Friday, June 7th, 2013

Went to bed at 11pm and got up at 7am; only 1 trip to the bathroom during the night and I feel pretty good; eyes only a little tired.

I had my iPad synced to my Toshiba laptop for iTunes before I had my laptop stolen.  If I lose my iPad then I’m afraid I will lose all the music I had purchased from Apple, for sure what I had copied myself from my own CDs.  I found something called iTunes Match where for $25 a year I can upload my iTunes music from my iPad to the cloud and then access it from my iPad and my laptop.  But I also found a backup I had of my music on one of my flash drives but I’m not sure everything is backed up.  I can play some of the songs from my flash drive, the ones that have a type of MPEG-4 Audio, by simply clicking on them.  But the others have a type of VLC media file (.m4p) and while it looks like it’s playing I can’t hear anything. (And just yesterday I upgraded to VLC Media Player 2.0.6 so I know I have the software to play it.)   So it might not be worth it to try to restore my music from my flash drive backup.  I still have some investigating to do.

We haven’t had any rain for the last few days and the weather prediction is for no more than a 30%-40% chance over the next 10 days.

Rosetta Stone is still causing me some frustration.  I go through Microphone Setup where it records your voice saying “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” and everything seems to be fine.  Then when it comes time to pronounce a word it often doesn’t even acknowledge your voice.  Very frustrating!  I think I’m going to have to contact them.  At least now I’m into new words.

I checked online and After Earth is now playing at several Medellin theaters with Spanish subtitles so I think I’ll go the first day I have available next week.  The closest theater is Terminal Del Sur with showtimes at 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, 9:15 (at least for today).

I called Sears using the Magic Jack app on my iPad and I got “Medellion” corrected to “Medellin” on my address.  I questioned the 30% reduction in my pension and was told it is some new law where the US is deducting that amount for anyone living outside the USA.  They sent me a letter – dated May 31^st – notifying me of the change.  Now I have to wait probably 6 weeks for the letter and then I have to call the IRS?

When I lived in my townhouse in Des Plaines I had a beautiful chess table:

I would like to have something similar here in my apartment.  When I came here I brought the chess pieces with me and also pictures and dimensions of the old table.  I’m going to ask Dario if he knows anyplace where I could buy a table similar to what I had or else I will ask Jesus if, and for how much, he could make one.

This morning I went to that internet café where the young lady speaks English and I had her print the page of dimensions (which I’ve translated from inches to millimeters) and the pictures.  It cost me 2,300 ($1.28) for 1 page in black & white, and 2 pages in color.  I was also smart enough this time that I picked up one of their business cards.

On my way to have lunch at Likkes I realized I didn’t have my list of things I like with me so I headed to Laureles Mall and had a Hamburger Combo #3 at Gordog’s for 11mil ($6.11).   After lunch I was studying my chess course and a man came up and asked me in English if he could play.  His wife told me to be careful because he once beat some chess master.  I didn’t understand his name but they are staying at the Golden Palomar Hotel and they are from the island of Curacao just off Venezuela near Aruba.  Anyway he was good but not quite as good as Dario and I beat him twice in a couple of hours.  They told me there is a big futbol (soccer) game at 5pm – Colombia against Argentina.  While we were finishing the second game Dario stopped by and reminded me about Tuesday.  I also asked him if he knew where I could buy a chess table in Medellin and he said no. 

About 2pm the young lady who works at Bunuelo Express walked by – out of uniform – real cute.  I guess she was just getting off work or maybe going on break.

About 4pm I headed over to Viva and a little later ordered 2 Hamburger Supremes for 9mil ($5) and a large strawberry milkshake for 8,300 ($4.61).  I timed it so I would get my order right at the beginning of the futbol game.  It was a little distracting because the large screen TVs are above large picture windows facing the street and there are all these pretty ladies walking by.  The final score was Argentina 0, Colombia 0 but it was exciting – at times.