An inquisitive old fart with a camera
I took this on Thursday morning. It went away quickly. Not as heavy frost as four years ago. I was thinking it too early in the year to have frost, so interesting to revisit that.
This afternoon, walking a slightly different route than normal, I spotted a pine tree starting over — lots of trees were lost to fire several years ago. You have to wonder how much of the existing root system feeds this. Or did it sprout from seed in the rotting trunk? I’ll have to look more closely.
Half a minute’s morning amusement at the Atlántida Zoo.
Some time ago, while a friend was in the Untied Snakes, I shipped to him from Amazon a little humidity monitor. Only a few ounces. He had offered to bring things back. Over the years my “need” for goodies from up north has diminished. But this seemed useful, and I’d never seen one here.
No sooner had it shipped from Amazon than there it was in Tienda Inglesa, similar model for more or less the same price. I didn’t buy it, because I didn’t need two. However, with our little unoccupied chacra house, I’ve recently been watching for mold, so carrying this one back and forth. Hey, maybe it would make sense to have two after all.
So this morning I went to Tienda Inglesa with a mission, and no, they don’t have them any more. I thought, well, this is typical of a very small market! The population of Uruguay is 1% that of the Untied Snakes. So people coming here from there have to be aware — hey, wait a minute, where I have experienced this before? Costco and Sam’s Club, where some stuff is always there, but other stuff you grab because it’s unusual and probably won’t be stocked again.
Hmm. Okay. No particularly profound economic observation here. I do see one similar in Mercado Libre (~eBay) for 50% more. Fair enough.
I’m reminded of my first trip back over the border after moving to Mexico in 2007, where high priority was some LED flashlights, which weren’t available locally. I stood in Tarzhay, befuddled by a seemingly endless selection, finally buying two or three. And returned to find LED flashlights — one or two models only, but hey — in Walmart in Morelia, Michoacán.
P.S. — yes, we have no Malwart in Uruguay, but Tienda Inglesa was recently purchased by whoever owns Safeway and Albertson’s. Entonces, ya veremos.
I noticed some school girls running up the pedestrian bridge yesterday. That bridge and another are some of a number of improvements we’ve seen in almost seven years in Uruguay. Granted, sometimes nothing is budgeted for repair or maintenance (see here and (yikes!) here). And the engineering — well, perhaps that’s too strong a word — leaves something to be desired.
Early this morning, I took the-dog-that-cannot-get-too-much-exercise with me to leave our car for an oil change. An excellent opportunity to experience that bridge for the first time (and very exciting for the dog!).
Alas, the Uruguayan acceptance of mediocracy rears its ugly head again. Yes, that’s a puddle. On a dry day.
But the bridge appears to be solid, which can’t be said of much of the decades-old infrastructure where I came from. Just before we moved to Uruguay, the History Channel did a 2-hour piece on the infrastructure of the United States. It’s the only long video on Youtube I’ve actually watched from beginning to end in one sitting. Highly recommended: The Crumbling of America.
At some point, recovering from a stupidly self-inflected shoulder injury, experiencing rare back pain, and having heel pain — all on the right side — I decided to go to an osteopath recommended by several people.
I didn’t particularly like her. On the third visit, she was inflicting more pain than usual, and I asked what she was working on. The psoas, she replied. Oh, I said, there are two of them, aren‘t there? — Yes, she said, one on the left and one on the right. Red flag! I remembered something from 15-20 years ago.
Not a good sign, I thought, when I, with no training, know more about anything anatomical than a practicing osteopath. Strike one.
But it got better (or worse). Her “office” is a tiny anteroom in an old Uruguayan house, with the “customer” seat a very slouchy thing under a bookshelf. So I was sitting upright on the edge of it instead of slouching underneath the bookshelf, for which she sort of ridiculed me, saying something about a straight back. There are people with straight backs? I asked. Yes, she said, you have a straight back. She went on to explain that it‘s more difficult to put a curve in a straight back than straighten a curved back. Well, sorry to bring you into the 21st century, but there’s something about a J-shaped spine being healthier than an S-shaped spine. Strike two.
There was a strike three, though I don’t recall now what it was. It’s been almost six months. Anyway, I never went back.
Update 14 June: the third strike was in fact the first: with my first step out of her office after the first session, I had pain in my back. I am still aware of sciatica issues now. Every day.
But I hung on to her prescription for orthopedic shoe inserts, and finally ventured into Montevideo last week to get them. I really don’t like driving into Montevideo, but there was a schawarma place nearby I wanted to try. Good enough excuse!
In the store, Bergantiños, after spending an inordinate amount of time facing a distinctly unremarkable oversize sepia photo of the store’s opening in 1973, I was ushered to a little cubical where, one foot at a time, I stood on an “imprinter” that recorded each foot. Wow, I thought, the same technology they used when they opened the store!
Am I finished? I asked. Oh no, have to wait for what sounded to me like the “foot studio.” And after another ten minutes, she led me into the back room, had me stand facing a mirror marked with tape to help me stand straight, walk back and forth a few times on a little platform the length of a bed, and stand on a scanner.
