February 28, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Today started like any other day, I thought.\u00a0 I woke up, crack of Noon, and rolled out of bed.\u00a0 I was sick in the night and there was vomit everywhere.\u00a0 I barely remembered what must have been a bender the night before, but on seeing myself in the mirror, I knew that something terrible happened during the night.\u00a0 I realized my wallet was stolen and my passport gone with it; the apartment was as empty as the liquor cabinet.\u00a0 Obviously, calling the police was not an option.\u00a0 I tried to gather myself while at the same time finding something to drape over my slowly awakening limbs.\u00a0 My next thoughts were, why does this keep happening?\u00a0 Sure, booze and babes are fun, but why the oh so obvious result — waking up in vomit?\u00a0<\/p>\n
February 29, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Got a call first thing this morning from\u00a0ATF agent Guilliam, working on a strange case he described as hacking, arms sales, international fraud and animal cruelty.\u00a0 In his gravelly voice, while obviously inhaling slowly from a cigarette, he unravelled a tall tale.\u00a0 Seems we’re the victim of an elaborate ruse where Nigerians selling the fake gains of a “Executive Government Official” went to “deposit” money to our accounts.\u00a0 The strange thing, according to Guilliam, is that we are now in possession of $28 million, US.\u00a0 Do I have to give it back, I asked.\u00a0 Absolutely not, said Guilliam, but privately he offered, outside of his job as an NSA agent, to invest it with some “bankers” that work out of the middle east.\u00a0 Hmm, sounds interesting, I thought.\u00a0 Let’s do it, I told him.\u00a0 I called a Russian friend, Sergi, to have him to open an account in Moscow at the Danau Bank on \u041f\u0435\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0432\u043a\u0430 \u0443\u043b.<\/span>, 17, \u0441\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 1<\/span> – Gilliam called back 20 minutes later with what was easy to predict.\u00a0 They would need a dog in order to have a cute looking animal in the car careening around the streets of Moscow to attract attention away from six armed men entering the bank to withdraw\u00a0money from the account.\u00a0 Easy, I offered, go to the dog shelter — I know of a very sweet golden retriever\/lab mix that vomited all over my bed yesterday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n March 1, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We went to a dinner party last night.\u00a0 It was really nice since it’s the first non-school thing we’ve been to.\u00a0 It was filled with lithe waifish things, well guys, who were here to run the Barcelona Marathon with 9,000 others.\u00a0 It’s tomorrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Huntleys are here.<\/a>\u00a0 New car rental (new car), trip to Sitges<\/a>.\u00a0 Lunchy poo.\u00a0 Etc…<\/p>\n As I told Anne, I don’t pretend to have all the answers.\u00a0 One thing is sure though, I won’t be a burn out from working too hard.<\/p>\n March 2, 2008.\u00a0 We have hit the point where we already see the end of our sabbatical in sight.\u00a0 I have started getting my ducks in a row to get out of here, thinking about shipping boxes back home, and otherwise getting the apartment cleaned out and emptied.\u00a0 In the meantime, we have about 112 days in which to enjoy the remainder of our stay.<\/p>\n Anne’s folks are here and Anne is driving them kind of crazy with her hovering and Anne’s mother is driving Anne crazy with her non-stop offers of food from her plate and complaints about too much food being served.\u00a0<\/p>\n March 3, 2008.\u00a0 Anne’s parents took a tour of Barcelona and enjoyed it, they report.\u00a0 It’s a hard city to see in a few hours, for sure.\u00a0 There is so much architecture and so many interesting buildings and sights.\u00a0<\/p>\n March 4, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 I picked up our German passports today.\u00a0 Pretty amazing that now I am German AND AMERICAN.\u00a0 I’ve been very careful with the boys that if they ever are in a situation requiring them to choose, rip up the German passport.\u00a0 Well, it would be hard to rip up, since it’s a small book imbedded with all sorts of electronics; very high tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n I also went shopping at the market nearby.\u00a0 It’s composed of about 40 stalls each selling something specific, like the olive seller, the bread seller, the fruit seller (there is also a banana seller), the chicken seller, the various stuff seller, the fish sellers (lots of these).\u00a0 In any case, a few observations from Anne.\u00a0<\/p>\n (1) If you are going to the bread seller<\/u>, be prepared to stand amist a minimum of five old, very aggressive ladies in an undefined line.\u00a0 Be prepard to place your order, and fast.\u00a0 The people in front of you will order 20 different things and you’ll wait, sometimes up to 10 minutes.\u00a0 Once you get there, order and when she kindly says “algo mas” just say “no” quickly before some old lady\u00a0begins to beat you to a pulp.\u00a0<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0 If you buy fish<\/u>, you must stand there for the 20 minutes while it’s fileted.\u00a0 If you don’t, they won’t do anything while you try to improve your efficiency (your efficiency will actually go down since you’ll have to wait, again, to get the fish).\u00a0<\/p>\n (3) Fruit<\/u> is something where you really have to wait, after taking a number.\u00a0 If you are not prepared to scream out your number, you’ll have 2 or 3 seconds, you’ll miss your turn and possibly have to wait another half hour.\u00a0 Once they accept your number as an original and not a fake, you have to place your order quickly.\u00a0 The whole process takes less than a minute and it’s super efficient but you have to wait half an hour in order to get the stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n March 5, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 I went to a Rotary meeting today since Anne’s father, Bill, is really into it.\u00a0 John Barkley invited us after I asked him about Rotary for Bill.\u00a0 I was surprised and a bit miffed that there was no spanking ritual while nude.\u00a0 I was lead to believe that everyone got naked and spanked each other and while I am not into that, I was a bit curious.\u00a0 It turned out to be lunch (expensive cigarette-smoke filled lunch) with a bunch of older guys who were all interested in the newcomers.\u00a0 I sat next to an architect who was very nice, and we spoke Spanish the entire lunch.\u00a0 I think he was a near-communist since he argued that the ability to will one’s property to progeny is bad and should be done away with.\u00a0 Either that or he liked the fish.\u00a0 Anywho, it was relatively entertaining and everyone seemed nice.\u00a0 Strange thing is I couldn’t find my wallet afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 28, 2008.\u00a0 Today started like any other day, I thought.\u00a0 I woke up, crack of Noon, and rolled out of bed.\u00a0 I was sick in the night and there was vomit everywhere.\u00a0 I barely remembered what must have been a bender the night before, but on seeing myself in the mirror, I knew that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}