No Way...

This thought probably should have come to prominence before in my thoughts, but it just dawned on me the other day: I live on an isthmus!

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And We're Back

Well now, it's been over a whole month since I've written anything on this blog...not that it was really missed. As you know, I was in the US with Angela, and we had a very nice time. I'm working on getting some pictures from the trip to Colorado and Seattle up on my website, www.ryansitzman.com, and I'll put a note on here when they're finished. Or, as always, you can check on the "What's New?" tab on the left of ryansitzman.com's homepage to see...well, what's new.
In the meantime, Angela and I are back in Coast Tasty, and we've just been enjoying the remainder of our summer vacations. It's been very nice here, and last week we went to the beach and also sat beside the pool. January in Costa Rica is awesome.
Tomorrow, my sister gets in, and the week after that, if I continue at the school I was working at last year, I will begin working again. That means that there might not be too many updates in the coming future. Or, maybe there'll be more. Who knows. One way or the other, I just thought I'd check in and say hi.
Until then, it seems that this site must have turned into a top-40 station because it is now taking requests. My niece Adriana, the one who took the humiliating picture of her dog Ginger in a ballerina outfit, enjoyed seeing that picture so much that she sent me a few more. The following two pictures are from Ginger's birthday. I guess that in Costa Rica, the tradition for canine birthdays is to dress them up and humiliate them a bit. Which I'm fine with, if it's the dog that kept me up by barking incessantly every night for about four months. Anyhow, enjoy:

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Coming To America

Angela and I are now in Colorado, and it's been a very nice visit so far. The trip up here was also a good one, including aerial views of an erupting volcano near Guatemala City, Los Angeles during the day, and Denver at night. Good stuff. It was also the first time that Angela had flown before, so we were lucky to have nice, smooth flights.
Upon arriving in L.A., our layover city, we were greeted by some funny things (a guy in the immigration line wearing a hat that said "Fuck White Supremacy" in hand-written bubble paint...he was also reading Ayn Rand) as well as some not-so-funny things (Neil Diamond belting out a jazzed-up version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in the airport Burger King food court). But all in all, it's good to be here, and it's a completely new and fun experience for Angela, which makes it fun for me, too. Here are a few selected pictures from the last couple of days:

Here is Angela in Los Angeles, in front of her first plane ever.

This picture was actually only staged, but farily realistically. She really enjoyed flying.

Another first for Angela: snow.

Here are Angela and I in front of my grandma's house (the flag is there because we believe in Liberty, dammit!)

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Coffee

Hello Everyone,

In honor of the upcoming coffee harvest (yes, it's upcoming), I've added a new page to http://www.ryansitzman.com/ dedicated to all things related to producing that tasty black elixir you enjoy every morning at breakfast (at least, that is, you enjoy it if you're not a big pussy). In any case, if you click here:

COFFEE

it should take you right to the page. However, in the past my links from Blogger have been crap, so if it doesn't work, you can go to http://www.ryansitzman.com/, then click on the link on the left that says "Stories and Stuff." From there, go to the first story on the yellow tab, entitled "coffee."

I hope you enjoy the page as much as I enjoy coffee.

Which means I'll surely be disappointed in your level of appreciation for my page.

Think about it...it's deep.

Thanks,

The Management

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Ow.

I hate low doors.

(Yes, that's the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat...aka my robe)

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Mariela

Last night our neighbor and niece Mariela came over to bring me and Angela some food that she had made. She remarked that it was too bad that there was not a picture of her on the internet, but there WAS a picture of her dog (that's Ginger, from the posting on Nov. 26, "My Old Nemesis"). Well, she IS actually on http://www.ryansitzman.com/, under the wedding photos, but just to put her mind at ease, here is a picture of Mariela (in white), with her sister Lupe, and her cousins Veronica, Enrique, and Donald:



There you go, Mariela.

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Something I Can't Figure Out...

So last night, I was watching the movie "The Queen," alone, while Angela slept (she turns it in early many nights). Anyhow, "The Queen" is a movie about the Queen of England. I was enjoying it with a cup of wine, and I was wondering to myself:
"Is this totally gay, what I'm doing?"

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If Only I Were An Engrish Teacher

If you've never checked out the site www.engrish.com, you really should. It's a site where people around the world take pictures of signs or products that butcher English in their overzealous translations.
So, in that spirit, I was recently in a store here in San Ramon that has a lot of weird, cheap stuff imported from China. I have no idea why I had my camera that day, but it was a good thing I did, because I came across this product. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but it's got some weird English:


Especially if you zoom in on the picture, you can see that it is an "Oxygen Bar," if something like that can be placed in a small box. On top it says:
"IN RUTHLESS BUSINESS WAR
THE WISER BECOME WISER"
And at the bottom it reads:
"BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
THERE IS A BRIDGE
BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER
JUST LIKE HUMAN BEING AND NATURE
IS ALWAYS INSEP ARABLE"
If that's not poetry, I don't know what is.

