March 31 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

My Playa Lapa crew reported back via Skype from Laguna Vista that all the solar panels and batteries were gone, stolen apparently, sometime between 7:00 a.m. Monday and 8:00 a.m. today.  I was able to get our guest scheduled for Friday rebooked in another house, no big meltdown . . . but the loss is sickening.

Here on this quintessential Friday, the Wednesday before Palm Thursday, the town is locked down in full party mode and bibulous expectation.  The police will be making the rounds to tape the beer lockers in a couple more hours.  I have lain two six packs aside to get me through the next couple days and bulked up my larders.  I have left over black beans and pork, salad fixings and the makings of a pizza.  I am licking my licks at the notion of awakening tomorrow to still silence. 

March 30 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

A storm kicked up to the north and east, filling the horizon with lightning bolts on the march, their reports a low rumble moving south.  The wind kicked up and I stood on the street corner and caught small tastes of ozone.  Semana Santa is in full wind-up.  It feels very like Friday tonight, but tomorrow will be the quintessential Friday, its very Tico incarnation.  Both Juanita's and CafeNet are closed Th and Fr, and I am in plate clearing mode to anticipate my own delightful two-day hermitage as the town and half the country flocks to the beaches. 

There is a building confluence of outrage and realization, it seems, that will mark a chapter for me.  In the news, we have the following alarming developments:  1)  apparently direct evidence of tolerance for pederasty and child rape by the Pope;  2)  another child in American kills herself because of serial bullying while teachers and administrators in the know failed to intervene;  3) a US militia with the plan to kill a police officer in order to attack his mourners and precipitate a revolt by "like-minded" militias in the US against the central government;  4) an American polity so polarized that a meeting of the minds on health care was not possible.  On the balance, the planet is revealing itself to be ethically nimble however, as suggested by:  1)  an overdue comeuppance for Israel's temerity to treat America with pointed incivility and measured disrespect;  2)  a mosaic of wins for the American president and a final overcoming of inertia for the rolling transformational ball that we elected. 

How weird is the world when Sean Penn is the face of a relief effort (Haiti), and religious cults (like Scientology) enjoy tax-free status and are empowered to enrich themselves from the institutional victimization of its adherents.

The Snow Hare bounces around a room in San Jose, a room that I imagine to be an internal one, without windows, dark and secretive. with air-conditioning, cable tv, telephone, wireless Internet, maybe even a mini-bar, a nice place if you are there for nice purposes, an ugly place if you are there to be ugly to yourself.

Life imitates art, and form follows function.  At least sometimes in Paradise. 

March 29 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

The Snow Hare's emotional extortion is legerdemain.  A day will come when he will look heavenward, "My God," might he yell, "What have I done?" The ambiance is Easter Week, the holiest of holies the seminal vacation week of the tico work-year.  Even I may not deny the elemental part of it.  This is a fundamentally and primally elemental week.  It is like a paleolithic week, perhaps.  The el.  Take note of the el.

March 28 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

9:00 p.m.

On this Semana Santa kickoff I live a cautious combination of trepidation, relief, satisfaction, and sense of incompleteness.  It is bad and good, interesting and the same, but the composite whole is one of longing and need, a recognition that this pace and existence, this incarnation, this net stillness is not going to be enough for me.  Life feels like there is an existential knick point coming up where I will either cave and settle for what I've cobbled together or I won't.  When I imagine the worst, I am always rewarded by the admission that I like to work (if what I do can be called that) so even if I need to do it well into my life to get through and fill my needs, there is probably nothing really wrong with that. 

The Snow Hare surfaced in San Jose in another jam and gave me a quick synoptic run-down then passed the phone off to an acolyte to explain to me what was being implicitly expected of me, lain at my door so to speak, and it devolved to a matter of 90,000 colones and a few cracked ribs.  I have problem guests in Playa Lapa that have been whining all week and now are requesting a partial refund.  The fix at Verdemar did not work, did not solve the problem they reported.  The wholesale rejection of the suspension bridge was quite a thump but the proposed alternative of an elevated roadway and the assignment to cobble together cost estimates for a preliminary comparison is going to be a fruitful thing.  It's a lot of work, and I thought I had arrived at a moment of closure last Thursday, and I guess I had, a moment.  But closure on anything remains elusive.  There is the wheedling of ICE to turn on the electrical connection and a final commissioning of the system, necessary but probably fruitless tomorrow Monday of Semana Santa. 

