A New Post

Upon popular demand from Deuce, here is another blog posting.
Not much new.
Our friend Annie is visiting us from Seattle, and we're currently in Puerto Viejo, on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. I'm in an internet cafe and sweating profusely, for some reason. It's not a good motivator for blog writing. Other than that, though, her visit has been great and the Caribbean is a wonderful paradise, especially compared to Costa Rica's over-touristified Pacific Coast.
So things have been great, though, and even greater news is that --apparently-- we might be able to get INTERNET in Berlin! This is super-big news, and I'll keep you all posted.
In any case, my fifteen minutes of free internet time (and thus my fifteen minutes of fame) are almost up, so I'll check in with you all later.
Abrazos to everyone!

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Sweet and Sour Pork Flu

Let's start with the bad news first:

The Sour:
--I got gradually sicker last week, and on Wednesday I couldn't talk. The doctor sent me home from work, and to stay home and rest on Thursday and Friday, also.
--I couldn't do any blog posts for quite some time.

The Sweet:
--I didn't have pig flu, as I originally imagined I might.
--I was able to rest up and recover, and by the time the weekend rolled around, I was feeling quite a bit better.
--I've mentioned my love-hate relationship with Costa Rican bureaucracy before, but the health system is pretty great, at least if your company has a private doctor. That's how I was able to get something equivalent to sick days.
--I read a lot.

In any case, I've not written too much lately, but I'll try to remedy that as soon as possible. We're having a get-together/housewarming party on Saturday, and then next Thursday our friend Annie is visiting us, so things will be busy. That means that I'll eventually have something interesting to write about, but it may take a while.

In the meantime, check out this video:

The weirdest thing about this video is that in my first internet visit in a week, I spent most of the time watching cooking videos in German. I absorbed them like a Brötchen sitting in a bowl of Weisswein. In any case, right after I wrote the title to this blog, I saw that the very same cooking video series actually had a recipe for preparing sweet and sour pork! Hopefully you like the video. Even if you don't speak German, it's strangely hypnotizing...

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Funny Joke

The other day I somehow came across a sort of random blog called "Jewtah"... which is a great name, by the way. It really is about a Jewish woman in Utah.

In any case, there was a pretty funny joke in one of the posts, and I thought I'd pass it on for a bit of Friday fun:

Two guys are sitting in a bar, having a few drinks. One guy says to the other, “Ever since you left for college, I’ve been doing your mom four times a week.”

The other guy says, “Dad, are you drunk?”

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More Fake Bands

After my post a few days ago about my fake band Iffeldorf, I got a few more fake bands and albums from some friends. So, I decided to share them with everyone.

Here's the original that got me started from the band, Osnat Elkabir, fronted by my friend --and bandmate from another side project, Faded Sky Gods-- Annie. The album is called "statesmen and philosophers and divines":

Next up on the list is my friend Bus Drivin' Krista, who probably doesn't even drive buses anymore (but to be totally accurate, I don't either). Her group is called Heronina, and their newest album is entitled "For he shall never be disappointed." You can see the album cover below (the name of the group and album is only written on the spine of the CD case, of course:

It's definitely a solid effort, and after the whole band's group stint in rehab, the lyrics are less Emo, surprisingly, yet still life-affirming.

Next, we've got a married couple, my friends Dustin and Samantha. They have worked together on albums in the past, but they've decided to pursue solo careers to expand their own personal musical horizons a bit more. Rumor has it that Dustin was wanting to take the group in a more ABBA-pop direction, but Sam wanted to stick closer to their original thrash-metal roots. So from Sam's venture Downsouth, we get her debut solo album:

Powerful stuff. Speaking of powerful, Dustin's album cover picture is powerful... powerfully depressing. I give you Clozapine's debut, "First Requisite to Great Undertakings":

He says it's supposedly "medicine rock," but to me it just sounds like Counting Crows, but with an extra keyboard.

In any case, thanks for the submissions, guys! Happy fake listening!

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I Take Back All The Bad Things I Said About The MOPT

Well, at least I take back most of the bad things I said about the MOPT the other day. If you recall, that's the Costa Rican equivalent of a DMV. And I had to renew my license there last Thursday.

The amazing thing? I got in and out of the office in about 5 minutes. Yes, that's right, friends, it's no typo: five (5) minutes!