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Speaking of Night-Time Incidents...

Since I just wrote about Ginger, I remembered that I had been meaning to post this following picture for a while. I guess I talk a lot about the shit that comes into my house at night, like the lizard in my toaster, the various roaches, beetles, and flies, and God knows what else. But about a month ago, I saw this little guy hopping around our living room:


Sure, he's a frog, but he's freaking cute. Plus, he was really tiny, about the size of a quarter (that's about the size of a five colones coin, if you're nasty). I think his major problem was that he was caught in a piece of Angela's hair that he picked up from the ground along the way. So when I took his picture, he just kind of sat there. Expressing as much bummed-out emotion as a frog his size could reasonably be expected to express.
Plus, I guess frogs are cold-blooded or whatnot (what am I, a frogatologist??). Since it was a chilly, windy night, he was probably just trying to find shelter.
Anyhow, I was going to leave him in the Torture/Crucifix Room, but, as with most good Torture/Crucifix Rooms, there's no ventilation and no real way out if you're a frog. So, I just put him outside and sent him hopping on his way. Hopefully he made it to wherever he was going.
Godspeed, little froggy!

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My Old Nemesis

This posting pretty much speaks for itself, I suppose...





OK, maybe it doesn't speak for itself. At all. So I guess I'll have to speak for it.
Anyhow, Angela and I live next to Angela's sister Toni (Antonieta). Her family has this little dog named Ginger, which used to bark all night and keep me awake (although I seemed to be the only one affected by this). So, after dropping hints, they tied up the dog at night, and now she doesn't bark at all. Man 1, Perra 0, if you're keeping count.
This picture above was one that Angela got off of her niece Adriana's camera when we were downloading our wedding pictures. I have no idea what the hell is going on with the dog in this picture, but after seeing it, I can begin to understand a bit more why Ginger might have needed to bark all night to let out a bit of pent-up aggression.

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Resident Evil

This is probably, in all honesty, the most complicated thing I've ever done.

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It Looks Like I'm One Of Those Guys...

So, It looks like I'm one of those guys who...
1. Drives a RAV-4
2. Owns a black and a brown belt
3. Calls guacamole "guac"
4. Actually buys those almanacs at the grocery store (they have them here, too)
5. Is a homeowner (oh man, I still need to put up a picture of the shack on our property!)
6. Gives his students a writing assignment after watching a movie, just to ruin the fun
7. Rips off both David Letterman and Jeff Foxworthy in one fell swoop
8. Speaks Spanish
9. Has a blog...AND a website
10. Teaches high school

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Getting a Bonner*

As you may have noted from my postings on this blog lately, I've grown obsessed with my cluster map. I love it. And I was happy to see it when my friend Brad Bonner put up a cluster map on his site, too. His link is here, so check it out quickly, or else this posting won't make any sense:
http://bb-365images.blogspot.com/
Anyhow, if you look at the right side of his blog, you can see HIS cluster map.
"Fucking A! How the hell did he get all those dots?!" I thought. I was getting envious. Sure, his work is much better than mine. And after all, a photo is a more universal image, and my blog is light on the photos and heavy on the words. So it'd stand to reason that someone from...what!?...is that a dot from SIBERIA on his map?!...uh, where was I? Oh yeah, it'd stand to reason that someone from United Arab Emirates or north north north Canada would be more likely to come across a web site with pictures, than a website with musings and bitchings about life as a teacher in Costa Rica.
Still, I was jealous. His map is impressive. So, tell your friends about sitzblog, or visit it from exotic locations.
Thanks.

*(Yes, the title is spelled correctly, so no, it's not dirty)

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Famous Brother

I mention my brother Paul a fair amount in this blog. I do that for two reasons:
1. Paul is cool.
2. I think the only reason people come to this site is to see if they get name-dropped.
In any case, my brother is studying music and video production or something similarly technological and complicated in Australia. So I guess he was in a music video that one of his friends made as a final project. I thought it was cool so, despite the fact that Paul himself called it "Corny. As. Hell.", I still decided to post a link to the video here. I think it's actually cool. Have a look at it if you want:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2-kGYwhP2I
(Paul is the one with the scraggly beard, not the boobs)

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