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My morning was spent like this:

Where I cross the Street at Balderas (from StreetView)

• I woke up at 7:45
• Stuffed Nicorette in my mouth
• I drank Nescafe
• I took a shower
• I took the dog to the corner and said hi to the guard who stands by the side door of the building
• Picked up dog-shit with old pages from a copy of the Economist I bought in the airport 5 months ago.
• Wondered about leaving English magazine pages smeared with dog shit in a Spanish language bag of garbage.
• Took dog back, emptied envelope of soupy dog chunks in her bowl. 
• Ducked back out of building.
• People on my side were scrubbing the sidewalk with soapy water and brooms so I crossed - between stopped cars - to the other "sunny" side.
• Observed that the sun in this country is too harsh in winter. Best to avoid it unless one is actually cold, which, in winter, can happen.
• On this side, again, they were scrubbing the sidewalk
• I waited at the edge of Balderas, the main north south avenue in the neighborhood. It's got this busline where these enormous double articulated buses hog the middle two lanes, and for that, it's a little difficult to cross sometimes. There are also frequent passing street "diablitos" that pass on their way to setting up a street stand for a day hawking cell-phone covers and huaraches and similar fare. Some of them approach just stacked with sheet upon creased sheet of cardboard, enourmous flattened boxes that wave like sails above the head of the hurrying driver.   
• I've never understood what they do with all the cardboard.
• I avoid the smell of anything cooking on the street unless I'm planning to eat it.
• I wondered at the sections of concrete missing on the far side of Balderas.
• A woman was standing patiently enough, literally on dirt, in one of these gaps in the sidewalk that had never been filled back in. I don't want to say her shoes were cheap, but I did notice them, out of place above that packed orange dirt, and they seemed cheapened at least. She was just a lady going off to some normal job.    
• I got to the metro well enough late.