Here's the deck about noon today with our heroic satellite dish, I can't believe we are still online through it.




The red flag is up.


Here's the next band coming towards us.


Apparently Alma had a sex change in Central America and is now Arthur, a tropical storm with sustained winds of 40mph and gusts to 60mph.

Mimi went to Playa this morning and said it wasn't too bad, it was a bit of a lull. I admit, I haven't left my aerie and I'm not sure I'm going to. Except, as Nancy commented, we are down to zero beer! Bad planning. No one seemed to realize this was going to be this strong though, it kind of snuck up on us from the south/west.

Tropical storm Alma contributed to a fantastic sunset last night. It was Mary Kay pink!

Then, this afternoon she came roaring up from Central America and hit us. Supposedly, the winds were max of 35mph. I have no clue whether that was right or not but it was seriously blowing.

All the deck furniture was spinning around and the long cushion on the banco was lifting into the air.

Mimi made a mad rescue while I held the door open, we were both soaked in seconds. With everything inside and the doors shut the wind and rain were pounding into the glass, water was coming under the doors and we had to go back to our old trick of putting towels in front of every door. I thought we had that fixed.

This is a pic I took as we watched it coming towards us, it was still calm and sunny.

Oddly enough, I had been thinking about the hurricane shields that I got a flyer for in Playa the other day. We measured the windows this morning and I did the math and was kind of horrified at the total.

So, I was reconsidering. Alma kind of got me back to thinking it might be worth the money. If that was 35mph, I don't even want to think about a Cat 4 or Cat 5 would do.

Leapin' Lizards! As I was writing this at about 1am, another cell came barreling in. If it was scary in the daytime it is much scarier at night. Plus, this one seems more intense, the lights went out right away and we are watching the 2 big dishes on the deck move way too much. They are weighted down by buckets of sand and since this afternoon the sand is full of water, it's heavy. I'm not at all sure they are going to make it. With nothing else to do I'm sitting her writing this on my laptop by candlelight.

The other not so great part, it is getting really hot and steamy in here. We can't open a door to the ocean for air and not enough is coming in the back windows. What the hell, I just went and got the last cold beer from the fridge and if it all blows down, it all blows down.

2:30am - Well, it's still blowing but the lights came back on and just on a whim I plugged the modem back in and - I can't belive it - the dish seems to still be on the satellite! I'm going to upload this and go to bed while the AC is still working.

It looked like we would get some rain this morning when I got up - I know, morning is a relative term but really, 11am counts as morning.

We had a storm blow through this last week, lots of wind and cooler temps but no rain. The waves were crashing though and the tides were higher than I've seen.

The tide washed right over the only turtle nest we have in front of our condo, I don't know what that does to the baby turtle's chances.

Anyway, this morning the water was flat and there was very little wind. It was hot, humid and still.

I was getting a little excited by the prospect of some rain but... it moved inland north of us. I'd guess that Playa got some and probably Cozumel but none for us. Within a couple hours, it looked like this.

It's good the rains haven't started yet though, Mimi has to paint the deck before it starts raining. They cheaped out on the outside paint on the building, got the cheapest kind and then watered that down. It rubs off on you if you lean against the railing or sit on the banco. So, we're going to paint our railing and walls with some better paint. Also with some color. These friggin beige people around here, all they want is beige or white on everything.

We used to have really nice wood railings and when the others decided they wanted to replace theirs with concrete I specifically asked them not to touch mine. Guess what? I got the concrete ugly ones too. You think ugly orange concrete is better than ugly beige concrete? Maybe I should paint it in stripes of red,green and white like the Mexican flag?

There was a hoodoo voodoo wedding on the beach this evening and when the guy started blowing a conch shell Chica went ballistic, barking over the railing. I had to hustle out there and grab her before she became a sacred spirit commenting on their chakras or something.

Actually, it was a very nice ceremony and I had a bird's eye view. Unlike Chica, I like the sound of a conch blowing and the smell of copal.

Mimi and Rodrigo were in Playa all day looking for a place to align the RV and buy new tires for it. They were in there all day yesterday getting a new piece made that attaches the tow bar to the RV. Tomorrow they will be in Cancun all day getting the tires and alignment since they couldn't find a place that could do it in Playa.

Another disaster averted, Mimi discovered that the metal plate bolted under the RV was tearing on both sides, that's 1/4 inch solid steel. Had it come off, the jeep would have been left behind rather rapidly on the road.

Anyway, I stayed home and stayed cool and played with Tito. I was in town all day yesterday getting more dental work. They couldn't close up the tooth after the root canal because it was infected so I return next week.

