Monday, October 31, 2022

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, fell asleep quickly, got up once during the night, woke up at 6:30 and got up.

It’s Halloween!

Wow, 2 days without rain. Let’s see if our luck holds up for another day.

When Teresa was making my coffee this morning the mixer/blender broke. She told me there’s a place by our real estate office where I can take it. Me: “No, you can take it, you speak Spanish.” Her: “But it’s heavy.” Me: “Take a taxi”.

I checked my CS account and see that I got a currency exchange rate (CER) of 4895 last Friday. That matches the CER I received with USAA, 4895, which became 4847 after they took out their 1% foreign transaction fee.

Yesterday I filled out a travel notice with CS for October 31 thru November 5.

I left the apt at 9am and walked to the Bancolombia window in La Buena Mesa. (Steve, who we used to have breakfast with, told me about years ago.)

I successfully deposited 70 mil into Laura’s account for the gym and 162mil into Natalia Holmgren’s account for my health insurance. I also had another copy of my Charles Schwab International application printed for backup. (When I checked later she printed page 7 twice and forgot to print page 8 and all the print was a little faint.) Still this is a good location for printing some chess notes and it will serve in an emergency when the consignacion machines in the mall don’t work.

I walked to the mall and saw this new drugstore with an outside entrance in the corner of the mall.

I recycled a plastic bottle then went upstairs to the banking area. I managed to make a withdrawal with my CS card so obviously my Travel Notice had been accepted.

I had a café con leche and a cold bottle of water in Todo Fresa. Didi acknowledged my 2,500-peso payment so I should be good to go again. I made an appointment with Daniel for a haircut tomorrow at 9am. I checked the weather for Punta Cana and it still looks threatening.

I left about 11am and picked up a few things in Exito including a bag of Snickers bites and Hersheys Cookies & Cream Fangs. While waiting in the 10-item maximum line I noticed a new area which appears to be a self-checkout area similar to Home Center’s.

I’ll try that another time. I returned to the apt by taxi.

Teresa returned at 12:30.

I left the apt at 3pm and on my way to Parva I saw workers had poured a new short wall between Los Porteños and the street. I ordered a café con leche and pan sano to go but they were out of the latter so I’ll pick one up tomorrow. At 4pm the downpour started. A couple young girls came in and took a nearby table; I think they were speaking German. At 4:30 the rain lessened so I made a run for it. My shoes were pretty well soaked by the time I returned to the apt. By 5pm it was all over.

The trick or treaters started about 6:30 and continued until about 8pm. Many were very young with mother or father in the background. We had enough to go through the one bag of Snickers Bites.

We’re close to breaking the 5,000 mark:

Today I got in 4,827 steps.

 

Fun pix