The 30-mile salad

My wife recently asked, where’s your camera? which means come take a picture of this. (In case the concept of camera confuses you, yes, I do have a phone, but a a clamshell unit that can only sync the results of its .3 MB camera through Windows OS, which we do not use.)

food-color

And though I probably would have opted for white or yellow onions in a baked dish, I must say the red onions make it more photo-worthy. The light yellow is winter squash from our garden. Onions, carrots, green peppers, and tomatoes, were I to source them, most likely came from within 30 miles of here.

If you are familiar with the 3,000-mile-salad of northern North America, and the fragile nature of the truck-based food transportation system in the USA (Syd can fill us in, perhaps, about Canada), the thought that fresh produce grows nearby feels kind of warm and fuzzy. No, it’s not all organic, but organic is available: we paid 90 pesos/kilo* last Saturday for organic green peppers at the local féria organica at Pilar’s chacra. We then stopped at Tienda Inglesa, where they sold for 158 pesos/kilo* — and not organic.

Not perfect, but not bad. And we get lettuce and cucumbers as well year-round, also local.

*USD 1.36/lb vs USD 2.39/lb

 

 

Today’s walk: three observations

Actually yesterday.

  1. An interesting roof enhancement. Probably to be finished with stamped metal sheets. The spacing of the whatever-you-call-them horizontal slats appears to large for plastic imitation-clay tiles.
Wood framing for a second roof over quincho, Atlántida, Uruguay

2. Well, this is moving at a decent clip.

construction

Compare with the photo I posted on March 7:

constr-1

Granted, a “dry” construction house could have been completed in this span of time, but this seems fast compared to another construction on the same street, which I’ve documented.

3. Duneshrooms, next to the dead snakes.

duneshrooms

Syd has collected some edible mushrooms recently during dog walks in Villa Argentina, at the base of eucalyptus stumps. Which seems a reasonable place to expect mushrooms to grow. But here are some growing out of — what? I have never seen mushrooms in the dunes before. And OBTW a meter away (top) are the dead snakes.

Two dead snakes, where snakes shouldn’t be, then two clusters of mushrooms where mushrooms shouldn’t be. OK, maybe not massively weird, like elongated skulls and impossible stone construction (I’m foreshadowing: we’ll be exploring in Peru and Bolivia in July). But, a little weird nonetheless.

Beach. Wheel. Dog.

OK: granted, one of my more worthless posts: but here in the off-season, odd shit washes up and you have to (maybe) wonder about its origin. In this case a wheel.

tire-1

In context, with the Oriental Spinky-faced Sand Hound.

tire-2

Create a short story based on this in 50 words or less? Not sure I can. But try?

 

Sanders: my experience

No, not Bernie.

I’m making another 1-meter hanging shelf for under the kitchen cabinets. I bought a piece of 1″ x 10″ pine, a bit longer than needed (so I can trim the ends square with my table saw, since the good ol’ boys at the aserradero don’t quite grasp the concept of “right angles”). Then, of course, there’s lots of sanding to get rid of various planer marks. Fortunately, I have a hand-held belt sander that makes quick work of such chores. At least until almost finished, when it suddenly stops working.

Well, with not much left to do, I wasn’t bothered at having to use my much-less-competent palm sander. Well, to clarify, much less competent when they both work. Instead, I found it to be equally competent: instead of sanding, it just made noises. Might as well have been dead as the other.

A few days later (today), I decided to tear into them and see what I could.

Disassembled hand sanders

The palm (orbital) sander, to the left of the screwdriver, was hopeless. Something’s jamming the central shaft, and I have not a clue what (nor why it didn’t the last time I used it, a while ago). A path forward wasn’t immediately evident.

On the belt sander, however, I found it is activated by a double-pole switch — basically two switches acting together, one for each incoming live wire (and they’re both live in Uruguay, so I tend not to do “simple repairs” to light fixtures or outlets without first turning off the entire house circuit). Easy diagnostics revealed one switch wasn’t working, so I installed a jumper wire (turquoise “U” at lower right) so that the connection is always on, and — ta da! — it worked, and I replaced twelve screws that hold the two halves together.

Turned it on, finished my sanding job, turned it off — uh, no. Now the switch is jammed “on.” But guess what? I don’t really care! Unplug it to turn it off. It works!

I won’t be tempted to tear it apart again because, being a cheap no-brand tool, the screws that hold it together anchor into the plastic molding of the other half. They were all nice and tight when I undid them, but only a third of them really firmly reconnected. The others just turned and turned.

So it may end up being held together with wire and duct tape. But it works — !

I’m feeling more Uruguayan all the time.

Dead snakes in the dunes

dead-snakes

A few days ago, at the end of the boardwalk, edge of the beach. Why snakes would have been there is beyond me. No obvious evidence of what killed them. A month or so ago, I encountered a local man trying to kill a snake at the other end, near the parking area. I told him it wasn’t harmful. But he wanted to kill it anyway, “por las dudas” — just in case. Idiot!

From town to city

Heard today that Atlántida is now officially a city instead of a town, having a population of over — drum roll, please — 15,000 people. Only in Uruguay.

The "junk house" oF Atlántida, Uruguay

Here’s the “junk house” in the middle of Atlántida that we walked by today. You can walk by it yourself in Google Earth Street View:  34°46’18.01″S  55°45’17.51″W. You just won’t see the spinky-face dog.

 

Truck gets hit by dog

Yes, you read that right.

Benji disappeared into a yard, the second half of which, facing the potholed dirt road, has tall bushes. I couldn’t see him, but, leash in hand, was watching for movement through the bushes. Also monitoring the aging Doguita, who sensibly stays to the side of the road when a vehicle, such as a 50-year-old gardner’s pickup, lumbers toward us.

Sure enough, with impeccable timing and predictable lack of vector calculation, Benji comes blasting blind out of the yard and BAM! smacks into the truck. I thought he hit the bumper. Maybe he hit the fender. Anyway, an exceptionally loud noise. The driver stops, rolls down the window and I say in Spanish “They never learn.” Had I been a little quicker, I might have asked if his truck was OK. Whatever the look on my face, it must have been amusing. He smiles, says something, drives off with his workers. No big deal.

I think I detect a limp, but no, within 30 seconds Benji is on to the next house, yapping at the dogs behind the fence and running up and down with them, tails wagging.

(N.B.: I am careful to keep him on the leash where I know fast traffic is possible.)

banji-tennis-ball

Here’s the little darlin’ earlier today, once again delivering a destroyed tennis ball for me to kick 3 meters (max) from where I sit at my computer so he can chase it.