Let's see if I can land and build it, whether a bridge or an elevated driveway and gestate the great composite next thing that includes what I have together with what I need for a nice unified field of existence.

8:30 a.m.

I love being awakened by the first tendrils of dawn's eastern blossom.  It means I have another hour at least to sleep and this morning being Sunday I lay in bed trying to continue to sleep until around 8:00 a.m. when the first call came in.  It was Dan.  He was calling from a hotel.  He was beaten the night before by some guy with room furniture and had broken ribs and was cut up and dizzy from loss of blood.  The police were there, and the hotel was expelling him but wanted their money.  Nobody would allow him to call the credit card company to find out why his card was not being accepted, the US embassy, an ambulance, and they refused to press charges against his assailants.  He handed the phone to a woman who announced herself as the wife of Orlando, a guy that has been running with Dan for the past couple weeks, a guy that was put on the phone when Dan was in his jam on the 17th, when I wired him the rest of the money I was holding for him.  Dan said he knew his Discover card was good because he had been using it.  But abstracting the charges he has racked up on his card(s) and abstracting the supposed 90.000 hotel bill that the woman said he owed, $4600 in 11 days is a burn rate of $418 per day.  While I was talking with the woman the call was dropped, and I wrote down her number 8344-5139 and got from directory assistance the number of the hotel, Doña Ines 2222-7443.  But the hotel's number only rings busy, and the woman's cell was going to voicemail until the third call.  She said he had been beaten up and kicked out of the hotel but would not give me her name, only the wife of Orlando, and then she hung up on me.

Ten minutes later as I was mulling this all over with a sick sinking feeling, Wicho arrived.  His little eyes were clouded a bit, not outrageously, and he circumnavigated the point of his visit by talking about our work and schedule for this week and what he had been doing.  I asked him if he had come for money, and he said if I could five thousand.  I only had tens and gave him one, and water welled up in his eyes, and he said that he was going to change, that it was the sadness, and that I had also lived through sadness had I not?  And that it was why I understood him. 

The two back-to-back vignettes leave me with jumbled emotions as Semana Santa begins to unfold here in paradise.  I discovered yesterday that my belief system is actually codified and has a name and is called Humanism.  It's kind of a strange sensation, not surely like an orphan discovering his or her real parents or being separated at birth from a twin or some other hugely impacting personal discovery, but it is also not small potatoes.

The Khan Man's life bubbles over with a galaxy of tiny duties and a starburst of small commitments.  Each and every single one of these is important to some single individual out there but not a single one of them is really important to me.  I have a sense of disconnection, like I am on a treadmill out of choice and running along.  But I need something better and larger and more meaningful.  A good project is a fine thing to do, a fine source of some dough.  I don't mind work and in fact like it.  But the work has to be like a form of entertainment, a choice of how to spend time and of course be compensated.  But if I arrange my life in such a way that I depend upon all these pieces of straw to comprise my sole haystack I see that outside some spiritual renaissance or unexpected nirvana that it will not be enough for me, that it will be marking time and marching in place while the world passes around in gusts. 

It is a sensation that resides in a narrow universe between desperation and ennui, between fantasy and denial, between the cold cruel world and my insulated padded air conditioned landing spot here in my cozy crow's nest crib.   

March 27 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Happy Human	Cephalantastic	Matapalo surfer chicks, vintage late nineties	Namibia, thanks Linda Giesecke

I congratulate Barack Obama for stepping up and showing the adversary how the cow eats the cabbage.

March 26 2010:  Tucan Hotel, Uvita

All set up to stay at the bunk house, food bought, ice, nervous about facing a night without sheets or a fan but willing, my cell phone could not connect to the Internet, leaving me no choice.  Amazingly, there was a final room remaining at the Tucan

March 25 2010:  Crow's Nest, PornoJiminy

Finished and sent off the bridge offer

March 24 2010:  Crow's Nest, PornoJiminy

March 23 2010:  Crow's Nest, PornoJiminy

Finished and sent off the bridge engineering and design report

March 22 2010:  Crow's Nest, PornoJiminy

March 21 2010:  Crow's Nest, PornoJiminy

Mademoiselle Elm	Silke	Oaxaca morning glories

I am witnessing history on television and am not ambivalent but not educated enough to know if the legislation has redeeming qualities or not.  For my part, I am relieved that it passes for the win for Obama.  I don't know if the bill goes far enough or not, and I know that the nation cannot afford it, but the American health care system is wildly out of control.  Perhaps this will be part of a process to a better overall system in future decades.  But all I can do is to juggle it intellectually.  I have no visceral connection.  But I sense that a win can help toward a domino of wins after a rocky year one. 

