Tuesday, September 29th, 2015

I got up once at 3:30am finally waking/getting up at 8:15am.

At 9:45 am it’s a cool 68 degrees in the finca.

We left the finca at 11:35.  The killer dogs hasseled us by their house but a couple of well placed stones kept them away.

At Don Carlos’ house it appears they are building a small fence with a gate.  They have cement laid in one of the posts and the other two have forms set up.  A small dog came out but didn’t bother us much, probably because the owner was there, and though he was very shy he finally came to me and I gave him a dog biscuit.  Teresa talked to the young man for about 10 minutes and later she told me that Don Carlos and his family don’t live there anymore.  So I guess we have new neighbors with a car and motorcycle and he wants to protect them with a fence and gate.

We waited 15 minutes for a bus and after a taxi to downtown Envigado we walked a block to nueva eps.  The clinic was uncharacteristically cool and uncrowded.  Teresa talked to someone for a couple minutes then took a number – 49.  They were serving 39 so while she waited I went to Bancolombia, where no one was using or waiting to use an ATM, and withdrew a little cash.  I walked a couple blocks to the internet café where I printed 3 more pages for the homeowners’ assistance application.

Back at nueva eps, after a 35 minute wait, Teresa had my Urologist appointment for October 30^th at 9:20am at Guayabal, whatever that is, in Itagui.  I finally noticed the reason it was so cool was because they had the air conditioning on despite the fact that they left the front door open.

We walked a couple blocks to Carbón de Leña where we had lunch for 32mil.  It was more expensive than usual probably because, even though I had the special of the day, Teresa had fish and an extra side salad.

We walked to a nearby cosmetics store where Teresa bought some rouge or something for 6mil.

Walking down the hill towards Exito, on a street we don’t usually frequent, we stopped at a display of pretty mirrors but we both agreed that the prettiest of them was too large for the main bathroom.  Teresa talked to someone there and afterwards she told me she can come on Friday between 2 and 5 and learn how to make mirrors like that and in the meantime I can play chess in the park.  (When we got back to the finca she told me she wasn’t going to do it because it was too expensive.)

We walked over to Home Center where Teresa found a large strainer spoon and two wrought iron plant stands (some assembly required).  I found a decorative “hurricane lamp” that uses a candle.  I asked them if they had any other hurricane lamps or wasp spray but the answer was no.  Teresa and I went back and forth as to whether to get one or two lamps.  We finally found candles that would work with it but Teresa was afraid they would blacken the glass so we put it back.  They had lots of Christmas trees, ornaments, and displays set up.  I found my 2 packages of Energizer AAA batteries.  Teresa also picked up a box of what I think was mortar.  It cost 113,400 pesos for everything.

We stopped at the Popsy booth where we each had an ice cream cone.

We took a taxi to the Envigado station as a Tratam bus was just pulling up.  We signaled the bus and he waited for us to get on.  Teresa took one of the aisle seats about halfway back and the bus started moving just as I was getting into the seat behind her.  Due to my height I really didn’t fit into the seat.  At the next stop we moved all the way to the back where there was more leg room.  A few more people got on at upcoming stops until the bus was standing room only.  A guy sitting next to me talked to me a little in English.  Traffic was very heavy; barely crawling.  The driver could see that the highway leading towards the finca was still crawling so he headed towards Caldas.  It was 90 minutes after we got on the bus that we finally got off on the sideroad to the finca.  It was 6:10 and even though it wasn’t the usual dusk time of 6:30 it was very dark because it was cloudy with no moon showing.  

The killer dogs heard us coming and gave us a hard time until finally Guillermo stuck his head out and yelled at them.  We got back to the finca at 6:25.

I started watching season 5 of The Walking Dead.

I took my sleeping pills at 11pm and went to bed.

T-shirt of the day: I want to be for ever young.