Monday, July 11th, 2016

I received an email from MBE that my package has arrived.  I think I might pick it up tomorrow while Teresa is at the health club.

Today at the health club I weighed in at 76 kilos so I’m down a couple pounds from the first day I started.  I increased my treadmill time by another minute to 17 minutes.

I saw Jose and asked him if he had a small dog and he said yes and even showed me a picture of it on his cell phone.  Now I understood why he didn’t turn around last Friday night was because I called him Oscar.  There is an attractive lady in her mid 40s working out there and I asked Oscar if she was his wife or girlfriend and he said just a friend.

I left the apt about 3:30 to play chess and Teresa was going to get her nails done.  While walking around observing other games, waiting for someone to invite me to play, a couple men came up to me and all I understood was they wanted to invite me to join their chess team.  I asked if they had more information and they pointed to the far side of the park.  I followed them across the park and across the street and into what I understood was city hall.  We walked through the new section into the old section and up to the 2^nd floor.  In the office no one spoke English but after they simplified their words a little I understood that this Thursday at 2pm in Parque Envigado the 5 of us will play a simultaneous exhibition against 50 other players.  That will be fun; the last time I did that was back in the 70s when a few guys from my chess team played a simul in a mall in Aurora, IL.A man took down our names, ages, cedula numbers and telephone numbers (I couldn’t remember mine).  I noticed that each of the other men were in the 63-65 age range.

Back at the park a man declined to play against me because I’m too strong.  That’s the first time that’s happened; I’m starting to be known and getting a reputation.  I finally was invited to play against another young man with his arm in a sling (which might be why he isn’t working and instead is playing chess).  Both games were very close and he won the first game with the black pieces and I won the 2^nd game with black.

I ran into Teresa as I was walking back to the apt.  She had the old polish removed from her nails but didn’t have the new polish on yet.  We felt a few drops of rain as we walked back to the apartment.

About 7:30 it started raining seriously.  It stopped before we went to be but it did make for a slightly cooler than usual evening.

T-shirt of the day: Oh no, it’s Monday again.