Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up twice during the night, finally waking/getting up at 6:30am.

I left the apt just after 8am and by 9am I was sitting in Ganso y Castor having a latte, so my workout in Smartfit must take about 40 minutes. I checked the tree and the peanut is still there. ☹  Not for the first time, a guy come through the park with a gas leaf blower making lots of noise. As he approaches he always apologizes for the disturbance. 😊

I left at 10:30, got in a long but quickly moving line at the Bancolombia window and had my ballot printed on both sides and printed another copy of the “envelope”. Back in the apt I signed the ballot, put my old US address on the envelope and used it to build an envelope around my ballot.

My lesions haven’t appeared over the last week so hopefully I’m over that – only took about 13 months.

It was only 82 degrees when I left the apt at 1pm in my shorts and sleeveless t-shirt. Big mistake. In Envios Market Victoria assisted me in sending my ballot to Chicago. The charge was 185,000 pesos ($43.50) for one envelope containing 2 pages and it might be interesting to track its progress, so we’ll see. I asked her what the latest date is to release my packages in FL and to still arrive here by October 31^st (Halloween). She said next Monday.

I went across the street to Otra Parte where I had one of my favorites, Mama Pastora, teriyaki chicken with short pasta and a limonada de coco.

Just after 2pm it started raining and of course the temperature dropped. I moved to another table to escape rain being blown on me but there were still occasional drops landing on me and the table.

By 2:45 it had ended. I had a latte before leaving at 3:30 and returning to the apt feeling a little chilly.

I logged into my SS account and it’s still in English. ☹

It appears I have options: I can have a Spanish copy of my SS Benefits Letter apostilled or have an apostilled letter in English to be (OFFICIALLY) translated here. I found this email answering my question about the English copy:

“Hi Terry

your document left the 7864 address Fedex tracking number 779133181622.

I believe it arrived there on October 10th.”

I contacted Innovation Corp and asked them to send me my mail which should include at least 2 packages and an envelope.

I checkmated Troyclough in 27 moves with the Black pieces increasing my rating to 1584.

Teresa informed me she’s going to Santafe de Antioquia Friday with her arts & crafts group compliments of the mayor of Envigado so I’ll be on my own for meals. I made arrangements to meet Glenn for breakfast Friday morning.

I tried setting up a Netflix account but it wouldn’t accept my US debit card. I think I’m going to have to use Teresa’s bank account to deposit cash and use her debit card. I got her card now I have to see if I can see what her balance is. I remember putting 100mil there on August 14^th for the Max account that never happened. Teresa gave me her password – my reaction was, well, I guess that’s better than “1234”. 😊

Per FedEx at 4:30pm my envelope arrived in Medellin.

 

IN HONOR OF IKEA

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once during the night, again at 5:30, eight minutes later a noisy garbage truck parked outside and I gave up and got up.

Terea left at 7am to pick up her monthly pills in eps.

I was dressed and ready to leave when I noticed a steady drizzle outside. I put on long pants, a jacket and grabbed the large umbrella but by the time I got outside it had stopped.

In the park I checked the crook of the tree and the peanut is still there. I had a breakfast croissant

with a latte in Los Portenos then waited to hear from Teresa. She called at 7:45 to inform me she’s in the apt and will have breakfast there. I had another latte while going through my chess book a little more. I left at 8:45 and returned to the apt. Teresa was tired so she laid down instead of going to the gym. I followed suit but couldn’t fall asleep.

I’m thinking I might need to get the apostilled SS Benefits Letter direct from Social Security so I called and the expected wait time is 120 minutes. ☹

2 hours and 20 minutes later I got to talk to Linda. She had to check something and I was on hold for another 10 minutes. It turns out they can’t do an apostille but she’s going to set my default language in MySocialSecurity.gov to Spanish for tomorrow so I can print my Benefit Letter in Spanish and next week she’ll change it back to English.

I then called the Cook County Clerk and was surprised there was no wait. The answer to my first question is the address they want is my old address when I lived in Cook County. The answer to my second question is that I should fold the “envelope” page into the approximate shape of a #10 envelope around my ballot.

Teresa asked if we could go to Santafe mall and take her mother. Sure.

We left the apt at 2:15 and took an Uber to pick up MT and then drop us off at Santafe mall. I had a latte and a chocolate filled cookie while they went shopping.

I heard some cheering and google informed me that Colombia was playing Chile. (The final was Colombia 4 Chile 0.)