By the way, on June 1st it will be 5 full months since my last cigarette. However, I chew the shit out of the nicorette gum and that is not having a good effect on my teeth.

So, tonight Mimi and I took Rod out to dinner for his birthday. We went to the 'upscale' place on the beach and had a mediocre meal on white tablecloths and a lot of fun. It's the company that really matters. We forgot the camera but these are small pics from the cell phone.




The waiters all came and sang Las Mañanitas, the Mexican birthday song, and put those huge sombreros on Rod and Mimi. It is low season now and we were one of only 2 tables in the whole place. Even so, it took forever for the food to come.

Uh oh! I hear thunder and I just saw a flash plus suddenly I can smell rain from the jungle. Maybe we will get some rain and maybe the deck won't get painted after all.

¡Ni modo!

Tito is doing really well. The intake and the output are in sync, the worm medicine had no obvious effect which I consider good. I was ready with my camera though in case we had an incident like Cancun Canuck so I could photograph Mimi pulling one out of the back end.

He is running now without falling over, he actually batted his ball and tried to play with it, he comes running whenever he hears our voices... he's a doll!

We've been busy the last few days, our new gas tank has been installed and filled. That took several trips to Playa for parts, a couple days of our friend Rod climbing really scary ladders up to the 3rd floor and then drilling and welding when he got there, the finding of 2 leaks and repairs, and getting the gas company to come and fill the tank. Such fun. Really. We are now on our own gas though and that is a good feeling. No more paying a percentage of 2 buildings whether we were here or not and whether every other place was full of 6 people showering all the time and cooking. Now, we pay for what we use I can guarantee you that will be a lot less.

Another wonderful milestone in divorcing ourselves from the hotel operation here is that we have our wonderful maid, Manuela, back with us. A couple years ago, the macho management fired her mainly because she wouldn't take their shit. I'll leave out the details but it was ugly and it was one of the main reasons I started wanting out of this whole group. I didn't ask her to come back right away because I was not willing to subject her to their BS but things have been calm and they did agree not to talk to her or bother her in any way.

So, last Monday was the return of Manuela and Mimi and I are in heaven. Our place has not looked this good since she left. There are areas that I think I just trained myself not to look at because they were always dusty and yucky, now everything sparkles. I can see out of all of my windows and I didn't have to say one word. In the past, I would have to hound the maids to clean the windows.

Our last maid was so good at ignoring stuff that she could ignore dirty dishes and pots and pans that were sitting on the stove in the kitchen! You could safely leave your empty coffee cup on the coffee table for a week and it would not be disturbed. She even got to the point that she could ignore dirty dishes that were on the other side of the drainboard, not the side closest to the sink. That's talent. If I didn't follow her around pointing things out, they were ignored.

She also refused to learn how to make a bed. I showed her many times how I would prefer to sleep on the right side of the sheets and that she didn't need to turn the sheet back and tuck it in like a marine before putting the blanket on and doing the same with it. Trying to break into the bed after she made it was not easy. She made great towel animals though and that was the main thing she wanted to do while here. I ruined all her fun by telling her I really preferred the towels hanging in the bathroom and not made into swans on my bed.

I know, this all sounds rather petty but if you knew what I have been paying for this shoddy service then you'd understand my frustration. It finally got to be too much hassle and we just stopped letting them come in to clean more than once a week. Even then, they didn't do much. But still, I paid for daily maid service that was supplied to renters, for all that towel animal building time, for 3 guys who were supposed to do things like clean the screens but never did unless you called the office every day for weeks, it goes on but... back to the good!

Our condo is a joy to walk into now. I am noticing things I just never looked at, my artisania doesn't have a layer of salt grime and dust on it and wow! I'm in love with it all over again. Mimi started doing a happy dance after Manuela's first day because her coffee pot was clean! In 4 years, not one of the maids has taken the old coffee filter out and cleaned the pot unless one of us stood over her and didn't leave until it was done. I think we've both gone up and spontaneously kissed her in the last week just because it was such a pleasure to be here now and to have her here. What I can't figure out is why I let this all go for so long. I should have nutted up on these people a long time ago. If I had, I might not be so angry about it all now. I have to get over that, it was my fault as well for putting up with it.

You know that bumper sticker that says a bad day in paradise is better than a good day at work, or something like that? It's true, really, it is.

I had my version of a bad day Tuesday, it was hot and muggy and I spent the whole day in Playa driving around in traffic in my jeep with no ac and nothing seemed to work - one of those days. But, you know, it was still better than any day I ever spent at work. I'm just saying.

