Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The laptop had a field trip today. I took it into town and left it at a little computer shop, in the care of a young man named Alex. I told Alex that the fan had been making a lot of noise, seizing up on occasion, and I asked about having a new fan installed. He replied that it might be very difficult for him to get a new fan, but he could take the computer apart, clean and oil the fan, and put it back together, and that might just fix the problem. At 5:30 this afternoon I went back and picked up the clean, quiet computer. The shop charged me $5. I'm not sure the problem is entirely fixed, but there's certainly less noise.

I also bought a new headset while I was there. The one I was using before had one earpiece attached to a hard plastic headband. The other end of the headband sat against my skull and tried to dig its way through. The microphone was on about a 6 inch stem and stuck out at an angle that I never could quite adjust properly. It always seemed to be either digging into my lip or sticking out so that it was in my line of vision. I've met other people that have that kind of headset and swear by it. I don't understand those people. My new one has a curved hanger that goes around my right ear. The hanger is attached to a stem on which are (1) an ear bud and (2) a microphone so small and unobtrusive that I can't see it even if I try. And it works. It cost twice as much as the other one (about $15), and it's worth every peso.

While I waited to be reconnected to the outside world, I cleaned out and defrosted the refrigerator and freezer, then stowed all the food I had brought home from the supermarket.

R had a craving for curried prawns. Having run out of all our curry sauces except Vindaloo paste, we improvised using the Vindaloo paste and lots of substitute ingredients. R really liked the resulting concoction. I'm not so sure. When we get back to Canada, I'm going to enroll in an Indian cooking class. That way, next year we can just bring lots of dried Indian spices, and I can make curries from scratch. The spices will weigh a lot less and probably take up less room than countless cans and jars. And I do like cooking things that simmer for hours. In case R wants another curry dinner while we're in Mexico, I'm going to look online for recipes I could fudge using local ingredients. Indian food hasn't made it into the Mexican grocery stores yet. Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing an Indian restaurant, either. I've seen a couple of Chinese restaurants, and apparently there is an Italian restaurant here in San Carlos, but no Indian anywhere. You know, if everybody would just live on tortillas and beans, we wouldn't have these problems! ;>)

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