Tuesday, September 13th, 2016

Teresa wanted to go to Mayorista de Medellin again to buy fruits and vegetables.  I had set the alarm for 7am and of course as soon as it went off she begged to sleep some more.  I couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up at 7:30 and Teresa followed soon after.  We left the apt about 8:30.  I remembered how inexpensive it was last time so I didn’t bring my debit card and I didn’t bring any large bills.  As soon as we got there, instead of checking in with the individual vendors like last time, Teresa heads into a Euro grocery store.  Uh-oh!  I informed her I only had 160,000 pesos with me in small bills.  We got most of the things she wanted, however.  It cost 7,000 pesos to get there by taxi and 8,000 to return.  Compare that to if we shopped at Exito we would have taken a taxi back for 5,000 pesos so we have to consider we spent an extra 10,000 pesos just for transportation.  It was probably still worth it.

Teresa left the apt with Laura about 2pm to go to El Poblado to show a woman how to make meat rolls.

I studied more chess tactics and played more 10 minutes games getting my rating over 1100.

Teresa finally came back at 8:15.

That was interesting.  It was about 9pm and I was lying on the couch when I felt someone shake it.  I looked to the right and saw Teresa sitting in the rocking chair.  I called out “Laura” thinking she was behind me but she came out of her bedroom and said she felt it also.  (Come to think of it, it’s a big couch made of hard wood that I know I couldn’t shake.)  I checked my Earthquake app but it didn’t show anything that occurred locally.  I checked again just before I went to bed (about 10:30) and it showed that at 8:58pm, 91 miles NW of us a 6.0 tremor occurred 11 miles deep inside the earth.  

T-shirt of the day: Mutt strut.

Joke

A Jewish woman says to her mother, 'I'm divorcing Sheldon!  All he wants is anal sex and my asshole is now the size of a 50 cent piece when it used to be the size of a 5 cent piece.'

Mother says 'You're married to a  multi-millionaire, you live in an 8 bedroom mansion,  you drive a Ferrari, you get $1000 a week allowance, you take 6 vacations a year - and you want to throw all that away for 45 cents?’

Monday, September 12th, 2016

At the health club I was working on the weight machines and keeping an idea on a woman using my (usual) treadmill.  When I saw her walking slowly I figured she was in the cool down period so I stood near the machine and got on a minute later.  I did 16 minutes at speed 6, which I think I’ll repeat for the remainder of the week.  I weighed in at 77.5 kilos.

I spend a good part of the day, studying chess on Chess.com and playing some 10 minute games to test my opening theory.  I won more games than I lost and got my rating over 1000.

T-shirt of the day: Buy now, pay later.

Sunday, September 11th, 2016

Well, it’s finally here.  

First, today is the 15^th anniversary of 9/11.  I remember sitting in my cubicle in Schaumburg, IL and hearing reports of a small plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers.  We knew for sure something was up when a 2^nd plane crashed into it.  I recall seeing from our office windows a military fighter jet guiding a commercial flight into O’Hare airport.  We were let go early and we all watched the remainder of the day’s sad activities from our homes.

Well, today is my Chicago Bears 1^st game of the new NFL season, at the Houston Texans.  The team has undergone a lot of changes and a few new pieces haven’t had much time to practice together.  I think we should be a better team this year although it might take a few games to get coordinated and by then there could be some serious injuries.

In the 2^nd half I started munching on the bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts my son brought me from the States.  The Bears lost to the Texans 23-14.

I think I mentioned I subscribed to Chess.com’s Gold plan for $5 a month; it allows me to practice 25 tactics and take 5 lessons each day.

Teresa and I started watching Kill Bill Vol. 1 (8.1) on Netflix.

I received an email from my son that he had arrived safely in Fort Lauderdale.

T-shirt of the day: Smoke weed.

Saturday, September 10th, 2016

The Colombian Peso closed at 2,919 to the Dollar.

I walked a few blocks to $efecty where I paid this month’s Une bill.

I left the apt at 12:15 to meet my son for lunch at Parque Envigado.  He arrived right at 12:30 and since he’s eaten at Carbón de Leña before we walked a block further to Morisko’s.  I had a bowl of cream of onion soup, a hamburger and strawberry juice and he had a pizza and 2 pineapple juices.  The total bill came to 56,800 including tip.  After I made a trip to the restroom he made his trip.  While he was gone a young waitress stopped at our table to clean up.  I tried talking to her in my broken English and she learned that I live in Envigado but my son is just visiting.  She said he’s handsome and asked if he’s married.  I said “no” just as he returned to the table.

Jim had to print out his boarding pass but he couldn’t do it before 2:15 – 24 hours before his flight.  We walked a couple blocks away to La Vaquita where I picked up some eggs, sugar, cooking oil, mustard and sandwich ham.  We were still a little early but I took him to 4 different places where I thought he might be able to log on to the internet and print his pass but they were all closed.  

