So. Maia, my Macbook, went poof. I booted her up, she beeped a horrible beep, I rebooted her, and then her keyboard didn’t work. Nothing could persuade her: I pounded the keys; I lovingly coaxed her; I fanned her; I played really, really nice, and still, no luck. Sigh.

Luckily, Josue was here. I love Josue. He took me to Icon, the Mac repair shop close by, and helped me explain to them what was wrong. [Ok, fine. He did it for me. But techy things are not Erin things even in English, let alone in Spanish, so please give me a break.] They thought they knew what might be wrong and they thought they had the part to fix it, so hopefully this will not be too painful a process. Cross your fingers.

Anyway, back to my mad love for Josue. Yeah. He took me shopping. Well, what I mean is that he has a car and I was feeling blue about my Macbook, I was bored without her, and he is just awesome and so we went to the mall! We got coffee and he went into the stores with me and he waited while I tried on clothes and he told me what looked good and what didn’t. Okay, scratch that. He wasn’t so great about the “what didn’t look good,” because he said that everything looked good (which it didn’t). But he did help me pick out a pair of jeans that look pretty hot. Furthermore, I’m on a mission to look less gringa (a mission that I’m told I will fail), so buying jeans that a tica would wear was high on my priority list. I also bought a purse and various other little things. And we spent about 15 minutes picking out a pair of sunglasses that made me look hot. It had been quite awhile since I’d indulged in some serious retail therapy and dear God!, it felt good.

Further world rockage is due to the fact that Josue is letting me use Tony, his Macbook, until mine is resuscitated. Even more awesome still, he allowed me to transfer all my files off of Maia (except my music, which he would have let me do, but I didn’t have the patience to transfer it all) onto Tony, so that I may go about my work and business as per usual. Yes yes, I know. You’re all jealous. We should all have Josue’s in our lives. Maybe if you’re really nice, I’ll let you borrow him for an hour. [Maybe.] So anyway, yes, Josue is awesome and you all needed to know that.

Moving on, an update on my fabulous sunburn: it’s peeling. And ewwww, it’s gross. I hate peeling. Especially since it’s in a location that I cannot hide. So it sucks. But whatever, it’s almost gone and I’m noticeably tanner (in the reddish sense of the word), so I guess it’s not a total disaster. I did, however, buy SPF 35. And this SPF has some self-tanner built in, so I’ll get tan while I block the sun! It’s genius.

Lastly, I’m going to rot in hell for all eternity for this, but I ate fish last night. I hadn’t eaten any in over 18 months, but now I have and oh. my. god. , it was more delicious than I could have thought possible. Some back story: I have been thinking about eating fish since I arrived for two reasons: 1) It is very hard to find meat/protein replacements here, unlike in the States and 2) there is a ton of amazing seafood all around me and I’m weak when confronted by yummy smells. So anyway, we went to a Japanese restaurant, and I entertained the idea of ordering fish, but I was a good little veggie and ordered the vegetable tempura. The only problem: they brought the combination tempura, which had white fish and shrimp. It was A Sign, obviously, and so I ate it. And I thought I was going to die from the pleasure of it all. Seriously, if I could exist in the moment when I first bit into the fish, I would die happy.

So there you have it: This is partially what I’ve been up to. And oh, if you missed my little side post, I also gave Ender a bath. Anyway, I’ll update again soon, after I’ve uploaded my photos to Flickr and can tell you about going to a concert to see Editus, a Grammy-winning Costa Rican group, my trip to Poás volcano, my trip to a Costa Rican Farmers’ Market and all the other fun & crazy things I’ve been doing. Peace out, maes.