It's good to be home.  Tomorrow I must complete the bridge engineering report and get materials costs.  Big day, tomorrow . . .

Spring 1	Spring 2	Spring 1 with cap	Intake contrasts:  before (right) and after (left)

March 20 2010:  Tetey Lodge, Orosi, Cartago

March 19 2010:  Tetey Lodge, Orosi, Cartago

When there is no remote, you have to listen to the commercials or turn the set off.  Tonight a young kid broadsided my passenger side door in a mini-bike and ruined the door.  This morning we got the nod on the second spring box.  Roberto came through with the bridge graphics.  I had testy emails with two separate reservations clients, one set wanting a $330 refund because they did not like their lodge and left a day early and want me to refund it--not happening--and tonight a woman writing from Sirena that she was made to pay again and I was so going to pay when she got back and could smear me.  Turns out she did not take the confirmations I sent her did not follow instructions.  I got it all straightened out but have taken issue and allowed it to bother me.  I did not advance with the bridge report.  It's hard to work well from a hotel room.  And spring boxes are chump change . . . but this too shall pass. 

March 18 2010:  Tetey Lodge, Orosi, Cartago

March 17 2010:  Hotel Dunn Inn, San Jose

March 16 2010:  Hotel Dunn Inn, San Jose

Spring Box makings	Carving	Carving	Terrible Picture

March 15 2010:  Muñeco, Rio Sombrero, Orosi, Cartago

Wrong turn	Muñeco office	Makings of dinner	Wicho cooking	The khan man grills

March 14 2010:  Hotel Los Crestones, Pérez Zeledón

March 13 2010:  Hotel Los Crestones, Pérez Zeledón

Once and future bridge	YHC	Lagunas highlands	Luis Copete	From the bend

March 12 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Today we transitioned to a new ICE connection, 1 megs up and down, 25:1 contention, $80 a month.  Better specs for half the rate of my existing service, even after they cut my monthly bill by $100 for March.  Completed the network security overhaul, the cleansing and ordering of the system.  Marnee gave it up today and was able to change her ticket to come back a day early, leaving the snow hare to his own devices in Orotina.  I imagine him huddling in a Jaco hotel room tonight.  Here we expect to blaze off to the next job tomorrow afternoon, via Hatillo, but I have some offers to complete on solar equipment to leave town with my plate clean . . .

March 11 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Today's little deeds:

1)  Car passes revision tecnica, now fully street legal; my mechanic brings back my new glasses from San Isidro.
2)  Twelve computers reformatted, two under repair scheduled, full new virus protection and firewall, final network configuration tomorrow.
3)  Secured the Autocad and topographic 3D graphics rendering contractor to do the work.  I will have now expended one fourth of my contract budget on subcontractors and expenses.
4)  Very busy day of payments for services
5)  Received the new Juanita's logo and put it to work, redoing the appetizers menu with new prices.

Am looking at a Friday departure for Uvita, Saturday spent surveying, then Saturday night in Uvita and Sunday night in Perez, have the boys bus up to meet me on Monday and continue on to Cartago.  Marnee got Dan out of downtown, and things are emerging into focus and not as bad as they seemed to be.  They have a continuing list of things to do tomorrow.  My big target for the rest of this week is to get my OWW billing and solicited bids wrapped up and distributed and to get some more marketing work done, Casa Tortuga on VRBO.com and Facebook places for Osa Power and Water, Juanita's, and Osa Corcovado Tour and Travel.

It was a banner day in Paradise, and tomorrow has a good feel to it.  Weisbeck's Part II, the Max Dalton murder investigation, is interesting and well-written, and the character is even somewhat sympathetic, certainly so in comparison at least to Part I's egomaniacal and neurotic self-absorption, which displaced any curiosity at the tenet of metafiction or the author's notion of his memoir style with the regretful voyeuristic fascination with a train wreck.  But for me, of all people, his memoirs are absolutely MUST-READ.  It's like Oro and Gold Walker.  These are books that must necessarily inform anything I write here, including this very blog.

