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August 15, 2008- I had help doing this update. As you can see  Schnauzer boy is growing like a weed. He expects to be involved in anything that his Mom is doing. We have discovered in the past eight weeks that the breed is far noisier than the Cairns! The  No Bark command is a work in progress. We can surely count on the fact that the midnight cat bugler would NEVER make it past the Schnauzer alarm system and into our BR.

He has been a good companion and nurse with Dart and Dida as I had to go in for surgery again. I thought I was going to need a knee replacement on the right knee. Right around 4th of July it got so painful that I could not step on it. MRI's and consultations with our good Dr. Tello and the verdict was arthroscopy to repair both meniscus and laser gun bursts to the joint/bone to make fibroid scars that replace the lost cartilage! Cool beans. The surgery was same day and I was very shocked at how well it has worked. NO PAIN! Not from the day it was done up to today. I was just released to walk on the cobblestones again so it is as healed as it is going to get. We are going to swimming exercise every day. It sure is great to be rid of the pain.

August 10th we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Harry managed to pull off a catered surprise party for me with 30 of our good friends. I never had a clue. My Machiavelli man.

 It has been a great summer and a good rainy season. For the most part it has been following the plan and raining at night. Nice sunny days and the lake is way up. It is nearly to the top of the wall along the malecon. The Municipal in Chapala continues with all kinds of infrastructure improvements. More lights, laterals and turn lanes at many intersections on the way to Chapala. There is supposed to be a malecon all along the lake to link up with the Ajijic malecon. That would make for one long, lovely, scenic walk. In Chapala proper they just dedicated a bandstand and concert area where the old post office used to be. Jocotopec has also redone there waterfront area and there is now a tour boat that is taking people out onto the lake for view rides. All along the lake area there is initiative to make it even more attractive to tourists. Which is working as all the towns are usually packed on weekends. As always all over town parking is minimal. Bring small cars!!

The Wal-Mart is zooming along and should certainly be done by the projected November opening. The mall across the street is going a bit slower but also should be done in November.

Just like NOB prices on everything here are going up. Food, electricity,  gas are all going higher. The price of building materials of any kind are skyrocketing. Of course very few people here have a mortgage to default on but that is about the only difference. The peso against the dollar is also getting worrisome. There are some people who are considering moving back NOB because it has gotten too expensive too live here. It may discourage some from retiring here. It does help to contradict some of those ridiculous articles that touted this as cheap paradise. There are still many great reasons to retire here but cheap is NOT one of them. We are still happy here and we can manage the cost rise.

We are busy and enjoying our life here. That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the women are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

June 24, 2008- During the hot times, end of May we flew up to Portland Oregon to visit Harry's sister.  We were glad to leave the heat and dust but after six days of cold grey skies and frequent rain showers we were equally glad to get back. And the rainy season here started with a bang. A week of grey skies and rain both day and night made us think we had brought Portland home with us. Now the rainy season has settled down to the proper good T-storms at night schedule and the lake is filling up. The plants love the nitrogen rich water and all start looking fabulous. The mountains are green and it is such a relief to be free of the dust. 

Still we always need a gripe. Now it is dogs and mud!! The  week before we left for Portland, Harry and I went to the Guadalajara dog show. FCI  Mexico basically has two big ones a year. They are three day shows, one in Mexico city and one in Guad. They use the big expo center in Guad so there is plenty of room for vendors, rings and a crating area. Harry wanted another puppy. He was leaning toward the Brussell's Griffon a kind of terrier looking toy breed. I wasn't real thrilled about adding another dog responsibility to my dog mother role and said if we got one it was "his" dog , he takes care of it. We had researched it and contacted rescue services. You will find if you live here and tell the truth they are VERY leery about Mexico. Plus most of this breed in rescue are puppy mill dogs so many with elbow dysplasia or other problems. And at 12 lbs. max  I was afraid if Dart tried to play with it he would break it.  At the dog show we met a breeder with one. When she took it from the crate and handed it to me it peed all over my lap and tried to bite me!  The breed she says can be a bit nerovsa! ya think! So we continued along the benching row and came to a gorgeous kennel set up with miniature schnauzers. Mexico city based, owned by a veterinarian who was there showing his dogs. His stud had won the breed in Mexico city this year and placed in the group. And.. he had two gorgeous litters on display. One was three months old and the other was five months old. The five month old litter were all black. There was a beautiful male that we both fell in love with.  Cisco ended up coming home with us. The breeder said he was show quality and he would show him for us, but that meant cutting his ears which I think is barbaric so he won't have a show career. He and Dart are best bros and play all day long. Dida wishes to be an only dog but is slowly getting over her snit.  Harry named him Cisco after a child hood TV character the Cisco kid! He is a handful but also a love.

The mud issue is the morning run down to the park to play. If it rained during the night it can be a real mess. There safely off leash we are also working on teaching him to come, not jumping all over people and yapping your head off at all and sundry. He is a cutie and already a much loved boy.

The housing market is still pretty stable. Actually some really $$ places over the 500 thousand price sold recently and anything around 200 is going quickly if a decent house. There are new ones still going up all over in little developments and some people say Jocotopec is also getting a bunch of buyers due to cheaper prices.

The new Wal-Mart super center at the Libremento light is going up quickly and the shopping center across the street opposite Flora Exotica is also going up fast. There has been lots of street work making lateral roads all along the highway from that light back towards Chapala.  How all this is going to effect traffic and the population density is anyone's guess.  There are certain times of day when it takes 15 minutes to get from the top of our hill all the way through town to the El Torito light on the way to Chapala. There is also renewed talk about the through town road turning into a four lane, but that has been going on for years. It would mean buying out and tearing down the stores on one side, and really eliminate all parking along that street. Parking anywhere in town is hard and weekends it is awful.

Since closing off the beach access to the weekend crowds, down by the park on weekends it is barely navigable. They double and triple park along the street once the parking areas fill up. Still since they are contained and the town went to those big trash dumpsters the trucks' hoist up, the mess on Monday AM is GREATLY diminished. We shall see how this plays out. Ajijic Limpio which spear headed the cleanup and financed many of the trucks and manpower is saying they never planned to do this forever. They want the Municipality to take this back. We shall see how well the service continues under the township's responsibility.

As always we are busy and enjoying our life here. That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the women are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

April 13, 2008- Well we are home from a ten day driving trip to the U.S. Which has only reinforced our idea of flying from now on!! Now we did have the dogs with us which makes it harder. Very few hotels in Mexico allow dogs. While you may sneak in a small one like Dida, Dart is a bit too large to hide.  They are both good travelers and don't bark when left in the room. So that means no stopping, a straight through 10-12 hour drive from here to Laredo or Piedras Negras. We are just getting too old for that!!

The dogs were the reason we went. They had appointments at the vet school at Texas A&M . It was worth the trip since Dart is now on a new gastritis med and has not thrown up since we got home!! Dida is on a new diet for her low thyroid but so far the just like us! the pounds are NOT dropping off. Time will tell. From College Station we went on to visit my sister in Charleston, SC and had a wonderful Easter there with family. Dart loved playing with my sister's young corgi and I enjoyed seeing my nieces.

 There were some cold days up there one morning in Charleston it was 35!! So we were glad to return home to what is now our hotter, dry season. Most days it gets up to the high 80"s but there is NO humidity. The hills are brown and this is the time we wait to hear the rainbirds announce the coming summer season.

It is amazing how much has changed in the time since we moved here. More and more "stuff" you brought back is now available here. But.. the prices for everything are rising.

While there is much discussion of the troubled economy NOB, here the economic situation looks bright. There are both Mexican and Gringo housing developments springing up all around Guad and here at the lake. New stores and businesses are going up. Old ones are being painted and refurbished. From Chapala to Jocotopec infrastructure is being upgraded with new street laterals, more lights to handle the traffic, and work beginning on a new malecon along the lake here in Ajijic.

The auto access to the lakeside east of the pier has been totally closed off. This now ends the Saturday and Sunday "frat party" there. These were mostly out of towners who left lots of trash and didn't contribute much to the local economy.  Their gatherings involved a lot of booze and a lot of noise. In addition to closing off the area between the pier and Nueva Posada, the area there was cleaned up. It is now bulldozed so no brush, and leveled with some added soil.  Now it is a nice picnic area for a family that walks in.  Swimming is also popular there and whatever the state did, there is for now no more lirio. The water is high almost to the top of the malecon wall by the park, so we are holding our own despite the dry season.

I am sad to announce the loss of Snickers. He died at home in the arms of his owners about a month ago. 16 was a good age and he was there with people who loved him when he died. Dart is thrilled at the new arrival of 8 month old Sadie. She won't replace him but she adds much fun and loves racing about here on the privada.  We are glad to be home and as always back in the thick of things with friends and activities.

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the women are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

February 11, 2008-  The Lake Chapala Garden Club bought a beautiful new crèche for the plaza this year. We decided to go with metal sculpture since the plaster stuff gets old and crappy quick. The Delegado met with a metal artist and the life size statues came out just lovely. We were all (LCGC Board) invited to the evening dedication at the plaza, but.. in the ways of politicians LCGC NEVER got mentioned in the sound bite!!  Life goes on. We may do the Mexican thing and put up a plaque! Well Candlemas is  here and the Christmas season is officially over. We are finally coming out of the colder weather. Days up to 80 sometimes and nights around 50 again.

One of the fun things about life in the village is the unexpectedness of things. A week or so ago the dogs went nutz, Dart was climbing the front door as he and Dida yapped their heads off. Along with their noise I could hear a flute playing in the privada.  Out the dogs and I went to the gate. I could see why Dart was acting so crazy .......for him, it looked like Big Bird out there in the privada.

So there for our personal entertainment was one of the dancers from the Indian groups????? Usually the whole troupe dances in our many parades. Question to me was why??  He was all alone just cruising along playing and stopping if you handed over some cash.  Which of course I did. Dart and Dida were entranced. He did his bit moved on down the privada and then they went back out.  Now what was it?? Did they need to make a car payment? Was the rent raised and due immediately?  Medical bills.. WHAT, why was he out there without the rest of the  troupe hustling on Sunday afternoon. I guess like many things Mexican we will just never know. Just one of those cool things that only happens when you live in the village. Kind of like that time long ago when I turned the corner on the malecon down at the lake and there were zebras tied up to the trees. Look back in old news and and find the explanation for that one.

 Easter is really early this year.  The Mardi Gras madness has come and gone. The crazy floats, the flour flinging and the confetti eggs are all broken. It being a bit colder the guys impersonating women were a kinda  more covered up than usual.

On Ash Weds. Harry had surgery to fix a deviated septum on. Hopefully this will help him to KEEP ON breathing at night.  Once again we got to see one of the boutique hospitals in Guad. Another  one with all suite private rooms, huge bath. Nice furniture with a place for me to sleep. Plus a white table clothe restaurant downstairs and me able to call and order anything off the menu. He had his own nurses round the clock and his ENT surgeon and the anesthesiologist were there all day after the surgery. He is mending but it is turning out to be as painful as I told him it was going to be. We went into Guad today for a follow up visit to the surgeon. Tubes are now out of his nose and he can sort of breathe through it. The Doctor will be out here on Thursday to check him again.  Hopefully he will be well enough to enjoy the Valentine's day dinner a bunch of us are eating at Roberto's restaurant down by the pier.

Lots going on this month. CASA is competing and will have a booth at the Chili cook off. Northern lights series is soon and we just got confirmation on the musicians who will be staying here.  After that we will be going North to Texas A&M for a consult at the vet school on Dart and Dida. Busy, busy.

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 19, 2007-  Strange portents and signs! A popular quote around Christmas time, but.. we really did see some back around Thanksgiving. Harry's sister came for a week and was going with us to PV on one of those all inclusive beach trips. She flew in a few days early and we decided to take her to Tapalpa to see the standing stones. These rocks look like Stonehenge but are really water and wind made not manmade. The cooler weather I had been whining about was still hanging around a bit and Tapalpa is higher than we are. Still it was a warm sunny day when we set off. As we got there the sun left us and it got colder and cloudier. On the climb up to the rocks, dirt road, streams crossing,  it started to rain, then turned to hail and sleet!! This is what it looked like when we finally reached the stones at the top.

