Hearing the dogs stir shortly after sunrise this morning, I got up to let them out. Almost immediately Mocha started barking at the closer avocado tree (for the record, notthe one I put fence around). Aha!
Hmmm …. trying to remember – can dogs climb trees?
The first year we had avocados, there were 32 of them. So when a possum got one, it was a big deal. This year, both trees have been producing since March. At 6:45 AM, standing naked in the back yard watching a four-legged looter getting ready to steal an avocado, my best course of action quickly became clear: go back to bed.
Later we saw that the critter had indeed had a heart-healthy breakfast. Mocha wonders if it is still in the tree.
Meanwhile, a few feet away, our little orange tree whose first harvest (three oranges?) happened this year, looks primed to do considerably better next. Which would be wonderful. But I have to wonder if it will be as “dumb” as our lemon tree, and grow so much fruit that a branch breaks. Time will tell.
Just shy of six months ago I totaled our Chevy Meriva. The driver of the delivery truck that hit me (the whole thing was entirely my fault) had no insurance, and I assured him I would help him with repairs. He spoke great English, and we had quite an interesting and unrelated discussion as we waved away the ambulance crew, who couldn’t quite believe there were no injuries.
It turns out I had no insurance, either, since the company never sent a bill, and lied that they had called me ten days before they cancelled it for non-payment – just a couple of weeks before the accident. And though I sent a couple of text messages to Jorge, the other driver, I heard nothing back. Was it possible I got his number wrong and he got my number wrong?
Yesterday my cell phone rang. That in itself is unusual, because it’s almost always in airplane mode, serving primarily as a camera. It’s Jorge, wondering if I remember him (of course) and was still willing to help (of course). He said the repairs would be around USD 2,000,1 and I agreed to meet him today at the gas station near the accident, as he would be on his way to Montevideo.
Let the ironies roll: traffic was crawling on the highway, and I saw police cars and an ambulance, so guessing I couldn’t cross the most direct way, went over the bridge and through the awkward back streets to get there. I was early, and curious what the fuss was about.
Irony #1: it was about a car broadsided. Though I have heard there are many accidents in this crossing, before and since my car being broadsided I have never seen another.
The closest point of grass in this photo is where the Meriva and I ended up, spun 180%.
Irony #2: I thought I had gotten a picture of the crashed car (silver, to the left of the police truck), but with shutter lag instead have it obscured by a black car.
Irony #3: that black car is exactly at the point of impact of my crash.
Irony #4: the black car in my photo is in the exact position of the black car in the Google Earth screen shot I used to illustrate my accident back in March.2
Feeling little chills yet?
Anyway, our meeting was rather emotional and ended with a big hug, and Jorge telling me if I ever need something delivered from Montevideo, let him know and he’d do it for free.
1 I asked if I could see the estimate, and it was closer to USD 3,000 2 wrong lane, but hey….
I was informed yesterday that I needed to sign and deliver a power of attorney letter pronto! regarding a Swiss-based investment in Panama that turned out to be a scam. Issue #1: it absolutely had to be delivered on legal-size stationery (8-1/2 x 14″). I do have legal-size documents from Uruguay. Alas, they date from the 1980s. “Legal size” hasn’t been here for a long time.
So how on earth to create a document that size? Visit a papelería and ask them to cut down an A3 sheet to size? Actually, turns out the solution is much simpler – shoot an email to our Canadian neighbors Janet and Wayne, and minutes later retrieve a ream of legal-size stationary from atop the wall that separates our properties.
Issue #2: OK, I am used to this; it has existed for the couple decades I’ve sent shipments internationally with “Federal” Express – but this is just total insanity:
If you have any insight into this, please let me know. Is it just a scam for people who don’t pursue details?
Mexico – January 1, 2009 (southern hemisphere summer): I read Syd’s post about a forest fire which started on the beach side, jumped the Ruta Interbalnearia (main coast road), and did extensive damage to wooded areas on the north side (fortunately not homes, which here are generally not combustible). Three months later we visited, met Syd and Gundy; three more months visited again to check it out in the worst weather; three months later moved. (By the way, Uruguay has been my longest stay in one place since I turned 16 and got my driver’s license!)
Informal loggers moved in, using the excuse of dead trees to remove more than a few perfectly healthy ones. I don’t include in-between imagery because it’s not that good, but clearly shows large areas of dead trees.