March 9 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Brunch

Supper

Am not sure how to assimilate the full spectrum of neuron synapses and relay transmissions from this day.  Yesterday I saved the Juanita's day by going over to Golfito and signing away a guarantee to pay back social security extortion of back payments that I don't owe for employees during a trimester in 2007 that were added by the CCSS.  I could fight it but as my lawyer points out with the Caja, you always lose and the interests keep accumulating so all delays play to the government's hand.  They were holding my liquor license hostage and today would be the curtain on Juanita's.

And this morning Dan turned up in a San Jose hotel with reports of having been abducted by the police and having all his money stolen.  I sent him more and his lucidity was reassuring but shortly after I wired the money Western Union he would not take calls and is surely holed up in his hotel room tithing his devils, and I am exhausted from his emotional roller coaster ride and his dissemination to the winds of thousands of frittered dollars.

The correspondence crunch is unrelenting, my little money motor, invented out of magical poof dust and fairy pixie dust and incarnated into a living breathing little cash cow finding its ungainly feet, letting loose a little brazen moo from its modest little pasture between the precipice and the sea on the marginal side of the economy but the hopeful side of humanity.  Sweet nothings with which to atone for a small sensation of looming inadequacy in the viridian planes of paradise.

Am  lumbering along in Allan Weisbeck's minor tome, Can't You Get Along with Anyone?  At first I reviled the author and narrator.  Now I am somewhere north of not standing him.  By the time I get through Part II, I may even be empathizing, heaven forbid. 

The Khan Man needs meaning in his life.  All these fleeting sensations do not collectively comprise much to write home about, and distraction and divertissement should not be the subjective measures of a career or lifestyle.

The thought of hitting the road to the next two jobs, slated for Saturday, remind me of that old Jimmy Cliff song with the refrain.  'You keep running and running and running and running. . . but you can't run away from yourself . . . "

March 7 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

SUSPENSION BRIDGE SKETCHES
Global	Tower Footings
Deadman	Undercarriage structure and attachment
Tower Couplet and Glider	Retaining Wall

March 6 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

March 5 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

News alert:  ***  I hate Sanjay Gupta ***

There is a conspiracy by Martini and Rossi to sell me the wrong product.  Whatever I bought was sweet, and I had to pour out the martini and settle for gin with a splash of olive juice, a considerable step down from my intentions.  The label on the Martini brand of sweet white wine says to try it with lime.  Oh well, maybe the chicks will like it.

The deferral of work continues unabated this pleasant Saturday as I consider all the drawing materials that I have purchased and relax under the gastronomic glow of a few pieces of salami and feta cheese and crackers and two fingers of icy gin about to be displaced by a 2007 Chilean Malbec.  And that's just the legal stuff.  Yes, the unabated deferral of work is a bit of an artform here in the Crow's Nest.  Were that everybody should be so blessed.

March 4 2010:  Hotel Los Crestones, Perez Zeledon

March 3 2010:  Hotel Angelus, Perez Zeledon

The Golfo de Nicoya viewed from Cerro Azul	If God were an engineer, would he prefer churches to bridges?	The road between Carmona and Punta Islita	Water softener and brine tank, installed	Golfo de Nicoya

Pana cools his neural circuits in the desert heat.	Online on the ferry in the middle of the Nicoya Gulf:  3G wonderland!	The view toward Islita from the westernmost pass, headed home	It sure seemed like a long way through the arid mountains	Midnight oil road work, Hatillo

March 2 2010:  Hotel Las Brisas, Puntarenas

Mid-Pacific Costanera tarmac, hot off the press, Hatillo	The smell of napalm in the morning	Villas in the making	View from the top	All I was looking for was a tank of propane

My curious crew	Sucking it up in the pedestal	75-KVA, baby, solid state	3G now	Asses and elbows

March 1 2010:  Cabinas Gato, Uvita

The Tigre River Bridge under construction, headed north	Trench crew, pipeline burial	The Khan Man savors the concluding strokes of a project	350MCM cables, three conductors, buried in 4" conduit, 525 meters