The funny part was when Harry asked us if we wanted to get out.!!! Since both of us girls were in sandals the answer was  a loud NO!! Still it was a hoot watching the Mexicans and their kids, snapping pictures, and playing in the snow. They were totally entranced by this strange gift from nature.  The weather stayed nasty and the drive down and home brought more hail, sleet and as we got lower just rain.

A few days later we left on the beach bus trip, missing the last of the San Andreus festival noise. This is a fun trip, sort of like a cruise ship on land. Very popular for Thanksgiving here. You go to this beachfront resort. And for the entire time there no money ever changes hands. You have a plastic ID bracelet and all drinks at the pool, food at the four restaurants, activities on the beach and so on are covered.

The price was good, the rooms and all the facilities were very nice. Just a lot of steps all over. They need a better map since there are ramps for us crips but they are not easily found or marked on the map.  Still it was  great, a warm and sunny for five days.

After we got back, I did a horrible thing, I let the neighbor's old dog, 16 year old Snickers run away. I was watching him for Weezie and Burgess. I let him outside into the Privada with Dart and Dida, his friends,  a HUGE barrage of booms went off and so did Snickee.  First he went to the other , end of the privada the dead end walled part and hid under a car. I went down to try to get him and he ran again. By the time I got back to my feet he was gone!! And I felt AWFUL!!! We all searched, the neighbors helped. How far we assumed could a half blind, deafish, almost toothless dog get!! That day we put posters all over the village in English and Spanish. Thank god this picture was there in the house.  I posted about his loss on chapala .com Every day the dogs and I went out in a different direction to look for him. No one found him. Weezie and Burgess came home and were VERY understanding. We all just assumed he went off somewhere, hid and died.  But we had a Christmas miracle!!   8 days after he disappeared I posted this message on chapala .com

We were so lucky. He has gained back most of his weight and his owners are very happy.  I want everyone to know that despite the popular idea that Mexicans are not kind to their pets doesn't wash!  Much of the Mexican population in the village was looking for him. The restaurants with outdoor seating, the pickup truck cops, the garbage men, the car washers and street sellers, kids both above and below the highway, all the workman down at the park were all searching. No one ever thought he would make it towards the booms and clear to the other side of the village. It was such a wonderful ending.

Now into the mad holiday whirl. Two days spent packing 2500 gift bags for Toys for Tots. Then Denny, Dagmar- MR. AND MRS. CLAUS  with Harry and others elves were off to all the kinders from Ajijic to San Nicholas , San Juan Cosala and all the way to Mezcal.

This week a Christmas celebration every single day! CASA, Garden Club, Shriners, two potlucks, plus we are having the block party on Independencia on Saturday night. Harry is off today to Guad to buy the piñatas. I am making German potato salad for tomorrow's potluck and I still have to decide what to make for the block party. Plus 16 for Christmas day. Then we will just chill out until Three Kings day!

May you all have a Happy Christmas and a Healthy New Year, just watch out for those strange signs and portents!

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

November 1, 2007- The first of the two celebrated days of the dead. I set the altar up last week. I have become thoroughly Mexican in this. I like my yearly visit with the dead. Just wish I didn't have to add more pictures to both sides each year :-( 

There were altars set up all over town some just for individual families and two especially lovely ones for Juanita Reed..La Japonesa to the Mexicans. She was a tireless supporter for good here in the Chapala area for well over 20 years.  I will miss her friendship and her always great cooking advice when I was preparing a dish for CASA.  The memorial service at LCS was not properly announced in the papers and about 50 people were there. Since her Saturday morning town clean up with "her" kids now has second generation kids in it,  I am sure if the event had been better publicized there would have been many more of her Mexican friends there.

At the risk of being branded a whiner by many of our friends in much more northern climes we had an early and totally unexplained cold spell last week. 48 at night and maybe 70 by day. We were all griping like crazy since it was accompanied by a brisk and sharp wind!! But then everyone here has commented that weather wise this has been the strangest summer anyone remembers in years. Cooler, grayer and at least wetter than most can ever recall. It will be interesting to see what our six weeks of "winter" brings.

If you look at this link you can see the map and directions for a wonderful around the lake tour to view wildflowers this time of year and waterfalls any time of the year.  Garden Club Field trip     

There you will find a map and directions for 4 different tours. Some are on rough roads and do need a vehicle with higher ground clearance or 4 wheel drive. But the tours all start at the town of Concepcion de Buenos Aires and right there in the town square there is a huge billboard with all the routes marked and in a model of efficiency there are also blue road markers all along the various routes to keep you on track!! 

Lake Chapala Garden Club was VERY fortunate that one of our valued members, Dr. Jerry Smith and some of his "Hell's Prostates" motorcycle club  friends agreed to act as guides for a group of about 30 LCGC members.  We had a great breakfast arranged for us by Jerry there at  the town of CBA and then the members divided up into groups to go on the various tours.  The wildflowers are just coming into their glory and all the scenery was just beautiful.  If you want to go do check the link and the map and plan to make a day of it. And don't forget your camera!!! Also dress warmly and wear shoes you can hike about in .....no sandals!!

November is upon us and time to gird our loins for the Maestroes who will be staying with us for the artesano four day sale, then the  feast of San Andreaus and our celebration of Thanksgiving. Well at least the cohete makers will make a killing!!!

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

October 8, 2007- With the San Juan Cosala disaster there has been so much going on here. We are all busy with our own special charities there as well as all the other stuff we do. And the busy time ..high season is starting soon. All the festivals are starting, this month the all month long feast of the Virgin of the Rosary. Next month Maestros del Arte, the feast of San Andreas. And then on into December, the feast for the Virgin of Guadalupe , all the school visits with Toys for Tots and so on.. and so on. It is like the way we tell the season's of the year here.

I spent some time this Sunday in church reflecting on prejudice and skin color. America although we get a bad rap for racism we are hardly the only country to practice? it.  I have occasionally ranted about how the well off Tapatios treat native Mexicans. Lest you think in church that I am part of the the minority group of blonde gringas, I am not. The weekend Tapatios come in all shades of skin, mostly light like me and red, blond and brown hair. There is also a goodly number of the native Mexicans in all shades of skin color from, light to dark. So we look like a pretty international bunch. In the U.S. even among themselves Negroes discriminated against one another by color. The "darkness" test was the paper bag test. You were "better" if you were the color of or lighter than the color of a paper bag. Here the discrimination is similar. The darker and more "Indio" a person looks the more likely they will be discriminated against and often they are not educated and poor. Even other Mexicans, the lighter brown people, look down on the darker pure "Indios".  And sadly many of the European looking Tapatios regard them as little more than animals. Just leaving the U.S. doesn't let you leave prejudice behind. Sad, I wish it were not so.

Happy news...Brice-9 was first  in the rebozo competition and Chayo- 6 was first in her age group. And drum roll please Brice was chosen Queen of Six Corners!! I'll have pictures of the crowning next week. She is at 9 such a beautiful child. Dad, Jose is already at wits end about the neighborhood men and boys noticing her! He keeps threatening to carry a baseball bat at all times.  She is such a shy, modest girl. She gets a bit confused about all the notice by the male animals. Go help Jose by the time she is 14!

Supposedly the real estate prices are dropping here. But that does you no good if you can't sell your home up north. The price of building supplies are not going down and the rehabbing/remodeling is still going on all over the village. Other prices are also going up steadily. The cost of living even here is climbing. But the weather is still wonderful, the people are still kind and caring and the pace is still far slower than NOB. I think we will stay. <VBG>

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

August  23, 2007- Well weather with Hurricane Dean is a major topic today. No it wasn't much! A bit cooler, cloudy rain sometimes heavy off and on all day, no wind.  At this elevation storms from either coast get brought down by the mountains by the time they get here. But that isn't to say that this has not, like last year been a different rainy season. More rain during the day, cooler and fewer spectacular night lightening storms.  All summer I have been  sleeping with a blanket and going out in the early AM with long sleeves. That is a change over other summers we remember from the last 15 years. Weird but when you consider that meteorologists measure climate change in thousands of year hardly a blip on the radar here.  I guess we just chalk it up to global warming, that thing our esteemed fearless leader says doesn't exist!

The delegado here  has changed; a new party member along with the new Chapala mayor. It seems strange after dealing with Ricardo for 6 years. This new dude is purported to have a hort background. He has done a ton of work in the plaza and doesn't seem to want us garden clubbers mucking around there.  We may do a trial balloon and give him a budget and see what he wants to do. Then dole out the money to pay for whatever. Whenever we planted in the plaza the town just provided manpower, we bought the stuff and decided where it went, we dug, pruned and weeded, etc. If he wants to save our stiff old bodies we can at least try it once and see. I will say that I now see a couple of the layabouts who worked? up there really having to work! Shock. Which is why right now it looks really good.

Ajijic Limpio, the township environmental initiative has made a major difference in the amount of trash in town. Losing the nearby dump has forced everyone to look at how much we put in the trash bin! There are new trash cans on poles all along the street provided by AL and funded by the local realtors. A bag person has a key to unlock the ring that holds the bag and has to monitor his/her can and change bags as needed. There is now a once a week pick up of green waste that goes out of town to a shredder on ejido land. The resulting compost is used in farming by the ejido people so we are saving space in the dump. There is also a weekly pickup of recyclables; cans, glass and plastic bottles.  They have a major teaching initiative in all of our local schools with regular classes on not littering and recycling. AL lost one of it's founders this past month in the untimely death of Bob Moore a local horticulturist who died in a car accident. This is the memorial placed in a public garden along the Carretera. He was a member of my orchid group and we all really miss him.

Realtors report that again prices are going down or being cut due to the real estate slowdown up north.  They expect this to continue for another year. Not a lot of people seem to be taking advantage of this because they can't sell their homes up north! Still the building on this side of the lake continues. A bunch of smaller developments popping up like mushrooms and some with really small homes being sold to the Mexican people. These are being built on the way to Joco. Very small and not really finished, but a first home for the rising Mexican middle class. All of this is going to stress the infrastructure especially when it comes to roads and water. Not sure how much more the roads or the water table can take.

Here in the village and the nearby fractionamentos the cat burglar/dope kids are still going at it.  They slip past sleeping homeowners. WHO LEFT A DOOR OPEN OR HAVE A SCREEN SLIDER, JALOUSIE WINDOWS, OR SOME OTHER UNSECURED INGRESS!!! and rifle handbags and wallets for money, pick up any easily  available jewelry or cameras and usually leave before anyone wakes. A neighbor had the police wake them early last week. They told them their car had been involved in an accident!! Seems this burglar also took the car keys and the car which he crashed and then boogied off on foot. Now this is scary but mostly could be prevented by making sure all doors and windows have some sort of decorative iron work and not leaving handbags ,wallets, car keys and so on lying out at night. Not rocket science. If you are away for a time or someone has cased your place they can easily drill out the locks. Another lakeside resident in San Juan Cosala was robbed of his home theater and they took the safe that was bolted into the floor! These were more pros than the cat burglar druggies and they obviously had some inside info since they knew the  whereabouts  of the safe. His home was secured by bars but they had time and opportunity, and some knowledge of what they wanted so they did get in. You can't prevent a determined thief.

Fall has come, school has started and after Dean leaves the sun will come back out! The lake is up quite well due to the summer's plentiful rains.

