Dear Diary

Wow, it's Kitchen Pete! How wonderful to see you!
I've missed a lot of folks from "the old Abuzz". Sigh.

I'm still plugging away at work and school. Sigh.


Gosh, it really is great to see you.

No posts exist for this topic? What th?

Yea, I got that too at first. I get that often here.

either a2k or my computer is sporadically slow today...

Well, things be all right at this point, JG and Osso.

What a day this has been for me. Exhausted.

Apparently, the glitch is fixed here.


Be well, dear Letty. Be well.

Thanks to all....and a new name (panzade)...perhaps, I need to arise and take to the A2K keys.

Would someone direct me to a discussion re: the abuses that lead to the shutdown of Personal Message ?

Mapleleaf,
My private e-mail still works. That hasn't changed.

So....some PMs work and some don"t?

I wasn't speaking of PM's here. I meant MY e-mail. Remember?

OK..............

And again, with the no posts for this topic. Sheese.

Dear Diary,

It ended up being a good day. First thing in the morning my wife realized she had left her purse at Ventolini, the outdoor restaurant last night. It contained all of her most precious possesions cedula, drivers license, atm card health plan cards you know the usual plus a notebook with all of her notations and $130.000 pesos. First she was panic stricken then in tears berating herself but the place didn't open 'till 10:30am so went in the Mazda stake bed to El Calvario, one of the worst sections of downtown Cali to pick up seven four meter beams for our mountain home. On the return trip we went straight to Ventolini and low and behold when the girl behind the counter opened a cabinet there was my wife's blue bag. It had everything inside save $50.000 pesos which no doubt the waiter of the night before figured was his due reward. In fact while one might reasonable expect to encounter such belongings left behind in a restaurant in the US or Europe it is really pretty unheard of in Cali. Much more likely to encounter an employee who stares off in the distance and says with all sincerity: no senor no encontramos nada.

So the day was saved and we went ahead with our plan to go up to the mountain house and review the week's progress on our remodeling job with the architect. And pleased as punch we were with the results though the architect had had to make the workers tear some stuff down and rebuild it to get it up to par. No union laborers here! It's like whoever shows up gets to work on our house to earn a little plata. You can get them to re-do it enough times that it comes out right in the end but only after various refusals of shoddy work. "Macheteros" we call them meaning they do every job with a machete. That's not a far cry either since a guy will come up to your house and offer to cut the lawn in front and when you say ok he pulls out a machete and laboriously cuts the whole lawn with it.

The architect told me she has to have all kinds of strategies for paying the workers that never include paying in cash since when it gets around that a job is underway there's a good chance someone will step out onto the roadway and stop the foreman at gunpoint when he's on his way to pay the workers on the fifteenth or thirtieth. It can even be the workers themselves "encapuchados" (with hoods on). Happened a couple of weeks ago in our area to a foreman on another remodeling job. They stole his car too and when the cops found it a little while later the seat were all ripped up. Seems they'd thought he'd hidden the money there.

We in fact are only going up on Sundays when the workers aren't there. It's for security. My wife insists it's better they don't know what I look like, all the more so being a gringo.

Oh wow. And we thought we had problems with construction guys. Oy.

I'm glad your wife got her purse back.

Thank you Jesusgirl, yes getting the purse back was a great relief as replacing cedula (national ID) and the other documents means hours and hours in long lines and months of waiting. Buracracy is stunningly slow here.

Pitter, that's very interesting. And also a bit scary... Take care!!!

Dear Diary,

I was pretty busy the last couple of weeks. After spending one week in the offices in Denver, we had a one week vacation in Colorad which was great. Then another week at home...

My first week of work started with two days in Sweden for an assessors training for our new assessment/development center. And this week we had the first development center in Brussels. It was extremely interesting to meet all this bright young people and like my colleague Lena I feel honored that I can be part of these development centers.

Now we have a long weekend. Tomorrow is a holiday. Great! Stefan does not have to work either!

Today I helped Petra who will be moving soon. We disassembled most of her kitchen and moved it to her mother's place next door. Tomorrow, she and her uncle will move her mother's kitchen into Petra's old place. Very interesting concept...

And NO Halloween party for me tonight. I will stay home with my own two monster :-) and enjoy the evening!

Dear Diary,
I just learned that one of my dearest Abuzz buddies has passed. I was not made aware of the date/time but Fancy Tickler has succombed to an ongoing battle with cancer. Some here knew him.
Prayers winging for all who are hurting as I am. Sigh.

Dear Diary,

I checked my e-mails today and found a new entry in the guestbook at my photo site. It is by a very old American friend who I haven't heard from for at least 15 years. We met when I was 16 or 17, about 25 years ago. And he was the reason why my brother went to college in Fargo, North Dakota of all places. I am so happy to hear from him. And I have no idea how he got to my picturetrail albums. I wrote an email back to him and am waiting for more news.

Some days ago I got an online Halloween card from an ex-colleague who is also American. I haven't heard from him for more than a year. This really makes me happy!

Jesusgirl, I feel very sorry for you. It is so hard to loose a friend.

Urs what serendipity. And what a small world this internet is. I used to use picturetrail.com but now I like photobucket.com much better. Lots of storage space for free.

Thank-you Urs,
Work was rough tonight. A very dear patient is actively dying...another cancer patient. The whole family was there congregating at bedside, crying, and trying to comfort each other. To make matters worse, she has two children, ages 10 and 12. They and her husband are devastated. That is one of the hardest parts of my job....watching families suffering through the passing of a loved one.


Love and peace to all on a nippy November night.