Back at the apt we all had something to drink and then took a nap.  We then walked down to Exito but weren’t able to print his pass in the copy center.  Laura finally suggested we go to her school where we were lucky to find Marco and he helped Jim to print out the pass.  Back at the apt we watched The Big Short (7.8) on Netflix.

Then we had to say goodbye to Jim and he caught a taxi back to the hostel.  Tomorrow he’ll leave about 10:30 or 11am for the airport and a Spirit flight to Fort Lauderdale and then Chicago.  Hopefully I’ll see him again next year for his annual vacation.

T-shirt of the day: I am not a unicorn.

Friday, September 9th, 2016

As we were walking to the health club I saw dark clouds approaching from the east.  I just wanted to get to the gym before the rain I don’t care so much about after as the first thing I’ll probably do is take a shower so I’ll be getting wet anyway.  About 5 minutes after we arrived it poured so hard it was actually noisy.  Today I did 15 minutes at speed 6 on the treadmill in addition to going thru all the other weight machines.  The rain stopped about 30 minutes after it started.  Walking out of the building Teresa said something about a gringo we just passed.  I turned around and it was Alan – the gringo I hadn’t seen since last December or so.  He said soon he has to go back to the US again and I told him to let me know when he returns.

Among this week’s new US movie releases I would like to see Sully (8.0) and The Disappointments Room (7.2).  Locally, there isn’t anything I want to see.

I loaned 300,000 pesos to Teresa’s friend Martha who should be returning it on Monday or Tuesday.

We left the apt at 7pm and as we were walking down the stairs Teresa and Laura were having a discussion.  When we got out to the street and I was looking for a taxi Laura showed me her cell phone.  She had called an Uber car and it showed it would arrive in 5 minutes.  It showed the name of the driver and the license number of the car.  Five minutes later he still hadn’t arrived and Laura said he’s lost so I started looking for taxis again.  Laura showed me the Uber app again and I understood another car was on the way.  It arrived in 10 minutes.  It was a newer clean car and he took us to Contenedores Food Place.  I asked Laura how much it costs since it had no meter and how do I pay?  Do you have an account that it’s charged to?  Do I pay the driver with a debit card?  With cash?  She didn’t know.  Great!  It cost 9,200 pesos and I gave the driver 10,000 because I didn’t have any change and he didn’t offer me any in return.

We met Jim, Jeff, and Sean there and went to the Italian restaurant named Tano Argento.  There was no one at that restaurant so we easily got a table that seats 6.  The chairs were metal folding chairs so that’s going to cost them a point in my review.  There was a duo playing blues music so that was nice. 

For the table, Jim ordered 2 bottles of red wine – La Consulta Tinto BT – for 86,000 pesos and an order of mozzarella sticks.  I had a bowl of minestrone soup and lasagna bolognesa, Teresa had the fish of the day, Laura had something called Magherita, Jim had spaghetti, Jeff had fettuccine, and Sean had chicken lasagna.  Everyone liked there food although Jim said that the pasta was overcooked.  We ordered 3 different desserts that we shared and 4 of us had café con leches.

The total bill with tip came to 324,196 (about $112) and Jeff and Sean picked up the check.

We said our goodbyes to Jeff and Sean who have to catch an early flight back to Chicago tomorrow morning.  They said they thoroughly enjoyed their time in Medellin and want to come back.  I’ll be meeting Jim tomorrow after he switches from a room for 3 to a room for 1.

We quickly caught a taxi back to the apt and it cost less than 6,000 pesos.

T-shirt of the day: It’s not easy being so smart.

Thursday, September 8th, 2016

I left the apt about 12:25, took a bus to Parque Poblado, stopped at MBE and picked up a FedEx express envelope and walked up the hill to Hotel Charlee.  The guys moved into this hotel, situated on the edge of Parque Lleras, last night.

I left my envelope in my son’s apartment and we walked down Calle 10 to the metro.   We took the metro to Acevedo station where we transferred to the metro cable.  At Santa Domingo we bought another ticket for 4,850 pesos which took us to the Parque Arvi entrance.  There we bought cups of berries, cups of juice and bottles of water.

A few minutes later Jim shared with us his interesting experience in the toilet trying to get the toilet paper dispenser to work.  Lol.

I stopped at the information booth and asked what else there is to do here beyond the ecological park.  She gave me a small map and told me about Comfama which must be where the obstacle course(s) is/are.  I fed a couple dogs the last of my dog biscuits.  

We took the metro cable back down to the Acevedo station where we took a taxi back to Parque Lleras for 18mil.  On the way back I showed them where the new river park is going to be.

I said goodbye, will meet with Jim again on Saturday and walked down the street to Parque Poblado.  I caught a Sabaneta bus back to the apt.

I watched the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers in a nailbiter 21-20 using my Slingbox.  I did experience a few buffering problems in the 2^nd half.

T-shirt of the day: Stay focused.