Jack of all, master of …

A German friend introduced me to the term “project fatigue,” and it describes perfectly the MEGO (my eyes glaze over) feeling I get with renovations and other work proceeding at glacial (lack of) speed.

Also, when I hire someone to do a job, it is not my job to tell them how to do it. Get on with it!

And so it was that I wasn’t paying particular attention when Martín put the sheetrock ceilings in our little country house a few years ago. He used wood instead of steel framing, which I thought poor judgment. In fact, the first batch of lumber delivered was so warped and twisted he had to send it all back. When I asked, he said that if steel framing gets bent, you can’t straighten it out again. OK, cast logic to the wind:

  1. Why should it get bent in the first place?
  2. What about the natural tendency of lumber to warp and twist – especially the low-grade stuff sold here?
  3. Oh, and what about bugs eating wood, which they really like to do here?

Anyway, I wasn’t there, and wasn’t paying attention, because I would have spotted this immediately. Anyone who has done anything with drywall would. In fact, you would find it incredible that someone would pretend to know what they were doing and do something so wrong.

Here’s one example of what’s happening everywhere:

drywall error

The long edges of a sheet of drywall are tapered. To cover that joint, you use a 6″ knife and put a thin layer of “mud” (I’ll have to find out what that’s called here), then lay on top of it paper (or plastic mesh) “tape,” then the finish layer of mud on top of that.

What you don’t do is simply put the tape in the joint, and cover it with mud. Which is exactly what Martín – the jack of all trades – did here. What hasn’t fallen down, will.

Unfortunately, this is quite common here. Everybody’s a builder. Everybody’s an electrician. Everybody’s a plumber. If drywall is a solution, everyone knows how to do drywall.

Except that they don’t.

There are exceptions, but after nine years I am still amazed at the general Uruguayan acceptance of mediocrity. Chinese power tools with two-month guarantees come to mind. Vendors who advertise online, and take money for, products they don’t have in stock. Yet another occurrence last couple days: twice charged then revoked charge on my credit card without explanation. But I have an explanation: they discovered they simply didn’t have the product they advertised.

Es lo que hay. “That’s what it is.” Mediocrity. How unfortunate.

Tiles

Shopping for most things in Uruguay is not fun, given prices, lack of selection and quality, and not-quite-ready-for-first-world business practices. But recently, shopping for tile, at least I found a title amusement in these ceramic tile displays.

Tiles, Uruguay

OK, the English-sign thing. That’s definitely got appeal. Of course they’re missing out by not including possessive apostrophes, but ta.

Tiles, Uruguay

I don’t see how ceramic versions of old American license plates would find a place in too many design schemes. But then again I’m often surprised at the limits of my imagination.

Tiles, Uruguay

Which brings me to what I bought for the terrace above our dining room, in an atempt to solve the moisture/mold problems below. I found a great deal on these 50cm (almost 20″) square tiles: good albedo for summer heat deflection, nice texture. The kid at the store (at a certain age, almost everyone is a kid) advised I should take my 24 square meters in two loads of about 300 kg (660 lbs) each, given my vehicle.

The first trip went swimmingly. On the second trip, I decided I should stop at Tienda Inglesa to stock up on wine, which involved a turn to the right up a ramp. As with the first trip, the tiles were vertical in the back, leaning to the right.

Kar-umpph! Load shift to the left! I did my shopping, then carefully re-leaned the tiles, noticing that happily, few had broken, and with them just corners.

Getting off the Ruta Interbalnearia, I realized we were short on cardboard, still necessary for fire-starting (it’s been a few weeks since this happened) and provision for night time puppy “accidents.” So I pulled slightly off the road, which involved a slight incline, and kar-umpph! This time the fall wasn’t quite as drastic, seeing as it was limited by ten bottles of wine – ten because that’s what fits into a very sturdy bag we have, gift from a friend in Mexico.

And – sorry if this disappoints you – the story does NOT continue with my ruing the odor of alcohol replacing (what’s left of) our new-car smell. No bottles broke, and though significantly more tiles suffered breakage, overall it’s not as bad as you might have imagined.

And there is – at least was – plenty more where it came from.

 

 

 

On the walk

I’ve walked by this many times, but this day it caught my attention: burned-out (from the fire that deforested our dog-walk area) trunk of a pine tree. Charred outer bark, and inside the wood is disintegrating in rectilinear chunks. Huh?

Then, a snake. OK, just a snake – but no, the air was quite cool; the sun was quite hot, and the sky was blue dotted with puffy clouds, and it was lying still, almost into the sandy trail. We tried to keep the dogs from noticing it – and they didn’t – but because Syd and I stopped to look at it, three dogs came back, curious about the unusual human behavior. One almost danced on top of it, but amazingly none stepped on it. And still it didn’t move.

