Last night I left the apartment about 7:30 for
the 8:40 start of the Bears game. I
caught a bus about 7:40 and traffic was awful.
The bus driver even drove down side streets that parallel the main road
in an attempt to get ahead of the traffic.
What should have been a 30 minute bus ride took almost an hour. I got off the bus at Monterrey about 8:35, thankfully because of
the cool evening I felt comfortable walking quickly and somehow got to
Patrick’s by 8:45, only 5 minutes late.
As I was settling into my seat Dallas
was scoring the first touchdown to go up 7-0. :(
At halftime the Bears were ahead 24-14. I told Patrick about NIU playing in the
Poinsettia Bowl on December 26th at 9:30pm and he said that would be
no problem. That’s going to be quite a
late night for me.
The Satay Beef Medallions I had for dinner with
my 1 Coke came to 35,200 ($18.53) and I left a 5mil tip.
The final score was Chicago Bears 45 Dallas
Cowboys 28. :) I took the first taxi I found a block away
and the driver was really hurrying although he didn’t go thru red lights like I
saw other taxis doing. It cost about
12mil and I left him a 2mil tip.
I went to bed at midnight (without the
earplugs), got up once during the night, woke up at 6:30 and got up at 6:45.
The cleaning lady arrived on time – 9am. She pointed out to me that my shower is
draining slowly so I sent an email to Margarita.
I invited Reina to my next Bears game on Sunday
but she has some other event to go to with her son.
The housecleaner left about 1:15 after
completing her usual fine job. This time
I also had her clean the horizontal blinds in the master bedroom. Lately I’ve been keeping the louvers behind
them open more.
I bought a banana for 200 pesos (10 cents) from
the fruit stand on my way to Exito. I
went upstairs to BanColombia to get change for 100mil. (The problem is when I get a fairly large
amount of money from the ATM I get mostly 50mil bills which can be difficult to
use in some places – taxis, bakeries, etc.
But if I get a small withdrawal then I need more transactions and
anything more than 10 per month and I have to pay an extra service charge. I think I’ll get in the habit of stopping
upstairs for some change whenever I make a large withdrawal.) At 1:45 in the afternoon there was only one
man ahead of me in the Preferred Line – it looked like he was paying his
utility bill. Next to me in the regular
line was the lady from the laundry with a young boy about 7 years old. When it was my turn I told the teller my
usual “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak much Spanish”. I gave him the 100mil and asked for 3 20mil
bills and 4 10mil bills. After he gave
me the change he complimented me on my Spanish.
Little does he know if he had asked me any question I probably wouldn’t
have the slightest idea what he was saying. :)
At 3:05 a guy in a 4/72 blue and gray uniform
pulled up on a motorcycle and rang the apartment upstairs. I asked which apartment he wanted and it was
302. He left about a minute later.
Reina showed up at the apartment and we walked
down to Mall de Laureles where I had a Frisnack (I wasn’t very hungry after the
large lunch) for 9,200 ($4.84) and she had a chicken Combo #1, consome (a soup
with chicken innards; she ate the broth and left the rest), and 16oz. soda for
23,200 ($12.21)
We stopped briefly at the pet store, she saw
they had no pets there and I explained about the quarantine. We walked over to Calle 35 where we caught
the Laureles 191 bus to the Stadium. We walked
a long block to the metro station. The
woman she talked to yesterday said to be there at 7:10; the flyer said 7:30; we
were there just before 7pm. We waited
until 7:45, saw no bus, and I took the Laureles 191 bus back and she took a
taxi.
I guess Reina told the bus driver to be sure I
got off at Mall de Laureles. When we
were at the location where we got on he said "Mall de Laureles" but I
guess he got nervous because I didn't get off. The other passengers looked confused as to
what was going on. The guy sitting next
to him came back to me and talked to me in perfect English. I told him I knew where I was but I wanted to
go just a little further because I wanted to see what direction the bus went
next. As soon as it crossed Avenida 80 I
got off.
I stopped at the apartment, picked up my Nook
book and went to the bakery where I had a cafe con leche oscuro and a pan de
queso pequeño.
Reina called the lady about the tour and she
said the bus didn’t show up until 8pm because of traffic. Reina wilk talk to her again about a makeup
time. The only problem is that tonight
the weather was perfect and starting Wednesday we have about 5 days in a row
with a 100% chance of rain.
BTW, I got an SMS message on my iPad informing
me that the December 22nd game against the Philadelphia Eagles has
been changed from 1pm to 7:30pm which is allowed based on the flexible
scheduling. I'll post the Flexible Scheduling rules as a separate posting.
I checked the Bears schedule on their website
and it has already been updated. The
start time is 7:30 CST which means for me the start time is at 8:30pm so it
will be another trip to Patrick’s Irish Sports Bar. And it
is on NBC instead of Fox Sports.
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