i have been feeling pretty restless the last few nights, and tonight i tried to kill that with a little world of warcraft, but kept getting kicked from the server. so after a dinner of black beans and vegetables, i poured myself a cup of black tea mixed with fresh ginger and milk, opened up a new document in bean (the word processing application i usually use) and started typing, courier new 12 point (old school typewriter style). i have some pages of notes from the last year or so living here that i referenced a couple of times for ideas, but otherwise i just plowed into the writing. i started in a different world, in a ramada inn in the midwest. eventually the story is coming here, but for now i am going to try working without an etched in stone concept of where the story goes.

of course, this all assumes that this will not just have been a one-off night of passionate scribbling, to be followed by weeks and months, perhaps years of silent fingers. the idea of being a writer is more appealing to me than the writing process, or at least i think that’s what i have told myself in the past. but tonight it felt alright, it felt like something i could do, and the work felt like something that could be enjoyable for itself. i have a little headache after all that mental exertion though, or maybe it’s a side effect of the surge of manic energy that i usually get whenever i start a project.

my life has seen its share of unfinished projects, so i guess we shouldn’t hold our collective breath on this one. but if it continues to be fun, who knows.

i spent the whole day, except for a half hour making breakfast and coffee, and a half hour making dinner, stretched out on the bed with my laptop transfering my web stuff to a new host, and switching all of my email to three IMAP accounts rather than the five (i think, there might have been six) POP accounts. i feel like a dumbass for not having gone IMAP before, but then again i didn’t have that option with my previous host (i think, i could have missed it).

being on the internets for that amount of time, doing miscellaneous mundane tasks, you need occasional breaks. today i took one such interlude by posting in a thread about which cat or dog food is best. there were a lot of people on there talking about fancy expensive organic raw food diets (for pets!!!), and so i tossed off a quick defense of tough, purina eating, no-nonsense jungle (house) cats:

i just buy whatever ground-up-horsemeat kitty-factory-style dry food i can get at the store (i believe right now i have one choice, purina). cats here in costa rica are a dime a dozen, most of them are rail-thin, and they appreciate ANY kind of food you give them. they don’t have the option of being fussy, they have the option of eating what you give them, scrounging, or dying of hunger.

quite frankly, guapo, the cat i inherited from my girlfriend when she moved back to the united states, is probably the happiest, fittest cat i have known. i have a feeling he may be supplementing the dry food with live, wet gecko meat, but usually he just tosses them around until they die and then loses interest. he also likes papaya and yogurt, so he gets some of that occasionally. i think a big key to his health and wellbeing is that i don’t let him lounge around all day. i toss him out in the yard for some exercise if he is getting too snoozy. he also follows me around constantly, so when it is hack-at-the-hibiscus with a machete time, he is in another corner of the yard working over some endangered tropical reptile.

i started to do some googling about pet food a while ago when i accepted responsibility for the cat, and kinda gave up when i realized that guapo was going to be eating whatever was available, and didn’t have the luxury of picking a fancy-lad food. once again, the food in combination with his lifestyle seems to be treating him right.

there is something really satisfying when you are about to drop off into lala land, and you can tell it will be a good restful night’s sleep. tonight i am in bed and it is late, and there is a nice gentle breeze coming and going, coming in the screened windows from the caribbean. the temperature and the smell of everything is perfect for deep slumbering, and even the roosters have been knocked out by it. which is somewhat unusual, and another indication that i am going to……..pass….ou….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

the band and friends skimmed across the water in a lancha out to the bocas del toro islands, panama this week, for some jamming and hanging. we played at ultimo refugio, the cosmic crab, and aqua lounge. this time i was flying solo so i stayed at the gran kahuna hostel, and that was a GOOD deal for $12/night, looking out across the water from the room enjoying a sweet fast dsl connection.
the afternoon gig at aqua lounge was fun too, out on the deck about 10 steps away from a refreshing dip between songs. i took a photo of this starfish during one swim break.