Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once during the night, woke up at 6:22am (but didn’t make a trip to the bathroom), finally waking/getting up at 7:45.

Teresa skipped her 7am-8am trip to the gym, she said her butt still hurts from yesterday’s class but she’s thinking of going to class later in Mayorca.

I looked out the window and noticed this red-headed woodpecker eating a neighbor’s suet.

I left the apt at 9:30 and completed my workout in Smartfit. Today attendance seemed to be back to normal after Monday’s smaller crowd. I saw Nebraskja and told her that Teresa got her US Visitor’s Visa and we’ll be visiting Chicago next summer. She was happy for me.

I had a latte in Ganso y Castor for about an hour. There was a young lady sitting 2 tables over working on a laptop and I heard her speak English on her phone but I was ignored when I tried to talk to her. I replaced all the missing peanuts.

At 11:15 I returned to the apt.

I sent Christmas presents to my son and daughter back in the States.

I took a closer look at our flight and hotel reservations. I emailed our hotel, gave them our flight information and requested airport pickup.

Teresa called Kelly’s (our woman FBI driver in Bogota) son here in Medellin and arranged 61m pickup next Monday for our 9:53am flight to Punta Cana. (We’re afraid Bryan’s car is too small to hold our two large suitcases, carry-on and backpack.)

Per Fed-Ex, Teresa’s passport is “out for delivery” in Medellin.

I left the apt at 2pm, printed Teresa’s medical appointment in the Bancolombia kiosk then had a latte in Los Portenos returning to the apt at 4:30. Teresa was getting a massage from Kelly.

I checked Fed-Ex and Teresa’s passport arrived at their Poblado location at 1:28pm and is awaiting pickup. We plan to go there late tomorrow morning to pick it up then on to El Tesoro mall for some shopping.

About 6:30pm I heard someone blow one of those plastic oogah horns. Per google, Atletico Nacional has a match starting at 7:30 against Deportes Tolima.

I spent the rest of the evening watching the news.

Per google, the soccer match ended in a 1-1 tie.

 

JUST FUNNY

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 11pm, got up once during the night, finally waking/getting up at 6:07 before my 6:30 alarm.

I resigned a game against Troyclough lowering my rating to 1573.

I arrived at Unicentro mall 10 minutes before their 8am opening. Jose joined me a few minutes later. We both had French toast and coffee. We adjourned to the food court where I started with the Black pieces. I don’t mean this as an excuse but lately I haven’t felt like I’ve been “in the zone” chess wise. Remember I had a rating up to 1630 and now I’m down to 1573. I seemed to be “in the zone” when I was working on the difficult “mates in 2” in my large book. Anyway, I asked Jose to play d4 and e4 and his first 2 moves and I played the Czech Pirc opening. He made a tactical mistake on his 7^th move and I was attacking his king the rest of the game, he blundered a rook on the 46^th move but being in a little time trouble I missed it, finally he resigned on the 82^nd move.

From his 6^th move to 7^th move my advantage went from 0.17 (even) to -2.80 (Black has a decisive advantage).

I had White in the second game and I asked him to reply 1…Nf6 to my 1.d4. I played 2.Bg5 and got to practice an interesting line of The Trompowsky Attack. (The computer later said that after the 8^th move, “White is Better”.) He blundered on the 20^th move losing a piece and resigned on the 52^nd move.

I don’t often win both games against Jose so I was very happy. Maybe the few daily puzzles I’m doing on Chess.com are helping after all.

We must have been playing quicker than usual as it was only 1pm. We said our goodbyes as we won’t be playing again until next year and I ordered a Didi to take me to Viva Envigado.

I checked Only Roastbeef but it looks to be closed permanently. I went to Pergamino where there were a few seats available and I had my usual bowl of granola, yogurt, and acai berries with a small latte.

I had brought at least 2,000,000 pesos in 100s with me and I withdrew another 2,000,000 from a Davivienda ATM; it was a nice mix of bills. I paid our apt rental, my health insurance, the gym, and both our cellphones. I had a latte in Urbania while texting the receipts via Whatsapp for the apt and my health insurance.

A new clothing store opened across from Urbania and I shared a photo of it with Teresa later.

I received an email from the US Embassy that today they’ll be handing off her passport to Fed-Ex and gave me the tracking information.

About 3pm Teresa called me and asked me to go to a stand outside Exito and buy 2 Nutella de Bunuelos for her and meet her at Wilson’s bar.