How in the world could this be, you may ask? I'll tell you: I knew the secret password. It goes a little something like this: "Buenas, soy el yerno de Honorio" ("Afternoon, I'm Honorio's son-in-law"). Once again, in Costa Rica, it's not about what you know, it's all about who you know, and in this case, my father-in-law happened to be friends with the guy who prints the licenses. So, quick hi, an introduction, presentation of some documents, quick flash, and I'm out the door.

Contrast that with the first time I got a license here, when I had to go all the way to San José, taking a whole day off work. I went to the dilapitated central building in a sketchy part of town and got in line. I was about the 130th person (I counted). I waited over two hours, standing in line and reading my newspaper, and when I was about the 25th person or so, they made the announcement that "the system was down." We could all get a piece of paper with a stamp on it, and we were welcome to come back the next day.
After inquiring and realizing that the stamp meant nothing, and not wanting to take another day off of work to stand in line again, I just stood there. I asked to talk to a manager and was directed to an enormous woman talking on a cell phone. I walked over to her with another guy who was also pissed off about the situation (turns out he was from Miami), and when the woman saw us coming towards her, she went into her office. We waited outside her office with our arms crossed, talking shit for about a half hour. It was about 3:45, I believe--close to closing time!--when a girl came up to us and told us she'd try to start up the system again.
She flicked some switch, and whatever was wrong before was now right. They took our documents and our picture, and our licenses came out about 3 minutes later. So easy!

In any case, you can hopefully understand how I was quite skeptical about my upcoming MOPT experience last week but, as I said, it went wonderfully quick, and I must admit that I was quite wrong. In fact, the shock on my face in the picture basically says, "Oh my God, is this seriously happening?!"

Good work, MOPT. Now I just need a password like that to use at the Ministerio de Migración.

PS - As you notice, in my picture I'm growing out a rather objectionable "protest beard." I'm doing this to protest against the junta de agua de Berlín, which is the entity that was shutting off our water every afternoon around 4 or 5, until the following morning, for four months or so. But that's another story. And for some reason, every time I think of the phrase "protest beard," I get Bob Marley's song Redemption Song in my head, but the chorus now goes like: "All I ever wear / protest beard / protest beard / beard of freedom."
The pig flu seems to have hit my mind first...

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Watching The Time Blow By Your Face

My friend Brad sent me a link to this cool time lapse. Which makes me wonder how Brad has time to find so much cool stuff on the internet, what with his beautiful photographing and his eloquent lawyering and everything...
(And yes, the two beautiful people in the first picture on that second link are Angela and I... I'm the one who looks like he's wearing a skin yamika.)

Living My Life Faster - 8 years of JK's Daily Photo Project from c71123 on Vimeo.

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Workers Of The World, Unwind!

Just so you know, I might not be able to post for a few days. Tomorrow I've got to go to the Costa Rican version of the DMV called the "MOPT" to renew my driver's license. I'm pretty sure that stands for Ministerio de Obras Publicas and Transportación. It's in a heated competition with the phone monopoly ICE, the insurance monopoly INS, the Ministry of Migración, and the Junta de Agua de Berlín for the award of "Most Bastardly Costa Rican Bureaucracy of 2009."

To understand the MOPT, imagine a typical DMV in the US, but take away all the efficiency, non-corruption, and human warmth, and you'll get a pretty close idea of what the MOPT is like. Oh! And add a bunch of so-called gavilanes ("hawks"), which are losers who form lines outside the MOPT branches starting the night before, in order to "sell" their place in line and offer other thoroughly corrupt and bullshit extortionist services to motorists wishing to renew their licenses.

BUT, if I make it out of there in a day or two, I'll probably be able to relax on May 1st, which we have off for Labor Day! I know that in the US Friday is only "May Day," so if you're in the US, then the traditional May Pole can represent "the shaft" that you are getting by having to work on International Worker's Day.

All this, plus people losing their minds about pig flu, means that I might not be able to get to an open internet café over the weekend. If that's the case, I hope everyone is well, and we'll see you next week!

PS - If you did your own music album (see yesterday's post) and would like to share it, email it to me and I'll put them all up in a few days. I've gotten some pretty great ones so far!