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

uly 2 ,2007- Rainy Flora and Fauna. This is the time of year when all the plants are both very happy and under attack! The rains make them grow really well but they also bring bugs and disease galore. This is one of the four gorgeous amarylis bulbs that came home with me from Amsterdam. Here amarylis grow in pots or the ground outside all year. They are not the forced Christmas plant you often see NOB. I had trouble getting the garden store man in Amsterdam to sell them to me. He kept thinking I was taking them home to the U.S. There they would have to be stored under refrigeration until fall. NOT! They came home and went right into the garden.  I bought two white bulbs , one with dark orange stripes and this one with it's peach edges. All four have been spectacular. They like their Mexican home and each bulb has had two or three bloom spikes with four or more flowers on each.  Here they will multiply in the ground and I can spread them around the yard beds. The caladiums right, in the shady bed by the front door come back every year. Again NOB they would be either a pricy annual or something I would have to dig up, store and replant every summer. The orchids in their baskets and all the other plants here are sending out roots and shoots. The fauna are equally busy. The birds are nesting and there are new butterflies daily.

On our daily walks we also feed the local lions. We don't know their names. And it is a bit hard to get a good picture of them from the street through the gates. For a long time I found them very intimidating.. which is what they are supposed to be. They are some sort of European mastiff, the size of ponies and they live at the old hotel on Pedro Moreno. The hotel has a long checkered past. Privately owned, a home for a famous actress, then Mafia owned, then private again, but then taken over by the state. Now it is owned by a Guad lawyer who brings his family to visit infrequently. There is a caretaker family and the boys.  They have more space and freedom than most Mexican guard dogs , they seem to be well fed but I don't think anyone pays much attention to them. I started tossing them each a biscuit about a month ago. Now they wait for me at the gate, never bark anymore , and wag there stumpy tails as soon as they see me. I tell them they are good boys and while I get closer to the gate to give them their cookies, I still don't reach in with my  hands. I tried once but no one ever taught them to eat nice and they are expecting food. I want to keep all my digits!  I feel sorry for them. Maybe some day I can get them to let me pet them.

All over the village the mares are foaling babies. Here we run to a lot of pintos and dark bays.  Not too many chestnuts. The goats who live near Mariscos  Peter's are also increasing the herd. I always look when we go by as they have a rock pile in the middle of their pasture and there is always one goat up there on the top. Hard to tell if he is the watch goat or the king goat, but he looks very impressive. 

While the town is much quieter now the building is still going on apace all around us. New developments on both the Joco and Chapala sides of town. Right here in town crossing the highway is still a dangerous thing. A local merchant was the latest hit and run victim a few weeks ago. That makes three people killed in hit and run accidents here since January. There was a lot of discussion about adding topes as well as the traffic lights. Chapala has detailed more traffic cops at all the intersections.

Other than that Dida's eye is finally healed and the hated collar is off! She has a small scar on her cornea but she has most of the vision in the eye . Dart is now two and still a coco locco puppy. I hope he is always this happy a camper. Harry is still improving I'm just fine.

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

June 1, 2007- Yes it has been two months. Harry is recovering just fine. In fact he was well enough to travel some. I am tripped out. The end of April and into May was the Amsterdam tulip trip. Harry stayed home from that one. Then I came home for 24 hours and we left together to visit his sister in Portland, Oregon. Then home for a week and off to visit the other coast  and my family in NJ. I love traveling more than Harry. This was his first time back to NJ in six years. It was great seeing all my old friends at school and our former next door neighbors. They were our hosts and we could never find  better friends than Nila and Charlie. NOB  there is always the shopping, and of course the food. Even Harry enjoyed a Jersey Mike's sub, Vic's pizza, clams and fresh fried seafood, fresh not frozen bagels and so on. His sister Janie took us to a marvelous restaurant at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Portland ; a multi course lunch to die for. And it was way to cool to actually see Powells book store.

With all the shopping, the trick when you go is getting all your purchases to fit into two bags each that must NOT weigh over 50 lbs. Plus we e-bay shop before we go and send those purchases to whichever address we are visiting. I was proud of myself and Nila's good scale all the bags were almost exactly 50 lbs.!! We had to do some last minute juggling at the gate when we came home from Portland.

We are following many other year round residents here and planning our trips during the hottest months of April and May. And it is hot most days around 90, dry and dusty. Very low humidity and the the mountains are brown.  Still relief should be here soon. The rain birds are singing and every night since we got home last week the wind picks up and the clouds gather.. but so far only an occasional sprinkle. That means daily watering for all the pots and the new grass. The predictions are for a longer, better rainy season, but we all know how reliable those things are. For now you go on hot mode which is walk the dogs at 7:00 AM, then do your errands by 11:00 and get home.  Garden work outside I just do after 4:00. The house is wonderfully cool so it is no problem. We even had one of those swamp cooler air conditioner things  but we  sold it. Tlaloc will hopefully send rain soon.

The town is much quieter now. A bit less traffic although the building and remodeling doesn't seem to have slowed down. The realtors are saying that just like the housing slump NOB the prices and traffic have slowed here. Not as many concerts and extra stuff to be running to. Right now we are staying close to home. Dida dog managed to rub her eye or somehow ulcerate a cornea. A month of drops three times daily (thank you Lucia and Jose our dog sitters) and it still was not healing up. So yesterday she went in for micro surgery to use the conjunctiva to from a patch and make it heal faster.  For the first time in her life the drama queen is wearing an Elizabethan collar and she is NOT happy. Dart keeps trying to kiss her to make it better and she is probably about to bite him.  Helping her eat and drink and just getting her to walk wearing it has been tough. She is one stubborn terrier. She wants this thing OFF!! I have used them on my other dogs but never on a short child. She keeps catching it on things on the ground! Ten days of this sigh.. I just hope this is the end of the battle and we don't have too much vision loss. So still playing nurse here. Other than that just catching up on web work, feeding the orchids, dentist appointments and all the stuff we put off for a month.

That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

March 29, 2007 - We have been through a bunch of major things this past month.

February, 2007- Critter tales. This is about our new privada resident.. the runaway rooster. You do know that in Mexico they fight roosters. Their feet are equipped with metal spikes. UGHH almost as unfair as bullfighting. Neither has ever been a sport I aspire to go see.

About a month ago as the dogs and I were off for our AM walk we heard a rooster crowing right nearby as we were going down the privada, Dart rushed over to the barred window in wall of the spite lot and began to bark. So I had to go over and look. There staring back at Dart was a very pretty rooster! Now the walls of this narrow, now weed/bamboo overgrown lot with the wire part must be twenty feet high. So my first thought was how the devil did he get in there???? But the dogs were off down the street and I just assumed if he got himself in there he would get himself out.

Well he didn't! Too high to fly out? then how did he get in, who knows. He would hop up on top of the window ledge but didn't seem to fit through the bars. My Mexican neighbor said he couldn't be a fighting rooster because his comb would have been cut off ... UGH SQUARED!  After a week or two I began to wonder if he had exhausted his supply of worms and grubs in there. And what about water? So behind Harry's back (he felt Mr. Rooster belonged in a pot!) I went and bought him a couple kilos of rooster food. Juan and I fed him daily and I wired a small plastic take out dish to the bars which got filled with water as he needed it.  He had been in there for over a month. Everyone on the privada stopped as they passed to look in to see if he was still there. Dart was obsessed with him.

 Eventually a  Mexican man came along and said rooster was his and how could he get in there to get him out.  I explained about the rich  Jefe from Guad who owned the lot and how it was never visited or opened.  And climbing in was pretty impossible.  So the man went away. This past week we heard wild thrashing and squawking from the lot. I went out thinking that the feral cats had come back and were trying to reclaim their territory, but it was Carlos, and a young friend who had somehow?? climbed in there. They were chasing him around trying to catch him. Rooster now managed to fly!! First to the top of our outside wall, then to the wall atop the house on the mirador. From there after Carols tossed his hat at him he went even higher to the very top of the neighbor's fence which must be thirty feet. And that was the end of the saga. The boys gave up, he disappeared and is now probably some where down the street in someone else's yard .. where there are GIRL chickens. And Dart is very sad.. he misses him and keeps looking to see if maybe he came back <G>>.

Some one posted on one of the web sites about his initial research on moving here and added all the usual comments from friends? about personal safety, kidnapping, banditos etc. I thought of this as we were out Saturday morning. It was a  very nice part of the village near LCS. A young man of about 4 or 5 was bebopping down the sidewalk still dressed in his jammies and flip flops. He must have been headed back from the nearest abbarote because his bag carried bananas  and breakfast things. Maybe he and Poppie were making breakfast as the average Mexican mother would never have let him out in his jammies. Anyway NOB no matter what or where the town you would never have seen this.  Most little ones meet other little ones in parent sponsored play dates, heck most of them are not even allowed to play out in their own yards unsupervised.  Not that there wasn't oversight here. Had he fallen, been menaced, cried out in anyway and there would have been three Mexican women at their doors to see what was wrong. If there was a need he would have been immediately scooped up and ministered to. But he was really very safe.  Just as we all are as we head down the street on foot on our errands.

Unfortunately the traffic accidents continue. Recently a  Chapala bus struck a young man on a motor scooter.  He was seriously injured. The family lives here in town and so far it is another case of the company stalling on paying anything. Busses and their drivers have a terrible rep here in Jalisco. They seem to whack some poor pedestrian monthly!! Just after the new Mayor of Chapala took out a full page add to promise better traffic control, more cops and all he could do to prevent these accidents ALL the street lights on the carreterra went out/bonkers for three days!  Poor man. Some say that with all the bad press in Canada about recent deaths and other mishaps to Canadian citizens that fewer are coming this year. Hard to tell. I think that more and more Guad weekenders are taking up the slack so to us year round villagers it seems the same busy high season.

Our two girls from the Northern Lights group will be here t until the 28th. We have really enjoyed them and the concerts. Just hard to fit five concerts into all the other parts of our schedules.  The Valentine's day auction for Casa Ancianos was a big success. My dinner for six went for 6000 pesos!!

The cold weather is gone, soon we will be griping about the heat <G>.  That's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

January 26, 2007- Dida and I are major grousing because the warm/sun part of the contract is in violation. Dida really misses her sunbathes stretched out on the terrace.  I guess the nasty winter weather NOB is drifting south. We have had a week of clouds, cold stiff breezes, and even some serious rain. The daytime temp is around 60 degrees. It is supposed to be hanging on for another week. As I type I am wearing double sweaters! One thing I can't stress enough to anyone considering moving here. Bring your sweaters, sweatshirts, fleece jackets etc. The house when there is no sun never really warms up. So you are cold all day!! Even some of the Canadians are not running around in shorts and tee shirts.

Another result of the population boom/traffic here there was a hit and run on the Carretera this past week. The man was killed, the woman was seriously injured and air evacced back to Canada for treatment.  This was  in the center of town right in front of Bruno's restaurant. Driving and walking here require ETERNAL vigilance.  You never know what you are going to encounter and you have to be prepared to defend your body or your car! So far no info on apprehending the driver.

High season is in full swing, parking places and reservations at the most popular restaurants are in short supply. We will soon be hosting our kids/musicians for the annual Northern Lights Concert weeks. It will be fun to see whom we have for visitors this year.  There are also a ton of benefits, auctions, and parties to raise money for the many charities here. I am donating an Italian dinner for six to be served here at our house. It will be auctioned off at the Casa Ancianos  benefit dinner dance on Valentines day. This is a benefit for the old folks home in Chapala. I was there a few weeks ago. Tommy Thompson from Barbara's Bazaar mentioned that although the facility is immaculate it is still an older Mexican building. The geezers really feel the cold. When I was at Soriannas I came upon a large bin of hats and scarves 70% off.  I grabbed 26 matching scarves and hats none of which was more than a dollar and a half U.S. With this recent cold snap I am really glad I took them straight to the home. It was around noon and the ambulatory and non ambulatory were in this sort of sun room while their rooms were being cleaned. The nurses helped me lay them out on a table and every one picked a hat and scarf! I had a huge amount of fun for a grand total of less than $30.00!

I just hope that this cold weather will leave soon. May you NOT be living in one of those places with the awful winter weather....that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

January 1, 2007- It used to be such a pain in the old days after New Year's, remembering to put in the right date on paperwork and checks etc. Checks, never see them anymore.! Now it just means getting out and buying a new write in date book to keep track of all and sundry each month. It lives here on the desk and is consulted daily.

Last night was a quieter night than most New Year's Eves here. Maybe a shortage of cojetes? A fitting end to a year of dolor.. we lost a bunch of friends this year. I guess although we are counted in with the young bunch, since many of our friends from when we first started coming here are older  I better get used to it. Maybe with the good weather/sunshine, the better health etc. here you just lull yourself into thinking that all your friends will be here forever.   My New Year's resolution is to treasure my friends and family and treat each day as if it might be my last!  I am glad to see 2006 gone.

The week in Puerta Vallarta was restful. We needed it. The city has changed a great deal since we were last there nine or ten years ago. Kinda reminds me of Florida, much more traffic, a lot more retirees, and the costs have gone way up.  A whole lot more gated beach and golf communities going in on the side of town near the airport and like here also in the outlying towns of Sayulita and Brucieras. 

PV is fun to visit but I could never take the summers. Funny thing is many of the year rounders we met are from Florida, so I guess to them the weather is much the same as what they left. I took a house tour similar to the one that San Miguel does. The PV group that runs them  uses all the money they make from the tours to fund their own version of Operation Smile, to help fix cleft palates in local kids. Lots of $$$$ real estate. As is often the case on these tours two were for sale. Similar prices to San Miguel both for around one million.  Now they were all either in old town or the most desirable Conchas Chinas section.  Not on the beach. One has an interesting local resident. Note the huge iguana that was in the bushes outside the fence by the pool! Check out the gorgeous views, other than that not much different than your average big home in Ajijic or San Miguel. All of them were many steps, and multiple stories to take advantage of the views. One was billed as an easy access, meaning you didn't have to hike up a mountain goat driveway, to get to it. But it still was on three levels, plus the pool level! As they always say in real estate it is location location location. View lots take their toll on bad joints!

Cindy and I managed to improve the local economy by doing a lot of shopping.  We stayed in beautiful condo on the hillside in the old town. There were two huge doors like this one looking out over the bay and the town. The views, the pools and the amenities were really nice. Only drawback was the hill it was on. No walking unless you were a mountain goat. And since the town is so crowded parking spaces  are just plain never.  Most of the time we left the car there and took a taxi, cheap no more than 40 pesos anywhere in town. We ate lots of wonderful fresh seafood, walked along the beach or lazed by the pool. Plenty to see and do. One night we dined in Viejo Vallarta across from the malecon and from our third story balcony table watched this act done by the Indians , four of them atop a tall pole, spinning and unwinding toward the ground as they hang by their feet!  Each night from the couch we saw beautiful fireworks out on the water. Some dinner theater on the water thing involving a pirate ship attack.  Nice free entertainment for us.

Real estate here according to realtor friends.. lots of lookers but not too many buyers. No conjectures from the local realtors as to a drop in the prices here since many of the home prices in various parts of the U.S. are also going down . As always just have to wait and see how it plays out. There are enough smaller less$$ homes in developments going up both in Chapala and along the highway going to Joco so no lack of inventory to look at.

Right now we need to fill the pinatas for the Plaza night Three Kings celebration. Tommy Thompson, Walt Smith ad Stuart MacGowan will as always reprise their Three Kings in the pickup truck gig; traveling all over the village and handing out candy. Also look for something for them to take when they visit the Casa Ancianos home. It has been colder, sooner and longer this year and Tommy says they all really feel the cold. So hats, scarves, sweaters, or lap robes.  That will for us at least round out the Christmas season.  The Mexican's celebrate one more day in February, Candlemas I think, but after Three Kings day here it will be time to take down the Christmas decorations.  Always fun to add to the "stuff" each year. The colorful straw roping and hanging star from Tzintzantzun. And two beautiful palm trees and some more sheep for the creche. Gradually it is beginning to look more Mexican <VBG>. I almost added a zebra when I bought the sheep.  He just wasn't quite the right size. 

With the festivals over the "bad Guys" seem to be gone. I have heard no hearsay about homes being robbed, pockets being picked and so on. We can only hope it stays that way. Now we just have to exist with the traffic etc of high season.  and...

...that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 1, 2006-  We are very social here. I have been to fancy gringo parties for over 70 people.. but I do love the Mexican celebrations. These are usually for them, a major life moment: a baptism, a birthday, a wedding . They are just so much fun. Yesterday we celebrated at the first communion party for Bricela and Montse.  At a Mexican celebration the WHOLE family is there. Everything from newborns in a stroller to grandma and grandpa. There are no restrictions  on who comes and there is always a huge number of happy kids. At the evento Lucia always uses there was a large bunch running,  playing, and eating -see our friend Caesar below having  his cake.

For some reason unlike U.S.  kids they all play together fine. In the five hours we sat and ate and talked I never heard anyone howling or fighting. All the kids lug the little ones around and watch over them.. even the boys. Abuela cooked the food.. major yummy. Two kinds of chicken, salad, rice and potatoes cooked in with the chicken. I had to go ask her how she did the one chicken. For Lucia's wedding she made a mole.. this wasn't thick like that  but it had a lovely chili taste. She told me how she made it and the type of chili she used.

And speaking of celebrations yesterday was the last day of the nine days of San Andreas. We marched on gringo night which was last Sunday and there was a respectable showing of Americans and Canadians. Now we are die hard village people and I usually wake up and then go back to sleep when the cojetes go off at 6:00 Am ...  BUT  I think that the priest should ask the more moneyed trades like the maestros and the masons/carpenters to cut the cojete budget in half and give the money to the Casa Ancianoes or some orphanage. I know... this is a tradition  etc etc but I DON" THINK AT 6:00  AM AND NOON WE NEED A NON STOP HOUR OF FIREWORKS!!!! AND PEALING CHURCH BELLS!! On their respective days they try to outdo one another.  There is such a thing as overkill. There is no way you can just go back to sleep. The banda last night went to 5AM this morning, but that rarely penetrates the house.  All this started with the Independence day celebrations . Pictures of the parade are here.  The crime rate went up, as it usually does during the fiesta. A friend had her spare tire on her newish CRV stolen off the back of her car (but no locking lug nuts duh!!) and another women here in the privada was robbed at knife point as she was returning home alone at night. This was just at the end of the privada. Fortunately the loony dog pack across the street starting bellowing and the bandito took off.  The steady stream of small time burglaries and cat burglars getting into homes (as the owners sleep) continues.  They seem to have radar for an unsecured window or open door  So far no one hurt, just stuff stolen.

We will start all over again with the celebrations this month for Guadalupe.. who fortunately does NOT have a large fireworks budget.  I look forward to seeing the lovely altars going up in front of the homes and after her feast the naciementoes- Christmas crèches. We start packing for Toys for Tots next week and will be doing a bunch of schools daily after that is done.  The traffic is already AWFUL through town and will only get worse. The Chapala planning board approved two more large subdivisions at either end of town, for a total of 300 more houses, and I assume ACKKKK at least that many more cars. Not to mention the stress on the other parts of the infrastructure.  The question is will there be separate wells and sewage treatment plants for each of these developments? What about phone and electricity? There are also a  bunch of smaller developments going up along the highway from here towards Jocotopec.  Again same questions and serious issues since the water table is dropping.  Telmex is blithely ignoring them all. Out El Limon way the only way you can get a land line is to pay off! someone. And it isn't a small payoff. I have not heard from my many realtor friends as to current state of sales/prices. Most of us think that if the prices keep dropping up there they may drop here. As always we shall see.

We are off to PV to the beach this month. It will be the first time we have been there in 8 or 10 years. It should be fun to see how much has changed there.  After the El Nino caused cold spell last week we are back to normal here but I am still looking forward to going to the warmer beach. The long range weather dudes are predicting a colder winter. Not as bad as the U.S. midwest but caused by the same weather current.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

November 4, 2006-Check the trips page for the orchid trip to Cuernavaca.

NOB and back east where we lived this is the time for the news people to chart the best places for viewing fall colors. And I must admit even though I hated the weak wooded swamp maples on our property the red color the leaves turned was very pretty. Lest you think we are deprived here we do  have fall colors. And .. ours are more brilliant and varied. The rains have still not stopped, a totally weird rainy season but unlike Buffalo's BAD snowstorm the late rains here only make the wildflowers more prolific. And the colors!!! Did you ever notice that wild morning glory comes in a lovely pale blue, a deep morning glory blue, a dark purple, a dark violet and even a white growing along the malecon.  Nearby close to the ground is tradescantia in mauve and blue, the tall yellow helianthus, like a small sunflower, the little daisy white flowered chamomile or manzanilla as the Mexican's call it, and the orange dogweed which I always thought was tithonia.  All along the roadside we have big swathes of  pink cosmos mixed in with all of the above. Yes, sometimes I wonder how my woodland is doing. I can see the huge bright yellow leaves of the Tulip tree, and the different colors of red, orange and yellow of the oaks and maples, but I have all the same colors here, just on different plants!

A few weeks ago we went to an evening competition at Six Corners. This was a rebozo competition for girls ages  4?-15. It was great fun to watch. Lucia's two girls Brice and Chayo, were in the competition . We raided my closet for shawls/rebozos. That evening each girl was in a long gown, with those heels, ! even the little ones!.  So we now know they start out early learning how to walk in them <G>! They all had lovely hairdos and a bit of makeup. Each wore a beautiful shawl.  First they did the model walk on the stage before the judges and stopped to twirl and hold the shawl in front of them and then drape it around themselves. The second time they on the plaza, were in front of all the spectators and they stopped at a table to pick up a decorative jar or water jug. That was carried on the shawl draped shoulder to the center of the space, then placed on the ground and they sort of paraded around it and again draped and fluttered the shawl. Lucia's nine year old Bricela looked so grown up and GORGEOUS!! in three years Daddy Jose will be beating them off with a stick!! Brice is shy and kind of rushed through the whole thing, with her had down a bit and not really looking at anyone. It is common to Mexican girls , both she and the much older ones acted this way. They are not brought up to be as brash as an  American girl.  There were two girls there with a Mom coaching them who must be veterans of this type of competition. They kept their heads up, played/smiled at the judges and so on.  When we watched the adult version of this competition at the Ajijic plaza this woman placed. 

Anyway our Chayo only five, is NOT shy and retiring. No eyes down and go fast for her! Look at that face! She is the one on her sister's lap. Plus she watched how this woman's two daughters performed. On her second go round with the jug, she took her time, pranced and draped and when she was done took her jug back to the judge's table put down her prop and gave them all her 500 watt smile! Out of 15 girls aged  4-15 the woman/pro's older daughter took first and our Chayo took second!! Much fun to watch but next year we will practice!! If Brice had held her head up and smiled a bit we would have swept the competition!! Old competitive Chris here.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

September 10, 2006-You guys can probably skip this, just go look at the Globo pictures. This is about shoes. I once read that when Jackie O. was living with Mr. O. she sometimes had to change her outfits 6 or 8 times a day, Oh deah!  Anyway  living here lakeside that sometimes happens with shoes.  So if you are NOB and in the final stages of pack and purge before moving down here this is how you should sort your current stock of footwear.  First pile House shoes, this is my friend Cindy's term.  These are worn inside to keep your feet from being cold on the tile floors and if you are cursed with them to protect your tootsies from stinging critters. Often just flimsy slippers, flats, or flip flops. You won't wear them walking anywhere outside as the soles are too thin. You would feel every sharp cobblestone you walked on and if flip flops you tend to fall off the side of your shoes! Second Pile Walking Shoes,  must be able to leap cobblestones in a single bound. These will be sturdy sneakers with good thick soles. For those with hot feet during the months of April and May you look for the knock offs of the $$$ Teva sandals. These have thick soles and Velcro straps at the toes and around your ankles. For winter you might bring the Easy Spirit  loafers etc. These also have a thick non slip sole. Or you can buy a pair of Flexis here.  Very similar.  Third pile Dressy Shoes,  worn only when you are driving to the event and walking a short distance from the car to whatever. How many depends on how social you plan on being. You will need them for a trip to the Degallado or Teatro Dianna in Guad to see a concert. You may wear them to the auditorium or Little Theater for an evening show. Or just out to dinner or a party.  I know, I know, you WILL see the Mexican women navigating down the streets in spike heels. I have NO idea how they stay upright!  Or maybe you are one of the fortunate few with  superlative knees, ankles and hips.. whatever.  Many of us are not so lucky,  so know thyself and let your conscience be your guide.  I do wish I COULD wear my pretty shoes more often but whenever I do I find I need to tell Harry to walk slowly as we navigate a couple of blocks to Calle Colon and Pampa Tango or Cafe Q!

