The Year in Review is Blurry.

It's amazing the things that will fail to stand out if you get used to them.

Becker and I were in Costa Rica two years back and went to visit a friend of his south of Tamarindo who'd opened a resort somewhere in the area of where the jungle meets the beach just like everywhere else. A dozen bungalows scattered about the property, a perfect pool next to the outdoor bar with the sun pouring under the Pacific just as we pulled in.

The owner was a Costa Rican - about our age or a little younger - who'd been living in London for several years prior working in finance. He opened the bar thinking he'd get all the UK suits to fill the place in the high season.

It was the highest point of the high season now and his occupancy was zero.

Paradise bust.

He sat alone at the bar with his cheeks in his hands staring at the television and said hello to Becker without moving his head. "Two and a Half Men" was on - an American feed in English. His eyes stayed fixed on it while he got up to get us beers and never wavered with the small talk. Business was bad, his birthday was coming up and was going to be a big party, on and on. But he never looked anything less than worn and depressed.

Then, as the conversation lulled, a good-sized dog came running over with its head smeared in what seemed to be dried blood. Becker asked about it.

"Jesus - is that blood on your dog's head?"

The owner - still transfixed by Charlie Sheen's goofball antics and without blinking - muttered that the dog had grabbed a monkey off of a low-lying branch and killed it.

He said it as though he was explaining a gravy stain on his shirt. And never missed a second of Two and a Half Men. The conversation kind of died after that and all three of us just stared at the screen.

I hadn't watched a network sit-com that I can remember in over 15 years and now we were treated to back-to-back episodes of the worst of it in a remote tropical Valhalla where giant iguanas, postcard sunsets and monkey-eating dogs go unnoticed.

It's amazing what you can become bored with.

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Bingo sends her love.

She hasn't been drinking for the last few months and that is a good thing. As you can imagine, she feels like she's boring now. But she's actually more fun than she's been in a while.

She was getting to places where the stories were only funny from a distance. One night this fall when I was on the road she decided to march down in her marching band outfit to the high school football field at the end of a game in a half-blackout, grab the trombone from the kid in the band on the sideline and start playing it poorly with the expectation that the rest of the band and cheerleaders would follow her lead. The band teacher was kind enough to walk her home and the town has been kind enough to not bring it up again when we go out in public.

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