Tuesday, December 8th, 2015

I slept well despite getting up 3 times during the night, finally waking/getting up at 9:30.

The shower still doesn’t work right.  Teresa called someone – Don Carlos – to come and replace it.

Star Wars episode VII is scheduled to be released Friday, December 18^th.  I suggested some day the week after, we all go to Triada for lunch and afterwards Laura will start working and Teresa and I will go see Star Wars VII.

Laura left at 1pm for the employee Christmas party at Triada.  Teresa asked her if she had an umbrella and she said yes.  At 1:05 it started raining hard.  Teresa went out back and retrieved my towel and I brought in the dog’s blankets that were outside.  By 1:20 it had slowed significantly and 10 minutes later it stopped.

I wanted to order a new Nook book using the $30 gift card my son gave me for my birthday.  I got an order confirmation email followed by another one titled “Your B&N Order Has Failed”.  The reason given was “We're sorry, but your order did not pass our order verification process and we are unable to fulfill your order. We assure you that you were not charged for any portion of this order.

If your order contained a NOOK Book or NOOK Apps, these items can only be purchased by customers physically located in the United States or Canada.”

What?  They certainly had no problem selling me a Nook Glowlight Plus for over $100 but now they won’t sell me the books to read on it?  I’ll try again with the IP changer.

Teresa left the finca at 3:15 to meet the electrician.  A couple minutes later I heard a big commotion from the dogs as I’m sure all 4 terriers followed her up the hill and met the killer dogs.  Poor Peluche probably can’t even move fast enough to defend himself.  A couple minutes later they arrived.  His name is also Don Carlos but he told me I could call him Charlie.  He shut off all the circuit breakers, removed the old shower head and opened it up and we could see the part that was broken.  It looked plastic but might have been some type of composite material.  He put on a new shower head, tested it for leaks, turned the circuit breakers back on and tested it for temperature.  There are 4 settings on the head the lowest being entirely cold, he set it for the highest temperature and instructed us to further control the temperature by just increasing or decreasing the water flow.

Before I could ask him, Teresa showed him the lightbulb in the bedroom closet that we want moved to the center of the ceiling.  I believe he said he could fix that later this week.  Teresa also showed him how we have the TV plugged into an outlet next to the stairs.  He removed an outlet from the outside of the wall and moved it to the inside.  It all took a little over an hour.  I think Teresa enjoyed showing off her new kitchen to Charlie.

I changed my IP address to the US and received this message when I tried to access www.bn.com “This page is unavailable due to either geographic restrictions or other restrictions in place at this time. NOTE: other restrictions can be a result of our security platform detecting potential malicious activity. Please try again later as the restrictions may be lifted, or contact your service provider if the issue persists.  ID: 2592836210225784384”

I guess I’m going to have to call them.

Charlie showed me a Grover Cleveland $1000 bill that he carries with him.  He told me he has two more at home.  I searched online and it was discontinued in 1969 but collectors will pay more than one thousand dollars for one of them.  But I know condition is everything and this bill is in very poor condition.  I emailed a coin collector in the US and we’ll see what he says.

I received a reply and he said it does have some extra value, probably $1100-$1200 but he would have to see it.  I replied with a photo of each side.

When my brother comes to visit in February he could take the bill back with him, sell it to a collector, deposit the cash in my checking account and I could take out equivalent pesos here for Charlie.  At current COP/USD rates that would be over 3 million pesos.  And he’ll give us a tip for our efforts.

I watched Arbitrage (6.6) on my hard drive.

Upon looking closer at my photos of the $1000 bill I noticed the following details: “Series 2005”; “This note is not legal tender for any debts, public or private”; “Copyright © AAC 2005”; and the secretary signature looks like “Jonthan C. Doe” aka John Doe.  So it’s looking more like it’s a fake.

I took 2 sleeping pills at 10:45 and went to bed at 11:30.

T-shirt of the day: Good people don’t obey bad laws.