I paid the epm utility bill and after overcoming a little communication problem I managed to buy them for 16mil. I found Teresa with MT at Wilson’s bar.

A Colombiana sitting at the next table with a laptop overheard my broken Spanish and we had a short conversation in English. Her English was very good. I told her a joke in English than the only one I know in Spanish.

At 4:15 Teresa and I returned to the apt by Didi.

I wasn’t monitoring the time but it must have been about 5:45 when the TV went blank. It’s red light wasn’t on so I knew it hadn’t completely lost power. A minute later a screen came on like it was searching for our Wi-Fi network. The lights started getting a little funky, like half power, the bedroom lights didn’t work at all and the bathroom light was also half power. The building across the street seemed fine. I had Teresa call the porteria and a portero explained that power was out in our area. It finally came back on at 7:15, the TV was back to normal and all was good again.

I finished reading Lee Child’s The Affair (Jack Reacher #4) on my Kindle.

 

JUST FUNNY

Monday, December 16, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once at 5:22am (it was pouring but seemed to stop soon after returning to bed), finally waking/getting up at 7am.

I forgot to mention 2 things from last night: 1) I heard some cheering but not enough for a win and after a google search I saw that Atletico Nacional drew Americas de Cali 0-0. 2) There was a lot of fireworks and they were still going on when I went to bed at 10pm.

I left the apt at 8:15, put a peanut in the tree next to the birdfeeder and proceeded on to the gym in weather between a mist and raindrops. Fortunately, it had stopped by the time I left the gym.

I had a latte in Ganso y Castor before returning to the apt.

I found an unknown payment in my USAA account of $61.19. I called USAA and while they were checking for more information, I checked my blog and found was the payment for my cedula. Mea culpa!

Glenn has been having speed problems with his new Movistar fiber optic service but today a technician came out and he now is getting 700 Mbps.

And yesterday I showed him the new google lens feature that allows for live written translations from Spanish to English.

Teresa and I left at 3:45 and took a Didi to Arkadia mall. Our driver’s name was Aura and she was a young lady that drove very tentatively like she had just gotten her license. Oh, and her Didi photo was an older man, maybe her father?

As soon as we entered the mall Teresa there was a Mimo’s stand and we both got a soft serve ice cream cone with chocolate and peanuts.

We waited a couple minutes outside the elevator where we finished them before we went up to the 4^th floor. It only took about 10 minutes for Teresa to pick up her mammogram results and get an appointment for next year.

We were sitting in Peregamino having a latte (cold) and we each had some type of pastry. I checked the .pdf they emailed me and the date for her next appointment was today’s date. I asked her why it doesn’t have the year 2025 on it so we returned to the clinic and Teresa talked to someone who convinced her that it was okay.

We walked across the street where we bought a bag of groceries for 392,700 pesos ($90.50). There were four families ahead of us for a taxi which turned out to be a 30-minute wait. We returned to the apt in heavy traffic which took about 35 minutes.

With a bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts and a Coke, I watched the Minnesota Vikings pummeled my Bears 30-12 for their 8^th loss in a row. ☹

I went to bed right after at 11pm.

 

JUST FUNNY

Bob Burford - Part VII

I just found out that Michael Moore's "Sicko" is now free for the taking on YouTube. If you have never seen it, it is well worth the time. If you have already seen it, chance are good you'll want to see it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEQ7acb0IE

Moore took some 9/11 first responders down to Guantanamo. He saw in a Senate hearing that the inmates at Guantanamo received bi-weekly health screenings. That's a helluva lot better than what the first responders to get, so he decided to take them on a cruise. All of the first responders wound up with serious medical issues. I remember one of the women in the movie was spending $120/month for an inhaler, without which she would die. They went to a pharmacy in Havana and the same inhaler was only 25 cents. She went back to NYC with a bag full of inhalers.

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once at 5am, finally waking/getting up by alarm at 7:30.

I met Glenn with Bianca at Olivenza at 9am where I filled him in on our Bogota adventures. He still has a stomach problem but all his test results are negative and he’s trying to decide what to do next. He just had coffee and a homemade muffin while I was there. He told me about a faucet leak that took him 5 years to deduce and finally fix. He gave me some advice about my VPN problem. We may pursue getting new routers for about $90 next year as he has a make and model that he had investigated.

