Dinner last night, San Jose today

Last night, we attended an Italian "gringo" dinner @ Essprezzo de la Casa.  Apparently, Joyce & Tony from Brooklyn do this around once a month.  Started with fresh bruchetta, followed by a wonderful salad with hand made Italian dressing, then Chicken Parmigiana with ziti (I think it was).  Hand made cream puffs filled w/chocolate for dessert!  Yum!  We haven't been cooking much on our "shocking" stove, so it was a real treat! A few photos for y'all:

Home and to bed early and up at zero dark thirty (again) to take the bus to SJ to do a little business & look at a car:

Cute, but small!  We are dealing with the owner on price at present. Will keep y'all posted.   

The "other business" involves the ramifications of trying to be smart, without reading contracts.  Before we left Oregon, I (in my infinite wisdom) decided that our luggage was too full, so we stuffed a bunch of things (clothing, shoes, electronic accessories ... "stuff") in a couple of "if it fits, it ships" boxes and had Kendra mail them to us at our Miami PO Box, to be delivered to San Jose.  Sounded like a good idea at the time.  Sigh ... NOT!  Apparently, you can bring any old thing in your luggage, but mailing USED CLOTHING OR SHOES is "a major, big time, NO NO"! (as my dear friend, Patricia would say).  So, our stuff is sitting in customs somewhere between SJ and the airport and we are supposed to call one of 5 numbers (don't know which ONE) to see what needs to be done ... fumigation apparently.  So, sicced M & M's son, Alberto ... the customs expediter ... on the problem and headed back to San Luis.  I am really missing my Mephisto sandals!  And, Aerocasillas will start charging us storage if we don't retrieve it within 30 days!  Live & learn, I guess ... hummm ... been doing a lot of THAT lately!  

We did pick up some mail at ARCR, which involved a refund check from NWNatural and a dividend check for Roy from some stock he has ... so we took them to Banco National in Grecia to deposit them to our $$ account.  Easy, right?  WRONG!  Because the house is only in my name, so are the accounts, so, even though Roy is a signer on the accounts, they didn't want to accept the dividend check for deposit.  Apparently, the "powers that be" in San Jose can refuse to accept it and return it and the charge for that would be nearly equal to the bloody check!  Sigh, again.  So, at the suggestion of the teller, we made two separate deposits, as they won't refuse the NWNatural check ... even though it was made payable to both and they would only let ME endorse it!  And they wouldn't let Roy sign over the other one to me.  Sheesh!  Plus, we had to explain the source of each of those checks ... Gee, $27.13 ... stock dividend, $130.?? refund from the gas company.  Had to explain the whole concept of "refund".  We will see how that all works out.  Banking "es muy differente, aqui"!  

Tomorrow is another day, another adventure!  Pura Vida,

Kathleen