Monday, April 15, 2013

Monday, April 15th, 2013




Happy Income Tax day, everyone!  According to today’s Neil Steinberg column in the Chicago Sun-Times the federal income tax is exactly 100 years old.  (And I thought it had always existed.)  Interesting column today as are most of his columns (except when he’s extolling the wonders of opera LOL).  Sorry, Neil!

I woke up during the night to a hard rain.  I checked my watch and I thought I saw 11:25 - I sure thought I had been asleep longer than that.  A short nap later I noticed it was starting to get light outside, I checked my watch again and it was almost 6am.  I think that 11:25 I saw in the dark was actually 4:55.  The rain only lasted the usual 5-10 minutes.

Reina and I have reached an agreement.  I get the microwave oven, dining room set, sofa and television stand and she will get the refrigerator and the rest of the furniture (1 chair & small tables).  Later, when I can afford it, I’ll buy a smaller refrigerator.

At Noon the guy in the blue and gray uniform stopped a couple of houses down stopped at the stoop and started sorting envelopes, flyers and 3 small identical yellow boxes.  Most of it looks like the same sort of junk mail I used to get in the States.  It’s now obvious to me he’s the mailman.  5-10 minutes later he continues up the street but doesn’t stop at our apartment or any other that I could see.

I saw a woman across the street open her front door and I could see all the way through the apartment and was surprised to see a backyard with grass.  Now I can see that some of these apartments/homes have backyards.

While sitting with Angel outside under the bushy tree I noticed a smashed bird’s egg that probably didn’t survive last night’s rain.  Whistle guy came by and said something to me.  I told him I didn’t speak Spanish and asked him if he spoke English.  He said “yes” but then he didn’t say anything that I understood to be English.

Reina told me she is going to tell her friends I had to go back to Chicago for 5-6 months and she asked me if I run into any of her friends to tell them that she is in the apartment.  I told her I would do that as long as I didn’t have a new girlfriend.

Reina tells me she called Immigration and my Cedula is ready for me to pick up.
3:35 and it starts raining.  There are clouds but they don’t look like storm clouds.  For a few minutes it rains real hard.  It sure can get noisy in the apartment when it rains; the rain makes a lot of noise as it beats on the hard plastic cover over the stairwell that runs adjacent to the apartment.  It’s all over in 20 minutes.

5pm Angela calls and informs Reina that she’s got my 100mil but I have to pick it up tonight so I guess we’ll be walking the 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back to pick it up.  At least now I’ll be able to pick up my Cedula (national id) tomorrow.

We got there just before 6pm and after my requisite glass of cold water with ice she gave me a little dinner of an arepa, 2 hot dogs and a cup of coffee.  We left there about 7pm and despite a few rain drops were back at the apartment by 7:45.  We did make one short stop at the drug store for her to pick up some medicine for only 1mil.

Later Dylan showed me his bicep and told me it was only because he drinks Milo (their version of Ovaltine).  Seriously?

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