About 4:30 they came back and wanted to go Crepes & Waffles for ice cream. I had a banana split, Teresa had the Suprema and MT had a mini waffle with vanilla ice cream.

When it came time to leave about 6pm I ordered a Didi but I couldn’t remember the name of our usual entrance/exit. I ended up ordering a car to pick us up at a side entrance. Luckily, we arrived there in just a couple minutes and our driver was still waiting for us.

We dropped off MT first and then continued on to our apt.

I logged into My Social Security and did a couple screen prints of how to print my Benefits Letter. It should be easy tomorrow to log in and print it in Spanish.

 

IN HONOR OF IKEA

Monday, October 14, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up twice during the night, woke up briefly several more times, finally waking/getting up at 6:45.

Today is a holiday – Dia de la Raices.

Ugh, I forgot to move bagels from the freezer to the fridge so I’ll be having regular bread for my toast for breakfast.

I left the apt at 8am and found Smartfit nearly empty; I wish every day could be like this. After completing my workout I had a latte in Ganso y Castor and the park was nearly deserted. I could see in the distance that the peanut is still in the tree so I didn’t leave another.

I left at 10:15 and stopped at the little market but they had no milk, same with Ara so I guess it will have to wait until I can get to Exito this afternoon.

Teresa was quizzing me on two topics: 1) something to do with when we signed the Union Libre paper and 2) when did she add herself to my health insurance. We’ll discuss this further later.

I called the Cook County Clerk but of course the office is closed today, probably for Columbus Day or is it now Indigenous Peoples Day?

I talked to Maggie at the Chicago Tribune and the charges of $15.96-$2.94+$15.96 gives me a subscription until December 6, 2025 so I told her that I am okay with that but I’ll probably cancel it once it expires.

I left the apt about 1:30 and walked to the mall. I paid for our epm utility bill in Exito after a 20-minute wait in line. I went into Home Center where I purchased an 8V LED bulb for 18mil. In Claro I found the cashier where I pay our cellphone bills to be closed. The girl was probably out to lunch so I figured I’d come back later. I went down to Urbania where I had a latte for a couple hours. When I left, I went upstairs and after waiting in a short line I paid our Claro bills. In Exito I purchased 2 bags of milk. Outside, in the new location outside Exito’s no longer used middle entrance, I immediately caught a taxi back to the apt.

I cleaned the light fixture, which was filthy, and put in the new bulb and we can have light again.

I checked Pronto Notary Public and they are closed today also.

I watched the news on CNN and MSNBC.

 

IN HONOR OF IKEA

More Bob Burford

 It was circa 1960, give or take, and I was working my first real job at Western Union in Tucson. My first assignment was in Hammond, Indiana (telegrapher, phone operator), transferred to Holland, Michigan (delivery clerk), and recruited into sales in Detroit, all inside my first year with the company. I escaped from Detroit in the middle of winter and headed for the warmer climes of Tucson.

It was fairly late at night when in walked a tall, sophisticated-looking gent; not sloppy drunk, but certainly had been drinking. He wanted to sit down in the lobby and compose a telegram so I handed him a pad of blank forms and motioned for him to take a seat. He would write for a while, then get up and stroll over to the counter. Assuming he needed some assistance, I asked him if I could help him. Nope. He just wanted to talk ... about everything in general, actually, but specifically, to air his grievances about whoever he was writing about. 

He finally finished it, brought it up to the counter, and asked me to proofread it for him. Which I did. It was a perfect opportunity for me to rib him a bit, needle him, critique his copy. But that would have to wait until I got to know him better. Then everything was fair game – and I think he enjoyed it.

His name was Westbrook Pegler, a legendary syndicated newspaper columnist who had a reputation for hating everything and everyone. He was so far right-wing even the John Birch Society expelled him. The telegram was filed as a night letter, a class of telegram specifically designed for long wordy telegrams for overnight transmission to be delivered sometime the next morning. No rush. I assume he was in Tucson on vacation. So, for the duration of his stay, I would chat with him every night while he wrote out his column for the following day. 

After a short while our familiarity with one another developed a fairly common and open friendship ... to the point that one night when he entered the office, I asked, “So who’s tonight’s target for your toxic tripe and drivel?” I was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t seem to be offended at all. As I proofread his copy, I would mumble snide, digging remarks along the way. One evening he challenged me to write his column for him. “You think this is easy? You should try it sometime. You’d see.”

