Saturday, May 27, 2017

I slept well only getting up once during the night but I was awakened at 7am by some man calling out what he was selling from the street.

It’s a clear sunny day.  Teresa would love to go to Santafe de Antioquia today but it’s a bridge weekend (Monday holiday) so we will skip it because of the crowds.

I left the apt just before 10am and was quickly on an Envigado bus.  I got off at MBE where I picked up my “document” which turned out to be another letter from Sears Holdings regarding my pension.  “Beginning August 1, 2017, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company will assume responsibility for the monthly pension payment you currently receive from the Pension Plan.”  Hopefully these “wild goose chases” will soon settle down.

Outside MBE I didn’t see a Sabaneta bus coming my way so I decided to walk.  The streets and especially the sidewalks were nearly deserted – I guess a lot of people left town for the holiday weekend.  At Starbucks I bought a small vanilla latte and, as usual, a man wrote my name on the cup.  When it came time to pick up my order the young lady looked at the name and didn’t even try to pronounce “Terry” she just handed it to me.  J

There were lots of seating available; this is the first time I’ve seen the “laptop” bench/table with no one sitting there.  I sat outside and enjoyed my vanilla latte while reading my Nook.  At a nearby table were a gringo, a Colombian man and three Colombianas with 3 almost identical looking dogs lying underneath.  The gringo was speaking English with the others which isn’t too surprising as the language school Colombo Americano is right upstairs.  When it came time to leave, the gringo dropped one of the 3 dog leashes and said “oh shit”.  I laughed out loud; way to teach them colorful English but they didn’t appear to notice.

I walked over to Oviedo where I bought a package of Apple Cinnamon bagels.

I waited outside for 5-10 minutes for a Sabaneta bus.  Of course it crawled through the construction zone just before the Exito store in Envigado.

I stopped at Exito and picked up a few things.  Lines were long and it took me about 15 minutes to checkout.  (Where is self checkout when you need it?)

I was back at the apt by 12:30.

The Colombian Peso closed for the week at 2,911 to the US Dollar.

I received an email from Trip Advisor that my Envigado Papa John’s Pizza review has been published.

I took a short nap from 2:30 to 3:15.

MT came over and we left the apt at 4:45.  We walked down to Home Center where we picked up a Black & Decker rice cooker.  The same one we saw in Falabella that Teresa said was too large – 14 cups.  She didn’t like the fact that it was black – she wanted white.  I told her that things for the kitchen are going to be black or white.  (Thank god we don’t have avocado green anymore!)  A minute later she found something else in the next aisle and I pointed out that it only comes in black.  Lol.

When we got outside we saw that it obviously had rained while we were inside so I insisted that we take a taxi back to the apt – 7,000 pesos.

T-shirt of the day: IRONY – the opposite of wrinkly.