Then the technician came in, looked at the initial impressions, made some marks on them (see above), then got on the computer and starting matching colorful pressure images to the scan of my feet, spinning around the resultant shoe inserts in three dimensions in the program‘s CAD window. When I left, they gave me a folder with all my data neatly arranged.
This from when I stood facing the mirror, including the percentage of weight on the front and back of each foot.
This is the computer’s assessment of my stride, apparently averaging the several passes.
I told the tecnico that this was impressive technology, and he indicated that it was new within the last year. Whether that meant the technology itself or their acquisition was not clear, though I suspect the latter. Nonetheless, all pretty cool.
The inserts arrived yesterday. I like them! Total cost 100 bucks and change. Seems like a bargain when you consider this, from 2006: Do You Really Need an $800 Custom Insole?
Seriously. What‘s to say? I expect people in Chile, Paraguay, Honduras, or many other countries could post and have posted similar.
Still, this was part of my day in Uruguay, today.
Which means no parking (literally “not to park” as I understand it).
My wife recently asked, where’s your camera? which means come take a picture of this. (In case the concept of camera confuses you, yes, I do have a phone, but a a clamshell unit that can only sync the results of its .3 MB camera through Windows OS, which we do not use.)
And though I probably would have opted for white or yellow onions in a baked dish, I must say the red onions make it more photo-worthy. The light yellow is winter squash from our garden. Onions, carrots, green peppers, and tomatoes, were I to source them, most likely came from within 30 miles of here.
If you are familiar with the 3,000-mile-salad of northern North America, and the fragile nature of the truck-based food transportation system in the USA (Syd can fill us in, perhaps, about Canada), the thought that fresh produce grows nearby feels kind of warm and fuzzy. No, it’s not all organic, but organic is available: we paid 90 pesos/kilo* last Saturday for organic green peppers at the local féria organica at Pilar’s chacra. We then stopped at Tienda Inglesa, where they sold for 158 pesos/kilo* — and not organic.
Not perfect, but not bad. And we get lettuce and cucumbers as well year-round, also local.
*USD 1.36/lb vs USD 2.39/lb
Actually yesterday.
2. Well, this is moving at a decent clip.
Compare with the photo I posted on March 7:
Granted, a “dry” construction house could have been completed in this span of time, but this seems fast compared to another construction on the same street, which I’ve documented.
3. Duneshrooms, next to the dead snakes.
Syd has collected some edible mushrooms recently during dog walks in Villa Argentina, at the base of eucalyptus stumps. Which seems a reasonable place to expect mushrooms to grow. But here are some growing out of — what? I have never seen mushrooms in the dunes before. And OBTW a meter away (top) are the dead snakes.
Two dead snakes, where snakes shouldn’t be, then two clusters of mushrooms where mushrooms shouldn’t be. OK, maybe not massively weird, like elongated skulls and impossible stone construction (I’m foreshadowing: we’ll be exploring in Peru and Bolivia in July). But, a little weird nonetheless.
OK: granted, one of my more worthless posts: but here in the off-season, odd shit washes up and you have to (maybe) wonder about its origin. In this case a wheel.
In context, with the Oriental Spinky-faced Sand Hound.
Create a short story based on this in 50 words or less? Not sure I can. But try?
No, not Bernie.
I’m making another 1-meter hanging shelf for under the kitchen cabinets. I bought a piece of 1″ x 10″ pine, a bit longer than needed (so I can trim the ends square with my table saw, since the good ol’ boys at the aserradero don’t quite grasp the concept of “right angles”). Then, of course, there’s lots of sanding to get rid of various planer marks. Fortunately, I have a hand-held belt sander that makes quick work of such chores. At least until almost finished, when it suddenly stops working.
Well, with not much left to do, I wasn’t bothered at having to use my much-less-competent palm sander. Well, to clarify, much less competent when they both work. Instead, I found it to be equally competent: instead of sanding, it just made noises. Might as well have been dead as the other.
A few days later (today), I decided to tear into them and see what I could.
The palm (orbital) sander, to the left of the screwdriver, was hopeless. Something’s jamming the central shaft, and I have not a clue what (nor why it didn’t the last time I used it, a while ago). A path forward wasn’t immediately evident.
On the belt sander, however, I found it is activated by a double-pole switch — basically two switches acting together, one for each incoming live wire (and they’re both live in Uruguay, so I tend not to do “simple repairs” to light fixtures or outlets without first turning off the entire house circuit). Easy diagnostics revealed one switch wasn’t working, so I installed a jumper wire (turquoise “U” at lower right) so that the connection is always on, and — ta da! — it worked, and I replaced twelve screws that hold the two halves together.
Turned it on, finished my sanding job, turned it off — uh, no. Now the switch is jammed “on.” But guess what? I don’t really care! Unplug it to turn it off. It works!
I won’t be tempted to tear it apart again because, being a cheap no-brand tool, the screws that hold it together anchor into the plastic molding of the other half. They were all nice and tight when I undid them, but only a third of them really firmly reconnected. The others just turned and turned.
So it may end up being held together with wire and duct tape. But it works — !
I’m feeling more Uruguayan all the time.