Friday, May 17, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, seemed to take a little longer to fall asleep, got up once at 5:15, did my Kegel exercises, gave up going back to sleep and got up at 6am.

So my reading experiment last night had the advantage of I wasn’t watching any screens (TV or cellphone) but on the negative side my mind was busy working on the chess puzzles. I’ll try again tonight and see how it affects my falling asleep.

I’m down to my last half bagel so it’s time to make a trip to Eduardo Madrid.

We had a short shower about 7:15 this morning and after it stopped Teresa deemed it too cold to go to her gym class in Viva Envigado.

Well, that was weird. Teresa decided to go to the gym after all. (I guess because the sun came out?). I asked if she wanted me to order her a car. “Yes, right away.” I ordered a Didi, told her the car is silver, the driver’s name is Juan and as usual I sent a screenshot to her phone. I started shaving when for some reason I decided I’d better make sure she found the car. I looked at the Didi app and it showed the car stopped on our street. I walked out to the balcony and I saw a silver car with its emergency lights on in front of Tienda D1. I took a long-distance photo (x2) of the car then zoomed in and the license plate matched. 

I pointed to the car and motioned toward Palo de Rosa and I guess he saw me because he turned his lights off, drove to our porteria and I saw Teresa come out. Whew, disaster averted!

I left the apt at 9am and had a latte in Eduardo Madrid. They had several sleeves of bagels but they were all plain. I’m going to check café Al Alma in the mall tomorrow; I remember they often have bagels and Marcos raves about them and I’ve never tried them.  I competed more puzzles in my book and won an endgame against Troyclough increasing my rating 4 points to 1581. While paying, I met an English-speaking Colombian named David whose 9-year-old daughter just learned how to play chess. He said there is a “master” named Betancur (last name, don’t remember the first) teaching chess at the Envigado stadium every night, including Saturday, from 4-7pm. I’m going to have to check it out.

My neck/shoulder problem is pretty close to being back to normal. I’m hoping to start with some dumbbell exercises on Monday and we’ll see how it responds.

We left the apt at 12:30 and took a Didi to Big Boy in Envigado for 14,620 pesos. I waved “hi” to Carmelo, the owner. I ordered the fish & chips to share and a Coke for me but Teresa ordered a bottle of water. I showed Teresa the Avianca flights to Popayán, none direct and all $300-$400 so we decided it wasn’t worth it. We’ll try to gift the certificate to someone.

I ate two of the pieces of fish and she ate most of two pieces trying not to eat the outside fried part. She didn’t touch the fries wishing to have a baked potato instead. I think she had the waiter wrap the remainder of the fries to gift to the next homeless person. The check came to almost 52mil. I ordered an Uber to take us back to the apt for 14,720 pesos.

I left at 2pm and walked to Los Porteños where I had a latte while working on more chess puzzles. Teresa called and asked me to pick us dish washing liquid on my way back to the apt. Later she called again and asked me to pick up a few lemons. I left at 5pm, stopped at Ara for the few purchases and returned to the apt.

I watched another couple episodes of The Good Faith on Medellin TV. I also spent some time before bed working on the chess puzzles.

 

EL ARROYO SIGNS