Sunday, April 23, 2017

Saturday, April 22, 2017

5 more days!

I slept much better last night and my cold symptoms are gone.

It started out as an overcast day but soon cleared up.

On occasion Teresa likes to rearrange the furniture which might just be something simple like turning the kitchen table in a different direction.  Sometimes she’ll say “I’ve been thinking” which I usually follow-up with saying “Uh-oh”.

So, this morning she tells me she has a great idea.  She wants to make the utility room Laura’s bedroom and move my computer and its table into Laura’s bedroom along with the television.  I wonder if Laura’s bed would even fit in the utility room.  After questioning her on a number of things like would chairs for 4 fit into Laura’s bedroom in front of the television I finally put the kibosh on the idea when I asked Teresa where the clothes drying rack would go.

The Colombian Peso closed at 2,873 to the US Dollar.

He did call first and the real estate salesman showed up just after 9am.  We walked a few blocks to a building right across the street from the bakery El Pastelito.  It’s a 3 story building and he showed us apartments on both the 2nd and 3rd floors.  I don’t know which was older and uglier and they are asking 1,800,000 pesos and 2 million a month for them.  And, just to sweeten the deal, the building is currently about 150’ from Avenida Poblado where you can hear the jackhammers working on the new MetroPlus. 

Afterwards I asked Teresa if she wanted to have a coffee with me across the street.  She said she’d rather get her nails done so I gave her 50mil, about twice as much as she would need.  I went inside the bakery and ordered a cafĂ© con leche.  Outside I was beginning to wonder if the waitress forgot about me.  I figured I’d give her 15 minutes before leaving but she brought my coffee after a 10 minute wait.  Sitting outside I could see the real estate signs on the windows of the apartments for rent – 10 on one and 7 on the other.  They don’t have MLS (multiple listing service) here so they have to get a sign from each real estate agency if they want them to know it’s for rent.

Back at the apt Teresa returned 5 minutes after me and informed me she has a 4pm nail appointment.

We need some new living room furniture and Teresa showed me a Home Center flyer with a large corner sofa for about 1,500,000 but first I think she wants to try the local antique stores.

In preparation for next month’s tournament from May 17-21 I signed up for 3 months of Chess Magnet School.  I tested out of the basics and I started out with the title of Baron.  After a few exercises I was soon promoted to Count.

We left the apt and took a taxi to an antique store we had visited before.  Teresa even called them first to make sure they were open.  What they didn’t tell her is that they had moved.  When we got out of the taxi and saw it was now someone’s house she called them again.  Luckily they were only a block away because the taxi had already left. 

They had a beautifully colored couch (a couch of many colors?) and matching chair but they were too expensive.  The saleslady pointed us down the block and we tried another shop.  An attractive woman in her 30s dressed … well, let’s just say her clothes were missing material in some strategic places … came to the door with a plastic glove on one hand like she’d been working on something.  Unfortunately, we were told she doesn’t have what we were looking for. 

We tried another shop and found in the same room, 2 nicely decorated Victorian chairs, a beautiful (low, like Japanese style?) coffee table and a sectional sofa.  Teresa got a price of about 1,500,000 for the chairs and coffee table.  Then she asked me how I liked the sofa and we ended up buying the coffee table and sectional sofa for 1,900,000.  I told Teresa we won’t be able to afford to buy anything else expensive this month as this purchase will take all my savings and a little extra from this month’s budget. 
Unfortunately, the lady informed us she can’t take my debit card.  She did tell me where we could find an ATM.  Unfortunately, I have a daily withdrawal limit and that wouldn’t work either.  I understood they would deliver it sometime in the future and we would pay the driver when it arrives.  When we got outside Teresa said she was hungry so we stopped at a little restaurant across the street where she had an order of trout for 20,000 pesos.  I wasn’t hungry so I just ate the 20 or so tomato halves from her salad.

Back outside we walked down to a busier street where we quickly caught a taxi back to the apt.  After I let Teresa in I headed to the ATM to start accumulating the cash I’m going to need.  I asked the ATM for a large amount of cash – the most I’ve ever requested – and the machine informed me in English “I can’t do that right now”.  I guess that’s its way of saying they don’t have that much cash as it did give me a lesser amount when I requested it.

I stopped in Exito where I picked up a head of lettuce, some tomatoes, and a bag of granola for 10,247 pesos.

Later Teresa told me she was anxious to get the sofa and table and luckily I asked her which day is it supposed to be delivered and she said “today at 6pm”.  I told her I don’t have enough cash because there’s a limit to how much I can withdraw each day.  We avoided a minor catastrophe by borrowing 600,000 pesos from Laura’s college savings.

The delivery men arrived at 7pm and had everything in place by 7:20.

I received an email from Trip Advisor that they had published my 123 Wok review.  I tried to change it but they don’t let you submit another review for the same place for a month.


T-shirt of the day: Well, another day has passed and I didn’t use ALGEBRA once. 

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