Our timing was bad, but our location could have been worse. Walking dogs at 5:00 PM, Syd and I got rained on to the point that I decided going into an air-conditioned supermarket in wet cotton might not be the best idea. And it was necessary: we were out of wine! It’s not killer air conditioning as in the Untied Snakes, but I remember well from my days as a summer camp counselor in Maine: Cotton Kills. Hypothermia is not your friend.

Home, just a couple kilometers away, we had received a lot of rain – pooling in streets, filling drainage ditches. I showered, changed clothes, waited for the rain to abate, and took off again for the 4-5 minute drive to Tienda Inglesa.

Not. The entire town was gridlocked/stop-and-start. I thought I could come at T.I. from the back, but that involved the Rambla (beach front road), which was no better. This is what I saw of the stoppage:

The red represents gridlocked or stop-and-start traffic. The 4-5 minute trip from A to B took at least 30 minutes.

The trip back was significantly quicker, traveling the right direction on the Ruta Interbalnearia:

Those cars headed west toward Montevideo appear that they may be moving slowly. They’re not. They’re stopped.

So I’m a little puzzled: this shouldn’t be “turnover” day – once upon a time, families here spent a month on vacation, but now it’s two weeks, and that turnover’s not for another couple days.

Sure, it’s Sunday, and the weather suddenly went pear shaped.

Wild….

At the Christmas day party of our neighbors, we met a house-sitting couple from North Carolina who happen to be professional videographers with decades of experience, who love stories. And we – particularly my wife, who got caught in the middle of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and who survived a perilous crossing of the Indian Ocean in monsoon season, detailed in her memoirs – have a few.

Charles and Linda came to visit and we set a date and time for a shoot for their One of a Million series. They arrived with what I thought was a lot of equipment, but they insist is just a fraction of it.

They rearranged furniture, set up lights and background (I helped with background lighting, great fun!). Charles did most of the technical work, while Linda prepped Susan for their interaction, with her as off-screen and unheard interviewer.

What’s remarkable is that the end result feels as if it was one take, whereas the final 5-minute video is carefully edited from perhaps an hour of shooting (I lost track of time). They want it to feel like you’re chatting with someone over a cup of coffee.

Then there was the acoustic environment. The neighbors’ music, playing since 8:30 AM, stopped. It was raining lightly, so there were no weed eaters or lawn mowers. There was almost no traffic on the street. The dogs didn’t bark once the entire time. And the completely obnoxious gas delivery truck with its piercing Führ Elise noise was nowhere to be heard.

As soon as the shooting stopped, the renters next door returned home from wherever. Shortly after, I heard the gas truck in the distance. 24 hours later – today – we would have had a very loud weed eater and lawn mower going next door. With the shotgun condenser mic, maybe background noise would not have mattered. But the lack of it was amazing and wonderful.

I wondered what would happen to the left-behinds, and it appears that anything goes, indeed. The big container re-appeared in position number one.

Inside it appear what looks like the base of a fan, and a toilet, along with podas. But no visible appliance or fencing from my previous post. So perhaps the people who delivered this container, being more than one and thus able to load those items into the container, did so, and took them away?

If so, a remarkable and encouraging display of initiative – kudos!

Maybe six months ago I wrote to the Intendencia of Canelones (our departamento), who had been putting up lots of signs like this.

Given a ditch in front of my house, and narrow street, where exactly was I supposed to put tree and bush trimmings (podas), I asked? I never received a reply.

However, a month or so ago a large container appeared nearby on the large circular lot, and filled rapidly.

It actually appears in two different places. This was the second.

And here is the first. Apparently they assumed – as did I, for that matter – that it would be obvious the containers were there solely for organic material. Apparently, though, the owner of the washing machine and the guy who dragged overgrown chain link fencing didn’t get the memo. Or maybe they would have been hauled away, had they actually made it into the container instead of being left next to it. Either would have required more than one person to accomplish.

Before the container appeared, I had made substantial and ugly pile of trimmings this side of that little path in the foreground. I made a point of cleaning it all up when the container appeared, even though it was not actually in this spot, but the other, 50 meters away. It was a bit of work, but it was the right thing to do.

Will the people who left this stuff be equally responsible?

I suspect I already know the answer to that question.