I haven’t experienced a thunderstorm like this one since I lived in Lake Charles LA in 1972. It sounded like the Civil War had broken out again. It was truly unsettling.
Today’s thunderstorm is officially “peligroso” — dangerous. The electricity failed for milliseconds more than half a dozen times, and the lightning bolts lit up even a fully lit sky. The sound was enormous; it sent Charli under the bed from her usually safe sanctuary beneath the bedding on my (our) bed. I’m pretty sure she’s not (yet!!!) as enamored with Costa Rica as I am. I simply cannot get enough!
This morning Topher and I Uber’d to Grecia again. He had two appointments to catch (dental and eyeglasses) and I had an INR test done at Clinico Medical Sanchez. Lovely people there! They don’t do finger pokes, though. They draw blood the old-fashioned way, from the arm. The phlebotomist asked if I was afraid of needles; I assured her I’m an old pro at giving blood, and would be fine with it. I’ll be getting the results via email sometime this afternoon.
Before we headed to Sanchez, Topher and I stopped at a store so he could buy me a $3 mug with a $20 USD bill so he’d have some more colones in his pocket. As luck would have it, the store with a mug I liked didn’t accept USD, so he bought something at a pharmacy instead, which gave him enough change for other stores that don’t accept US cash.
He forgot to have his phone unlocked and to tell his bank that he was going to Costa Rica, so he can’t withdraw money from an ATM or call from his phone when he’s away from VE’s wifi coverage area or when he’s appreciably far from me. (The Liberty company that sold me my SIM card and phone number was able to “connect” us in a way that he can piggyback off my phone plan so we can reach each other when and only when we’re in the same neck of the woods/town, but that’s just about the extent of his outreach ability when it comes to phoning.)
After I left the Sanchez Clinic and Topher (Topher kindly accompanied me there), I went to three different stores in search of various household necessities, including knives, forks and spoons. Got knives and forks but no spoons, so I’ll have to find a store that carries them on a different day.
And of course, since I was in Grecia central again, I decided to stop at Cafe Delicias for my favorite meal: Plato Ejecutivo with pescado and limonade. As soon as I ordered, Topher called to say his dental appointment had concluded and he wanted to get back with me for lunch. So I ordered meals for us while he Uber’d his way back to Cafe Delicias. By the time he got to me he told me the dentist had given him a recommendation for his eyeglasses and that he was going to do that after lunch, and so we wouldn’t be Ubering back in the same vehicle.
So, after we ate lunch, I called Uber for myself and he went off to an eyeglass appointment.
As soon as I got home, the skies opened up and it poured and crashed and thundered and lightning’d (how do you like this creative sentence structure? HA!) like crazy. About an hour after the deluge began, Topher returned to VE looking like a drowned rat from the belly down. (Bumbershoots/umbrellas are only good in a friendly rain, folks! Wind and rain is a whole different kind of weather!)
He didn’t stay in my unit more than two minutes and by the time he headed out, the umbrella he had laid upside down on the patio was filling with rainwater as we watched! It’s remarkable how hard it can rain. Monsoon is close to what we experienced!
I posted a brief video of the storm on my Facebook page. You can catch it there. Or maybe even here. Let’s see if I can figure out how to do that….