My best guess is it got to the side of the trail in lovely radiant heat from the sun, but when a cloud blocked the sun the cool air took over, its energy went away. I am not a biologist, much less a herpetologist. If you know more, I’d be interested to hear if I’ve got a handle on this.

It appears to be Lystrophis dorbignyi, or South American hognose snake.

From one day to another … to another

irresponsible trash dumping, Uruguay

A few days ago, arriving at the dogs’ favorite watering hole, we found that some troglodytes had made an extraordinary effort to ruin it. Plenty of places to dump stuff nearby, but they put it here: from one day to another.

But another day, and it wasn’t there anymore. Note arrow indicating sand road said troglodytes use to carry other trash to the middle of nowhere, and tend to their bees, cow fencing, etc. (of course none of this is actually their property). Maybe they dumped it where they did so they wouldn’t have to look at it?

And, being card-carrying troglodytes, they had to include plate glass in the load, positioned so that it would shatter when they dumped it. What would have been a 5-minute cleanup job became a 20-minute job because of that glass…

… now prominently on display across their “road.”

Will they get a message from this? I’d be very surprised. But if it causes a couple of obviously-unused synapses in their brains to fire for a nanosecond or two, well hey, mission accomplished.

 

 

Had to chuckle…

…when I saw this in the road.

string in street

Because I knew exactly what it was for.

string in street

Do you? Scroll down for the answer….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bicycle seat with string

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.

 

Finally, a major Mercado Libre success story!

Three months ago, I told about our original kitchen stove and attempt to buy a new one on Mercado Libre. That experience was so ridiculous that I abandoned the idea for a while. Yesterday I looked online again, found one I liked, asked if they actually had it (yes), ordered. Their confirmation included instructions on picking it up, which I didn’t want to do. So I sent an email yesterday evening after office hours with no expectation of a reply, but pretty quickly got a reply with delivery cost (USD 17). I replied saying yes please, here’s my delivery and contact info. This morning found a message from the seller from 8:00 last night: OK, we’ll deliver it tomorrow afternoon.

At 3:40 this afternoon, a phone call from the driver; he’s in El Pinar and will be here in 20 minutes. I try to explain how to get here, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested. Though easy to find, our house somehow eludes many delivery people, so I tell him I’ll stand out in front. Couple minutes before 4:00, I stand at the end of the driveway, and almost immediately a little nondescript truck appears from the opposite direction I expect, but no matter. Driver gives me a thumbs-up, I reply, very pleasant guy unloads the stove and delivers it to our kitchen on a hand truck. Beautiful!

kitchen stove Uruguay

It would be lovely to say I just connected gas and electric and ¡ta! But no. I decided to replace the plastic gas tubing, so rode a few blocks on my bike to the closest ferretería for that. Then discovered that the gas line nipple on the stove was slightly smaller than that of the garafa (13 kg propane tank), and the previous stove. The screw clamp wouldn’t tighten enough to seal it. Dug around in my collection of plumbing detritus, and found a clamp marginally smaller that, fully opened, barely fit over the tubing. Slathered a little silicon adhesive on the nipple por las dudas (just in case: “for the doubts”) and plugged in the electric …

… oh shit. The electric cord has a Shuko plug. I don’t have an adaptor, and don’t want to replace the plug because of warranty concerns. Oh but wait! Digging around in my electrical detritus, I find an Argentine Shuko socket to match our house installations! Find appropriate circuit breaker, pull out components, only to discover that the plastic frame that holds the plugs is broken beyond hope. Go to the nearby electrical shop, ask for a 3-socket frame plus one Shuko socket (which takes up two) and a filler cap, and the kid brings out a complete unit with one Shuko socket. Brilliant!

Presently, I have gas and electric up and running – uh, no. There’s no gas. Thinking the gas tank is low, I change it. Then, thinking my repair of the switch pin of the regulator (involving a small rusty nail) didn’t cut the muster, I replace it with one from our defunct barbecue grill – which, having being exposed to the weather for a while, exudes rusty water and doesn’t work any better. Ack! Now past 6:00 PM, I race to the hardware store again to buy a new regulator. Happily, they’re open until 6:30.

New regulator installed, nada.

Then the “D’oh!” moment. What if you had the on/off positions of the little cryptic plastic garafa-regulator switch reversed in your mind?

TL;DR (LOL): time to take dinner out of the oven.

Home is where you hang your shoes

shoes on coat rack

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.