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not taking the ferry to Jaco
Saturday, February 9 2019
location: Casa Trogon, Agua Vista Lodging, Montezuma, Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
Today Gretchen (but not I) would be beginning an overnight trip-within a trip to Jaco, a beach town 30 miles or so to the east across the mouth of the Gulf of Nicoya. Supposedly there would be sloths and lots of monkeys to be seen over there, though I preferred to just have an unstructured weekend back at the casita. At around 8:00am, I drove Gretchen into downtown Montezuma, near where she'd be catching the ferry. She seemed to want to be dropped off right at the door of the place, though my preference is never to drive into the congested heart of Montezuma, particularly given how walkable the whole place is. Very much unlike Gretchen, I'm an anxious person by nature, and there is no medication that will ever make me want to drive on lawless streets crowded with hungover pedestrians doing their walks of shame, poorly-parked SUVs, and zipping all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes.
After I'd parked the Suzuki and Gretchen had registered for the ferry, we both went into the Super Montezuma to do some obligatory shopping. We needed more salt, as Gretchen had used a lot of it for soaking her ear back before she got the ear drops. I also got 100% natural orange juice (my main rum mixer) and a roll of toilet paper. (Our casita is a weird hybrid between a rental house and a hotel; some toilet paper had been provided, but then we were expected to buy the rest.)
Back alone at the casita, my glorious unstructured Saturday began with a cup of kratom tea, and a little after 12 noon I mixed myself my first rumdriver, which I drank as I fixed a few bugs in that Electron app. I enjoy what I do, even when it's difficult and uninspiring, and I'm keen to get this particular project behind me.
It was an unusually windy day, and debris kept blowing into the plunge pool. I kept fishing it out with the net-on-a-pole, thinking every time that I might take a dip. But then I kept not taking a dip.
At some point I completely caught up to the present in the writing in my online journal (what you are reading), something that rarely happens away from home and has never happened in a foreign country.
I like to drink alone, but when you have huge expanse of day and nothing specific to fill it with, there's only so much you can drink before it just seems like you're going through the motions doing something that's really not all that fun. And then maybe you start feeling regret. Maybe I should've gone with Gretchen to Jaco. I wondered what they were doing at the casita next door. The experience was classic FOMO (fear of missing out) coupled with boredom. What ultimately saved me was the Mike Judge movie Extract, which the Wikipedia page for Office Space said was something of a sequel. It turned out that I'd watched much of Extract before, probably in bits and pieces as Gretchen watched it in the teevee room (she's a sucker for Jason Bateman vehicles). The focus this time was on a more bluecollar industry (boutique flavoring agents), though again it's set in some depressingly generic exurb of office parks, chain restaurants, and namebrand motels, a place where handsome (but idiotic) landscaper can moonlight as a gigolo or a hot young woman can use her beauty to stun her masculine prey just before ripping them off and disappearing into the featureless landscape.
Throughout the afternoon, I made several brief forays from the desk where I work to check out the local fauna. I kept hearing a crunching of leaves every few seconds in the jungle to the north, so I went to look and saw that one of the agoutis (Agnes?) was standing down there, periodically stamping her back legs and not doing much else. It must've been some sort of signalling.
Later I went among the trees to the southeast of the casita, on a pathway that connects it with the central casita. There were some small black birds high in a tree making low whistling calls at each other. I couldn't get a good look at them, but in a blurry photos I took, I saw that they had a couple long whispy streamer feathers sticking out of their tails. [There were probably long-tailed manakins.] Then on the ground I found a sheet of paper comb made by a smallish wasp. The cells were about 2/3 the width of the sort of cell you'd see in honeybee comb or a North American paper wasp nest.
This evening when I got hungry, I made a pan of beans with fried mushrooms and onions. Since it was just for me, I made precisely the way I like it. I didn't bother with making a pot of rice and just ate it with corn chips.
That wasp comb paper I found.
My desk setup tonight, complete with Extract on one screen, Chris Watts' neighborhood as seen on Google maps, a pan of bean glurp, corn chips, and some 2018 Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Click to enlarge.
These aren't social flycatchers after all. They're probaly Kiskadees, which are also tyrant flycatchers similar to phœbes.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?190209 feedback
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