Friends:
So, my family and I are currently in Costa Rica. Been here a week--attended the ARCR seminar and leave next Wednesday. This is not our first trip to Costa Rica. Our plan was to turn in our residency documents this trip, and wait stateside for our application to be processed. We're in no particular hurry.

We have spent all Summer gathering documents from two continents and various states. Police reports, birth certificates, yada yada. We made careful plans so that our trip coincided with the ARCR seminar, which is held the last Thursday and Friday of every month (except December).

We have been working with a CR Lawyer for the past year on gathering our documents, and such because our situation is a little different from most. Anyway, documents gathered, we traveled a week ago Wednesday, my husband, myself and our two little girls, ages 6 and 8 (we are late in life parents). Trip went fine. We attended the seminar, that went fine...except that my husband...who is a little, shall we say "absent minded" kept leaving his wallet/bag in places (once in the hotel room after we had checked out, once in a guides car). He would get completely panicked about it and eventually it would turn up.

We have done all the things we needed to do (application stamps and Banco National, American Embassy Notary, and today, total fiasco for finger prints at the police station).

During the fiasco, from car to building (50 yards--maybe?) he must have dropped his bag..and not noticed it for about 5 minutes. He walked back to the car...no bag. Completely panicked...I thought he was going to have a heart attack...literally...but because of the fiasco at the Police Station, we could not leave. Eventually, we finished with finger printing and our guide drove us back to Heredia to our hotel. We spent several hours cancelling his credit cards and figuring out financial arrangements.

After that was done we went to the Attorney's office to sign a power of attorney and turn in our documents (we got an A+ on document gathering and Apostille application). We then returned to Heredia...it was about 4pm and I thought that I would write an email to the US consulate, just in case (Yeah right) the wallet was turned in to the embassy. His Idaho Driver's license would identify him as a possible US citizen.

I had very little hope that I would even get a return email. We took the K*ds to dinner and returned just after 9 tonight. I checked my email for work related issues, and there was an email from the consulate. One Line: "Your wallet was turned in to the consulate." Yahooo! No matter what anyone says about this country, no matter if the few colones in the wallet are there or not, no matter we cancelled the credit cards already, I LOVE THIS COUNTRY. We probably will never know the path the wallet took to get there...or maybe we will...we will pick it up on Monday. But someone found it...probably took it to the police station and they probably sent it to the consulate. That would never happen in the US state in which we live.
I am sure there will be much that will frustrate and challenge us here...if anyone wants to hear my finger print story, I'll be happy to share...but my faith in humanity has been bolstered by this event.

You just KNOW it is bad when people have to post something when something good or let's call it normal happens. This is a story just because it doesn't happen much here.

Greengo, with that little serenade we gotta meet ya, you name the time and place, hopefully in this time warp.
Regards, 911 Driver

is this it? is this all there is?

saw the heat at the new filmore in sf...goin down to the country was the biggie.melanie lost her key ..and carlos was just playing a few simple chord solos...these were pre mesa boogie gigs..credence was playing debutante balls ..janis was rapier thin ..jimi was playing a white les paul in the tiny matrix basement..with lonnie youngblood...bear reminds me of big emily(really big)...leon russels main squeeze... dancing and rolling biscuits.. in the kitchen ..in macon...in the 70s..he probly weighed 150 soaking wet and way old aready ..she was at least 280 without a stitch...laying around the studio while alex taylor..james brother is recording an old blues ..im gonna burn down the cornfield..over and over ..for hours...im jamming with albert in mobile in bullshead...at the unpainted tin roof concrete block ..harlem duke social club..later that night ..i drive the bus nonstop to iuka..my bud following us in my bora... sat with skippy in the 60s .. showed me the variation for washington dc blues.. sitting with a plate of grapes and cheese in the buffet room in mobile while the stones and stevey wonder are playing..you know who comes in ..is doing some stretching and warming up..adjusting the sock he just put in his pants..looks over at us and asks his security to tell us to leave..i stand up .... .both lookupatme .both turn red...ask them to please leave..yes amigos ..that historic bulge is 100 per cent pure cotton..im standing outside grants lounge..a hyper slim greg walks out..jeans tailored skin tight on what looks like a couple of ounces of meat on a set of femurs ..kicks over a triumph chopper ..had to have at least 12 to one compression..warms it up for like 3 seconds..peels off the sidewalk onto the street wide open..sidways ..still wide open ..its three fouths of a block to the light..hes still wide open no helmet ..goes thru the red light at least 90... ..a microsecond later two taxis slide thru the intersection sideways.. watching santana in byron and wondering where he got all those licks in a year and a half.. next thing i know ..im pulling a fish i bought at the mercado out of the morass of plastic bags and mile high suds at the river behind my hovel in santa ana ..my neighbors shitfaced with wonder and admiration..bam.. im in a fuckin plane 60 hours a week ....wondering how the economic system my great grandfather designed could become so bastardized (not unlike myself) by the howling contagion of cumdrunk socialist democratic psychosexual dysmorphia ... wtf ..is this it? is this all there is?

And you get out of the city completely and the people are really different. I like to get away when I can to Atenas, was just there this weekend. Folks there are much like they are in a small town like where I come from. Very nice and helpful, basically good neighbors. I find this a lot in many rural areas here. And as ID said, outside the gulch is a lot more normalcy than one would think when the gulch is their point of reference. Then again I'm a prejudiced person. In that I don't like gringos so much.