Saturday, February 14th, 2015

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.  Here in Colombia they have Day of Love and Friendship in September.

I slept pretty well waking and getting up at 8am.  I made waffles, my best ever, for everyone.  There was enough mix for 4 waffles (sections) for each person and I didn’t have any mix spill over.

My eyes felt very tired so I lay back down for about 30 minutes.

Laura left at 10am for her English lesson with Jhon.

Here’s an email I received from ExpatExchange.com that I could have used last December: “The US Embassy's Federal Benefits Office routinely issues official letters in Spanish confirming government pensions that are acceptable to immigration and don't need apostille. Just write them a request in Bogota, including reference information (pension number, SS number, etc.) and a copy of the ID pages of your passport and they will mail back the letter. Good luck—Priscilla.  Brson; Colombia Expats; 2/13/2015.”

And when I asked Priscilla for more details, I received “For a pension confirmation letter from the Embassy, write to: American Citizen Services - Federal Benefits Unit US Embassy Cra. 45, No. 24B-27. Bogota There is no cost, except for the postage, which in this country without a legitimate post office will cost over $3.00.  You can confirm this information by emailing the FBU at FBUBogota@state.gov...just in case anything has changed. They will respond to inquiries within a couple days. Cheers! – Priscilla

Brson; Colombia Expats; 2/14/2015.”

Teresa talked to Vicky and made arrangements to meet at San Diego CC on Monday to return my 250mil.

I’m looking forward to seeing Houdini on the History Channel tonight although it will probably be only in English and I’ve read there are A LOT of inaccuracies in this mini series.

I talked to Teresa and we decided I would watch it from 5-7pm in English and she will watch it from 9-11pm in Spanish.  After watching for more than 3 hours I realized this must be a 6 hour mini-series.  I told Teresa that next time it’s on (probably later this week) she could watch it in Spanish.

I received 2 1099-Rs for my Sears pension but I couldn’t get them to balance to what I thought I received last year.  I remembered that Sears was withdrawing 30% from my pension (a deduction) and when I called them on it (May of 2013) they said because I was out of the country I was a Non-Resident Alien.  I complained that I am a US citizen so I’m not an alien at all.  I checked and found that in April of 2013 they started this deduction but unknown to me they went back to 100% in April of last year (2014).  (I told them I wasn’t an alien; maybe they finally figured that out.  What’s ironic is that I might have to start taking a deduction through them if I don’t have enough deducted for this year’s taxes.)  When I took that into account they still didn’t balance.  Actually, the total of my 1099-Rs is exactly the amount for April through December.

I logged onto the pension website and it only shows my last 9 payments but it also states “Following is a list of your payments received (up to 14 months) from the date the new Sears Holdings Pension Service Center took over administration of the Sears Holdings Corporation Pension Plan.” So maybe I’ll be receiving another 1099-R?

The Houdini movie turned out to be 4 hours long but for some reason Teresa wasn’t interested in watching it from 9 to 1am.  Lol.

Now Teresa wants to go to Caldas tomorrow to buy more paint and also dog food.  She called Walter to see if he will be available – he will.

Teresa and Laura watched a movie titled Perfect Obedience in Spanish only so I read some more in my Nook.

I took my sleeping pills at 11:30 and we went to bed at midnight.

T-shirt of the day: Dad thinks I’m awesome.