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Diane's DiaryMay 10 Monday Mom's birthday I wanted to call Mom for her birthday first thing this morning before she went out but unfortunately, there was a long line of people waiting to use the one phone so I had to wait until I went to Plaza Mayor later in the day. Larry came with me to drop off the laundry, we put more gas in the dinghy, and I drove to Plaza Mayor and arrived around 12. I had lunch, got a pedicure, and went to the supermarket. The supermarket finally got meat back in - they haven't had it for several weeks now. So, since it was in, I decided to wait on the long line for it as there probably won't be any left by tomorrow. It was after 4pm by the time I finally got back. By the time I put all the food away, it was too late to take a shower, as I wanted to grill some meat at the potluck. We don't like going to the potluck anymore as some people bring really cheap things to share and everyone just pushes and shoves for the food. So, I just grill our meat and go back to the boat with it. Anyway, I have decided to start a diet - I have gained too much weight and really feel the difference. I'm going to do a modified Atkins - South Beach diet. I don't want to give up all the fruit but am willing to cut back on sugar and carbohydrates. I will give up beer but will still have my rum or maybe switch to vodka. I don't want to drastically change my lifestyle but am willing to alter it. I also want to exercise more so will start swimming laps in the pool and walking. I hope to do this almost everyday if the weather cooperates. May 11 Tuesday I went shopping this morning to Makro with Carlos but think from now on I'll go by taxi. He charged us $3USD per person and a taxi would have cost that much roundtrip for up to 4 people so it's definitely cheaper to go on your own. Anyway, I had wanted a DVD player for some time so I bought one here as we heard they had the cheapest prices. Rental VCR tapes are hard to find and many people have DVD's here so there's lots of people to borrow or trade with. The DVD player was $78USD and it's a multizone player, which means it will play DVD's from all over the world on it. We don't even own one DVD so I had to borrow a DVD from S/V Sylvester this afternoon to see if it worked. Seems like it does so we now have lots of entertainment at night now. Sylvester was nice enough to let us borrow a bunch of their DVD's. I made a salad, marinated some lomito and made some carrots for dinner tonight. I also did 8 laps in the pool and went walking at night. We watched the DVD "Radio" and it was very good. So far we are very happy we bought the DVD player as now we have entertainment at night! May 12 Wednesday I did a bunch of emails again today. Larry went to pick up the new flares we ordered with a bunch of other cruisers so the price was cheaper since we all pooled together and bought a lot. We watched the DVD "Harry Potter" tonight but really didn't care for it and don't know what the hype is all about and why people like it so much. This was movie number 2 so we missed number 1 so maybe that's why we don't understand it. May 13 Thursday It was a cloudy, overcast day with rain for about an hour. I guess the rainy season is really with us now. I cleaned the rust off some stanchions this morning and got up to the bow when the rain started so I stopped around 3pm. After it stopped raining, I went swimming in the pool and increased my laps to 10. I hope to keep increasing them every day. I made an early dinner of steak cooked with vegetables so I could watch the Thursday movie at the restaurant here-"Man on Fire" with Denzel Washington. It was a good movie but a little to violent for me. The compressor on the refrigerator keeps running all the time so I think we have a problem. Hope we don't have to buy a new refrigerator also! Anyway, only half of the freezer is freezing also so I am sure we have some sort of problem. Larry is going to email the manufacturer to ask for advice. May 14 Friday We watched an ER episode this morning that we recorded last night. The show is on at 10pm and that's when we usually go to bed so we just record it. The old episodes of ER are on at 5:30pm every day so we also watch that also. ER, Third Watch and West Wing are the only good TV shows we get. We only have 5 English channels and 1 is ESPN that we never watch, 1 is CNN International which is only just fair, 1 a movie station and 1 Warner Bros., 1 Discover and the last is AandE. So, it's far better to have a DVD player to watch movies on! After the TV show, I had to call Citibank- we had a double charge from 1 of the things Larry bought. He made the mistake of ordering off the Internet and calling the company when he didn't get it. He should have just called them to order it in the first place! It cost me a lot of time to get the charge removed as Larry didn't even know how to use the phone here after all this time! May 16 Saturday We watched some TV in the Am. After the TV show, I walked around the marina to visit some people- I returned some DVD's to Happy Hours, gave Plenum a magazine, spoke to the marina mgr, spoke to Transpacific about getting the shots (but the doctor had already left for the day) and finally got back to the boat. It's very difficult to walk around the marina and not see someone you know who wants to chat for a bit! I did some logs in the PM and we went out to the restaurant with Fred from S/V Global Ombaka for dinner. It's nice to get a break from cooking every meal. The refrigerator is still not working properly. May 16 Sunday Today was a very lazy day. Larry worked on the boat a little. I made some jello and marinated some vegetables. I started to update my logs in the computer as I am very far behind and need to catch up. I played dominoes in the PM. I also swam some laps and walked at night. We watched the DVD "Haunted Mansion" with Eddie Murphy. It was OK but I would never have paid to see it in the movies. May 17 Monday At 9:30, I took the dinghy to Plaza Mayor to do some shopping. The wind really started to blow on my trip down and I thought I was going to have a hard time coming back but fortunately, the wind died down for my return trip. I finished cleaning the bow pulpit with the stainless steel cleaner. Now I still have to finish the rest and wax it all also. I took today off and didn't do any exercise at all. We watched another video tonight "Cheaper by the Dozen" it was a remake- very predictable but good. We also watched a DVD Side By Side did of Merida and Angel Falls that was very good. Did I mention the prices of DVD's here are far less than the US? A DVD copy is about $3USD and a VCD (which is the same movie but not as good a picture as the DVD copy but a lot cheaper) is $1.50. You need to test all the DVD's as well as VCDs to make sure they are working properly. Sometimes you get a good clear picture and sometimes not. We only buy them in a store so we can see them played before we purchase the. We bought a few VCDs that have been very good quality but some are not. Anyway, while I was in Plaza Mayor, I also stopped at the grocery store- they still have no lomito, eggs or ganso beef in stock- only the cheaper cuts, which we do not eat. May 18 Tuesday I left for an appointment with the Gyn doctor at 8:30am. I got back around 1pm. In the PM, I made some quiche and chicken Italiano for dinner. I swam, walked and we watched the DVD, "the Mummy" someone lent us- not too bad. The movie was a poor imitation of an Indiana Jones movie but worth watching anyway. May 19 Wednesday College Graduation day Well, 25 years ago today I graduated from college. Time has gone by so fast and it hardly seems like it was so long ago! Oh, the college days were so easy back than! In many ways it would be nice to go back but somehow I don't think at this age we would fit in! Back to reality. I waxed part of the stanchions in the broiling hot sun this morning for a few hours. I took a break around 11:30 to get out of the sun for a while and than it started to rain. We continued to watch the movie we started last night. After lunch, the marina had a security meeting with one of the marina owners, Peter York. It lasted over 2 hours! It was a very good meeting and the cruisers brought up lots of good points with the owner. May 20 Thursday The rainy season has really started in earnest. We had heavy rain while I was waxing the stanchions so I had to stop. A French cat with kids came in today next to us so now we have 2 French boats on either side of us. The cat is going home for the summer so they only will be here for a while. Thank goodness as they have a few kids. The marina is full with many people leaving the boat to go home for the summer. Giulio emailed us that our windlass came into Caracas today. Not to bad time wise- only about 2 weeks from the time they got it. I spent the morning making phone calls to see how we could get the windlass here. I was hoping one of the workers George would be able to bring it back but no luck. Anyway, Giulio arranged to have it sent by courier. The courier only cost less than $5 to ship it from Caracas and from Miami to Caracas via boat was $45. So, it was pretty cheap and if Larry had known that he would have shipped a lot more things! Anyway, Giulio shipped it and said we should receive it tomorrow. I had to attend a Fundamigos meeting for volunteers this evening. We didn't get home till 10pm! Fundamigos is a Venezuelan volunteer organization that has 2 operation dates per year and performs surgeries for free for those unable to afford it. There is no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid down here - if you don't have the money you simply don't have the surgery! In Fundamigos, everything is free for those selected for the surgery and it's wonderful to see, as Venezuelans are not known to volunteer for things. We cruisers are helping out making cakes and working in pre-op, post-op and in the OR. I volunteered for 1 shift but if I can will try to do more. May 21 Friday I was sick this morning with menstrual cramps so was not feeling well. I took some medication and felt better when it kicked in. Anyway, it looked like rain the whole day. We got our windlass today around 5pm. Yea- it only took several weeks to receive and we as we sent it by boat since it was a lot cheaper. Airfreight would have cost a lot more and since we are here anyway we weren't in a rush. Looks like everything was intact so now Larry had another project to do. Our refrigerator is still acting up so we will get the guy to come here tomorrow. May 22 Saturday Charlie Alpha called a refrigerator guy to come look at our problem. He was here for 2 hours and the problem was only that we were low on R-12 refrigerant. This can't be sold in the US anymore but thankfully is still available here. Anyway, he filled it with R-12, put some valves on so we could test it in the future, and we were finished. Less than $50 for everything. This sure beats buying a brand new refrigerator! We invited Plenum over for drinks before we went out to eat with them for Weedie's birthday. Unfortunately, the restaurant was expensive and Weedie ordered 2 bottles of wine that we would have never ordered (way to expensive to order in a restaurant) and we wound up splitting it with them. My steak was delivered rare and when they redid it, they burned it. The bill was over $50 for us. If we had known it was going to be that expensive we would have never gone. We never spend that much money for a meal down here - that's not in our cruising budget. After we went to a Greek restaurant for dessert but it was closed. So, we went back to Plenum for drinks. I was bombed with all that alcohol as I usually don't drink that much. |