Not firing on all cylinders

Yesterday: Syd expecting house-sitters arriving by bus at our usual dog walk time, suggests we go at 1:45 instead of 3:00. No problem. I show up on time. Except that it’s 12:45. And now his dogs are all agitated, so we go an hour early. I wonder what exactly I was thinking. It must take a special set of skills to misread a digital clock: my computer and cell phone.

After the walk, I stop by (an hour early, but fine with them) to collect house keys for friends going away for several days, in case a real estate agent wants to show their house. Out their front door, I am unable to lock the fence gate. I ring the doorbell. Don comes out; also tries it without success. This is weird. Well, let’s check the driveway sliding gate, he says. It doesn’t work either.

At which point he realizes we’re using my keys, not theirs. Well, there’s that little mystery solved.

It’s spring, getting warmer, but nights are cool, so we’re indulging the last of our firewood.

Is it just my imagination, or is the wood stove laughing at me like I’m an idiot?

 

 

Quadruple bypass on a bun

Last couple days, I’ve had to venture past the peaje – tool booth – a couple times, to buy tiles. A phone call confirmed that what I wanted was en stock, and the visit to pay for them confirmed, as last time, that that means “come back tomorrow afternoon after they’re delivered from Montevideo.” That’s OK: it’s not far, and I like the certainty of seeing goods versus waiting around for delivery of – whatever….

And, of course, the odd chance for cultural enlightenment. At the Costa Urbana shopping mall, which sprawls above Avenida Giannattasio and contains perhaps 157 stores selling shoes (I’m not sure an accurate count has ever been done), I saw this appalling Burger King ad, for a quadruple-cheesburger with bacon.

something about burger king

I have noticed that Uruguayans have gotten noticeably fatter the nine years we’ve been here. Still not perhaps up to American Standards, but definitely noticeable. But – I immediately wondered – is this uniquely Uruguayan? Something in me said yes, but that seemed unlikely.

So I went online.

something about burger king

This horrific “flame grilled to perfection” culinary disaster represents the maximum extent of Burger King’s US offerings: a mere 1,480 calories and 2,340 milligrams of salt.

Now let’s look at Burger King’s Uruguay site:

something about burger king

OK, maybe I added something. Click on that, and you can see that they offer more info about “nutrition:” this should be interesting, no?

something about burger king

Ah, yes…

something about burger king

… their further nutritional info is also maybe you’d like some chocolate-cake ice-cream thing or French fries?

The type in red is my addition: also maybe you’d like a trip to the emergency room in an ambulance?

This is the same profoundly misled/ignorant place where feedlot beef commands a premium.

Paradise Uruguay. Uruguay Natural. No: just more exploitation of ignorance.

Sad.

A year ago, I brought back a cheap pair of boots from the United States.

chewed boots

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?

 

 

Spotted at the DMV

We got our new car three months ago, so this is old news, but as we were getting the license plates I swiveled my chair slight and surreptitiously took this picture.

un-filed papers in boxes

Umm, maybe they’re – umm, maybe – who the hell knows? Is there information here that a just-another-human bureaucrat can’t access with a few key strokes?

I like that idea.

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.