Saturday, January 25, 2025

Last night I went to bed at 9:30, got up once around 3am, didn’t sleep deeply after that, finally waking/getting up at 6am.

For breakfast, Teresa made me blueberry pancakes with pecans, yummy! During the week I usually have just a couple scrambled eggs with half or a whole toasted bagel with strawberry preserves but I usually have pancakes on Saturday. (Teresa still calls them waffles because she can’t remember the word pancakes but she can remember waffles because of Crepes & Waffles. I do miss waffles though.)

This is Expat’s response (lightly edited) regarding travel insurance, “Not without their issues but Assist Card has a Colombian site and a fairly wide range of coverage options, including those allowing any preexisting conditions. Not sure there are a lot of options for coverage outside of Colombia. Remember as well that while numbers like $1 million in coverage sounds huge it’s not hard to run up bills in the American system for say ER as you won’t qualify for any Health Company discounts and will therefore pay full tariff.”

I remember seeing the words “Assist Card” on a building yesterday as we went over the bridge entering the gold mile. I wonder if anyone working there speaks English. I did a quick search and found we’re talking about a fee of over $1,000, probably because of our advanced ages. ☹

I left the apt at 8:30 and had a latte in Pecatto. I left at 10am and took a Didi to Kalley, Calle 2 #50-21. (I thought my Didi driver was going to make me seasick with all his switching back and forth between the accelerator and the brake.) Their rep spoke English but he thought I needed a passport to charge it but my cedula photo id worked fine. It cost 139,900 pesos ($33) and I quickly returned to the apt by Didi. (In hindsight I probably could have ordered it online had I used my passport number instead of my foreign cedula.) The fan,

same one I saw in Eduardo Madrid, is nice because: it can be adjusted vertically, rotates 60º and is very quiet. When it gets hot here, I’ll aim it at our bed, just stirring up the air a bit can make a big difference.

I checked my locker in Miami and the last item was a “letter” received on 1/16/25. The next “letter” should be my library card, not that I’m in a hurry to receive it.

Teresa told me her sister Vickie might be coming over later and we’ll go for gelato.

I left the apt at 1pm, put a peanut in the tree in the park and took a seat in Los Portenos. I had a latte while going through my second Chess Life magazine. Teresa called and informed me Vickie wasn’t coming and I should buy a ½ liter of coconut gelato. I left at 4pm, the peanut was gone, bought a ½ liter of coconut gelato (I noticed the price has gone up slightly) and returned to the apt.

We each had a small dish of coconut gelato.

I finished watching the first season of The Squid Game (8.0). I think I’ll wait a bit before I watch season 2.

Teresa surprised me by saying she wanted to go for pizza. At first, she wanted Pizza Americana in Itagui, specifically mentioning I took her there when we were “novios” ie, dating. In the end she settled on Piccolo because it’s closer and she wanted to finish a TV program first.

We left the apt at 7pm and walked the 3 blocks to Piccolo, on Ave Poblado across the street from Smartfit, which I was surprised was closed. We ordered a 6-slice pizza with tomato on my side and chicken on her side. (I’ve mentioned it before but here they size pizza not by inches (or even centimeters) but by the number of slices, 4, 6, 8, etc.) We each had a Coke also and the check came to 75,887 pesos ($18), including tip. We returned to our apt in a few raindrops, but not enough that I needed to put up the umbrella.

 

FUNNY