Friday, February 8th, 2013

7:30am. It’s obvious today is garbage pickup day.  I took all the garbage I had stored in the garage and put it on the tree bank.  I think I forgot to mention we have a garage.  

It’s large enough for a medium sized car and then there is a small storage area in the back.  So far all I’ve put in the storage area is one of my suitcases, my gym bag with workout clothes, my travel toiletry bag and the roller skates.  I hope to empty the few things in my other suitcase soon and store it in there too.

I see a guy walking up and down the street and he grabs some stuff and is creating a separate pile in front of our building.  It is obvious he is keeping some stuff for himself as I saw him open a plastic bag and remove what looked like a small overripe bag of oranges and he is carrying 2 coke bottles that still have some contents at the bottom.

8:10am and a garbage truck comes down the street ringing a bell with 2 guys walking/running behind it each grabbing stuff piled on his side of the street and throwing it in the back of the truck.  Interesting thing is the separate pile the guy earlier had created is mostly still there.

8:30am and the guy is back.  Seems most of what’s there are cardboard boxes and he’s breaking them down and putting them in one large cardboard box.  I guess he sells it to be recycled.  I wonder, does he do this on every street or does every street have its own guy?

Reina told me sleeping on the mattress on the floor was bothering her somehow so she wants to have it put on a raised platform. 

After lunch we took a bus downtown and it started pouring rain.  Luckily she had told me we would need our largest umbrella.  I have a very fancy automatic open & close umbrella and I pushed the button and it snapped open as soon as we stepped off the bus.  A few minutes later I closed it which is supposed to “cock it” for the next opening.  But when I tried to open it a minute later it wouldn’t budge.  I never could get it to open again.  We stopped at a pawn shop and Reina pawned her camera to get enough money to pay for the bed platform.  

We had copies made of the 2 important pages of my passport so I won’t have to carry it around with me all the time.  We had a copy of the front door key made for Dilan so he won’t have to use the garage door opener anymore.  We met Jesus at a lumber store and he bought lumber for the platform.  All of that was loaded into the back of a station wagon and we headed home.  I helped Jesus put the platform together and I learned a few tricks along the way.

Next month we owe him 100,000 pesos for construction of the platform.  Reina and I decided when we get our bed we would put the platform in the guest bedroom.  Even though we will need a larger mattress than we had intended, we won’t need to buy a bed for it.

ODDITIES: I’ve noticed the last few mornings some man walking down the street intermittently blowing a whistle.  He isn’t carrying mail or anything else I can see.  I haven’t figured out what that is about yet.  The lettering on the back of his brown uniform says, “Seguridad Privada Asovic” in English “Private Security something”.  Reina explained he is like the neighborhood watch (private security) and every month we give him a tip.

Another morning I saw a woman come by and Reina explained to me the woman was selling wheels, like a dolly, you put under your refrigerator to move it easily (I guess for cleaning).  I guess newer refrigerators like ours come with wheels attached.