I hope this public service bulletin helps you decide what shoes to bring and what to pitch! Just know that sometimes in the course of one day depending on the activity schedule you may change them almost as much as Mrs. O!

The annual Globo Regatta was last Saturday. Globo means balloon but these are macho balloons on steroids. It starts about 3 or 4 at the soccer stadium and it is always done during rainy season when all the greenery/trees are  not dry leaves.  Clubs and individuals construct hot air balloons from colorful tissue paper. The month before the regatta they are being constructed all over town and from as far away as San Miguel d' Allende. They can fly quite high as they are propelled by a volatile mixture of gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene. The fuel  soaks a doughnut that is taped to the bottom of the balloon. They are inflated  using the heat from a chimenea . Some are so big that to launch them the builders use a scaffold so that the guy at the top can hold them while the  launchers at the bottom get the whole thing inflated and then ignite the doughnut. The beauty of the balloons and the creativity of the builders makes this a yearly must see. Sometimes they do crash into a roof but remember the roofs are tile. This year one drifted into the power lines and then hit the transformer. Special effects!!  Ka Boom! It is another one of those things that you would NEVER be allowed to do in the U.S. God knows how many agencies would have to give their permission. Some never make it off the launch pad! Some fly really high.  If you are here the week before Independence day don't miss it. To use a Mexican  friend's metaphor, globos are like life. Sometimes you take wing and fly, sometimes you crash and burn.

Juan our gardener celebrating the launch of Lalo's HUGE one                        This is it before it caught fire and burned, see below

A special thanks to Steve and Teri for the great pictures!

Well the rainy season is winding down. It is getting cooler after the sun goes down. Sometimes now we are shutting the outside bedroom  doors at night.  In a month or so we will put our shorts in the back of the closet. During the winter months layers are the norm since by noon the temps will be mid 70's. You will see some of the Canadian snowbirds running around town in shorts and tank tops in December. They must have anti-freeze for blood! The last couple of winters have been warmer, but you just never know.  So don't leave all your sweaters, light jackets and pants home!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

August 10, 2006- Well I have been just as bad as last time. We have again been busy, this time with trips to the states and to Patzcuaro.  The U.S. trip was to trade in the Wrangler. Much as I loved it, it was just too small. If I wanted to go to Guad with friends to shop there was no room for the shopping! We spent a week in San Antonio, bought a new Honda CRV and shopped till we dropped.  I can recommend Gillman Honda there for a fair priced, no pressure deal.. BUT they really screwed up the paperwork.  Two years ago when we bought the Acura, Gunn Acura easily handled all the paperwork to register it in SD. We went to see my sister and returned 7 days later with our title, tags  etc all waiting there at Gunn. Gillman screwed it up totally, ended up registering the car in Texas! sent the title to the hotel we had since left; it is now "missing".  Harry is still trying to straighten the mess out, but no one there seems to be answering our e-mails.  I find the Honda a great village car. It is the same width as the Wrangler and only a few inches longer.  There is so much more room inside and it gets much better gas mileage. It maneuvers around the village pretty much the same way the Wrangler did. Of course I have "lost" my exclusivity <G>. No one else in the village had a bright blue wrangler with silver top and fenders.  Everyone  who saw the Wrangler knew it was me. Not so with the Honda, there are tons here! Of course mine has a killer cow catcher front bumper add on and a bug deflector. We found the extra bumper guard really protected the Wrangler so we got the Honda one. We are still waiting for the rear one, it is on order in Guad. Something to protect those plastic bumpers all new cars seem to have.  August 20th STILL NO TITLE. They can't find it and they still expect us to get a replacement in Texas, from here in Mexico when they are THERE!!! OH DUH!!

I won my third first place at CASA so I have my Bing for this year  and I can no longer compete each month. People say I am crazy but I actually miss it. But....  it is fun to just go to the monthly meeting with no pressures on me.  No setting up the entry, no sweating how the presentation looks and so on.  Actually time to walk around and see what everyone else made!!

We have been having a very weird rainy season. All days grey and rain during the days!!! Most us us think it is due to global warming which just like the east coast is causing more and stronger hurricanes/weather patterns out in the Pacific. I want it to go back to the old way, sunny all day, rain at night but so far Tlaloc is not granting my wishes. We repainted outside and changed the back wall colors to a much darker shade. What do you think? I think it makes a nice contrast to the green of the plants. 

The weather has still been grey and often raining in the AM but clearing up by noon. Still cool and breezy thank goodness. The lake is back up to the end of the pier, but the park looks like a bomb went off in it.  Before the election "your tax dollars at work" had a large crew redoing the dirt paths/sidewalks with really pretty raised slate walkways. They also raised the pads that all the picnic tables sat on. But they had their election and NEVER finished it. So it is piles of dirt, and debris, the barbecues are gone, no more grass just mud piles. All the swing sets and slides are uprooted and tossed into a pile. Right after the Masons painted them! I might add. It looks like hell!  There are a couple of guys back to work now and we can only hope that those  new politicians in Chapala that take our tax money will use it to finish the park. I feel bad for all the local people who used it so much. And I miss the weekend birthday parties!!

The last week of July a bunch of us went off to Uruapan and Patzcuaro to shop the craft villages. The picture at left is a public park across the street from a craft shop we visited in Uruapan. A friend who has been coming back and forth to Mexico for years and who was a HS Spanish teacher led the group.  She is writing a book about this area and the crafts and she knows a bunch of out of the way craftspeople. We had six cars in the group and the shopping was great. The CRV got all my stuff home. When the rest returned to Ajijic we went on to visit and stay with friends who recently moved to San Miguel de Allende. The usual visit to nearby Delores Hidalgo resulted in some more Talavera pots. I have such well dressed plants <G>.                                We found a really great furniture maker in Patzcuaro so we are planning on selling all the equipale  on the terrace and replacing it with this new furniture. See  the Mexico trips page for more details and pictures.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart & Dida! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

May 15, 2006- WOW, I have been very bad waiting this long to update this. Also as always very busy, Plus technical issues, since my hosting service was "migrating" everyone's accounts to a new platform. Everyone on their forums was major having cows, but this web is done/migrated  and it publishes just fine and looks the same. YES!! Rarely does new tech work that easily.

I have been feeling soo much better since starting a new diet. My little sis introduced me to it when I was up visiting in South Carolina. It requires you to give up salt, fat, sugar, dairy. You fill out a questionnaire, based on a bunch of questions you are assigned a body type. That regulates the type of protein you eat. You HAVE to eat 6 times a day, like every three hours. Small amounts of protein, a ton of veggies, a fruit and egg whites for breakfast. And small amounts of starch at lunch and dinner. The approved USDA half cup! It really works. My bad knee & leg are now swelling way less at the ankle. I have lots more energy and I have lost quite a lot of weight. 

Now that the rains seemed to have started and the heat is less and I feel better, I am outside working on the plants a lot more.  Winter and the hot season I was ignoring the whole thing. We have been busy finishing up house "stuff" before it starts really raining. We had the outside repainted and took down the Italian cypress in back. Many landscapers plant things when a house is new so it has a big effect NOW!  Problem is the thing planted is often totally unsuited to where it is planted. Eventually it will be far too big for the space.  Thus we got rid of EIGHT Cypress trees. And replanted Harry's roses into the space; and so on and so on. Busy like I said.

The town seems to finally be cleared out. There were only about 40 people in church on Sunday.  The traffic is a little less awful. Right now the whole village is a mess. It being election year time, a whole bunch of public works projects are SUDDENLY being done in the village. We have raised slate sidewalks going into the park.  The top of Achille Serdan/Pedro Moreno no longer has a lip your car fell down from when you turned and the HUGE hole is filled in with cement and cobble stone. They have been working on Colon for  two weeks. Same thing, raised street, cemented cobbles.  It will be interesting to see how high the water rises towards the store fronts once the rains really start in earnest. A lot of other streets and crossings are getting the same treatment.  If this keeps up I may not need a Wrangler <VBG>. The biggest debate going on right now is how dare Simapa spray the lirio with roundup !! There sure is less. But they were not supposed to spray it. There was an injunction against it.  So far no sign of dead fish, stagnant dead weeds,  or any other ill effects.

We had a visit of SR. Lopez Obrador to Chapala. So far the only presidential candidate to come here. He like all of them is going to save the Chapala Lerma basin. Yeah right.  It is kind of fun watching this and not being able to participate in it. Time will tell.

The building is still going on at a fast and furious pace. There is still not much for sale in the village and a ton of little developments going up outside of town on the road to Joco. And there still are a lot of people here "looking".  For some what they are "looking" at back in the U.S.  is not what they want. I just hope they take their time and "look" carefully here.  In the mean time we have found what we were looking for here. Tomorrow I will do the shopping and print the costs/changes? from last year.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

April 6, 2006- The old train station/now museum  in Chapala is officially refurbished and dedicated. It was quite the soirée! Mrs. Fox , the governor and the mayor plus a bunch of other politicos were there. I was amazed to actually see very tight, well run, security. All of the gringos from Garden Club ( LCGC paid for the sod) had to submit names and addresses of attendees in advance. The place is of course fenced and gated and they had only one gate with a bunch of people checking off names on the list and you needed to show ID. Major show of large fierce looking security dudes. I guess even though his term is almost up, El Presidente is keeping his wife very safe. It was the typical political show piece with everyone patting themselves and the rest of the dais on the back.  Only thing that bothered me is that they failed to mention the many local businesses and clubs that donated to keep the redo going! It ran out of money and stopped several times. Prisa paint donated all the paint, we shelled out a lot of money for the sod, I forget which company it was that donated all the light fixtures. NONE of that got mentioned! Oh well at least the catering was good. <G> And with my Spanish lessons I could understand much of what they were saying.

Ahh raspberries! How serendipitous that I now live just 15 minutes from fields full of  one of my favorite fruits! And here for the same $2.00 NOB that you pay for a little half a cup box  , I get about one and a half pounds, of fully ripe not half way ripe berries. Like a pioneer Mom I am putting things by. The season here will end soon and not start up again until November. So we drove out to the fields just beyond Joco and bought enough for me to freeze two of the gallon zip lock bags full, plus make a raspberry cobbler for dessert tonight and a white chocolate raspberry trifle for a dinner party tomorrow night. I think I am covered but they will all get used up before November!

We had a visit recently from a man who reads this site. He stopped by for a drink. He was here for a fast and furious look see and to rent a house. He decided he and his wife would probably be "village people."  Part of the fun of village life is the sheer unexpectedness . When you are walking to the abbarote for eggs or down to get the mail you just never know what will come along the street or down the sidewalk. So for those of you undecided.  ( I mean no disrespect to those who live in subdivisions or developments, but they just drive here, park, run their errands and leave.) Here is what you will never see unless you live here below the highway and spend some time walking in the village: A four year old prancing down the street in her "prom" gown, a floor length extravaganza of lace & taffeta or something that looks exactly like what you wore to your prom. Her hair is brushed and braided and her eyes are shining because she KNOWS she looks "mahvelous." Where they get these dresses or why they get to wear them as an every day outfit is a mystery. I just know my NOB niece who loves dress up would DIE for one of these gowns. Greeting Spunky's other brother's and seeing his latest tee shirt outfit. And knowing that depending on what the handsome black hound is wearing, you can predict the change of seasons/weather.  Meeting the old man who sells fresh picked strawberries and buying a couple of kilos for even less than the ones at the tianguis.  Meeting any of the other vendors that happen along selling blankets, rugs, hand bags, watches, hats, flowers, tamales, doughnuts or whatever. Getting to see what your eventual new neighbors are doing to the house they just bought. Even without Dida and Dart who never met a workman they didn't like and always go in to say "Hi" most times the door is open and they don't mind if you walk in to look. Especially if you complement their work. Stopping to talk with a neighbor, a friend, or  even someone new who looks a bit lost.   Watching the entire grade from one of the local schools drilling for the Independence day parade. This is after school hours, down at the park in the parking lots usually with a couple of teachers.   Standing quietly aside as a funeral procession carrying the casket walks along to the panteon on Ocampo.  Hearing the clatter of metal shod feet as a group of riders goes trotting by. Watching all the posadas and parades that march just two streets above us.  In December, looking at the beautiful altars for Guadalupe and the naciementoes  (Manger towns, not scenes) In Spring seeing the altars for the Virgin of Sorrows. . And so on and so on. This Sunday on Ocampo cars will be moved, the street will be swept, hosed down and covered with fresh alfalfa. There will be pretty paper cut out streamers hung above. Jesus on his burro,  and a procession waving palms and singing will be along eventually. The Easter pageantry has begun. You just never know what will materialize,  but our streets are much more interesting than anything you see in a development!