So, having nothing better to do, I spent the rest of that night writing a column for him. At that time the Defense Department was spending trillions of dollars building and installing missiles in silos all over the southwestern deserts. Some of the men working on these missile sites would come in to wire huge amounts of money back home to their wives. They were paid small fortunes. And rightly so. Working in the desert, miles away from civilization, sweltering daytime temperatures well over 100 and nighttime temperatures below freezing. So I wrote a column for him damning everyone who had anything to do with the government in general and the missile program in particular. That, of course, would include JFK, “that bleeding-heart liberal Catholic.” He had a debate with himself about whether or not to include the word “Catholic” in the story. He finally decided to leave it in. That led me to think he’s probably Catholic.  

Our teleprinters were kept loaded with large rolls of salmon-colored paper. That’s what I used for writing the column. Telegrams are all upper case. There’s no such thing as upper and lower case on any machine in the office. I’m guessing that the end product was eight to ten feet long. So, when Pegler came in the following night, again just a bit tipsy, I handed him my roll of salmon-colored paper. He began to unroll it and asked, “What the hell is this?” “Tripe and drivel!” I said. “Ten feet of toxic tripe and drivel!” 

He chuckled and began reading it on his way over to his usual seat in the lobby. He sat down and continued reading it, marking it with changes, corrections, insertions or deletions as he went along. When he was finished with it he rolled it back up and leaned on the counter. He asked me a few questions, kinda to expound on a few parts of the column. After making a couple of final changes, he then slapped the counter with it, handed it to me and said, “Thirty dash! File it!” (In the journalism/printing industry a thirty dash is a column-wide stylized dash that’s put at the end of an article indicating the end, or that’s all there is, or ain’t no more copy to follow. In manuscript it would simply be -30-)

That seemingly innocuous transaction caused unimaginable consternation with the powers that be. The manager of the office was a mousey little guy named Morlin. Wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. Here’s copy for a paid telegram that obviously has been written on one of our printers loaded with a continuous roll of salmon-colored paper.

How did that happen? they wanted to know. So the following is a 30-second read condensed down from a 15-minute real-life exchange:

BOSS: Did you let someone use our printer? 

ME: Nope, I wrote it myself. 

BOSS: Where did you get the copy?

ME: I wrote the copy.

BOSS: No. Who wrote the copy for the column?

ME: I did.

BOSS: You wrote it?

ME: I did.

BOSS: Whose idea was that?

ME: Mine.

BOSS: The idea for the column was yours?

ME: It was.

BOSS: You composed the copy and then you sent it?

ME: Correct.

BOSS: Who authorized you to do that?

ME: Westbrook Pegler

BOSS: Westbrook Pegler read this?

ME: Of course he did. It’s his column.

BOSS: And he approved it to be sent?

ME: He did. All of the editorial marks on the copy are his. I made those changes and sent it off ... as per his instructions.

The 48 contiguous states are divided into five divisions. Morlin wanted to call the division manager of operations over our division, but he couldn’t come up with a rational reason to do so. “Exactly what are you going to tell him?” I asked. “You could tell him you have a problem but you don’t know what the problem is. That would make him proud.” What I had done had never been done before. There was nothing in our tariff book (our comprehensive all-inclusive bible) on the matter. He really didn’t like what I had done but he couldn’t find a reason to support his thinking. I hadn’t done anything bad, just uniquely unorthodox. So Morlin really had no option but to just let the subject drop, much to his dismay.

For the rest of my time in that office, every time my path crossed Morlin’s, he would divert his eyes and give me a very wide berth. However, that situation wasn’t to last that long since, unbeknownst to me, in a few months I would receive orders to report to Santa Monica as manager of that office. 

I learned in the four years with that company that I did not belong in corporate America.

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once at 4am, finally waking/getting up at 6:30.

We have two small lights over our dining room table. One has flickered on the past couple weeks but today it’s off permanently. There is another light on the wall and it wouldn’t come on today. At least I was able to easily remove that one and it’s a 9V bulb.

I was balancing my checking account and I see the Chicago Tribune charged me twice for $15.96 plus a credit of $2.94 so I guess I’ll be calling them again.

It was fun watching the Chicago Bears dominate the Jacksonville Jaguars 35-16. I’m not eating peanuts this morning though.

Teresa wants me to take her out for lunch. She knows the place but she can’t explain where it is. It turned into 20 questions and finally I figured out it’s the restaurant (unknow name) next to Valentina’s bakery in Complex Los Balsos.

