Paddled out over the holiday weekend and had some fun waves. Pretty strong offshore breeze that isn't the sort of winds we expect in March, but no complaints here! It wasn't a particularly notable session, except for the pleasant surprise on my way back to the car... I bumped into my office manager who is also a photography enthusiast and she told me that she caught a few shots of me surfing! Fun. To her credit- the wave was breaking pretty far out and to avoid shooting directly into the sun she had to get a strange angle. I think she did a great job. Now I've just got to surf better so that the pics are more fun to look at!

The following is one wave:






All photo credits to Pia Morera Castro (cropped by Steve)

Labels: Costa Rica, photo, surf

Ok, before you click on the link, you've gotta promise to keep in mind that we didn't clean up before inviting you in. Steve took a bunch of photos of various parts of the house and yard, mostly to have a record of "before" pictures so that when we (hopefully) get a bunch of projects completed around here, we'll be able to look back and say "Wow! Look at all of this progress!" Part of that progress will be making the bed and coiling the hose in the yard.

We also altered a sketch of the basic floorplan of the downstairs so that it illustrates (more or less) the way the house is laid out. I realize that some of our readers don't care about this stuff.... but if your parents bugged you for two or three months to show them some photos of your new house, you might post it too.

Labels: photo

Last night (this morning?) at midnight, Costa Rica's telephone monopoly threw a wrench in the works.

We've got an extra digit, folks.

So if you are calling cell phones, you've gotta add a 8 before what used to be the 7 digit number, and if you are calling non-cellular telephones, you add a 2.

Purportedly, they chose the 2 and 8 because it is 2008.

So, for instance, if you were looking to buy a beautiful Costa Rican home or other real estate in the greater Tamarindo area, you would dial 011 506 2 653 1102 to reach Bratton Broyles & Associates' office (assuming you were in the USA).

If you were trying to reach Steve on his cellphone, to ask about the waves this morning (which were utter crap, perhaps in protest of this newfangled telephone thing) you would dial 8 376 6278. That is, assuming you were in Costa Rica. After all, why would you care about the waves if you were out of the country?

It may seem fairly trivial... but in my little real estate brokerage alone we are looking at forking out around $1,000 just to reprint business cards. Let alone the cost of updating signage, websites, printed literature, etc etc. All this to add an 8 or 2 here and there.

Surprisingly, at least to us, the changeover seems to have worked! We tried dialing a few numbers this morning with the additional digit, and it works. Entirely un-North America style, if you dial the old number (without the extra digit) it doesn't give you any sort of gentle reminder. It just says "This is a recording to tell you that the number you dialed doesn't match any of our clients'."

So, to review:

Steve's cell: (011 506) 8.376.6278

Jocelyn's cell: (011 506) 8.376.6417

Our home phone: (011 506) 2.653.1354

Steve's office: (011 506) 2.653.1102

Jocelyn's Studio: (011 506) 2.653.2158*

# posted by Steve Broyles @ 3/20/2008 09:22:00 AM 2 comments

Sunday was a good day. No. A really good day. Not sure why it wasn't "great" day, but we like to leave room for potential improvement.

Got up pretty early but fairly lazy. Ate some delicious chocolate cupcakes (courtesy of Bakery de Jocelyn) with our coffee, then got surprisingly little done on a variety of projects around the house. We'll spare you photos of the shelving, it isn't much to look at.

Steve reveled in the fact that our local hardware store is now sort of open on Sundays. The whole store isn't really open, and you've gotta ask staff to let you in to the limited areas that are "open", but this is still a monumental achievement for the DIY on the weekend crowd as now one can forget a part on Saturday and still have a chance of finishing the project on Sunday. Good stuff.

Caly spent the afternoon snoozing in the sunlight. It's good to be the dog.


Anyway, and on to good parts, Steve stopped off at the grocery where he was inspired to make a delicious clam and bacon pasta dish (*recipe below). His enthusiasm inspired Jocelyn to set a lovely late-afternoon ocean/sunset view table, where we savored our food and wine with a nearly-perfect gentle afternoon breeze and temps in the low 80s. Pretty darn nice!

Looking to share the pleasure, we invited some friends over and the six of us had some more wine and chatted until it became dinner time. Since one of the guests came with some bbq ingredients, we fired up the grill and made a gourmet meal with grilled chicken, a grilled veggie medley including green beans, squash, eggplant, onions, and chayote (a local veggie that's tasty on the bbq), and a russsian potato and beet salad.

We stayed up a little late, perhaps, and drank maybe a smidgeon too much, but everyone had a great time and, in the end, it was a good Sunday.

*Clam and Bacon Pasta for Two*
(sorry the measurements are vague, you'll have to experiment)

• about 100grams of bacon (maybe 5 slices?)
• 1 can chopped clams in natural juice (the little can, 6 oz?)
• spaghetti noodles
• 1 organic green/red bell pepper (mine was half & half, which was perfect) diced to about pea size.
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed and diced
• 2oz olive oil
• 1 pat of butter
• 1 dried red peppers (the little crinkly ones w/ seeds)
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 large sprig fresh parsley, minced

1. Cook the bacon until crispy but NOT too hard. Remove and reserve.
2. Drain clams, reserve juice.
3. Start cooking your noodles.
4. In medium cast iron pan, sautee clams and crushed/diced garlic w/ dried peppers in olive oil
5. as garlic starts to brown, add diced peppers, dried parsley, and dried basil. I probably used more like 1.5 tsp of basil.
6. add butter
7. saute roughly 2 minutes, then add enough clam juice to barely cover the other ingredients (about 2 oz).
8. lower heat, simmer, don't let the peppers get mushy.
9. Your noodles are probably done by now. I like 'em al dente.

Pile the noodles on each plate, then put the clam mixture in the center of the noodles. Sprinkle the bacon and fresh parsley over the top of everything.

Serve with warm baguette or ciabatta, fresh parmesan and cracked pepper on the side.

We also did a simple little salad of fresh tomatoes (diced) with capers and sliced green olives that we marinated in balsamic vinegar for about half an hour and drizzled with virgin olive oil. Yummy.