Crinancial Fisis

Things are going well. For the most part. But there are struggles. Struggle #1: I'm still without the bulk of my furniture. It's here. It exists in Buenos Aires. Some port somewhere. I await all the proper paperwork to finish itself up. I've done my part as far as I know. I really, really miss my bed. It's a good bed that has served me well for many years. The air mattress is a good air mattress, but that's like saying "These Eggo Waffles sure don't taste as good as real waffles, but they do accept maple syrup." Seriously, I'm tired.

At least I'm eating well. There's a lot of really good food here. Friday, Josh and I went to an Italian place that Dolo recommended very close to here. There are no menus. They just bring out random plates of food and a bottle of vino tinto. And it was absolutely delicious. We immediately made concrete plans to make Guido's our regular joint.

People wanted more apartment photos. Here you go:


So there's a financial crisis at home, eh? I've got one of my own here in that it is taking me forever to set up a bank account because I don't have a local SS#. It's OK, though, the proper authorities tell us that they have a meeting already on the calendar. It's in May of 2009. Woooh! No, this isn't a joke. And of course, I have rent to pay. So I spent nearly my entire afternoon trying to figure out a way to get my hands on some real Norteamerican Dollars from my bank account in Chicago. This was harder than you'd think. Luckily, after various phone conversations with various incompetent folks at Chase (one of whom was nice enough to hang up on me), Nico bailed me out with his invaluable assistance. If all goes well, I won't have to move back into the hotel. Double woooh!

Speaking of the financial crisis, Nico and I were talking about it today after we solved (fingers crossed) my crisis. It's generally held that the overarching cause of this problem is that people were cool with taking on bad credit, from each side of the desk. But it's OK. The government has a plan. They're just asking us for a $700,000,000,000 loan (whoops, forgot the pork; make that $840,000,000,000). No need to check into those figures. Just trust that the government has good credit. I'm sure this Paulson guy is good for it. Plus, he's investing in a growth area. I mean, if the problem was stupid, short-sighted loans, how is a gigantic short-sighted loan supposed to be helping matters? I'm sorry, but this feels too much like the Iraq snowjob all over again. Incidentally, as an Argentine, Nico reminds me that at least we have pockets deep enough to bail ourselves out. If most countries needed to come up with seven-hundred-billion dollars, they wouldn't be able to do it. Hey, where are we getting this money again? Nobody knows? Sweet.

And since that all sucks, here's a photo of a cute kid in a huge sweater eating an all-day sucker: