Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Last night I took only 1 1mg sleeping pill instead of 2.  It took me a little longer to fall asleep – 30 minutes? – but I didn’t wake up until 5am.  I took a vitamin C with a little water and went back to bed.  I finally woke up at 7:45 and got up at 8am.

I watched the first 90 minutes of the Today show.

I walked down to Home Center but didn’t find any meat thermometer.  I did find a sandpaper disk (2,100 pesos) that I will use to buff up the plastic piece that fell off my coffee mug before I try to reglue it.  I stopped at Juan Valdez in Exito for a cup of coffee but there weren’t any tables available.

I walked up to Carbon de Leña where I asked the waiter for a menu.  He asked me what kind of juice I wanted and I said mango.  He said that wasn’t available and brought me another kind instead.  While still waiting for a menu he brought me a bowl of soup.  That’s when I figured out what I did wrong.  Instead of asking for “a menu” I had asked for “the menu” which I’m sure to him meant the “menu of the day”.  I went and got a menu myself and decided I would order either the chicken shish kebab or the Caesar salad.  A few minutes later he brought me a plate with the menu of the day – chicken breast, salad, and baked potato.  I hope he saw the menu and figured out what I had originally asked him.  I ate my lunch and then paid the 13,000 pesos for it. 

I walked over to the bus stop where I found an Envigado bus that left about a minute after I got on.

I got off at Santafe mall and stopped at a Davivienda ATM where I withdrew some cash.  It didn’t tell me what the ATM fee was but I checked XE.com and it gave me a current exchange rate of 2,972.  (When I got back to the apt I found I received 2,962 COP per dollar so I guess the ATM fee was 0.)

I walked up to Cachivaches where I asked a salesgirl for an oven thermometer.  The first one she found was one you put in the oven.  I asked her for one that I would stick into meat and she took me to a box of 4 small steak thermometers for 110,000.  I debated whether to buy it and finally decided to.

I walked back down to Avenida Poblado where I immediately caught a bus back to Envigado.  I stopped at the bakery but they didn’t have a blueberry muffin for me.  I ran into Robert Grimes, the Texan, and we went over to Bartolos for a drink.

He told me he occasionally finds Dr. Pepper available at Jumbo.  I told him I wish I could find root beer.  He agreed that the first few (4?) withdrawals from Bancolombia are without an ATM fee.  We traded jokes for quite a while.  I finally left just before 5pm.

Teresa came back and informed me that the woman that was interested in her finca is no longer interested.  She’s afraid that her grandson would fall down one of the steep hills.

A slight change to my usual presleep procedure – I only took 1 sleeping pill and went to bed at 11:15.

T-shirt of the day: Why so serious?