I had calentao with scrambled eggs and 2 lattes. I left at 11am, stopped and bought 2 bags of milk before returning to the apt.

Shite. I can’t find my USAA debit card. I remember Teresa putting it in a safer place but she’s sure she returned it to me. ☹ I finally found it in my toilet kit with my passport. Mea culpa.

I mainly vegged out the rest of the day.

I still haven’t figured out how to turn off Nord VPN but I did find a button that allowed me to pause it for an hour and then NFL Game Pass (DASN) worked. 😊

On Netflix I watched the first episode of Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War (8.4), Carry-On (6.6), and the first two episodes of Lost (8.3).

Teresa listened to something on her cellphone then shared her interest to go to a nearby 5:30am mass tomorrow. She’s afraid of going out in the dark alone so she seems to have resigned herself to not going.

 

JUST FUNNY

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Last night we went to bed at 9:30, I got up once during the night, finally waking/getting up at 6am.

No internet connection this morning. ☹

We had a simple breakfast in the hotel then hung out in the lobby a while. At 10am we returned to our room for some final packing. At 10:45 while waiting to check out I thought I noticed a sign, from a little distance, about free shuttles to the airport every hour on the half hour. We went downstairs and while waiting for Ricardo to arrive I thought I saw the gray and white hotel shuttle. By 11:10 Teresa called Ricardo and he said someone else would be picking us up in 15 minutes. I thought why should I pay someone 35mil to take us to the airport when the shuttle bus was right here. I confirmed with the bus driver that he was going to the airport and we soon climbed into the van and Teresa called Ricardo, the liar, and canceled the pickup. We were soon on our way to the airport.

At the Avianca area I saw lots of Paso 1 terminals but had to ask where to find Paso 2. Of course there were only two at the end of the others. I started entering our data and an Avianca employee quickly took over. Of course, she asked for my passport but I handed her my cedula. She put it under the scanner and got a not read message. She asked for my passport and I dug it out of my backpack but that didn’t work either. Obviously, the scanner wasn’t working right. She directed us to an Avianca desk where a rep quickly scanned our cedulas and gave us boarding passes. As we were walking away I asked what is our gate and Teresa said to look at the departure screen. For our flight, AV9318 it said D15C so we started walking down the aisle. Of course D15 was the last terminal and C was downstairs. We took an escalator downstairs and had seats just outside the gate an hour before our flight. Teresa surprised me and asked me to bring her 2 chantilly donuts from Dunkin Donuts. Knowing she will eat part of the second and expect me to finish it I just bought a strawberry donut for myself, also a bottle of water to share. Back downstairs we consumed our donuts and about 2:45 I looked at our boarding passes and didn’t see assigned seats. I looked back over my shoulder and the gate rep wasn’t busy so I asked Teresa to go ask about it. She did and came back and told me to hurry because we have to go to gate D5. We did and entered the plane right after the 3rd pilot, the navigator. I had seat 26E and she had seat 28B so we both had middle seats but luckily the flight only lasts an hour.

Bryan had already handed us off to Manuel and I texted him that we took off on time and since we don’t have bags to claim we should be out of the airport pretty quickly after landing.

I won a game in 21 moves vs Troyclough increasing my rating to 1587.

We were back in our apt for 150mil by 4:15. Our portero said we had a package so I went down to get it. It was a pair of ripped jeans from Studio F that Laura had ordered.

I watched Captain Phillips again on Netflix as it leaves their offering at the end of this year.

It was pouring by the time I went to bed at 10pm.

 

JUST FUNNY

Friday, December 13, 2024

Last night we went to bed at 9pm, I got up 3 times during the night, the last time being 2:30 and I couldn’t fall back asleep. Finally, Teresa got up and asked me what time it was and it was 4:45am. We both got up to start our day.

Today is US Embassy Interview Day!

Teresa swears she can see a line already at the embassy but I don’t see anyone. (It turns out I was looking too far, at the embassy itself, instead of outside their gates.)

To Jack W.: I think we have similar religious beliefs.

We left the hotel at 6:20 and walked across the street and down a block and there was already a crowd of a few dozen people.

A Colombian policeman seemed to be in charge and Teresa listened to his instructions. Just after 6:30 he allowed the US Residents to go in first. (I’m talking about behind the fence to the embassy property.) I would say there were dozens if not 100 people waiting. Then the policeman had most of the others line up next to the fence, and Teresa was near the front. I moved to the 2^nd restaurant on my side of the street named El Embajador.

