The numbers

This is what I saw on our refrigerator yesterday morning. 66-44-77-66. Struck me as rather unusual, but then it’s been happening a lot lately: glancing at the clock at 11:11 or 15:15. I even glanced at the electronic odometer in the new car a few weeks ago to find it was the same as the time on the clock.

Anyway, I never imagined I’d live in a place where I would consider 60% relative humidity “dry,” but Uruguay is that place. As you might surmise from my note on the AcuWRONG device in the photo, the accurate humidity reading is actually 12% more.

Today is again completely overcast and windy. I’ve got the wood stove cranked up, even though for economic reasons (lower electrical rates during the day) it makes more sense to use the electric “split” (heat/AC) unit. The more dry heat we can get today, the better!

And I think back to wood stoves up north with cast iron kettles boiling water on top for humidity – nooooooo!

Later that day: get in car after walking dog, glance at clock….

Unhappy day in Uruguay

I refer, of course, to Uruguay getting booted out of the 2018 World Cup by France. Cavani didn’t play.

And it’s been kind of cold. And overcast: dreary.

But my new bath brush arrived from China! It’s been almost three months since it was shipped.

It’s also almost exactly three years from the first replacement. This time I paid $5.29 instead of $4.02. Before this order, I paid the same for two brushes, but mistakenly sent them to our official U.S. address. So now my my sister-in-law has two bath brushes.

The condition of the old one is surprisingly similar to the last time. Interesting that the earlier one arrived in three weeks instead of three months, and the second arrived within days of three years after the first.

That numbers thing again?

From asado to barbecue to…

I explained asado some time ago, the painfully slow way (from a northern point of view) of cooking meat over glowing coals. Fine when you have a group and plenty of time. When the objective is to cook something outside in hot weather, a gas barbecue grill is not perfect, but tremendously more efficient.

But the prices here are double you’d expect to pay in North America, and quality poorer, so it’s hard to justify buying one new.

You might recall we bought a used one and fixed it up.

The other night, I went to fire it up, and the left burner lit up and immediately went out, as if the valve had broken. The right side hissed as if gas was coming through, but wouldn’t light. So, on to the next alternative: a single gas burner we haven’t used in years, and our largest skillet, which doesn’t have a lid (hence the pizza pan).

I might try taking off the valve and looking at it, but given the grill’s age can’t count on replacement parts. More likely the gas burner will end up inside, perhaps with a second burner. One of those projects one has to be in the right frame of mind for; hands get filthy.

UPDATE:

It’s back to looking like a plain old barbecue grill,

but under the hood it’s become a gas stove. Which means less heat inside the house!

Yes, those are bricks holding up the rear legs.

The coin nobody wants

I got two coins in my change last Thursday at the feria. They are the same diameter, though one is slightly thinner.

the thoroughly unloved Uruguayan 50-peso coin

Here the thinner one is on the left. It’s quite plain, not at all distinctive, and just looks cheap compared to the one on the right.

the thoroughly unloved Uruguayan 50-peso coin

When you flip them over, the distinctive one clearly states its value. The other you really have to take into bright light (as I did for the picture) in order to read.

the thoroughly unloved Uruguayan 50-peso coin

Yes, that wretched coppery coin is worth FIVE TIMES the other.

Normally I get rid of them in the very next transaction, so normally I would not have one to show, but this was from my last purchase of the day.

Is it just me? I asked the cleaning girl today when she arrived. No, she confirmed, everyone hates them.

Issued in 2011, it says Bicentenario de los hechos historicos. Which means (drum roll, please) Bicentennial of historic events. What events? They’re not saying.

It’s not the first 50 peso coins, but at least the others clearly stated their denomination.

It’s an idiotic coin, produced by idiots. I will pass this one on this afternoon, when I stop by the butcher’s.

Update: done.

Those ceiling spiders

I have nothing against spiders. They eat lots of critters, and that’s a good thing. What’s less good is when they decide to hang out at the tall peak of our bedroom ceiling, and we end up with insect inedibles drifting toward the floor (fortunately not directly above where we sleep).

I finally decided I had struggled with our foldable ladder (which gives us access to above-stairs storage) one too many times. So off to the workshop, and after a few fits and starts, this:

homemade bug spray extender

The lever and plunger are slightly off to the side, so the spray doesn’t hit the wire. And why wire instead of string? Simple — I don’t have any string!

So now I can stand on a chair that lives a meter away, reach up, and spray with much more accuracy than when I had to lean back off the ladder against the wall. Not exactly pretty to look at, but hey, it works!

