Okay, I'm back in CR house-sitting our three houses, Gary's, Vince's and mine. I returned after a month in the U.S. I won't bore you with arcane details because I know you like the colorful stuff. I've been here for 12 hours and, so far, nothing colorful has happened, thankfully. I'm sure that will change. My yard needs cutting, and the ants have decimated the plants I had put on the ridge behind my house, as usual. Good thing I had Omar the Peon plant a bunch of natural stuff as backup because those are growing fine. It's cloudy now, which is a change from when I left. Then it was the dry season. Now it's the rainy season, although it hasn't rained in the last 12 hours. My new gate and barbed wire seems to have done the trick on the cow problem. I see no evidence of cow activity, and I never got a word from Vince or Gary about my alarm going off while I was back in the states. There were quite a lot of dead bugs in my house, though, especially around the sliding glass doors. Those doors are typical of the quality of stuff in Costa Rica. There are gaps that let all sorts of bugs into my house, as well as sand and dirt in the dry (windy) season.

Well, I better sweep them up now. I swept last night when I got in but I guess I missed a few hundred or so. The toucans were noisy this morning, but I didn't go out to look for them. I'll have more time later. And I'm just waiting for the biggest bug, Fabian the motorcycle cop, to show up and bother me. At least, now, with the new gate, he can't blast down my driveway, go along my narrow front yard, spin around on the side, then park his bike in front of my house, then slowly remove his helmet like he's the Terminator or something - all while I'm peacefully on the computer and barely awake in the morning.