We left the apt at 12:30 and took a Didi to Complex Los Balsos unfortunately the restaurant was closed – in fact it looked like the entire mall was closed. We asked the driver to take us to El Correo in Provenza and I gave him another 10mil with no problem.

Teresa ordered a chicken dish with a baked potato on the side and a bottle of water while I ordered the steak pimienta and a baked potato with a limonada de coco and later a Coke with ice (to help put out the fire in my stomach).

I informed Teresa I have no game next Sunday (Bears’ bye week) so we decided we’ll go to Rionegro and have lunch in the restaurant/café Candilejas.

My steak was delicious and large and I still had 7 pieces remaining that I got to go.

The check came to 198,960 pesos ($47.25) and I paid for it with my debit card. Teresa wanted to walk for a while so I suggested we walk the 6 blocks to Pergamino #1, even though I was pretty sure it would be packed.

When we arrived there on calle 37 the street was closed off to traffic and they had lots of outside tables there so we had no problem getting an “inside” table.

Here we're facing the street.

I had a small latte and Teresa, eventually, ordered a large latte and a slice of red velvet cake. We left at 4:15, caught a Didi by D’Andre restaurant and returned to the apt.

Troyclough resigned our game in 50 moves, increasing my rating to 1575.

ONEIPAMETATO1452 resigned our game in 50 moves, increasing my rating to 1579.

I had the leftover steak for supper and it was just as delicious, although less spicy, as before.

 

IN HONOR OF IKEA

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once during the night, finally waking/getting up at 7:15.

Today is Columbus Day but here it will be celebrated Monday as Dia de la Raices.

 Left the apt at 8:20 and walked to Olivenza in Sao Paulo Plaza. Glenn arrived with Bianca 10 minutes later. It was busier than when we meet on Sundays so we didn’t get out usual table. He is in the process of having a root canal but it became a greater problem. When I told him about my envelope problem he recommended I call the county clerk for advice. I also need to know which of my 3 addresses they want on the envelope so I guess I’ll be giving them a call. He showed me a Bathroom Sink Drain Strainer on Amazon but later I found our drain is simply missing the screw on cap. Today I had a Caprese Omelette and a latte for about 50mil.

I left at 10:30, bought a head of lettuce in Carulla and stopped at Envios Market but they weren’t open. I asked at the nearby copy center about printing envelopes and the guy didn’t know what I was talking about so I guess they don’t. I stopped in Ara and bought Fab laundry detergent before returning to the apt.

After lunch I had an hour nap then I left the apt at 2:30 and walked to the park. I noticed a red squirrel in one of the smaller trees some distance from the park. The peanut was gone so I replaced it with another. At one point I saw the squirrel in the nearest tree but I didn’t see him in the tree where I put the peanut.

This guy in a belt and suspenders walked back and forth in front of the restaurant for 10-15 minutes. I don’t know what that was about.

The guy with the 4 dogs came by and they went nuts as usual but by the time I started this video they had mostly calmed down.

DOGS VIDEO (sorry, wouldn't download)

I saw Nigel take a seat about 20 feet in front of me and eat an ice cream cone. I didn’t bother him because I didn’t want to hear any more of his conspiracy theories.

I left at 5:30 and returned to the apt.

There was a knock on the door and it was the portero with our epm bill of 373,356 ($89).

For supper Teresa made blueberry pancakes topped with coconut gelato. 😊

I watched the news and read some of my Fauci book for the rest of the evening.

 

FUNNY

Bob Burford - Again

 One day I went to visit a client in South Bend, Indiana. I walked down the hallway to his studio and found when I arrived that he was on the phone. He saw me and motioned for me to come on in. As I stood in the middle of his studio I noticed a few books on a bookshelf. His bookends were stamped metal that made it possible to see most of the back cover of the end book.

The colors, the size, the design, everything about the book identified it as “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran. But something about it was off. I removed the book from the display and saw instantly what it was about the book that was “off.” Everything. It was a parody of “The Prophet” written by a group of lunatics who are in the business of doing such things. 

The book was “The Profit” by Kehlog Albran. The author’s bio was on the back cover: “The author, Kehlog Albran, was born and raised in the American Express Club in London.” I laughed my ass off. I don’t know why, but that whole thing just struck me as being really funny.