I don’t like the idea of spraying poison. My ultimate solution will be a lightweight vacuum cleaner extension, but I can’t make that from stuff I have lying around. Up north, I’d wander around Home Depot until I found something that worked. Here, I have to tell someone in a store what I’m trying to do, have them rummage around and come back with the wrong thing, try again, try again—.

Another dead light bulb

Aren’t these things supposed to last eight years? Well, we have been here a little more than eight years, and this bulb is kaput.

dead Philips compact fluorescent light bulb

To be fair, it was in my wife’s office, and heavily used. It’s also definitely more than a year or two old, whenever it was I started writing the date and source on the bulb in indelible marker as soon as I got it home.

You may recall the wretched bulbs Tienda Inglesa introduced after its American takeover.

What you pay for

I have posted a few times about cheap Chinese products. One of my recent free-international-shipping purchases was a replacement for a 4-port USB hub that was compact, highly-rated on Amazon, and, for whatever reason, disappeared.

After a week, its status.

discarde cheap Chinese 4-port USB hub, Uruguay

Obviously a quality-control reject, it dropped connections. Fortunately, during its brief tenure, I did not rely on it for external drives, just keyboard and mouse.

So it’s a complete write-off, my investment of USD 0.99, delivered from China for free.

Goodbye slotted screws

Twelve or thirteen years ago, when we lived in Spokane, I reached my breaking point. I don’t recall specifics, but it resulted in me going through all the hardware in my workshop, new and used, and throwing in the trash every slotted screw I could find.

slotted screw

Come to find that in Uruguay slotted screws are ubiquitous. The other day, in order to clean the outsides of our wooden windows with homemade screens, I had to remove a couple of them. The frames and windows have slots in them, and a removable wooden spline is screwed to the top frame. Hmm, let me try that another way:

spline

Squinting up against the outside light, it’s hard enough to find the old and dark screws’ locations, much less the orientation of the slot. For a couple of them I had to use a flashlight.

After everything was cleaned, I put all but one of them back, which I took to the ferretería, to buy the same with a Phillips head. And so, into the trash with the slotted screws!

Perhaps one day I’ll feel the same about Phillips head screws, and insist on Pozidriv or Supadriv or Robertson (square), or double square, or triple square, or hex socket, or double hex, or Torx. But I doubt it. The 81-year old Phillips is just fine for now.

Free international shipping

I’ve posted several times about buying stuff from China with free international shipping (including a 99¢ money clip I used today). The latest is more of the same, with a couple of international twists: first, it came from India, not China.

Piezo lighter delivered to Uruguay from India for free

Here, exactly:

Secondly, I thought of such a thing because a Romanian friend staying with us for a couple weeks in April, after watching me throw matches into the BBQ grill to get it lit (zzzzzht-toss-dammit! zzzzzht-toss-dammit!; zzzzzht-toss-FOOOMP!), wondered if there was somewhere in Uruguay to buy a sparking lighter (piezoelectric; no fuel) to take back to his father in Romania.

Recognizing that such a thing would be, if not as exciting, probably a better approach for me, I thought about trying to find such a thing in Montevideo. Half a day at least. Chance of success? Under 50%, I figured.

Twenty minutes later I had ordered one on eBay for USD 7.

From India. With free international shipping. 27 days to arrive, and it works great!

How did this happen?

Maybe we bought a blender and it burned out.

Maybe we bought one from Tim and Loren when they returned to the land of the Untied Snakes.

Syd and Gundy gave us one when they were cleaning out storage space. Which I burned up trying to grind up eggshells for the compost pile (thanks for that idea, cuzzie ;-).

How did we end up with three blender tops?

So now I’m sort of doing the same. I’m reading The Joy of Less and loving it. Because of our frequent moves in the past — 10 in a 21-year period from 1986 — including two overseas, we’ve done a lot of paring down.* However, even in a non-consumerist culture like Uruguay, the stuff piles up once you settle.

When we made hummus the other day, I dragged out our two blender bases, both of which are pretty heavy duty. One didn’t work at all (ah, another project!). The other did the job. But then a day later a third blender top surfaced. Do we need three? They seem to be sort-of-but-not-quite interchangeable.

And then, when was the last time we used the blender?

Perhaps in 2016. Perhaps not.

There’s something distinctly non-minimalist going on here!

* three of us moving from Mexico: about ten suitcases, three pet carriers (2 trips), plus a single pallet shipped from Houston with 16 cartons, a floor lamp, and a BMX bike.