The best part of the story is that I realized it even when I was so frustrated I was almost crying and so hot and so sweaty and just so damn over the whole day - I still knew that on a cosmic scale it wasn't shit. So, that's my lesson of the day.

Tonight I am completely in awe of how gorgeous the moon is over the water, how cool and refreshing the breeze off the ocean is and how just flat out unbelievably lucky I am to be living here with all this beauty.

Little Tito is doing OK, not great and we are still worrying about him making it.

He has balls of steel though and he is afraid of nothing, well, he tries to hide it when he is afraid anyway.

He needs to poop more though and if that doesn't happen in spite of Mimi's many tricks then he is off to the vet. We don't want to lose him now because we've fallen so in love with him.

I wrote this Wednesday night but Blogger has not been letting me upload since then. At first I thought I could upload the blog and just the pictures were a problem but it turned out nothing would go. Tonight, all is good so you get to see all of Tito's cuteness.

Isn't he adorable? He has that little snuggly toy that used to be a dog toy until they got done ripping all the stuffing out. We cleaned it up and he loves sleeping on it.

He also has a hot water bottle with a snuggly frog cover and he gets on that when he's cold.

OK, one more pic. I can't stop taking pictures of him and each one is cuter than the last one.

We're still worried about him, he's pooped some but not all and Mimi says he was impacted and could still be a little. I hate thinking that we could lose him. I hate his screaming when she is trying to get him to go. I hate that we can't feed him much until he does go. He's so tiny and so brave and so vulnerable.

Uh Oh! Look what fell asleep in my shirt tonight.

Mimi has been volunteering at a spay and neuter clinic in the Akumal pueblo the last 2 days.

Today she called me and asked if we could "foster" a 3 to 4 week old kitten that needed to be fed every few hours.

I said 'of course' and this little ball of fluff and purrs arrived.

As she was going out to dinner with all the vets from the clinic, she said "we don't have to keep it you know".

Yeah... right.

So after running around again in the heat of the afternoon getting all my errands done, we drove back to the coast last night. It was nice to walk in and open the doors to the ocean and feel that breeze. It's more humid over here but not as hot. You can't beat the ocean breeze though, really nice after the hot winds in Mérida.

I'm really happy with this set up, we are 3+ hours from Mérida and that makes coming over here whenever pretty easy. I can see spending much of the spring and summer at the beach and then on and off in the winter and fall. We'll probably start renting it again in the winter holidays once we get everything worked out.

Right now, we're just so happy that we are separate from the rental pool they run here. I'm well past over it as some of you probably know but now we're getting our freedom and hopefully this will be an amiable divorce.

We already feel more comfortable here as now we are not using their maid service at all, we've changed the locks and can leave out our personal stuff when we leave. It's much more like our place and we had a great time buying cleaning supplies and more towels. We already only used our own linens and usually our own towels when we were here. That's part of my resentment, we never used the stuff or the services that we have been paying for all these years.

Here's a picture taken from our deck that you won't see in the tourist brochures! It's a nurse shark in very shallow water near the beach. If you know the ocean then you know that wherever you are in it, there are sharks nearby. If humans were their food of choice there would be a lot more shark attacks, or they would be more endangered than they are. Most of them are not at all interested in biting a human but the fear is primordial.

This is a pretty harmless type of shark, they are one of the more common types found here. Most divers see them sleeping in caves or overhangs in the coral. Often the dive guides will take people right up to them, I don't think it is a good idea to bug any creature that is bigger than me and has teeth but many do it without injury, that's how calm these guys are. This was a big one, at least 5 feet and in little more than 2 feet of water. There were several snorkelers nearby and we watched him move away when they came towards him. None of them saw him... we refrained from yelling "shark!" Now that would really make us unpopular with the condo management!

All the lights on our bay and hopefully the other bays on the coast are now red or blue-green. It is the season when the big sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. White lights will keep them from coming in but they can't see red or blue-green. It's a nice night view to look down the beach and see only dim red lights. Especially tonight when the moon looks full and has a huge red ring around it. I forgot to bring the tripod up but if I remember I may try and get a picture.

It's been very hot and dry this last week. Temps have been from 104° - 107° F or 40° - 42° C. It's also smoky as this is the season when they burn the fields to get ready to plant when the rains start. Not the best idea in these times but old ways die hard. There is a constant hot, dry wind blowing and everything seems to be shriveling in the heat. A lot of the trees are flowering though and while beautiful, the pollen is also a pain to those of us with allergies. It's true, what I'd been told, that May is the best month to go north. Hopefully, when the house is finished we will be able to do that.

