Saturday, December 22, 2018

I got up once during the night, again at 6:30 finally waking/getting up at 8am.

I left the apt at 9:45 and walked up to Avenida Poblado where I soon was on an Envigado bus.  It was a cool overcast morning with what appeared to be at least a slight chance of rain.

At one red light there was a young man who did a tight rope act on the side of the road.  He started by bouncing on his feet, landed on his stomach, bounced and landed on his stomach facing in the opposite direction, bounced and landed on his feet and later landed a perfect flip dismount.  It was pretty impressive so I gave him 1,000 pesos and several others on the bus also gave him change.

At Envios Market I picked up my new SS benefits letter.  Next year we get a 2.8% COLA which always helps.

Outside I caught a Sabaneta bus and got off at Calle 39 Sur in Envigado.  I walked a block east to the bakery where I had a café con leche.  I wasn’t getting a strong internet connection but I had my Nook with me and I finished reading Ken Follett’s Jackdaws.  (Later I checked IMDB and found that there is a TV movie adaptation “in development”.)

I stopped at the health store where I bought 3 bottles of different supplements for 76,800 pesos.

I walked back to the apt arriving at 11:30.

I left the apt again at 12:15 and met Chuck outside Percimon.  We walked a block away to the restaurant that Teresa and I have frequented where we had the menu of the day.

After lunch I showed him the 2 cafes I had found on one of the side streets.  At one of them (Cocolatte) we met a young man and woman who informed us that this café has great homemade carrot cake.  Unfortunately they hadn’t made it yet, and they didn’t have much else, so we left.  I found another café on the way that I hadn’t noticed before but we didn’t stop.

We walked to Aymará where we each had coffee and cookies.  Unfortunately, my oatmeal cookie was so dry I had to dunk it to be able to eat it.

From there we walked downtown.  On the way Chuck dragged me into a t-shirt store where he wanted to show me something special.  He didn’t find exactly what he was looking for but we found a lot of t-shirts that had English words but made no sense or were misspelled.  My favorite was “Sometime have Wild Thing You Make my Hear Sign (sic)”.

We stopped at the bakery where we had more coffee.

We then went to Bartolos for limonada de cocos where we were soon joined by Byron.  We chatted for quite a while until I left about 4:30.

Back at the apt I watched some NFL football.

I noticed Teresa watching more Queen or Freddy Mercury videos on Youtube so I connected my laptop to the TV (and it’s much better quality speakers) and played the 3 Queen songs I have on iTunes.  Then I played an hour of Christmas songs.

Laura returned at 9:30.  I understand she’s working at the store through December 31^st.

I watched some of the Chargers vs Ravens game before going to bed.

Joke of the day

John woke up after the annual office new year party with a pounding headache, cotton-mouthed and utterly unable to recall the events of the preceding evening. After a trip to the bathroom, he made his way downstairs, where his wife put some coffee in front of him.

'Louise,' he moaned, 'tell me what happened last night. Was it as bad as I think?'

'Even worse,' she said, her voice oozing scorn. 'You made a complete ass of yourself. You succeeded in antagonizing the entire board of directors, and you insulted the president of the company, right to his face.'

'He's an idiot,' John said. 'Piss on him.'

'You did', came the reply. 'And he fired you.'

'Well, screw him!' said John.

'I did. You're back to work on Monday.'