I don’t use them often, and it’s been a while, but when I tried to listen to music with these noise-cancelling JVC headphones, there was sound only on the left. I tried three different devices, sent an email, received a reply with a toll-free number, called it and described the problem.
Sold in 2005, they are now a “legacy” product, and JVC doesn’t repair headphones anyway, they replace them if necessary. So there.
They won’t be replacing these. I bought them in April 2019 at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama.
How to dispose of your old stereo in Uruguay: take it into a field and dump it. Yesterday we saw someone carrying off these speakers after they had sat out in a rainstorm a few days ago.
50 sheets or so of drafting paper, each ¼ of the original sheet, torn because I had nothing large enough to cut them. A fraction of the original US Army surplus auction purchase in West Germany, in 1985, for maybe $8. The rest I used to create 10 how-to-draw books, which sold over 10 million copies. Last used in a 2015 updated edition of the Draw Cars book. I don’t intend to do another.
The templates are from 1992, used only in the first edition of the cars book, and held onto ever since just because that’s what people do.
At a summer session of New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1983 in Morocco, I was impressed with someone’s thick-lead mechanical drawing pencil. I bought several green ones. I don’t know where they went, nor where the red one came from, but I bought the leads in September 2012 in New York (while living in Uruguay). Basically never used since. Various erasers and the cool sharpener.
All will probably go to a high school kid who likes to draw.
For a year now I’ve had a calendar from a local pharmacy hanging on my wall next to a window I often leave open a little at night – which occasionally Mocha the dog opens further with his nose. This morning, for the first time I ever, I came downstairs to this:
(the glass bead is one of many our son Jesse made when we lived in Mexico)
Cowbells are from Susan’s time on Cyprus, before the Turks invaded in 1974 and she was evacuated
The calendar, blown off its nail and on the floor. But of course: its time is up. I replaced it.
Only in processing the photo – not taking it – did I notice the gray background designs on the calendar, which last year’s didn’t have.
Given what I’ve been reading and learning lately, makes me wonder how many other things I might be missing that are right in front of me?
Preparation for our first stay – after years – in our little country house involved a couple of trips, to connect gas, fix a few odds and ends. This trip included killing a small wasp nest where we park the car, and bringing back a shovel to bury the dog.
The dog was the smallest of the crowd that bark when we go by with our dogs, and the only aggressive one. Yesterday it turned up dead for no apparent reason, ten meters off the road, right on our path. I took a side trip after the walk to ask the 3XL neighbor about it. No, it wasn’t his but his neighbors; don’t know what happened to it; yes, the owners know about it.
Armed with that knowledge, we had a pretty good idea what would happen next: nothing. Hence the shovel. It would be a quick job as the area is all sand.
Halfway through digging, I looked up to see Syd, who had ridden his bike to see if the corpse was still there, in order to let me know whether I needed the shovel. Not long after a young neighbor wandered over. He’d apparently been thinking he would have to bury this now-fly-infested thing. Syd got a nearby piece of discarded shade cloth (covering an ant’s nest, but hey), grabbed the dog by two legs and dumped it in the hole. The neighbor took the shovel from me and filled it in.
Then it occurred to me that Syd might get a kick out of the rig I improvised to spray spiders in the peak of our bedroom ceiling. He did, and said I should blog about it. So here we are.
Terminator
I don’t remember now why I used wire instead of string.
Probably to intercept less of the liquid coming out. The can is actually slightly offset to avoid spraying directly on the wire.
I got change at the butcher today and thought I had been handed a bill from another country. But no – even though it was released three months ago, this is the first one I’ve seen
The polymer note is a welcome change from the tatty paper ones, though I’m not so sure the 50th anniversary of yet another Rothschild-controlled central bank is something exactly worth commemorating.
A year ago, I brought back a cheap pair of boots from the United States.
The puppy found them great fun to chew on. The tongue on the right is mostly destroyed, and the backs of both have suffered as well. That’s unfortunate, but not sad.
In general, I can’t find shoes my size here, and when I do, they’re anything but cheap. Again, unfortunate, but not sad.
In addition to the structure of the shoes, Mocha apparently finds the laces to have a lovely mouthfeel. I’ve had to tie them together and figure new lacing patterns. That’s annoying (and challenging) but not sad.
Yesterday we were gone to Montevideo for many hours, and Mocha got to them again. This time the laces were severed in a way that made them unusable. Very annoying. But still not sad.
Only then, after months of putting up with this, did it occur to me to simply buy new laces.
I find that quite sad. Maybe I’ve been in Uruguay too long?
In case you’re still wondering, that’s how I store what I tie around my right ankle when bicycling in long pants, to keep them out of the chain.
I don’t think I ever documented my USD 140 bike. It started falling apart as soon as it got out of the shop. It’s gone from 18 speeds to one, long since lost headlight and chain guard. Between that and the 26″ wheels – too big for most Uruguayans to ride comfortably – I never worry locking it up when I ride into town. And if someone does want to steal it, what can I say? For under USD 16 per year, it’s been a good investment.