Yesterday, after running all kinds of errands in the heat of the day - I've got to stop putting things off until the hottest part of the day - we decided to have lunch at Boston's. I thought it would be the 3rd or 4th US chain restaurant that I've only been in here in México. My count now is Chili's, Sirloin Stockade, and I thought Boston was another. Turns out I think the one I'm thinking of in the US is Boston Gardens or something? This was a pretty nice sports bar/restaurant with freezing cold AC and lots of TVs. The food was pretty good too.

I like watching futbol or soccer, lots of action and emotion and all. It doesn't have that let's-watch-testosterone-poisoned-men-bash-each-other thrill that US football has but it isn't like watching paint dry which is more exciting than watching baseball. So, I was enjoying all the soccer games except WTF is going on with the uniforms??? Can someone explain them to me?

First, nowhere on them does it say what the team name is. The player's name is on the back and the rest is filled up with advertisements. These guys are running billboards.

Second, why is there no relationship at all between the uniforms on the goalie and the uniforms on the rest of his team?

There was one team in spiffy black and white stripes that mostly looked like the jail outfits in old movies. That was ok once I realized they weren't all referees which is the other thing their unis looked like, US football referees if they wore shorts. Well, and had ads plastered all over themselves including one bright yellow bumper sticker across their stomachs. Their goalie had on all black, that kind of went along with the black and white stripes of the other guys EXCEPT... he was dressed exactly like the real referees who wear all black (since they don't wear stripes) except his socks were white and the refs socks were black. Come on! Help us out here a little, why would you have a player dressed exactly like a ref? Are the players supposed to be checking socks before body blocking?

The other team though, sheez! They were in royal blue and pink stripes! Friggin godawful! Their goalie was in an orangey red and white stripped shirt. I mean, do they just tell the goalies to wear whatever is clean? Just pick something up off the floor of your closet and wear it to a game? This was a televised game with full stands, they must not have been the bush league.

So, can someone please explain why in a sport that is the most popular in the world, no one has gotten a designer to straighten all this shit out?

House Update Time!

This is the cross that is now on our house until it's completed.

They are traditionally put up on el Dia de Santa Cruz (May 3rd) when the workers get a feast put on by the owners. In most of Mexico it is carnitas but our guys wanted ceviche and it was put on by our architect as we weren't in town.

We spent a couple of hours at the house today in 104F.

Yes, it is hot now, even I the heat lover will say "It is hot!". It's not as humid as I had expected though so really, it's no hotter than a normal day in June in Palm Springs. I can do that so I can do this.

We stood around for about an hour waiting for one of the architects, that's a switch as usually I'm late to meet them. After an hour in the heat and the dust I called, I think he forgot but whatever, he came over then. The pond designer I found the other day also came over and explained a lot to him that I wasn't getting across very well. It's odd but I understand just about everything he said to him but I couldn't have come up with it in spanish on my own. It's frustrating, my understanding and reading are well ahead of my speaking.

I spent some time with this pond guy the other day, his english is not as good as my spanish so most of it was in spanish. There are a lot of words I didn't know that are key to building a pond. Think about this one, how many ways can you embarrass yourself trying to describe 'bottom drain' in a foreign language? Trust me on this, I hit them all!

Finally he pulled up an Argentine pond builder's site on the net and we got the answer... are you ready? El Bottom Drain! That's what they called it. But, of course, it is pronounced differently in spanish so my saying it in english hadn't registered. It's stuff like that that can send you screaming into the night if you aren't as well balanced as I obviously am.

Anyway, he described bottom drains, biological filters, Y's for pump returns, water movement, and the oxygen needs of fish quite well.

They are going to meet next week and come up with a plumbing design for the outside pond. I'm very relieved as I knew I wasn't going to get what I really wanted because I couldn't describe it in words we both understood. This will be a concrete pond and that means it will be difficult to retrofit plumbing. I will buy all of the equipment from his company and also pay him for the design, I think it's better to spend some now than try and fix it later.

This is the living room looking into the kitchen. These walls are done and ready for paint when they dry. The upstairs walls are done and they are working on the downstairs now.

There is still a lot to be done though, the stairs aren't complete, the walls are only done up to the living room which leaves a lot of hallway, the library and the garage still to do. There is a lot of digging out that hasn't been done. They hit rocks in preliminary digging on the pool so they will start with a jackhammer next week - that should make me really popular with my neighbors!

We spent so much time hanging around waiting on the architect that I started wondering where all the workers take a dump. I know, I really shouldn't have that much time on my hands.

Anyway, while contemplating this I noticed a big, pink rope going down into the septic tank, which is still open. Luckily, it is very large and very deep and I couldn't see the bucket that I'm sure is down there.

Mimi, however, started poking around in the workers stuff.

They had music playing and she discovered that it was coming from a small iPod with a partial plastic bottle over the speaker outlet that amplified the sound. Clever!

We also spent some time hanging out in the street - looking for a cool breeze - and discovered that you can see the door of the master bathroom if you stand in just the right spot.

Because of the set back rules in the central historical district, the upstairs is 9 meters from the front of the house. You can see the new construction though from across the street.

The gas tank will be up there and perhaps a couple of lawn chairs as the view is great. I'm also thinking of putting some kind of shade up and using that area as a nursery for plants that aren't yet ready for the back.

The front of the house is still the same, they won't start working on it for awhile.

Check out my new blog roll to the right. I finally got it up, I've been keeping a list and 'getting ready' to put it in the template for awhile. I know you all wonder what I do with all my time, well... I spend a lot of it reading blogs. Check them out, they are all good!

Let's see... where were we when I so conveniently eddied out of the blogosphere? On Isla Mujeres!

It is kind of fun to be writing about this now when it has disappeared off everyone else's blog and mind. Well, it's fading in my mind too but that happens pretty quickly.

It was wonderful to meet so many of the bloggers I read and to have time to just hang out with them. More of that is definitely needed.

I also really felt like I actually live in QRoo, odd that. I've had the condo in Akumal for over 10 years and we are there on and off every year. I have friends in the town and I feel semi-local when I'm there but I know that I am not a full time resident.

In the rest of the state, I've never felt like I belong. I don't keep up with the politics, or the resort openings and I never had any friends who lived farther away than Puerto Aventuras in one direction and Chetumal in the other.

That's a long ways but it is probably more honest to say that I have ONE friend in Chetumal (Calderitas actually, Hi Kathe) and 2 friends in Pto Aventuras but they are only here occasionally.

Anyway, I spend time in Playa and Cancun, I can find my way to any number of little stores and suppliers in both places but I don't go to either of them to see people I know. That may change now, I actually know people in both cities and even if I never go and visit them it seems to give me a better feeling of actually belonging. Plus, I now have 3 friends on Isla Mujeres and several in Cancun and in Playa and well shit, I'm just wired into the action now!

Touring Isla was interesting, neither of us had been there since our teens or early 20s and for me, the memory was all garbled up with other islands and other tropical beaches.

Stand outs for me were these series of zip line huts out in the water, it sure looks like fun - zipping from one to another on a line.


Plus, one line had dozens of my favorite birds, Magnificent Frigates. These birds rarely roost, they can even sleep while floating on air currents.


Another favorite is this picture showing the skyline of Cancun and the huge Mexican flag that flies over every port of entry.


We did a lot of interesting stuff, drank a lot of tequila, drove around in golf carts, watched Fire Boy do his thing and generally, had a blast.

I had a homework assignment. Can I just say that the internet ate it? First it got coffee all over it and I hoped it was dead, but no, you could still read it. Then I lost many of my pictures and that was part of the assignment. Then I thought of a way to do it with what I thought would be an easy picture to find on the internet. Well, after many hours wandering the byways of Helmut Newton's photography - I couldn't find it. So, it just isn't going to happen. Sorry about that, maybe later or in a parallel universe.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I live. My computer lives too in a sort of half formed, rising from the ooze state. My internet connection... not so much.

I was hoping it would all miraculously heal when we got here to Merida. Why I even imagine these things when I don't believe in pictures of the Virgen of Guadalupe on tortillas or magic waters in France, I don't know. Maybe I only believe in inanimate, computer gods or magical magnetic force fields. Like human gods, the computer gods are not coming through with the goodies.

Oh, and I got in my first car accident in Mexico. My first car accident in oh... maybe 20 years. Not bad, I got clipped by an egg truck. I learned how to say '3rd party damages' in spanish and 'we had a bash up' too. Luckily, my friend Theresa was with me and not only supplied those magic phrases but a lot more as well. I don't recommend this as a way to increase your vocabulary but it was pleasant 'taking a little shade' and chatting.


So, now that I have sacrificed a left front bumper perhaps the computer gods will smile on me? Perhaps I should go out and light a candle on the bumper?