I promise to redo the price check for groceries again soon. I'll print off the list of what I bought and redo it. That is in what does it cost. It should be interesting to see if they have gone up. Things are slowly clearing out here. Many of the snowbirds have already left and most will be gone right after Easter. I heard a rainbird the other night so the rains will start in 60 days <G>. The realtors say things are humming, who knows, but the building/remodeling continues at a furious pace.  Glad I am not paying the current price for ANY kind of building materials.

The Guad reporter said that they found four murdered men last week in Ixtlahuacan. They suspect it was related to manufacture and sale of methamphetamines.  Never heard anything more about the guy killed near Las Fuentes. Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So the crime scene that many say doesn't exist is alive and well. Everyone feels it got way hotter way sooner this year. I agree!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

March 8, 2006- Told ya high season was a zoo time. This is the first time I have even been able to think of working on the web! Lets catch you up on the news. The February chili cook off was a big success. I worked the barbecued rib stand for Lakeside School for the Deaf. Tony's meats does the ribs and we just grill them and warm them up. We serve them with a fresh cole slaw we all make! It is the most popular food concession for the cook off and probably contributes a big share of the money all the charities split at the end.

CASA had their awards dinner, you can see my picture there accepting my loot. http://www.ajijiccasa.com/files/casaMar06.pdf   It was a wonderful dinner. This past month (February) I took first in Valentine's desserts with a triple truffle torte! But I am not chasing anything this year. I did it last year. This year I just compete and have fun and whatever!

Our four musicians for the Northern Lights concert series left on Sunday. They stayed with us from Feb. 19th until March 4th. We were out almost every other night for their concerts.  Really nice young men.

Garden Club visited the house/garden  that housed the author of "House in the Sun" one of the original books about moving here to Mexico. Carneval was also going on with flour throwing matches in the streets and parades with horses, cross dressers and floats oh my!. And we had friends visiting here from NOB during all this. The last big whoop before many of the snow birds leave is the Mardi Gras (or whatever this year's  theme).. ball that is School for the Deaf's big fundraiser. Then there is the big Passion de Christo passion play coming up on Good Friday in April and the  Easter celebrations. That week after Easter all of Mexico goes to the beach! Once that is over we all settle down to quieter times thank goodness.

Oh for quieter times. It has already gotten hot. Spring is here! Too hot to walk the dogs this AM in pants. And even in shorts the march through the packed Weds. market today was a mucho hot trek. Now if you are not soon to retire and you don't cook skip this part <G>.  But one of the joys of living here and retirement is a certain rhythm of life. I know even though it is still crazy here right now that in another month they will all be gone. For now there are still some soothing weekly routines.  Market day, Weds. means that you come home with a huge bag full of good fresh, things. And Wednesday afternoon you prepare some food things for the coming week. If you were a working  person there would NOT be time to do this stuff. Plus you won't have Lucia to clean up the mess. I always hit the chicken man first . His stall is at the bottom of the market where we park and start our shopping. I bring a freezer pack in my big shopping bag. He millanaises three boneless breasts for me, bags the dogs' weekly treat of a half kilo of chicken livers and gives me the  breast half of a whole chicken. All this goes into a plastic bolsa with the freezer pack. Harry is across the way buying a big bouquet of flowers from his favorite flower stall.  Then we march up the hill picking and choosing. Run any other errands and home we go.  Since many of these fresh fruits and veggies are minimally processed ( no preservatives) You don't buy too much. They all get washed when we get home and then the fun begins. Now I play with my toys. The Vita mix blender will make a soup of some sort  either hot or cold from whatever veggie looked the best. The carrots, so sweet will get peeled and go into the bag in the fridge. The Vita mix does a great ginger carrot juice some nights as a before dinner cocktail. If they had my favorite little beets some will get cooked and go into the jar in the fridge where they get pickled. The breast half of the whole chicken  goes into the pressure cooker with some stock veggies and in ten minutes it is done. Now I have chicken breast for sandwiches or salad, and stock with the wing & back meat that goes into the freezer for a quick soup some night. The dogs' livers get cooked for their dinner. It is all just so European? like under the Tuscan sun but here in Mexico. Good fresh food for a week's worth of meals. All dependent on what looked good. No eggplant this week but the little slipper mangoes were just gorgeous. So instead of eggplant I'll roast the nice sweet red peppers from Raphael's stand and make smoothies out of the mangoes.  It is a very pleasant routine to live by.  My weekly food fest is very soothing.  Especially now with life so hectic. Yes we do eat out .. we have a Thursday night CASA dinner in Guad and Friday and Saturday lunch out. So when we eat out the other meal of the day is made up of my Weds. things in some light preparation.  Only way to live here unless you want to gain more weight than the Pillsbury doughboy.

Realtor friends are all back on a roll! Since my last update three of the $$$ close to $400K or more houses have sold. Two right here on our street. The other just around the corner. A friend of ours sold their rental property and their primary residence all in one month! Again both houses here in the village. Now don't assume they made a killing. Yes they made money on both properties. But unless you downsize or move out of town,  when you sell high the cost of a replacement home is also high!  There have been a couple of TV shorts on moving here on CBS? and one on San Miguel on CNN. So the media is keeping the idea of moving here in the eye of the public. I griped last year but I think this year it was even more crowded. The traffic with the wonderful??? new  stoplights has been horrendous.  A friend who lives in Villa Nova gripes that now (high season) he has to "commute" to get anywhere in the village! There was a recent discussion on Chapala.com about the real estate values lakeside. Up, down, realistic?  Barring a terrorist attack NOB or some major Wall street correction most of us don't see them going down. Yes Mexico will reflect in some ways the cooling off the economy NOB (although their economy is in much better shape than ours) but there are still a bunch of people who saved/invested well who figure if they move here their dollar will go further.  Realistic? who is to say. As long as the demand stays high the prices are going to reflect it. Waiting hoping they will go down may just mean you are going to get priced out of the market.  I don't have a crystal ball so who knows!

Crime etc. As I said we never got anymore news about who did it or why the man out in Las Fuentes was killed. Just after the Perry March furor settled down.. another fairly recent Ajijic resident was deported back to the U.S.  Supposedly he got a loan for 17 million! under false pretenses and then after he was arrested did a walkabout from his minimum security prison. It seems the convict head for Mexico to hide out thing just isn't working for today's criminal.  Although this guy was on the lam for several years. It sure gives us all something to talk about here. In a place that gossips as much as here I can not imagine anyone trying to hide out in Ajijic!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

January 19, 2006- You have heard me mention "high season." If you have been here for a visit anytime after January 1 thru March 30th you have experienced some of it. Like childbirth it is one of those experiences that you really have to go through from beginning to end to understand.

High season, at its worst is a day when you get up at 9:00 AM wash, dress, run out of the house and keep running back just to change clothes and then go back out again!! ...like yesterday. 9:00 start time,  off to the tianguis to hand out flyers about the Shrine club transportation dinner fund raiser at Nueva Posada on Thursday. Rush to Patty's to get my hair done, then off to the Garden Tour in San Antonio. Run though quick, snap pics, back to Nueva Posada. Unload all the meeting paraphernalia for the last time, ACKKK no plants here for the raffle.. call the vivero, help new membership chair sign up/renew a zillion members. Get through the meeting, lunch, speaker, new board elected.. yeah I am no longer prez!!.  Rush home change clothes.. go to CASA board meeting, rush home Harry changes clothes off to set up for Masons meeting and new officers installation. I change and walk down to LCS for wine and cheese after.. then off to restaurant for dinner with Masons.. home to bed, change clothes for last time! at 9:30PM. 

High season is this plus trips to Guad, daily life, and the normal social engagements among friends!  Lest you think I am exaggerating here are some links to give you a small idea of all the stuff going on this time of year. ! And there will be events that are not on these calendars. Check these sites , if you are new or coming during high season for the first time. 

Mexico connects  Calendar   you don't have to be a paying member to look at this part

Coldwell baker/Chapal.com Calendar  

A few years back all the organizations that sponsor events got the presidents together and tried to adopt a strict policy of keeping the calendars and checking them so we didn't overlap too much on a given day. Betty Prentki at St. Andrew's church handles it now but things/days still get jammed up. Like anyone who lives in a vacation destination you begin to long for that time when all the tourists go home.

We have yet to use the gas heater but it has been colder. High 40's or low 50's at 7:30 AM. I do use the little electric heater in the bathroom. Otherwise you come out of the shower and turn into an icicle.  But by noon it is 70 or higher and many of the plants are happy for the colder weather. The gardenias and my terrestrial orchids are covered with flowers.  Most of the plants rest this time of year, you cut back on water and fertilizer.

The realtors tell us lots of people in town are looking but no one is buying.  Nothing sold since before Christmas.  The supply in the village proper is minimal. Atleast anything you might actually buy. It is the tired, old, overpriced stuff that is still sitting around. We went with friends in November to look at a $400,00.00 home down the street on Independencia. It has been empty for two years? since the owners walked out and went back to NYC. Hearsay is that supposedly some one threatened to poison one of the dogs. Looking at it, the grounds are overgrown, the house while large is stale, dusty and musty. The swimming pool was a Petri dish.  A lot of steps and stairs, a major hike from garage , front door, to house proper and kitchen. For that much money it really needs some cleaning up and "staging." So at that price and in that condition it is going to sit probably for another two years! The home prices may have dropped a little but anything fairly priced should still sell in the next three or four months. Still lots of people wanting to move here.

There are  tons of homes being built outside the village towards Jocotopec and some for sale above the highway in Villa Nova, Rancho del Oro etc. I haven't looked at those prices. Flat land with any services connected to it anywhere is $$$$. And the Mexican government is cracking down on the glut of realtors here. Many of the foreigners do not have papers to work in Mexico. They are not allowing these people to work and are telling the realty offices either get the correct work permits or hire a Mexican.  Of course they are not issuing anymore foreigner work permits so what does that tell you. IMHO there are far too many realtors here anyway. The pool of customers is much smaller than the number of realtors fighting over them!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the women are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

November 27, 2005- This time of year the weather is like fine wine. Clear and crisp. The sky has not a cloud and is bright blue, the air is cooler in the high 70's and breezy. It is just delicious weather. So much fun to see someone arrive from the frozen north and turn their faces up to heaven to drink in the sun.. ..and they laugh at me running around in long sleeves and pants 'cause I'm cold!!

Well we are half way through the Feast of San Andreas and they have not yet used up the inexhaustible supply of cohetes.  I have several friends who take their dogs and go to the beach each year. So far Dart and Dida are doing OK.  I must admit even as I roll over at 5AM and try to go back to sleep that I fail to see how one's godly/saintly devotions are some how better heard in heaven when accompanied by bombs bursting in air!!  The men were here yesterday to collect for the Virgin of Guadalupe festival. That means we will have our banda serenade some morning in early December. The altars set up around the  village in Guadalupe's honor are so beautiful.  Make a note to get a case of soda with SUGAR! to hand out to thirsty musicians!

