i went to the post office today. that was a chore and a half. first of all, there are no post boxes anywhere in playa but the post office and there is only one post office in playa. i rode my bike there today after dropping off my laundry at la lavenderia called "spidy gonzales". it's all the way down on avenida juarez which is near the ferries to cozumel, like 15 minutes by bike. i wanted to send a letter to mike and a postcard to friends back home. i figured they would have postcards at the post office. not so much. i saw they had none and turned around and went back to a souvy store to pick one up, wrote it out and then headed back to the post office. there were two people in front of me in line and when i got there, the chick right in front of me starts laughing and says that i shouldn't stay unless i have a couple of hours to spare. turns out she'd been in line for an hour and a half already and the couple from england in front of her were there for two hours and they still hadn't been helped. 3 guys were working there, all of whom were chatting on cell phones, and one fell asleep against a parcel in the back while on his phone (not unlike the vivid picture mike painted for me on the phone of the mexican postal worker asleep on a donkey). finally the couple gets helped and it turns out the parcel they're sending home was wrapped entirely wrong and they had to re-wrap it in yellow construction paper and use glue to seal it, not tape. they were then given 70, count them, 70 stamps to affix to this parcel and the lineup grew as we waited for them to add them to the box one by one. they kept turning around and apologizing to us. when i finally got my turn i asked for 20 stamps so i don't have to wait in line like that again for a while. it was utterly absurd. but in a way, kind of fun, cause all of us in line introduced ourselves to each other and had a good hour of laughter at the incredible lack of urgency the postal workers had. then i rode home 15 minutes in the heat of the mayan afternoon and had to jump in the ocean i was so hot from sitting in that fanless post office. all for michael m'boy, all for mike. it's funny now because i have vowed to myself i would send him many more letters like i used to, now that i have interesting things to write about and am not a ball of stress and madness. so that means an almost daily trip to the post office, 30 mins round trip every day in the sun and then an absolutely inescapable swim in the ocean due to heat, i shall be in spectacular shape in no time.

on the way to the post office, i had to stop at the bank. there was an american woman in there. she was so rude, so loud yelling at the teller "what is the exchange rate?" which was posted on all four walls twice. she then yelled so the bank could hear "i want this all on a piece of paper, with the amounts" and when they handed her the receipt she yelled "i can't understand this, i speak english". if she wasn't the scariest woman i ever saw and i wasn't sure she could kick my ass just by thinking about it, i would have said, "sweetheart, why are you in mexico then?" seriously. i don't understand why some people think that no matter where in the world we go, everyone should speak english. what a dull planet this would be, hey? funny thing is, it's only canadians and americans, and sometimes aussies, who are like that. you never see a swedish man lose it on a mexican for not speaking swedish, or a german lose it on a chinese guy for not speaking german. it's only our kind. it makes me sad. i wish we could all just present ourselves a little better to the rest of the world.

prior to the very sad, pathetic mollywhoppage the bears suffered, i had to go back to spidy gonzales' to pick up my laundry and i grabbed a slice of pizza at the pizza place beside it. i came home and sat by the pool and ate the pizza and the cops came around. denado and marcella had gone upstairs for their afternoon siesta, and they are usually up there for at least an hour each day, but ten mins after they'd gone up they ran down and were speaking with the cops for hours, marcella running around grabbing this, fetching that. i often wonder what shady business denado is into. you don't get a private jet and personal pilot from running a tiny apartment building and italian restaurant in playa del carmen. not to mention his private villa and beach a couple miles north of here. thats definitely shady. definitely.

it was simply too much tonight when the announcer on the nfl network said about maynard as he hobbled off the field, "he's got a bit of a hitch in his giddy up". just too much. i can't stop giggling to myself about it. what a shit game. i mean, in a way it was nice for the redskins cause they lost sean taylor then their fuckin qb gets mangled, but my god what have the bears become? bobby says it's the superbowl hangover. for the last 8 years every team that lost the superbowl shits the bed the following season. i dunno. i'm tired now and i seem to have developed a cough so off to bed with me.


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