Over seven years later, when Benji and I joined Syd and dogs for walks, occasional charred stumps were the only indication that something devastating had occurred. Syd was – and still is – frequently pointing out grown-over paths that used to be a “road,” mostly for horse-drawn carts. And he has frequently told me of areas that used to be forest. I didn’t exactly not believe him, but I was amazed to consult Google/CIA Earth historical satellite imagery and see how vastly the area has changed. The wooded image is from 2006; the barren from 2014. The trees have thickened a bit since then. When stuff grows here, it tends to grow like crazy, but unfortunately the “loggers” of firewood here now do their best to prevent any trees from growing to maturity. We have no idea who the land belongs to.
It’s a lovely area to walk dogs – though not without issues: cows, bees (we were inexplicably attacked near hives we know about yesterday), horses which Mocha hasn’t yet learned to “live and let live,” motorbikes and quads, which happily Mocha ignores, unlike Benji, who went crazy chasing them.
But it’s also for the most part brush. Not particularly interesting. I look at how it was, and can only think it must have been almost magical, compared to now.
As I stood in my little workshop, waiting for glue to set on the fake Crocs from which the puppy removed significant portions, I noticed the laser portion of my printer dissection. I assumed it would need to be broken open, but now picked it up and saw it had four little plastic tabs – piece of cake!
And very cool! The laser is at the arrow on the right. The hexagonal disk has mirrored edges, and is attached to a motor. The bizarrely-shaped plastic lens is obviously very carefully designed to very precisely deliver incredibly tiny dots at incredibly high speed. The arrow on the left points to a tiny mirror whose purpose remains a mystery to me. Amazing technology.
The plastic bits on the right represent a slightly less amazing technology. I was unable to plug in a Schuko plug to an adaptor (maybe the very one labelled C in this post from 2012). I thought I’d take it apart, which it turns out involved breaking it, but the stuck safety gate shown here dropped out. So I glued the broken parts back together, and voilà – another silly little project done.
It’s been over a week since I last posted, about dissecting a dead laser printer and discovering that it yielded several pounds of recyclable plastic. Today I was cleaning out files and found a photo taken a month ago.
Some low-functioning individual decided a more appropriate way to dispose of a broken printer would be to take it 180 meters from the nearest dwellings, and dump it in a field.
Meanwhile, doing a bit of spring cleaning – it’s amazing how much grows around the edges of those concrete plumbing junction box lids – I found that ants had been using this unused one as a dumping ground for sand as they made their nest under the patio. All the sand in the wheelbarrow came from that box, which means it probably came from below the wheelbarrow. Great!
After removing all the sand I could, I flushed the rest with the 3/4″ hose attached to our well. (Unfortunately not potable water.) “Someone” who saw the hose “come to life” decided it needed to be taught who’s in charge here. He managed to wrap it around this little orange tree three times, tightly.
Meanwhile “there’s something happening here” in the little park near the intendencia in Atlántida. And, as is to be expected, what it is ain’t exactly clear. Huge eucalyptus and pine trees cut down, all the tile torn up, and – nothing. The eucalyptus stump will send up new shoots; the pine in the foreground won’t.
The real question: will whatever they’re doing be complete in three months, when the summer season starts?
You may have read my account about dissecting the dead kitchen scale, and maybe thought well, that’s a silly thing to do. And maybe you’re right.
I had pulled my wife’s desk back so I could work on a window, and a certain dog who is not allowed upstairs apparently got upstairs while we were out, went to look out the window, got tangled in wires, and pulled a computer and laser printer from the desk. I immediately ran diagnostics on the computer (a Mac Mini) and it seemed to be fine. The 9 year old printer, on the other hand, wasn’t working right at all.
The local computer place techie looked at it, identified one part was cracked and basically not replaceable. So I had two challenges: 1) find another printer, and 2) take this one completely apart without breaking anything.
68 screws, 17 springs, and 12 gears later, it was done! The heating element (black and red rollers to the left) was the single most difficult challenge. Amazing the ingenuity that goes into putting pieces together – little tabs, rotate this, pry back that….
The number of springs surprised me. I did break a couple of small pieces of plastic, but on purpose to save time, not because I couldn’t figure out their assembly.
The carcass
In addition to admiring the design and engineering wizardry, I can hardly imagine how they created the incredibly intricate molded plastic parts.