It is a measure of how much you settle into the life here that all these festivals, just like Halloween and Easter back in the U. S.  are now just an accepted part of your life. They are like seasons and unchangeable. Oh yeah...sure  early December time for the virgin's festival.  Also time for Harry to start scheduling Santa's Toys for Tots visits to all the kinders. The elf assembly line will start putting all 2500 gift bags together in the next few weeks. Holiday time here is far different from NOB. I shuddered watching the "black Friday" stampedes on CNN.

After 12 weeks of dealing with a very sick puppy, stressed out Mom has joined the new gym here in town to work off the weight gained.  I wish.. but  I have never been one of those people who can't eat when stressed. Just the opposite actually. Dart is much better but with a few leftover problems from his "unspecified virus."  He and I will both deal with them and exercise will help us both.  The new gym is just one more example of the way more and more NOB type franchises are fetching up here. This is a copy of the Curves gym concept NOB except it does allow men. That from what I have been told is just about the only difference. People have been signing up in droves and it must really be cutting into the business of the other gym at Danza del Sol.  I try to get there five days a week. So far I have been able to do the routine with no pain to the old wrecked parts. Gentle exercise.. probably why with our aged population here that the place has been so popular. 

Everyone was shocked here when two gringo fellows out in the mountains near Las Fuentes (15 minutes away) were shot at. One killed the other wounded.  As with most of these bad things the story is murky and actual facts sketchy. It started out being told as a case of wrong time, wrong place. Supposedly they were going up to water some horses and stumbled onto banditos in the process of stealing them.  From this it straggles off into murky hearsay. There are others that say this time of year the pot crops in the mountains are being harvested and they stumbled into something like that.  The long timer hikers around here do say that this time of year you stay  off the mountain trails. There was a supposed drug shoot 'em up last week on the other side of the lake near Mazamitla. And there are still the kid gangs here in town. Drug abuse  as part of life is not to be escaped from, no matter where you are!  Either way with what little we know it still seems to be just a random wrong place wrong time thing.  The bad thing was the local Jocotopec police were called when the second guy got back to Las Fuentes and they never even showed up. They are not about to go up into the mountains this time of year either.  Who knows, and the state police, now in charge of the investigation  are not talking.

Other than that the news is the same old same old. Building is still booming, prices for building supplies are still going up, the good contractors are still up to their eyeballs with work and the realtors all say they are busy. The stop lights on the highway through town don't make the traffic move any better, but this time of year using the lights, you can get across the street on foot without having to take your life in your hands.

The homes in the 200 and below range are still going pretty quickly and there are a bunch of homes at the higher end for sale. Remains to be seen if they get sold at those prices.. but there still seem to be a lot of people wanting to move here.  I just hope they spend some time here BEFORE they buy. There are also a bunch of vocal/disgruntled people who bought in haste and now hate it and want to go back! To each his own.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

October 9, 2005- Progress, progress. Progress means that each year when the snowbirds arrive they are shocked at all the changes. Sometimes we are too. When we were driving up Pedro Moreno today  we both suddenly noticed a new cell tower on the hill above the highway. Red and white to keep the little planes from flying into it!  Progress means it will be interesting to see if the 4 new stop lights, the no left or right turns etc will make any difference in the traffic on the main highway through town. Well it is the beginning of another high season. We start high season with flu shots! As soon as we start seeing a lot more Canadian license plates it is time for flu shots. Some people will tell you that we don't have flu here. Technically that is true. We don't have flu as a native Mexican species but when all the foreigners from Norte come they bring the germs with them!  So time for our flu shot. 

The real estate market has slowed or not, depending on which realtor you talk to. If you are going to be looking for a home, there is one good deal with realtors. The newest Home- Net www.the-home.net run by the very personable Alfredo Zavala is discounting the commission rate to 5% not 7. Alfredo speaks excellent English and his contacts in the Mexican community might turn up that rare Mexican owned listing which meets your needs.

The rains seemed to be over and then we had several days and nights of steady rains. The lake level is supposedly a bit higher than last year at this time, but the rainfall overall was much less than last year. That means that when it comes time for the farm states upstream to do a scheduled water release; even though they agreed to it "last year" this year they will try to welsh on the deal. The  malecon no longer has lirio piled on it but the repairs to the cave-ins and the broken water drainage pipes were never made.  The municipality or someone  has cleaned up the soccer field and the basketball courts. It looks so strange down there. There were ficus trees all around the fields, the courts and along the malecon. They died from standing in water all winter and now that they are all cut down the vista is totally changed.

Mexico is starting to act like the U.S. Last week at Costco all the Christmas stuff was out!  I went to buy nice gifts for the December Garden Club Christmas  Raffle.  Being Mexico when December rolls around there won't be anything good left!!  In a schizophrenic vein, Halloween candy was also displayed. It is becoming popular here. So it will be a very ecumenical end of October. Buy candy and set up the Day of the Dead altar!

The fiesta season has started. This month here in our village the Virgin of the Rosary means bombs at 5:45AM, precessions to church and mass at 7Am every day.  The concerts are starting again at the auditorio for MAS. Next month we host a Mexican artist for Maestro del Arte sale and then the feast of San Andreas, Thanksgiving and so on. All December Mexico prepares for the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Around Dec. 12th the band will be here in the Privada to serenade anyone who contributes to the fiesta expenses.   Surprisingly Dart the puppy  has not been at all fazed about the every AM bomb barrage. Even Dida has been better. Now if I could just learn to sleep through them!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

September 6, 2005- A story of mace and men. I have often said that I walk , usually alone nightly around 10PM or later. Not really alone as the dogs are there with me; out for a nightly breathe of fresh air before bed. Woody was large enough  to be intimidating, but he has been gone for almost a year and new little D'artagnan isn't quite big enough yet.  Dida would kiss Dracula! Still I was not particularly worried as we walked back towards the privada last week and I heard the sound of footsteps coming up behind me.  I just turned around to see where Dida was because she is unleashed and sometimes she jumps up on people. She was waiting in the middle of the street wagging her tail at the man coming toward her. I told him Buenos Noches and Pero es no malo and hung on to Dart on his leash. The man came past Dida toward me muttering in Spanish and it was obvious he was drunk? high? retarded?   I backed up a few steps and he did stop right in front of me. He was still muttering and looked really weird. Kind of dirty and unkempt. And in that adrenalin mode, atleast with me,  Spanish deserted my brain. By now my hand was on the Mace canister that I always carry to discourage that very rare bad dog from eating my children. I backed up so he could not grab it, raised the canister to his face level and said quite loudly "Go Away!"  Fortunately he did muttering "no repeto"  whatever that meant.?

Now I was not really in that much danger. I was in the middle of the street just at the end of our privada with David's house with lights on and open windows on one side and Mike and Monica's house same way on the other. Had I started yelling someone would have been at their door in seconds. What I found enlightening was that when I  was panicked my brain insisted on its native tongue! I guess I need to practice some danger Spanish to keep it in my brain if I ever need it again! Despite that the dogs and I still walk nightly and I am still not afraid. Dart is proving to be the usual brilliant poodle. <G> At 11 weeks he already has learned an off leash come and sit in front of Mom that would do credit to a  CDX dog. He walks nicely on leash and stays around Mom's feet when playing off leash in the park.  Dida has made peace with him but still insists she is boss and elder. I am really enjoying raising this puppy as all my other standard were adults when I got them. He is a trip.

The rains are still coming nightly even though it is now September. The lake is still up now almost to the top of the malecon wall. The building/remodeling is continuing all over the village. It used to slow during the rainy season but not this year. The price of gas here is actually lower than NOB. About  $ 2.28 a gallon.  The housing sales are slowing down a bit and as always slower in the over $350,000.00 prices. The new developments are springing up like mushrooms. Most are between Ajijic and Jocotopec. The new Casa de Cultura opened on the Plaza and we were at a concert there right after it opened. It looks very nice and seems to be a  well planned venue for the town.  I am looking forward to the Charo competitions later this month. They will be in the new indoor ring on the way to Guadalajara and perhaps Juan our gardener will make the cut. The mariachi festival is in full swing right now with many concerts all around Jalisco and in Guad.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

July 13, 2005- It has to be a bit weird that we have passed our yearly anniversary and I didn't manage to post here. I would say we were not blasé, just busy. We even made the same drive back here from a vacation in San Antonio on the same days as the original landing. And then we just plunged back into life; trying to get Garden Club details arranged for this month's meeting, Harry and the Masons working on the playground stuff at the park, computer problems, renew the FM3s. Just the same things as you might do when you return from vacation and pick your lives back up. So no time to sit and reflect on another year.

Well, another year, what has changed about Ajijic and us. A lot. I think we have become a bit more cognizant of the fact that you are still an immigrant here. Something that happened here in the neighborhood really brought home the fact that there is right, wrong, legal, illegal and then there is good old boy money, privilege and power. While the gringo is expected to stay on and know the sides of right , wrong etc the Mexican who has good old boy money, privilege and power does not really have to. And unless you have an appetite for frustration and a bottomless pocketbook for litigation, fighting the good old boy is a waste of time. Pick up your marbles and move on. A fact of life.

The number of people looking and buying STILL seems to be going up. This second high season is seeing the town packed with people looking for a retirement haven. Also more and more wealthy Guad residents are buying homes here. Plus the weekend and vacation times the town is packed with day trippers. So the local economy is perking along quite well.  Because of all this the prices of homes is still high with no sign of a slow down. The building boom west is continuing unabated. Below the highway from Six Corners outward small developments of "starter"  homes are springing up all over. Just remember a bunch of these people just sort of came here and bought thus we are seeing a goodly number who don't last more than a year. They sell up and go back or go back but keep the real estate and rent it out. 

The current crop of lookers are younger and much like the class situation in the U.S. seems to be from two very far apart social/economic strata. There are those with plenty of money and those looking here because they think it will offer a simpler, cheaper but better life than the U.S. The first element is young often late 40's and early 50's. Well educated and usually buying something as an investment, not planning on moving here right now. It causes some problems in neighborhoods where there are clusters of these owned but not steadily occupied homes. The empty houses draw the burglars to the area. They may try the empty home or use the roof as access to nearby occupied homes.  The less well off lookers find that if they see something they like in the under $200,000  price range they had better put in an offer quickly as most don't stay on the market for more than a week or two.  If the budget is under $100,000 many just look out of the village proper.  The first group often buy some pretty expensive homes and then turn around and start doing them over. All the local builders and contractors have work. Someone told us that a respected and popular builder told them he could not start their projected home any sooner than nine months from now, maybe longer. Of course the cost of building materials keeps going up. And there are naysayers that say the area is overpriced look elsewhere. In Mexico in our travels we have not been anywhere that the average gringo would retire to: meaning a place with even some of the average things that a gringo would expect for daily living. In any of these places the prices were the same or higher than the Lakeside area.

Personally we are still happy. We just came back from a U.S. vacation and it only reinforced our feelings that we will stay here not ever go back to live in the U.S.  Right now the rains are steady, the hills are green, the temps are moderate, And Harry and Chris are very happy. Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

May 29, 2005- We are all waiting with bated breath and stuffy noses for the start of the rainy season. The rain birds are singing, and the humidity is rising. It has been a hot and yuck April and May. Yuck because of the forest fires, the regular burning off of fields and the volcano erupting. A lot of nasty stuff in the air and everyone's allergies being very unhappy. It can't come soon enough.

Hard to believe that our "new"  house is 5 years old. Five years  is the time when anyone who purchased a "new" home here gets to see how well built it really was.  So far we seem to be fine. All we are doing is before rainy season maintenance work and cosmetics. So Juan has used two coats of sealador on the dome, and we are resealing all the saltillo tile floors both inside and out. They really needed it. They are a traditional Mexican tile but not as hard fired as some and also not glazed. Once the top layer starts to go you will lose the entire tile if you don't seal it. The ones outside on the terraces get "eaten up?"  if they are in full sun.  Harry had several guys here for estimates but no one in the current busy construction economy showed up to do the work! So he got the sealer from Jara's and did it himself.  They look much better and are now protected from the rains to come.