There were dozens of tables, each identified by a different US state but I didn’t see Illinois (maybe it was occupied) so I sat at the Massachusetts table and ordered a café con leche. Soon a different waitress came over and asked if I had been served. I said yes and she complemented me on my green eyes. Teresa returned after about 30 minutes and said she was approved. She was only asked, 1) How long have you and your husband been together? 2) What kind of work did your husband do in the US, 3) What kind of work does Teresa do here in Colombia? 4) Do you live in your own apartment? That was it. He didn’t look at any of the photos, documents, or other stuff we had painstakingly gathered together. Like I tried to tell her they already decided ahead of time if you’re going to get a Visa. Teresa told me she saw lots of people, mostly younger women, ahead of her being rejected without looking at any of the documents they brought. I paid 8mil for my café con leche and we left.

We returned to the hotel and had a simple breakfast in their restaurant. I asked to see her passport and she said they took it and she handed me a piece of paper with Spanish on one side and English on the other which said her passport with Visa will be delivered to the “Applicant Service Center or at the courier office you selected during registration”. I hope 2 ½ years ago I opted to have it delivered to Medellin. 😊

I just realized, how can Teresa go to the Dominican Republic if the US Embassy has her passport? Her paper from the embassy had an email address for questions regarding the delivery of her passport so I dashed off an email to them. There was also a website “to obtain the status of your passport” but I found it was “under maintenance”.

Teresa talked to her lawyer Marisol and she said Teresa’s passport is scheduled to arrive in Medellin on the 18^th or 19^th so that sounds encouraging. She later texted us the address which is a few blocks up from Parque Poblado.

We left the apt at 10:30 and took a hotel van to downtown Bogota. We agreed with our driver Ricardo to be picked up at the same location at 4pm.

Of course, the first store Teresa hit was Zara but after searching both floors she declared all the clothes the same as Medellin – black and gray. We went outside and across the street to a large mall and took escalators up to the to (4^th) floor and selected a cute restaurant named La Grand Garden for lunch. At first they gave us breakfast menus but when we asked for lunch menus they switched them but informed us we’d have to wait until 11:45 to order lunch. It was now 11:25 and Teresa was starving so she ordered a croissant and coffee to tide her over.

At 11:45 as soon as we could flag down a waiter, she ordered a Greek salad bowl and a side of mashed potatoes and I their crispy chicken sandwich with a mango juice.

 It took a while for our food to arrive and they warned me my plate was hot. Was it ever, I couldn’t even pick up my sandwich without touching the plate for quite a few minutes so I started with my fries. Later I even had to remind them I’d ordered a mango juice. The total came to 150,778 pesos ($34.50).

We walked clockwise (to make sure we didn’t miss anything) around the 4^th floor then moved down a floor and continued all the way down to the main floor. This is a Christmas display in their atrium:

We found a Cruz Verde and were allowed to buy a 20-pack of Zopiclona for 60mil, giving us a better chance of sleeping well tonight. I recognized most stores from the same in Medellin. We walked out of the mall and were bombarded by beggars and people selling sunglasses, watches, lottery tickets, etc. We checked out a few more stores but by 3:30 we were ready to leave. Around 4pm Teresa talked to Ricardo and he was far away so he would be sending another driver around 5pm who would call us when he was close. We went into a smaller mall and checked it out but we were both exhausted and I was at my standing/walking limit. We chose a café/restaurant named Philipe on the first floor with a view of the street and ordered lattes and a slice of cake with raisins and nuts. Teresa talked to Ricardo a couple more times. Soon my cellphone battery was down to 8% and I had to shut it off.

Ricardo finally called Teresa at 6pm and said he was outside. I had already paid our 30mil cafe bill so we just had to drag ourselves out to the car. It was Ricardo in the same van. I asked him if our hotel had a courtesy van to take us to the airport. He said no so I made an arrangement for him to pick us up at 11am tomorrow for 35mil. On our way back to the hotel he turned down a side street and I thought, “good, he knows a shortcut”. He stopped at a building and another man came out and I thought we were going to get another passenger but they just switched drivers. That’s why he wanted me to pay the 45mil bill early. It took 50 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic from downtown Bogota to return to our hotel.

We had a simple supper in the hotel restaurant for 89,100 pesos ($20.50).

We were both very tired but managed to stay up until 9:30.

 

JUST FUNNY