PPS - For some reason, after I wrote the word "weekend," I got Loverboy's song by that name in my head. So, I share this classic with you:

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Extra Baggage

Why are all the productive people talking about what they put in their bags? Check here and here for examples. Perhaps I should give a tour of my own bag, or forever be doomed to wallow in my own inefficiency and decreased proactivity?

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Getting The Band Back Together

A while back, my friend Annie put up a post on her blog about her a "fake band" that she was in. At first I was a bit confused, because she and I were actually two of the founding members of another fake band that we formed while we were both TAs for the Scandinavian Department. That fake band was called Faded Sky Gods, and our first album was even going to be called "Bitch's Lucky Day." But then I found out that Annie had left Faded Sky Gods to embark on some solo work under the nom du musique(?) of "Osnat Elkabir." Her debut album was to be called "statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Not bad work, I have to admit, but it could have used more synthesizer.

In any case, I decided to follow the rules (detailed below) that Annie mentioned in her blog, and I started out on my own solo career under the name "Iffeldorf." As you can see from the cover of my debut album above, it's just about guaranteed to go multi-platinum in any country that has cassette players readily available.

In any case, here are the rules if you want to start your own band (cribbed from Annie's page, where it was cribbed from Facebook):

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page: the last four or five words of the very last quote on the page will be the title of your first album.
3 - Grab the first photo randomly generated from Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr here.

So, that's how I started on my own musical adventure. Evidently, "Iffeldorf" is the name of a town in southern Bavaria. Looks nice. The picture is from a random guy on flickr. And finally, the quote is the last part of a quote from Mignon McLaughlin that's good in it's own right. The quote goes: "I'm glad I don't have to explain to a man from Mars why each day I set fire to dozens of little pieces of paper, and then put them in my mouth."

Anyhow, it's all pretty good stuff. Try it out for yourself and tell me what you come up with!

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What A Terrible Language

In his book A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain included a section entitled "The Awful German Language." Here's a brief quotation to get this post started:

"A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is. Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp."

While I certainly would have agreed with Twain during the decade or so that I attempted to learn that "awful language," I have also come to realize by teaching English that my native tongue is not much kinder to language learners. My students have particular trouble with phrasal verbs, which are basically verbs that are followed by a preposition.

Don't feel bad if I lost you just there; in fact, for about 13 years between being in eighth grade and actually teaching eighth-graders, I wasn't able to tell my ass from an adjective. So, as a quick refresher, consider the verb "look." I can add different prepositions to the word, such as "up" or "down." With "look up" and "look down," I may be indicating a direction in which my listeners should direct their gazes, but these particular phrasal verbs also have other meanings. "Look up" can also mean to search for information in a work of reference, and "look down on" can also mean to regard someone with disappointment or disrespect.

But then consider something that looks simple at first glance, but which can get pretty hairy, especially if you're trying to explain it to a room of language learners. (This may also put to rest the claim that if someone speaks a language fluently, then he or she should naturally be able to teach it, no sweat): I submit to you the verbal phrases "close up" and "close down."

They look like simple opposites, right? But then you realize "close up" is maybe an adjective, since it describes a type of photography angle, and doesn't that mean you need a hyphen between the two words, as in, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Spielberg!"

But wait, "close down" is completely different. It means to shut or deactivate something, right? And come to think of it, "close up" can also mean the same thing, as in "Let's close up the shop," but then in that case the "s" is no longer pronounced like an "s," but rather like a "z." And "Close Up" is also the name brand of toothpaste that you keep in your desk for the days that the cafeteria serves pungent food (ie, weekdays).

And this is just an easy example. Try to think of all the uses of the word "get," and you'll be happy to go back to the three words above. "Get," on the other hand, can be mixed around so much that it makes your head hurt and your stomach feel vaguely like you got bonked in the nuts.

How am I supposed to teach this language??

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Cheapskate Window Cleaner Recipe!

Based on the title of this blog, you may think that I've translated Sitzblog into Engrish. Not true.

Instead, I actually have another recipe that I wanted to share with you, although it's better not to ingest this one. Basically, we used up our Windex a few weeks ago while we were cleaning our gigantic windows, and I didn't want to pay out the ears to get more. As it turns out, you can easily make your own window cleaner at home, and it barely costs a thing! Plus, if you use newspapers instead of paper towels to clean the glass, it's like recycling! The newspapers can even get a third or fourth life if you let the cat crap in them, and then later use them to start a fire in the backyard when you have to burn your trash.*

*These last two uses are optional, and only really recommended if you have a cat and live in a pretty redneck-y place without trash service (like we do).

Nevertheless, this window cleaner recipe is quick, easy, cheap, and effective. I compiled this one based on a couple of other recipes I found in the internet. Hopefully it'll help make your Spring Cleaning less Crappy!

Mix the following ingredients:
-1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap
-3 Tablespoons vinegar (brown vinegar is better cause it looks more bad-ass)
-2 cups water

Put that all into a spray bottle and you're set to go! Or better yet, make multiple batches of the cleaner in a bowl or a small bucket, and clean the windows using a squeegee with a sponge attached. It works a lot more quickly, and that way, you only need to use the newspaper to clean up a few stray streaks and drips.

Sitzblog. Life lessons. For your life.

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Beer + Bread = Beer Bread

I've recently gotten into beer bread 'cause it's cheap and easy to make. I've been going off the basic recipe that I got from my sister Di. It goes, more or less:

-3 cups of flour
-4 teaspoons baking powder
-1/2 cup sugar
-pinch of salt
-a beer

Then you mix them all together into a doughy lump, put into a greased bread pan, and bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for about an hour. It comes out like a slightly heavy, boozy bread. In other words, it's delicious! (Don't fear; that picture above is the raw dough... the finished bread looks a lot less dense and afterbirth-y)

I'm not sure why I'm compelled to do this, but I decided to write a bit about the bread I made last weekend. Maybe I'll make it a regular feature of the blog, since I keep mixing up the recipe. In any case, this time I made some changes:

-I used Guinness. That was a good choice to make it darker, but it gave the final bread a bit of a bite that's familiar to Guinness drinkers.
-I used less sugar, about 1/4 cup, and instead of sugar it was actually something called tapa de dulce. More or less, it's like sugar cane that gets compressed and then ground. I think. They use it a lot here, and it's sort of like brown sugar, but doesn't really pack down as much. The end result is that you kinda get these little brown speckles in the finished bread. Kinda good.

-I used half regular flour and half whole-wheat. Makes it tastier and thicker. Probably more nutritious, too.

The tapa de dulce and the beer.

So basically, when it gets all gooey and nasty like in the picture below, it's ready to go. It's one of the lowest-maintenance breads out there, so I'd advise you to give it a go!

Hm, now I'm realizing I should have taken a picture of the golden loaf after it came out of the oven, too.
What an anticlimactic ending.

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Hot House Pictures! Get Your Hot House Pictures Here!!

You know you want it.

And you know that you want to see what's behind that door.

And you know that you want to see it in STUNNING 360-DEGREE
"SITZ-O-VISION!"

Click here.

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Attack of the Clones?

The other day while talking about names in Costa Rica, I mentioned that it'd be weird if there were more Ryan Sitzmans out there. Well, it turns out that there is at least one on Facebook (a site that I still hate, but if it helps me reconnect with my long-lost clone, it may be worth it after all). There are also a couple of variations of Bryan/Brian Sitzman, although everyone knows that if you put a "B" in front of "Ryan," the name turns evil.

In any case, I wrote this message to Ryan Sitzman:
Hi there,
My name is also Ryan Sitzman. I know that's not really that interesting in and of itself, but since it's the same as yours, it's maybe worth mentioning. Still, I thought we could maybe be friends... or perhaps since we have the same name, I'm like your archrival or you're my nemesis or something. So if not friends, then perhaps enemies?
Anyhow, just figured I'd say hi. If you're ever in Central America, say hi. We could have some sort of Ryan Sitzman convention. We could even let the Brian and Bryan Sitzmans come. Maybe.
Have a good one,
The Other Ryan Sitzman

Then, I also came across a "Bryan Sitzmann." I sent him this message:
Hi,
My name is Ryan Sitzman. That's basically your name with the first and last letters cut off.
Does that mean you're the more sophisticated, updated model? Is there some sort of a primitive "Yan Sitzma" lurking out there, who is merely jealous of me, but considers you to be a sort of mega-advanced Super(Sitz)mann?
Anyhow, just thought I'd say hi.
Ryan Sitzman

I just figured I'd mention this now, so that it's all well-documented in case I get taken to some sort of international tribunal and get charged with Internet Harassment in the First Degree.

Otherwise, though, it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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