Cold, windy and raining

I wish you could hear the wind howling outside right now 35+mph winds and chilly, around 48F.

It has been like this all day. So glad it's warm inside!

No Money For You!

I went to the mall to get some cash from the ATM, or so I thought. I went to every ATM in the mall, they were all out of cash.

There are 2 ATM's by a bank. I was trying to get cash out but it was repeating in a woman's voice with a Brit accent that it was out of order. The girl trying the other ATM next to me said something about it not working and left. I thought it was just mine, so I went to the other one and displayed on the screen was "Would you like to make another transaction", and I realized she hadn't cancelled out her sesssion, I pressed "No" and out comes her card! I look all over for her and don't see her. I took the card next door to the bank and after finding someone who spoke English (And even then still had problems explaining the situation) was able to hand the card over to someone with the bank.

RIP KIng of Pop

I was going to check my Yahoo email and looked at Michael Jackson's picture and the corresponding headline. It took me a second to let it sink in, the first part that hit me was his age, I'm not to far off the mark. I didn't initially click on the link to read the story, after a few minutes I did and was surprised to see that it may have been a heart attack, scary.

Don't Throw Anything Away

That's what the lady cleaning my apartment told me before she started. I put a small box together with things we couldn't take, mostly food and some odds and ends and told her she could have that.

Well there was an old bed sheet and a bathrobe that we meant to use as rags but never did, so I told her that I was throwing it away as the material was not good for rags and she told me "Don't throw anything away, you might think it's junk, but somebody here can do something with it". I'm glad I heard that from her. We American's are in such a throw everything away mindset.

We were taking something to the trash, an old plastic bin that was a planter, it was breaking apart and it was junk. As we approached the dumpster she said "Let me make sure that nobody is sleeping in there". That wasn't a joke, it's cold and someone could have been sleeping in it.

The Moment I had Been Waiing For

It was the day to see how many Mas points I had and what nice thing I can redeem the points for.

You might recall how we thought getting one of these discount cards would be so difficult, when I eventually mustered up enough Spanglish to ask for one you would have thought I had one the lottery.

The grocery store keeps the items that you can redeem the points for behind a showcase, everything from kitchen gadgets to cheap electronics. I was like a kid in a candy store as I looked at the many items calling out to me "Doc, pick me, Doc, pick me!" Would it be the leather matte kit or maybe even a new digital camera, who knows.

So I went to the store to pick up some items, went to the customer service counter and asked the girl how many points I had "ciente dos", she says. I don't know much Spanish, but that much I knew, 102 and then I wasn't able to make out everything she said but she was shaking her head no and I heard the word "nada".

So I left Disco dejected, no parting gift from the grocery store we spent so many thousands of pesos at. They did have some good meat!

Packed Up

Over the course of the past three days the sound of packing tape ragging across boxes has been the sound that was heard in my apartment. Moving boxes filled every corner ready to go down the elevator as the king sized bed went over the balcony, much like the way it came up.

These guys do a great job and they are so familiar with doing moves with my employer they already know what goes and what stays pretty much. Fortunately one of them spoke decent English otherwise it may have been a little difficult.

We learned valuable lessons from our previous pack out and also from people at work. This time we didn't get rid of as much dry goods or for that matter unopened non=perishable food stuffs. What did we do? Put them in our coolers! The packers don't care whats in the coolers, they are just going to wrap them and put them in boxes.

Overall the haredest part is just making sure that you don't leave to much behind as you can mail things along but ideally you don't want to. You have to figure that you get to check in 2 bags for travel (3 for business class) so you need your bags packed before they start packing as well.

Now the clean up begins, some fun!

Nice relaxing day - redux

Just returned from a nice jog and walk on the beach. The beach is only around 1/4 of a mile, my guess, so it was a few back and forth treks. Mind you there are longer beaches here but it would be a decent workout just getting there.

The weather is beautiful, sunny and in the 60's. Quite the departure from the colder weather we have been having.

Our cats have acclimated to the weather change and they appear a little more fluffier these days.

Book Corner - Finished Reading

Death Trust by David Rollins

Paperback 416 pages

Fiction - Military mystery thriller

It started off as a good read, but then I started getting turned off by the mistakes in the technical details and how far fetched all together the story was. Of course this is to be expected, but the ending just went overboard for me and I could almost not finish reading the last three chapters.

The Round Up

I haven't been posting nearly as much as I should. My Internet service has been worse than usual, horribly slow. This has made streaming television and movies horrible. We are subscribing to a U.S. VPN service that assigns us a U.S. based IP address thus allowing us access to view on demand shows on NetFlix, NBC.com etc that otherwise does not let you view from other countries. It costs $15 per month but being that we don't have cable or satellite TV it's worth it.

Getting cold here! I have to wear my heavier jacket and knit cap on my walk to work in the mornings. The heat is on at the apartment which is good and bad. Good because it's warm, bad because we can't control the temperature and sometimes it gets too warm, we then open the doors.

I saw the saddest stray dog at the bus stop this morning on my way to church. There usually is a few stray dogs around the mall in the morning, this one really looked like it would make someone a good companion if it got cleaned up and a nice meal. The are so many stray dogs here, often times when you see them they have collars on, they were somebodys pet at one time.

Colder and colder

It's 9:46PM, the wind is howling outside (30+mph) and 52F. So maybe not exactly freezing, it sure is cold. Had put away my wind breaker and take out a heavier jacket and knit cap.

Book Corner - Finished Reading

Prey by Michael Crichton

Paperback 384 pages

You might know Michael Crichton by his well known movie "Jurrasic Park". Well this could be considered Jurrasic Park but on a microscopic scale. It's about nanotechnology gone out of control. You techno-thriller readers would enjoy this.

No Internet Access

Our ADSL modem died and we went without Internet access from Friday till I got home today on Monday (Tech brought me a new modem at work). Ugh, no streaming Internet television or movies, no email, no blog posts! But quite a bit of reading!