MY WEEK: February 1st – 6th, 2021 (#34) SATURDAY: Cathy and I are signed up for the Sputnik V vaccine in SMA. We want the vaccine so we can go on the river cruise in France the end of April, already paid for and postponed a year. We talked last night, however, that we are getting settled into this way of life. Cathy is a wonderful cook, and we get Pizza Guy delivered every Sunday. I see friends twice a week, one at a time, for a long walk then a safe, open lunch. I am a little scared of things changing.
Everything was so hectic before the pandemic, when we trying to film documentaries. Now I just stay in my office and edit from what is already out there or write. It has been a productive year with my YouTube channel CAST Of CHARACTERS Live and soon my website.
Interesting that for a nice guy, I seem to piss off a lot of people. My documentary “Racism in America: Why Black Lives Matter” got my personal page and the group I started, Americans Supporting Peaceful Protest, banned for 4 and 5 weeks respectfully, until Facebook decided it wasn’t hate speech against white people. My only submission to TikTok violated their community standards.
A record company complained about my last documentary and I now have two copyright strikes against me on YouTube. One more and CAST Of CHARACTERS Live will be permanently banned. That would mean a lot of work down the tubes. Also, YouTube has age restricted 3 of my documentaries. Unless you have a YouTube account, even if I sent you a link it is hard to prove you are 18 so you can watch them.
Many thanks to Fred Dannen for referring me to David Lopez who built the Boleto City website, and now is that building castofcharacterslive.com. When it is finished, my videos will be shown on Vimeo, which has a fair use policy that I am not violating. I will also have a section for my written work. You can pick a topic and posts or chapters will slide to the left, like Kindle, only with pictures. I hope to have a guest author section where friends can share their stories.
FRIDAY: Cathy setup TransferWise and transferred $1,000 US from our Bank of America checking account to our Intercam account in SMA. We got 19.9+ pesos per dollar and did it from home. If I had taken a check to Intercam and asked for their best deal, I would have gotten 19.8-, so we saved about $6.00 US on a $1,000 transfer and saved time. Thanks to Tom Nadeau for telling me about TransferWise over and over until it finally sunk in! Note: Exchange rates vary daily.
THURSDAY: I had a safe, socially distanced brunch at the Fabrica Aurora Cafe with friend Steve Marshall today and he agreed I could share a bit of his amazing story. Steve was a homicide detective in New Orleans when he met his wife, Mary Ann, who was a bartender.
Steve had a double major in criminology and chemistry. When they were married he decided to use his chemistry degree to go to work with Ameco Oil. While working with Ameco, Steve got an engineering degree from the Colorado School of mines. Steve became an underwater drilling specialist and he and Mary Ann traveled the world on different assignments for Ameco. Mary Ann worked just as hard as Steve, making a home for them in different countries in Africa and Asia.
When I met them a few years ago Steve was retired. They had a condo in an old hacienda complex near Live Aqua and a beautiful home and guest house on a large piece of property on the Bradenton River in Florida. Steve is a golf buddy and belongs to Malanquin Golf Club in SMA.
They talked about moving to SMA full time someday, but it was hard to let go of their Florida home. It really was spectacular. Last year they got serious about moving full time to SMA and they found a spectacular house here in a privada off Calle Orizaba. They had no trouble selling their Florida home, and closed on their SMA home in early January. Steve says Mary Ann now has them completely moved in.Two golf buddies moved from SMA last year, but now I have a golf buddy here full time. Something to look forward to when the Pandemic is over. You meet the most interesting people in SMA!
WEDNESDAY: What a great day! Cathy got up at 8:00 and I stayed in bed to read a few chapters of Bill Bryson. I only got up to get the fireplace remote and light the fire for the first time this year. Oliver joined me after he finished his breakfast and Cathy brought me breakfast in bed, a chocolate turnover from the baked goods Santos delivered yesterday. There had been doughnuts, but I ate my two as soon as he left. They were still warm.I got up at 10:00 and went to my office to write. The first thing I saw was the post from a year ago about our documentary (See #33). A wonderful way to start the day.
TUESDAY: I was still sore from Monday’s walk turned hike, so I just did stretches and wrote for most of the day. My goal is to write 100 stories by the end of March. I am actually several stories ahead, which is good because I need to spend time getting my website castofcharacterslive.com up and running.
Writing for Facebook is different that writing a short story. Interesting photos and a catchy opening sentence are a must. I notice that I get a lot more “LIKE”s when I use photos of Cathy or the dogs.
I also notice that I get the fewest comments when I post a video. That is understandable because it is hard to comment on a video you didn’t watch. Most people check their email and Facebook on their cell phone. When I make a video I use the best quality images available so that they look good when enlarged. I like to watch my videos on YouTube on my 75” TV. As I mentioned in #33, I watched Tonio K.’s “Say Goodbye” on the movie screen at the Santa Ana Theater and it was awesome! The 2” screen of a cell phone just doesn’t work.
Here is a comment from an original Character, Bob Cooksey: “I just watched all of CAST Of CHARACTERS Live again on YouTube, on my big screen. Awesome ! I was in tears watching It Could Have Been Me, gets me every time. I think my only regret in life is the choice I made in that era to be a participant in an illegal, immoral war. John Kerry expressed a similar regret. ‘The physical wounds heal, the wounds to the soul never’, he said. That is a perfect description.”
MONDAY/RUINED BULL RING: Monday was an embarrassing day because I am so out of shape. I’d taken a bad fall to my head and knee in November and had only started taking long walks a few weeks ago.
I drove less than 10 minutes north of our house to San Luis Reyes to take a hike with another Character, Steve. It was the first time in a month I had driven the car, and I started it the night before to make the battery hadn’t gone dead. We walked north on a dirt road for about an hour toward Sagrada Retreat. No problem.
On the way back Steve suggested we take a shortcut through a barbed wire fence and down a rocky mesquite and cactus filled hill. I was uncomfortable with the slope and slipped twice. Luckily, I just fell on my but, and didn’t roll down the hill. Steve had to come back twice to help me over some loose rocks where I wasn’t sure I could keep my footing.
I told him, “This is starting to remind me a little of the time Cathy almost got me killed.” (Cathy says, “It was Uncle Al that almost got you killed. I saved your life.” But that’s another story). Steve replied reassuringly, “You’ll be fine Scott. Kim and I cut through here with no problems and she was wearing a dress.” Now, you have to admit that is a little embarrassing.
It was all worth it when the ground leveled out and we walked by an old stone wall that turned out to be a complex with a bull ring and holding pens. Here I am at the shoot where they would send the bulls out! How cool to stumble (all most literally)across something so old and unexpected.
I have also included photos of my greatest hits to explain why I am afraid of falling.
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