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.
How-to tip, Uruguay style
Category: Stuff
Letting go: art supplies
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.
What’s for supper?
New year reminder
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 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?
Termination
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.
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.
Anyway, it works!
50-peso surprise
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.
And it is light-years better than the coin nobody wants.
Sad.
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?
Select a language
No idea what this app was. At any rate, it didn’t last long on my phone.
Had to chuckle…
…when I saw this in the road.
Because I knew exactly what it was for.
Do you? Scroll down for the answer….
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.
Home is where you hang your shoes
Especially if you have a puppy, not quite one year old, who will happily tear into Vasque hiking boots that you spent an hour getting fitted for in Asheville, North Carolina 15 years ago, and cost USD 150. I bought those at the end of few years of hiking and camping with kids, after realizing how idiotic I had been the first day of a five-day hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail, with backpack – racing a 15 year old boy, wearing cheap-ass Walmart-purchased hiking boots and very nearly twisting my ankle. I upgraded to the Vasques – and, oh yeah, then essentiality stopped hiking.
Turns out their construction is not essentially different – in terms of puppy teeth – to the last pair of middle-aged-man ankle-length “hikers” I bought at JC Penney last year for what – USD 30? Or Walmart? Alas, that was in Murka: nothing like that exists here: size 12 feet find little welcome. So they hang out of range of puppy teeth.
The Hiking Boot Thing is similar my Mountain Bike Thing: going “endo” over the handlebars of my mountain bike, tearing up and bloodying my shirt and cracking my helmet, riding down a root-addled trail in North Carolina, faster than I would otherwise, trying to keep up with two 13 year olds, one my adopted son. They were considerably shorter than me, so of course had a much lower center of gravity, as our bikes were more or less the same length,
Ah, the adopted son: he was brilliant at destroying things, and soon needed a new bike. Shopping, I was appalled at prices. Again, this is fifteen years ago, but look at this – who would pay USD 1,200 for a mountain bike? The clerk explained that Gary Fisher was a couple inches taller than me, and designed bikes with “cockpits” – distance from seat to handlebars – to effectively lower the relative height overall. In other words, make it harder to go “endo.”
He offered that I could ride it around the parking lot, and after “busting” a curb or two, I knew who would pay $1,200 for a mountain bike. Me.
And then, of course, we moved to Spokane. I rode a couple trails. We moved to Mexico. Eventually I left it with my several-years Myspace friend Hektor Dangus to sell in Austin, Texas.
And the fake Crocs? Well, yeah, they are fake Crocs – but left at floor level, simply chew toys.