the downside of downtime

living here in Costa Rica, time already passes by so much slower than what I'm accustomed to. Life is just lived at a much slower pace. There's a lot of waiting involved. Waiting for food, waiting for a wave, waiting at the bank, waiting for the bus, unfortunately for me not yet waiting for tips.
It can be a blessing or a curse. Tonight for example it is a curse. My three friends, two girls from Australia and one girl from England that hung out together, have traveled onward to the volcano, leaving me here at the hostel with a sleeping American, a sleeping guy from somewhere, and my friend from Quebec who spends his nights using the WiFi at Pizza Hut to call his girlfriend. I miss the girls, they were fun and crazy, with very interesting accents, phrases, and words.
I've always been a night owl so going to bed around 8-11 is not an option for me.
That leaves me with
a) get on my laptop and kill time online
b) go out to a sketchy bar or nightclub
c) write a blog
d) walk around town aimlessly
e) study and work on my Spanish
I've done a through d, have yet to explore option e but probably should.
I do option a every night, I really have no idea what I would be doing without my laptop(thanks again Amy), especially since I lost my iPhone.
I use the laptop for skype(like a video chat), facebook, watching sports via live online steams, research, and craigslist. Many sites are copyright restricted here, for example hulu.com. I can't watch the latest 'The Daily Show' or 'Saturday Night Live', even 'Jersey Shore', which may be a good thing. Some youtube music videos won't play here either.
Option b I've tried once, and it's just not for me, not the safest thing or the cheapest.
Option c I do every night but it only keeps me busy for so long.
option d just makes me more bored.
That's one of the drawbacks of living here and a rather small one compared to all the fun I have during the day. Night begins around 5, shops start closing, the sun starts setting, people go eat and then go back out around 10. Another big drawback is constantly having to make new friends. I've met many people here from all over the world but they always leave to return home or travel onward. I've got a couple of local tico friends here, but they stay busy with work and go home at night.
I wish I was busy with work as well, so far still no luck. I may have to just keep waiting til the busy season, which begins in a couple of weeks but doesn't really start peaking til January. I've decided to stay put here, already paid the deposit and signed a 3 month lease on an apartment. Hopefully I made the right choice. My other options were to move on to Panama as recommended by several travelers, fly to the very expensive US Virgin Islands in hopes of having a better chance of landing a job as a citizen, travel around Costa Rica until my funds are dry, or just return home with some money left.
I decided to keep trying to look for a job in Costa Rica and figured Tamarindo would be my best shot. I brought too much stuff to be traveling around with anyway since my plan was to immediately get settled in one location and stay there rather than trek across the country.

What I've learned about seeking jobs abroad: there is always a demand for chefs/cooks. If you can cook, you can find a job anywhere.
Computer repairs. The guy working as a "leasing agent" named Mario at the apartments I'm moving into is a computer repair guy. He can take them apart and fix them. He grew up here but lived in Boston for 18 years, learned English, and holds dual-citizenship because his dad was American and his mother Costa Rican. He told me he prefers Boston but had to move back here for whatever reason. All the books on software and programming are in English he says. Mario tells me he has more work than he can handle, that he's always traveling around this area of Costa Rica to fix people's computers.

There was a surfing contest held on the beach today. The waves forgot to show up.

Another interesting fact about howler monkeys I read from an article featured on yahoo's main page today: They are the loudest land animal on Earth. I don't doubt that for a second. When they howl, even from way up 50 ft in a tree, it sounds like they are sitting right by you howling into your ear. They can be heard up to 10 miles away!
There was more fun with mutant grasshoppers tonight, I'll talk about that later.
I've also seen a few of these guys around the streets and trees: