Thursday October 4, 2012

Thursday October 4/12 update

I woke up at 3am, thinking of ways to do a sympathy card for Miguel and his family in the loss of his Dad, Victor.  I scoured my many photos since August to find any photos of Victor since he had visited, and participated, in the classes at the AAC.  I found seven shots and was really pleased to see that I had a really decent shot of him when we had our hot dog picnic at the park.  It is hard to believe that a month and a half later we would be saying goodbye to him.

The next problem was making sure my new PrintShop program would handle my old sympathy card template, which luckily it did.  Then I decided to go a step further and translate it all into Spanish with Google Translate which did a real decent job of it.

The printing of anything here with my HP know-it-all printer is always a challenge.  Even though you tell it you are using the A4 paper available here and not the letter-size from home, it still manages to foul up all the margins so a person just has to live with the outcome which is far from perfect.   I hope they like it regardless.  Printing envelopes is even worse and I have had to throw out so many botched printing jobs that I should send HP the bill for my next batch.   One thing for sure, my next printer will not be an HP!

I crawled back to bed about 7am and was up again at 9:30.   I barely got all my chores done before I had to rush my shower and catch the bus to AAC.  I arrived before the 1:30 deadline to meet Ron & Jolene & Tom for the walk with the family to the church about ten blocks, following the hearse.   Linda caught up with us later by taxi and there were also 2 other Gringo couple that attended the service.

The church has seen better days and there is evidence that they are looking to build a new one.  Miguel spent the whole service at the back door with his son, leaving his 3 brothers and 1 sister perform the family duties and speeches at the front.  Miguel’s said his wife did most of the organizing of the funeral and was now up front doing the singing.   Wow, she really has a good voice!

It wasn’t long before the church was standing room only and there were few dry eyes when the daughter gave her tearful eulogy of Victor.

The family had arranged for a couple of buses to carry anyone who wanted to go to the cemetery.   It seems that about ½ of the people came to the cemetery one way or another.  Again Miguel stayed at the back of the crowd while the brothers and sister wailed while the casket was opened before being deposited in its cubicle.  I was too far back to be absolutely certain, but it seemed there was a uniformed cemetery worker there to seal the coffin in its place.   There were annoying bugs everywhere in the cemetery, I don’t know why???  The rest of the city is virtually bug free.

As I was leaving, I paid my respects to Miguel and his Mom who were now even further away from the crowd.   I learned later that Miguel was leaving space for his siblings to grieve as he had already made his peace with his father and spent much quality time with Victor during his last days.

At 4 pm I was leaving the cemetery with the intention of taking a bus home but decided to drop down the hill to see the electrician about fixing our large floor fan.   He talked about coming over later, but too late for my plans so I told him I would drop back.  Then I stopped in at Segundo’s Picanteria De Los Canaris and ordered a meal, seco de pollo (chicken drumstick with lots of rice and veggies) for a whole $2.   Segundo himself showed up a little later and was happy to see me.  He really wants to brush up on his English so he is anxious for Bella’s return.  He was very complimentary about her nice manner of teaching him.  Then he mentioned he is not feeling well, with stomach ailments, etc, but he is really concerned about his wife who has a multitude of ailments, stomach, heart, head, etc.   The doctor has prescribed a shot of good whiskey per day so he wants me to help him buy some good premium whiskey tomorrow.   He is to call between 4 and 5.

I then slipped home to grab a jacket, and to feed the Boys before heading downtown to the California Kitchen to hear readings of the Writers In Transition group.   Two of our friends were easily the highlight of the evening:

Chris Peterson with “How the Fourth Grade changed my life”   http://youtu.be/z40sd6scjuM

And Manon Stevenson with a true story “Well, there was the time we borrowed the airplane”. 

http://youtu.be/cn1QEnvG_MY    We all felt sorry for the soft-spoken Manon who had to endure a never-ending car alarm outside for the entire duration of her story.  A call has gone out for a gun to be brought for next month’s readings to take care of this ear-splitting offender.     

As I was saying my goodbyes I got a call from Jorge Beltran and I am not certain what it was about.  I suspect it is a Thank You for the video and gift for Gabriela’s graduation but I’m not sure.   It is much harder to understand Spanish on the telephone when you can’t see the accompanying pantomimes usually necessary for comprehension.  I told him I would be home pretty much all day tomorrow so hopefully he will stop by.

That was today’s excitement.   Please see all photos at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com.  Hugs to all.