As with the kitchen scale, there’s nothing particularly useful for other projects, though I’ll save some of the bits of wire and springs, and chuck the rest.
But wait! I see at the large plastic pieces are identified as ABS for recycling (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, but you knew that). So in addition to having a fun hour or so, disassembling the printer allows for recycling at least some of it (bits of aluminum as well) that otherwise would have gone to a landfill.
And oh by the way, I found no evidence of a crack or break in the part the techie indicated. But it doesn’t matter: the printer no longer worked, and wasn’t about to get fixed.
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….
Apparently the Santa Rosa storms have arrived. It’s dreary, and windy, and rainy. So perhaps appropriate to post photos I took a few days ago, on a beach walk, when I thought the weather was just awful, and rightly predicted that virtually no one else would be on the beach. (Hint: no blue sky today!)
This is the access board walkway I have shown many times in the past. Because of a “valley” walkway through the dunes to the beach, “they” built a board walkway. But “they” didn’t realize that, free of erosion, the dune would naturally build back to its original height, maybe 1.5 meters higher than the highest point of the walkway, making it the second choice for crossing the dunes. But it gets “better:” to the left (from this perspective), the new “valley” has now become so massive that it’s actually stripped away dunes from where they grew over the walkway. Great work by whoever “they” are (who BTW also budgeted zero for maintenance).
In the next town over (five blocks away), I am heartened to see that I am not the only one disgusted with the fishermen who leave behind their trash.
Using the formal (su instead of tu), graffiti implores one to take [away] your trash. And then, Mister Fish[erman] (a little confusing to me, since it seems to say pescada, whereas “fish” in this sense (literally caught) is pescado, care for the river. I have explained – but with over 1,000 posts, don’t easily find – that the Uruguayans consider this thing that others might reasonably call an ocean, having no flow nor other side, a river. In fact, an estuary. Whatever.
Anyway, I find the formal and polite nature of this message amusing. Perhaps explains why I found some of my stickers apparently scratched off trash containers, as if they were too norteamericano blunt.
But hey, they got the job done – sort of. More on that later.
You may recall I have not had great success with Mercado Libre, the Craigslist of Latin America. But, learning about training dogs on Doggy Dan’s site, and watching Mocha run in front of cars, completely ignoring me, before I could get him on leash after our most recent beach walk, I decided I needed to train with a dog whistle. So I went to three vet shops in town, only to find none had one (interestingly, after being corrected by the first I asked for a chifle instead of silbato; I now learn that chifle really means a child’s plastic whistle, so silbato was the correct term after all?).
Anyway, nice day, riding around town on my bike, so what next? What about Mercado Libre?
Sure enough I found one for about USD 6- with free delivery. OK, why not? I ordered it (after inquiring if they actually had it). That was Monday. This morning, Wednesday, a moto pulled up in front of our house, beeping his horn for me to sign and take delivery.
¡Increible! The training involves developing a neural pattern where your dog is insanely happy to hear the whistle, because it means he’s getting a lovely morsel of hot dog or something equally scrumptious, and comes running like crazy. Which is exactly what Mocha did today when I again walked with Syd and dogs. Well, at least once.
A bit complicated, but after putting down Benji – who had attacked Jordan, Syd’s only male dog, twice, despite our efforts to ameliorate, after our absence because of Mocha’s broken leg — Mocha and I rejoined them further along the walk route, since Mocha needed more walk training, and the off-leash point from Syd and Gundy’s house usually involves a half dozen or more dogs, most loose. Ten minutes later Gundy found Jordan in their driveway, trembling. Apparently encountering Mocha in the place he last encountered and got beat up by Benji was all it took to create a flight response.
So today we started together from the house, and all went well. Until Jordy – who spends most of the walk prospecting for rabbits – didn’t make a cameo appearance halfway through. Syd was convinced he’d again bailed, but a few minutes later he appeared. I decided this deserved a reward, so called “Come, Jordy,” from ten meters. He did! I gave him a little pancho (hot dog) treat. Well, that was it for his sister Kiya (KEE-shah). She walked behind me, licking one hand, then the other. I finally found an excuse to reward her with a treat, but it was so interesting — neither the two sister dogs Sophia and Lorena nor the “sharp knife” Leah took any interest. Only Kiya: you’re giving my brother a treat — I don’t care WTF he’s done — and not me?
