Squire and I are in Costa Rica this month. Our friends were here with us for two weeks and that was a great bit of fun, and we are sad they left. On the plus side, we like hanging out with each other a lot. We rented a house near the beach, bordering a smallish jungle. The monkeys wake us up sometimes and that is nice. There are also lots of lizards of varying sizes. Also chickens who roost in the branches of palm trees, which is interesting, though it is not nice when they wake us up. We work and play games and read Orwell and Huxley, catalog the animals we see, eat our body weight in gallo de pinto, jump around in the ocean and turn pink, peel, fade to freckles, and turn pink again. We have experienced ziplining, kayaking, and snorkeling, all of which are splendid activities and more so when I remember that at home I would currently require several layers of clothing just to take out the trash. The last time I went grocery shopping in Brno, it was so cold I cried and the tears froze on my face. So Costa Rica is a very welcome change. Also salt water has magical healing properties, which I mean literally and metaphorically. 

Happy new year, by the way. I have made ambitious resolutions for the first time I can remember, and a revised five year plan. My main goal is that 2011 be better than 2010. So far signs point to yes.

Yesterday we went to the Frida Kahlo exhibit in Vienna, because hey, we live in Europe and they have museums and stuff. As preparation we watched Julie Taymor's Frida, which turns out to be a bit more sexytimes than I remember, and that was sort of awkward and funny. Hey, thirteen-year-old son, come sit down with mama and watch fiery Mexicans getting it on. Whourps. The movie was good, though, and I think it helped Squire with appreciating the art a bit more. I do wish that museums were more like IKEA, where you have to walk up and down every aisle but then you see everything. I mean, go faster or slower if stuff interests you or doesn't, but I like that you have to walk by everything. I feel like the standard model of a bunch of rooms, where you walk through some rooms multiple times and others you can miss, is not effective. Particularly not when there are crowds that are coming in bunches – some people are like me, and want to go "in order" (I assume the museum curators did put it in some kind of order, right?) and others dart from picture to picture. So I got shoved some, and spent some time having the back of someone's head put itself in front of the painting, and also there were children touching the art, which is like: wow, parents. This is not an interactive exhibit. BUT the show itself was well arranged for the space, I thought, and I liked seeing her early drawings, so rough, and then you sort of watch her come into herself, and then there's a sort of deterioration at the end that is understandable but sad. Drugs, you are not actually a friend to art, despite how it sometimes feels like you are at the time. Also they had films and photographs and some of her actual dresses. Also I really liked the explanations, even though it meant I spent at least half the time reading instead of absorbing the visuals, but that is the curse of being me. I did think they went a little far with some of the explanations on the still lifes, but otherwise I came out feeling quite a lot better informed and even a bit more in love than I was, which was a lot. My goodness, are you still reading this? Let's move on, shall we.

It is not yet snowing here. I am going on a trip next week so I expect it will bust out the snow more or less on the very day I am leaving, to ensure some drama. Oh, drama, where would I be without you? I like to imagine I would be in a musical. I do so like it when people burst into song, as long as it is not me bursting, because nobody needs to hear that.

What else? Yesterday I ate a lunch so salty that my hands swelled and I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something. It is entertaining to think about the size of your tongue and whether it it is swelling. Mine was not, it turns out. Uh. Today I remembered to buy everything I needed at the grocery store without having remembered to take my shopping list. None of the eggs broke on the way home. So basically I rock. Except, all of my fingernails are splitting at the cuticles and it hurts. I painted them to try and cheer them up a little.

Workwise… I'm feeling a little challenged with work, but also enjoying a great deal of smug superiority over the Cooks Source editor. About fictional media, I know the more popular thing is to be mad as hell and not taking it anymore, but I feel more and more like Jane Craig in Broadcast News. I should watch that again; I have a feeling it influenced me more than just a little, and I don't mean just the baggy sweaters.

How are you doing? Things I thought were really terrible are turning out to be… not easy, but less difficult than I had imagined. I wish the same for you.

I got up at 6 this morning hoping to catch my sister in California to talk to but apparently people have better things to do on Friday night than park themselves on SKYPE. Last night was my Friday and I was also not wallflowering up the internet, so I understand. You know the horror movies -or like that one episode of Buffy, which we just started watching- when there's a demon in the computer? I sometimes think I AM that demon, because I am always on line. Not really. No, relax, come back. I only want to love you.

Last night we tried a different pub because our old favorite is under new ownership and the waiters are the precise combination of officious and cloying that I cannot stand. Uriah Heep with a tray of beer. So it is necessary to find a new place. The place we went to has an elaborate and noisy ventilation system, despite which they have to open the door to get the smoke out effectively, so we sat shivering in our coats while the people from one table shouted a conversation with the people at another table, over our heads, and thought: Well this is also not the place.

This weekend everybody goes back to where they came from and tidies up the graves of the people who have left that place even more permanently. I expect there will be pork and cabbage, traditional dishes, familial tensions. I don't have anybody dead here yet so we'll just stay home, watching more Buffy and possibly Starship Troopers, partly because it is sci-fi and partly because at this point we would both be happy to watch Neil Patrick Harris pick his nose.

What else? The book that I wrote with my own sweet hands (a textbook) is Zeno's-parodoxing itself towards completion. I'm meeting the publisher next week to hand it over so I sure hope it's done by then. Haha, that is a joke that I made; of course it will be done. What else? Oh, I got a giant book to edit on Energy Alternatives. It is more boring than you can possibly imagine, but I am going to learn so much about energy that it will be worth it. Also, this promises to keep me out of trouble until at least 2011. 

Sometimes I am so sad that I have to sit down with a box of tissues and let myself cry just until my brain is less soaked in tears and I can put together one or two thoughts. Sometimes it is more than I can bear. But then sometimes I laugh so hard I have to put my hand out for balance or I would flip onto my back like a cartoon character or I guess a bug. Hey maybe when you see a bug on its back with its legs twitching in the air, it isn't really trying to flip over; maybe it's convulsing with laughter, fully prepared to die laughing. That's not so bad a thought, is it?