I’m slowly being drained of my blood, my precious vital fluids, one tiny bite at a time. It’s the price I pay for nocturnal porch-sitting. The rainy season has arrived and brought hoards of mosquitoes with it. Apparently, they have a thirst for gringo sangria.

Despite the buzz of the little suckers and the constant yapping of the neighborhood dogs, it’s a pleasant night. The air is cool and the moon is bright. I survived a planned three-hour power outage that ended around 9pm. ICE, the utility monopoly, has been cutting electricity all over the country. I understood enough of the television news to know it was coming, though I’m not sure of the reason. It has something to do with an unplanned blackout that happened last week.

I can’t sleep. No particular reason. And no particular need. I have no plans for tomorrow… err… today. Sleep will come eventually. When the power returned, I studied a little Spanish. Then I whipped up a papaya fresco and finished reading “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” (I have a hard drive filled with e-books). And now I’m half watching an old Western flick on the retro channel. This is one of the rare times when they show a movie that’s not dubbed in Spanish. It’s in English, with subtitles. I’m no fan of Westerns, but I’ll take what I can get. Sometimes I keep a dictionary handy while watching so I can look up unfamiliar words, but not tonight.

Right now I’m just hoping the cheesy dialogue will lull me to sleep so I can quit scratching my arms and legs.

Labels: costa rica