My son Dupre and his wife Ginny came out this weekend from LA. It was great to see them and spend time talking and enjoying their company. Ginny has qualified for the US team at the World Triathlon Championship in Hamburg Germany this week. What an accomplishment! They leave Thursday for Germany and the race is Sunday. Here she is modeling her team uniform for us. I'm so impressed by her, she has worked really hard to get here and we are all cheering for her success on Sunday.

Dupre is supposed to send me a link so we can watch the race Saturday night over the net.

Hurricane Dean has moved off the east coast of the Yucatan, having hit land as a category 5 with winds over 160 miles an hour. I have little more information than I see on CNN and the Weather Channel about damage to the area.

Happily, I have heard from Kathe, our friend from near Chetumal. They spent the night in a hotel in Escarcega and they are fine. She said she posted an update on my blog but it hasn't appeared. Still, the stories will come later the important news is that they are fine.

Just to add to the confusion I'm in here, my server will be down for maintenance sometime tonight for, they say, 2 hours. Let's hope they are that quick. So, if my blog disappears for several hours this evening, that's what is happening.

I'm also having problems with the cable internet here because of construction on the road in front so I can only get online sporadically. Isn't the modern world grand? More like, isn't it amazing how frustrating it is to lose that connection?

Sometime in July my cell phone quit working, I'd only had it a year. That required some haggling with Verizon as I was not due a discount on a new phone yet and I can't let them change my contract because the plan I have that lets me call Mexico is no longer offered. I got a phone, not one I loved but an ok one, for $50 and no extension. Friday morning I did my usual morning ritual and groggily went over and dove in the pool at Country's. Except, the almost new cell phone was in my pocket. One of the downsides to small, thin and light in a cell phone. I paddled around for about half and hour and only noticed the phone when I got out. It was dead.

I reactivated a really old phone I still had around, except that it got no reception in the RV, the battery only lasted a couple hours and it kept switching to analog to search for a network. I never got a call on it and trying to call for my voice mail didn't work either.

So, finally I went back to Verizon today and got a refurbed phone like the one that went swimming. So, now I have a phone again although I have to get my ringtones back and configure this one the way I want it. The really good news is that when they were trying to figure out the first phone in July, they managed to upload all my numbers to the Verizon server and there they stayed so I got them all back in this phone. Sheez! Anyway, if I haven't answered your call give me another day I just got all the messages.

Also, hurricane Dean has been wobbling around on whether he will directly hit our condo in Akumal or move north or south of it. Either way, he won't be far and while I certainly hope we don't get the eye I also know that there will be damage from a close miss. Today, it looks like he is heading for our friend Kathe in Calderitas. We're hoping he stays north of her. I can tell you from obsessively watching WeatherUnderground all day and night that forecasts more than a day or so out are not worth spit. The computer models have had Dean all over the Yucatan coast and even missing it at one point.

All that is certain is that Dean is one big MF hurricane! Category 4 off Jamaica but expected to be Cat 5 when it slams into the Yucatan somewhere. Anything over a cat 3 is big and dangerous, when the winds hit 155 mph and they call them cat 5 they are also usually hundreds of miles wide. This is a picture of Dean taken from the space station, a couple hundred miles above it.

Oh, and the cable internet here has been flakey so I haven't even had a solid connection there. I'm just not able to communicate easily these days, mercury is hiding or something.

I never get the touristas in Mexico, whether it is because I'm cautious or because I have a hereditary cast iron stomach, who knows. I'm rather proud of that for no known reason but I have been brought low the last 24 hours. I've spent most of that time perched on a throne of sorts. What did I eat? Why, it was Cal-Mex fast food, El Pollo Loco to be exact and right here in over-developed Palm Springs, California. Not everyone who ate that particular meal got the runs, Mimi didn't. Country had a short bout but I was the one who suffered all night. I'm better today but then all I've eaten is oatmeal. I'm going to try some Ramen... maybe.

So, I was standing by the pond with all my blog entries in my hand and this HUGE fish came up and ate all of them!!

I think I'm about to be bounced from the blogosphere for tardy posts. Number one, I'm basically lazy and number two, I'm kind of bored with my life the last couple months. It's not the bad kind of boredom where you just want to scratch your eyeballs out so you won't have to look at the same old stuff every day, it's the one-day-blends-into-the-next-day kind of boredom where you aren't miserable but you can't really remember anything that was different today from yesterday or last Thursday.

We've gotten a lot done, which rather surprises me since I can't seem to remember doing anything. We're almost ready to leave though, one house sold, another refinanced, one pond fixed, another almost done, lots of random stuff purchased, new transmission in the RV, new seal on the RV roof, yadda yadda yadda.

Mimi and I have lived pretty much full time in this RV for 6 years. That's a long time in about 200 sq ft. I loved it, I still love traveling in it but I really don't like living in it in one spot for long periods.

I've always thought that there are many types of full time RVers, one of which I call the Travelers. We are Travelers, we like a smaller RV than most, we like to move often and we love heading down a new road. What I don't like is sitting still with no new roads and no room to spread out and double all that if you need to keep the RV closed up because it is hot or cold outside. When I can leave the door and windows open and spend most of my time outside, the small space inside doesn't bother me. When I am off every day looking at new things or finding my way around a new place, the small size doesn't bother me. But when everything is closed up tight to either keep the heat in or keep the heat out, and every day I look out on the same view - no matter how wonderful it is - then the small space starts to really bug me.

I feel almost like a traitor to even write this. You know how you get that sense of belonging when you are a part of a small group? Fulltime RVers are a pretty small portion of the population. The ones who do it in an RV this size are an even smaller group and the ones who don't just drive to one place and stay there most of the year are yet a smaller group. I'm abandoning my group... that I'm even thinking about this shows you how bored I've gotten. Anyway, the bottom line is that I have gone from unsure about living in a house again to really excited about living in a house again. I am ready world! Sorry, my fellow small-rig, traveling, fulltimers but I am so ready to bail out. I want all the kitchen toys I do without now, I want a big, comfy couch, I want a garden of my own, I want a cat.