Last One For A While
Coming up on midnight Saturday working on 3 Advil for a persistent noggin bruiser. I've got pictures to fix and post but my left eye is balking just looking at this screen. They'll wait for the morrow. I met Diego (sp?) from Argentina today who knows about as much English as I know Spanish, and Cleo is writing up sentences and words for me to memorize. I've met lots of people in the States from other countries that came with little or no English and have wondered what it must have been like. As of today I would figure it was like more than a few headaches as they tried to wrap their brains around a new language.
Dana wrote today and told me Ed has been discharged from the hospital to the care of his friend Larry. This worries me greatly, not that I don't think Larry and his family won't take good care of him, but because Ed needs serious therapy. Maybe it's best that he's with good friends; I hope they have the energy and time to deal with him.
The weather has been perfecto down here. Today had an incredibly comfortable breeze that the locals feel as cold. I could sleep outside. Speaking of sleeping, the nightly whore report: I hit the casino for my nightly Coke and came back down for my elevator. Riding the elevator up to the eighth floor was a guy that had 10 years on me with a baby all made up in stiletto heels that, maybe was 17 if she had led the life of a pampered veal calf, which I'm thinking not.
Prostitution is legal, but pimping is not, which means the girls are solo. The law however is strict on underage sex. Have sex with a minor and you go to jail for a long time. This is as it should be, but the line seems to get real blurry around here. John told me today about an 87-year-old friend of his that married an 18 year old. He showed me pictures of the Lolita like bride, who was precious, but his friend has passed to the great beyond. Now 22 at least she got the house. More manana.
Break
Went to the Amistad and checked out for good. They refunded me one day, which was 8 billion colones, or whatever. Got a few pictures ready to go for today's update, though I don't know if I will get to caption them. I've got to get one of those ez foto pages to just link to. I have a buzznet account that I've never used so maybe I should look into it, eh? But not today. I've got the keys in my pocket to my new digs, and later on tonight I'll see if any of those pictures are salvageable; though I probably won't get to post them until I get back to the States.
I'm of course counting on dumb luck here to pull this off, and it all seems too easy. The people I've met have been marvelous to the point of ridiculous (except for a cabbie or two), and as I wind this part of the journey down it almost feels unreal. I'm sitting in my new room with the wind blowing through the curtains, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, already getting focused on the trip back. Cleo and John think it's silly of me to stay at the hotel, and now that I'm officially in the house, I think Marisol expects me to stay too. She wanted to know where my luggage was.
We had lunch at some "tropical" place, and what they put on the table was light years away from what I thought I'd ordered. But it was tasty, and they were playing marimbas. I was already shanghaied into some minor house repairs, but the hardware store was closed so I guess it will wait until February. There is apparently a church not far away; as for the second time today the bells were clanging. There was light rain in the morning and early afternoon, just enough to get your face wet, and wind dried just as soon. The clouds are high and floating now, big puffy orange and white things, heading out to the north and east.
It's almost time to go and visit John and Cleo, and upload this and the pics, so as a word of warning to dial up users: don't click to read on, it may take a while. Ciao.
