What goes around

Setting out to do a good deed, I end up needing one

Ah, it gets complicated. Buckle up.

Starts with a WhatsApp call from Fernanda in Montevideo, an Urguaya whom we met at a recent asado (barbecue) of Jerry, our American country neighbor.

She has sold her apartment in Montevideo (we knew) but still needed to retrieve a few things. Apparently locks had been changed and Jerry’s Uruguaya “secretary” had arranged to meet her and help out, then showed up at the wrong time with the wrong keys, and blamed it all on Chuck.

Chuck is Jerry’s longtime friend, who unbeknownst to me was now at Jerry’s place here, while Jerry is in Miami, heading off on a cruise to Cuba. Turns out the keys he gave were the ones Jerry told him to give.

Fernanda leaves for Spain on Friday, needs a solution. Surely I have a number for Chuck somewhere — ? No, I don’t.

But then remember I need to pick up the charged battery from local ANCAP service station after failed jump-start of Mike and Michelle’s 18-year-old Ford yesterday. So, why not drive a few miles more and talk to Chuck?

Might have worked had I not first turned off after the Ruta Interbalnearia bridge, to the ANCAP station. The Interbalneria is bumper-to-bumper, with lots of people now exiting to take Ruta 11 in my direction, so it seemed to make more sense than stopping there on the way back.

At ANCAP, I learn that Mike had earlier retrieved the battery on foot, and texted me. My current interpretation of smartphone being “camera,” I was offline and got nothing.

Oh well, let’s connect with Chuck.

Back-o-mind wondered if he might be driving into Atlántida for early supper.

Indeed. 100 meters short his drive, we passed. I waved. He waved. Because you wave at everyone, whether you know them or not. Didn’t occur to me that he couldn’t have seen me anyway, driving straight into the sun.

I waved my arm out the window after he passed. Beeped the horn. Nothing.

And so I thought, if I can just turn around and catch with him…. So, slam into reverse, aim for that last driveway, and fail, totally. Backing up in haste, in hurry, with limited vision given dusty windows and light (notice shadow), I quickly found myself in a not-insignificant ditch.

car in ditch, Uruguay
Stuck. As in, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Can’t even open the door. Crawl out the passenger side, call neighbor Mariana, whose father Manuel has hauled my car out of mud before with his tractor. Alas, she’s in Montevideo, and he’s not there. Let me call Abel, she says. Calls me back with good news.

Ten minutes later, a kindly white-haired man rolls up with a big John Deere tractor. We spend a few minutes finding a place to hook onto the car. Then, with no effort at all from the tractor, he gently pulls me out onto the road.

I try to give him some money, but he of course will have nothing to do with it. We’re neighbors, he says.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Benji’s new little friend

Part playmate, part plaything — dogs will be dogs. When Benji came into our lives, Gita played with him, but, being somewhat matronly, she had her limits. Which I thought delightfully karmic, since it reminded me of her introduction into our lives, and how patiently our then-matronly dog Karma put up with Gita (Bhagavad nothing; short for Dogita, and properly spelled Guita), who equally more or less terrorized Karma. And invoked karma.

FWIW, this is my 1,000th blog post. How time flies when you spend it documenting trivialities!

At the taller

While in the States in September, I got to thinking about the pobre Meriva, as our worker referred to our Chevy minivan after seeing the loads it carried. (I wanted to get a four-door pickup when we arrived in Uruguay; wife nixed that idea.) We got it in early 2010. Paint’s fading, windshield best replaced because of scratches from volcanic ash from Chile a few years ago. But it runs well, and the prospect of shopping for anything in Uruguay is generally dreary. So when I got back, I got some repairs done: replaced the serpentine belt in the engine at 90,000 km (supposed to have been changed at 45,000), body pained, and maybe the windshield one day soon.

Quite a few weeks after the paint job, I noticed the strip between the top of the doors and the roof was looking pretty bad.

incomplete car paint job
I’ve been parking inside. This after just a few weeks?

I took it back to the shop (taller) and showed it to the owner. He walked around the car. Whoever painted it simply skipped that area. No problem, he said. Of course, to finish the job will now take another three (Uruguay: read four) days.

While waiting in the garage, I became fascinated with the packaging of a replacement door.

replacement car door cardboard packaging

The strings aren’t added afterward. They’re an integral part of the design. They wrap around little round plastic fasteners.

cardboard package string fasteners

What an elegant (in the engineering sense) solution!

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—.

 

 

The last box

Since we have to go into Montevideo, today was a beach walk day. Strong wind. Heading back, near the zoo, I saw a trash container that had apparently been blown over. I decided to right it, a bit of a challenge with one arm, since I had Benji on a leash. But I did it.

One shoe box remained on the ground. I picked it up, noticed keys, old photos and a copy of a cédula.

box with personal items

The cédula number is 698,315. I didn’t see the birthdate on the back, but seeing as my cédula number from seven years ago is over 5.8 million, and Uruguay’s population is only 3.5 million, I’d say she had a pretty long life.