It was about an hour’s drive back to my office. On the drive back I thought of all of my friends who would get a kick out of that book. One of the saving graces of being engaged in the advertising / graphics industry is that all of the people you deal with have a great sense of humor, although somewhat warped as it may be. “The Profit” was a great fit for my clients.

So, by the time I reached the office, I had developed a need for two dozen books to be passed out to friends.

My call to the bookstore was answered by the owner himself, a tall, very prim and proper, way too serious, stick-up-his-ass man of about 60. Thin moustache. Severe looking black plastic and wire-framed glasses. A man completely devoid of a personality. 

“May I help you?” he asked. |

”Yes, sir. I’d like to order some books.”

“Some books?” he asked, with stress on the “some.”

“Yes, sir. I need 24 copies of ‘The Profit’ by Kehlog Albran.”

“You do mean Kahlil Gibran,” he said, his superior intellect dripping off of every syllable.

“No, sir. I do not. I mean Kehlog Albran, author of ‘The Profit,’ P-R-O-F-I-T.”

“Kahlil Gibran wrote ‘The Prophet,’ P-R-O-P-H-E-T” he said.

“Yes sir, I’m very much aware of that and if you order that, you’ll have to eat them because I sure as hell don’t want them. I want 24 copies of ‘The Profit’ spelled P-R-O-F-I-T by a guy named Kehlog K-E-H-L-O-G Albran A-L-B-R-A-N.”

“Sir,” he says, “I’m afraid you are simply confused. There is no such book.”

“Sir,” sez I, “I am NOT confused. Just about an hour ago I had that book in my hands. That’s exactly how I know that I want it. Because I held it, scanned it, read parts of it. Here’s an idea: How about looking in your catalog and see if you find it? Eh?”

“Please hold.” ... [click] ... 

[silence] ...

It was a large bookstore with two vintage semi-circular customer service counters, one about 12 to15 feet inside the front door and the other much deeper into the bowels of the store. This, of course, was light-years before the age of computers. The store’s catalog was about eight inches deep, designed such that individual pages could be removed and replaced with updated pages. That book was kept on the service counter nearest the front door. And that’s where the man was headed while he had me on “hold.”

The man eventually picked up the phone and asked me to wait while he checked the catalog – obviously a complete waste of time for this illiterate moron he had on “hold” on the phone. I could hear the guy breathing and I could hear him thumbing through the book’s pages. He stopped and started reading aloud the listings from the top of a page that, he assumed, would take him right past where “The Profit” would be listed. 

“Blah blah blah ... one-second pause ... blah blah blah ... one-second pause ... blah blah blah ... a much longer pause ... SONOFABITCH!!” It came out as a very loud whisper. This from a man who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. There it was. Right where it should be. 

[Silence]

“Am I to assume you found it?” I asked. 

“Yes sir, I see it listed here.” he said, hating every second of this.

“Just to make sure,” I said, “maybe you should read the title and author’s name to me.”

And so he did: “The Profit P-R-O-F-I-T by Kehlog K-E-H-L-O-G Albran A-L-B-R-A-N.”

Don’tcha just love it when things happen right?

He took my order for two dozen copies of the book. I had to wait a few days for the books to arrive. Then one day I got a call telling me that the books were in and I could pick them up at my convenience. When I went to pick up the books, I was somewhat surprised that he was taking care of it himself instead of assigning the task to one of the clerks. So I asked him if he had read the book. He said he had not. He lied, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched me as I removed from the box the top copy of the book. It was quite obvious that it had been read. I stood the book up on the counter and it fanned its pages open, just as you would expect from a book that had been read. “Hmmm” said I as I put the book back in the box. And off I went.

I don’t recall what the books cost me, but I would guess that it wasn’t much more than two or three dollars. I just looked on eBay and found that a paperback copy of the book can be had for around $40.00. While at it, I also found this comment in a review of the book:

“‘The Profit’ gleefully jabs at Gibran's blind spot, showing no mercy. The humor is broad, the satire unrelenting and the illustrations a hoot. It is as inexcusably dumb as Gibran's writing is unreliably self-important.”

So I passed these books out to my friends and clients. That was years ago and they’re still using quotes from the book: “Yeah, well, you haven’t talked to my donkey.” That means nothing to you but if you heard that after reading the book, you’d be laughing your ass off. Because it’s funny. You would also have learned that, “Tuesday is the strangest day of the week.” To hear unhinged comments like that being inserted into a serious project planning meeting around the conference table makes it all worthwhile.

Life is good.