, and it's a very difficult place to stop (and eventually get going again), but I finally did it. In the leftovers you can see the sign for the auto shop, and know that I'm not just making this all up.

September 12th: It was a pretty slow day here in Berlin. It rained quite a bit, and we mainly hung out inside. Even Chubby didn't want to go out, but he did the next best thing: he slept on the top ledge of the high garage window. That's about 9 feet off the ground, and he's gotta somehow get up there from inside the garage. That cat has some pretty crazy skills that we just don't even know about.

I've also been uploading a lot of pictures from 2008. So far they're mostly from around Costa Rica, but I'm hoping to get more up soon, including ones of our trip to Colorado and Mexico.

So, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

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

It's Alwase Nice To Remember The Good Ol' Days

My sister Di told me about this, which she re-discovered recently:

She wrote it in her "Babysitters' Club Little Sister Diary" when she was about 8 and I was about 11. It's pretty funny!

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Pictures of the Day: August 25 - September 2, 2010

Hi Everyone! Here are the Pictures of the Day from the last few days. Hopefully there's something interesting for you in there:

August 25: "We're all equal in our big, happy world... except you, Pablo. We hate your scarf. You're out."
This was in a classroom where I teach in the evening. It's a grade school during the day.

August 26: I've seen this sign quite a few times on the way out of San Jose, but it's always been too dark (and possibly unsafe) to take a picture, so I made it a point to go a bit early and get this picture before my class on Thursday.
In any case, that seems like a very appropriate visual image for a rehabilitation school.

August 27: Some cheflera (schefflera, in English, I believe) that Angela was planting in our yard. Looks good photographed. I still think it's incredible you can just put a little stick of this in the ground and you'll have a bush within a year!

August 28: When we got back home from work, the power was out again, and it was getting dark. Plus, it had been raining all day and the condensation from the morning's showers was still on the windows.
Basically, a good time to take a nap.

August 29: Some flowers at Lucy's house. She invited us over to play Scrabble and drink coffee. Good times!

August 30: A pair of earrings that my grandma gave to Angela.

August 31: If you went to Timnath Elementary School in the late 80s and early 90s, this may look familiar to you. Or it may not. I remember being taught how to multiply this way. I was trying to explain it to some coworkers, so I went back into the past, drew up the grid, and multiplied some numbers. This is 312 times 725 which, as we all know, is 226,200. I can't believe three things:
1. That this technique for multiplying numbers actually exits and works
2. That I remembered the technique
3. That they actually TAUGHT this technique to us in 5th or 6th grade

September 1: The faucets in my hotel in Guanacaste. I started teaching an English class on Wednesday nights in a resort up there (Guanacaste is the northwest province in Costa Rica, where the most tourists go, but where I had only passed through previously). It was very nice, and I'm looking forward to continuing the class for the next seven weeks!

September 2: A windmill on the side of the road in Guanacaste. It was the first time I'd really spent any significant time or driven around much in that province, and I can see why it's the big tourist place in the country. It was pretty nice, and quite a bit different from where I live.

So, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

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