We are also painting inside. The 5 year old white/cream is going to go in some of the rooms. Time to introduce a bit of color here and there. I will post pictures once it is done. The paint crew, we are using Pippa, will be here in the AM. The entire house looks like a giant yard sale! It was no picnic emptying out some of these huge furniture pieces so they could be moved away from the walls.  As Martha would say it was a "good thing" sort of like spring cleaning.  We went through that big entertainment unit in the den and threw out a bunch of paperwork we brought with us originally. Don't need it now. And we decided to add more shelving in the laundry room as soon as we can get Jose out here to give us an estimate.  This house unlike many older Mexican closet less homes,  has lots of storage already, but even though we seem to be weeding out we also seem to fill it back up pretty quickly!

The church is redoing the floors so we are all shunted off to the little chapel for mass these days.  It is really lovely. Guadalupe? is up above the altar in a stunning outfit of soft pink. But it is too small so there is a tent just outside the front door and more chairs. Actually better to sit there as there are no windows inside and it does get HOT and airless during mass.

This morning was typical Mexico. The breakfast people had their stoves and chairs set up on the plaza just outside the chapel. They were doing a brisk business. The Ajijic mountain? foot race was going off right there in the plaza with teams from Guad, Ajijic and further away warming up. Lots of cops and local politicos, plus families and friends of the runners.  And we are sitting there trying to hear mass despite the race loudspeakers, and a very cute Guad weekenders' toddler jabbering in his push chair.  Just another day in paradise. <G>. After mass we headed over to the street in front of the big church looking for the veggie man. We saw him standing there but since the race started on that street they didn't let him set up!! Again only in Mexico,  we all still needed to shop so we politely waited our turns as he juggled the stacked up crates of veggies to get out what we wanted. He comes every Sunday and does a good business. I am glad he didn't lose his day's trade because of the race. There were four of us there all talking and waiting our turns to get our fruits and veggies.  More people came up as we were paying for our stuff and they too just smiled, talked and waited, no one getting upset. So not like NOB.

Dida doesn't know it but she has a big, "little brother" arriving in late August. We have a deposit down on a as yet unborn litter of standards from a very good kennel in Tyler,  Texas.  Originally we were down for a black male puppy but the black girl who was bred didn't take! So we switched over to the white girl's litter.  If you watch Westminster on TV,  the grandsire on both sides of this litter was that big handsome white standard that was BIS there a few years ago. This will be my fourth standard poodle and he will be named D'artagnan after the fourth musketeer. Oddly enough he will be my first standard puppy. All the others were older placements. So this will be a real learning experience for us all.  I am sure the ghost of Woody will be hovering over him.

The housing market continues to be brisk in the 250 and under range. The 400 and up stuff still sits but even then here in the village not often more than 6 months. A big place on Pedro Moreno just sold at well over that price and it was on the market for about 6 months. A slew of smaller less $$ developments are going up in Tio Domingo and other parts of Six Corners and Rancho Del Oro.  A realtor friend said that here July is actually the month they sell the most houses. So it is the same old same old for real estate here.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

April 4, 2005- It does seem funny that last month I was musing on rush mentality, just before the blitz began!!!

March was a good example of high season at warp speed.  Every single day on the calendar was written on.  From the 9th to the 24th we had a social or concert date every single night. During that time the three young adults from the Northern Lights concert series were here as house guests . We had a flutist, a violinist and the soprano.  It was nice to be frantically watering the garden to the sounds of Bach or a flute solo from some other composer. When they left a couple who are friends came to stay and they have not yet left.  This plus the usual things like club meetings, board meetings, hair and dental appointments, Easter celebrations.  Oh and organizing, selling tickets from home and getting 130 garden club members ALL the way out to Tlachichilco to visit this fabulous garden . The house is huge and the man has two full time gardeners. He gives them pretty much free rein.  From there to a buffet lunch at Vista Del Lago Country Club.  The membership loved it and we all were in awe of the garden . You can only see a small part of it in the picture. Check the Garden club website if you want to see the rest. http://www.lakechapalagardenclub.com/photogallery.htm    

After a month like that, it makes me sound like a real piker, spouting all that stuff about slower lifestyle mentality and letting go! All I can say is it is NOT the norm around here, it just happened. And by the end of the month we were both really bushed!.  Now Easter is over and soon most of the snow birds will finally be gone. Everyone looks forward to the traffic snarls ending and the village returning to quieter times. It is already getting hotter. This past week we had some 90 degree days. Watering the tree mounted orchids and the pots is now a daily thing and the dust is now a constant.  Despite the onset of "hot times" there are many new people here frantically? looking for real estate. As before not much for sale in the village itself, prices still high, and many village homes being sold within a week or two of being listed, thus never even making it onto the realtor's websites! Two here on Independencia went like that in the past month.  One in that hard to find $200,000. price range and the other a bigger property for quite a bit more.  Many of the people buying are not planning on retiring here or living here full time.  They seem to be buying them as investments to rent out and come down here once in a while themselves.  That can get old if you are a neighbor to such a property. There is a block nearby which consists of just  4 good sized properties. Only one is occupied full time and the owners find the proximity to the other empty now and then properties, daunting.  It gives the burglars lots of unoccupied roofs to climb over to get to their place! So far the banditos climbed up the roof of one of the empty homes to get to the roof of another empty one which they then broke into. That home is next door to the fully occupied home.  Not a fun situation. 

We have also been through a lot of birth and death this month. A gringo friend also lost his wife quite suddenly and all his many friends mourned for him.  She was a young retiree and her sudden death surprised us all. It is tough to do this in a foreign country but atleast the children arrived to help.   

Lucia's sister Patty  is due any day now. She is late, huge, and tired of being pregnant!  Lucia's family  finally lost abuelita to the cancer. That started eight days of mourning and visits to the family. The customary gift when you go to the viewing or after the burial is coffee or sugar since the family will be entertaining a great many people. I baked a huge pineapple upside down cake and we took it with the coffee and sugar. In the middle of the mourning period Lucia celebrated her 32nd birthday. We celebrated belatedly by taking her and the ninas to Guadalajara's excellent zoo last Friday.  Yvonne, Montse and Andrea, Patty's girls and Chaya and Brice, Lucia's two plus Lucia and her Mom. All settled in the back seat of the Acura. We look like the classic Mexican family off for a day trip...except for the blonde gringa in the front seat! The zoo is well laid out, the animals have big paddocks with moats, no little cages and there are lots of places to stop for a rest, drinks and snacks.  At the top? there is a restaurant and terrace that looks right out over the Baranca, the big gorge at the edge of the city of Guadalajara.  It is a lot of walking but none of the ninas complained. We saw white tigers and lions and all the usual zoo stuff. There is a train that takes you through a safari park and also an amusement park.  If you need a whole day trip for grandkids it will certainly fit the bill.  From there we took the troops to Outback for Lucia's birthday dinner. She was a bit surprised when the waiters snuck up with the dessert with candles and we all sang the birthday song!

I need to go out and move the sprinkler and water the pots. Dida loves to help with that part. Apparently water needs to be bitten and subdued by small terriers.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

March 7th, 2005- I think it takes new retirees  awhile to adjust to the change in the space time continuum. What I mean is adjusting to the idea that you don't have to rush.  For most of us 50 somethings, life WAS lived at breakneck speed. Weekends off from work were spent playing catch up. You barely had time to do all the errands much less have a social life. I thought about this the other day as I was making dinner. I was making cole slaw. In the old days, to save time I would have made it in the Cuisinart. Here I was shredding a head of cabbage and chopping it by hand, the way my Mom made it pre machines. Why?  ...well there was no need to rush. Dinner would get made when it got made! And I like the texture of the hand chopped over the machine shredded. While I love and use all of my kitchen gadgets I find that I am doing more things the hands on, old fashioned way just because I have the time and it allows me to enjoy the process. I guess like our Mexican neighbors I am learning to live in the moment and savor it for what it is.  That means walking even more rather than driving. It also means stopping to talk and socialize with our neighbors during those walks. It means enjoying the small things: the pelicans surrounding the fisherman's boat on the lake, how the flowers of a vine look against the wall of a house you are passing, the reflections of the mountains in the water. It means happily easing through the days without that low level feeling of dread that hung over you. You know, that feeling that you used to have....no matter how much you were doing, you were not getting it all done. That the only way you could fit it all in was if you only slept four hours a night or some such preposterous thing. Adjusting to retirement means that you lose that dread  feeling. Sadly some people who retire never do. They just can't give it up.  Even here in paradise you meet these people.  They can't let go of that rush mentality.  If you come here to live I only hope you can embrace that slower mentality. Live at a gentler pace like the Mexican people. Retirement is kind of like your childhood summer vacation...only it never ends. You never have to go back to school. You do have the time to pursue all those interesting things you were going to do IF you just had more time.

We are looking forward to meeting the four young musicians who will be here soon. These are the young adults who will be playing in the Northern Lights concerts. Loaning out bedrooms for a good cause is always fun. Kind of like opening a package, you just never know what you are getting.  They arrive late next week.

All the actors in the passion play are getting ready to take  part in the culmination of an entire year of planning and rehearsals. Soon the blue and white decorations for Palm Sunday will be going up and on that day the street above Independencia will be strewn with bright, green, sweet smelling alfalfa. The young man playing Jesus in the passion play will come along riding on the donkey with the parishioners behind him singing songs as the procession winds it 's way to the church. There is a reenactment of Judas' betrayal on Holy Thursday and the long and arduous Passion Play on Good Friday.  Easter here is real, and not focused on bunnies and eggs! I hope to have pictures to share with you as it happens.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

February 11,2005- Time marches on and my second year is almost past. Life here now is like a really comfortable pair of shoes. They slip right on and take you anywhere. You no longer feel like a "guest" perched between two worlds. I have lost that feeling that used to sit in the back of my consciousness. That feeling  that said you were just here on vacation; that this was going to end some time in the future.  My mind now knows that isn't true.

This is home now. I know it's seams and wrinkles. The house is pretty much the way I want it. I have learned to say yes and to say no so that I have a mix of clubs and organizations that I belong to, help, and really enjoy. If we go to a party or large fund raiser , I usually know most of the people there. I know where the best places are for all my specialty groceries at Abastos. I have learned to cook most of the local produce, where the best butchers are, and how to age the meat after I buy it!  I have a good cadre of Doctors to watch over  my health. If I need something fixed or done I have a large list of people to do it.  I can take each day just as it comes and enjoy the oddities and beauty of this culture. There are always new parades, fireworks, fiestas and day trips to be planned for and enjoyed.  There are Lucia's ninas to watch grow up and help as needed. We had a wonderful weekend taking Bricela to the beach for her 6th birthday. She wanted to see the ocean. It was the whole family's first time at the sea..

There are new comers to meet and help. There are old friends who still provide advice and fun. Days are rarely the same except for the usually perfect weather.  Life here is never boring.  There is always something pleasant to plan for or look forward to.  As my second year draws to a close I only hope that all of you find a place to retire to that meets your needs as well as this place meets mine. Look hard and find that comfortable pair of shoes. It is worth the search once you find them and slip them on.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

January 24, 2005- Well by February I will be coming up on my second full year. We are almost finished with the Christmas season. Candelmas  or Candelaria on February 2nd marks the end of the Christmas season.  January 6th, the feast of the three kings was well celebrated here in Ajijic. Do to the generosity of all, there were enough piñatas for three hours of smashing in the plaza. The kids were divided up into age groups and wore themselves out breaking them!  That afternoon our own  three kings, Walt Smith, Stewart McGowan and Tommy Thompson were dressed in their fancy costumes and out in their truck/chariot delivering candy to all the kids for about 5 hours! No child was left behind! We stuffed two fat piñatas and left them at the town hall for the smashing. We also got a bag together for Casa Ancianos. The three kings stop there first before gong out to the kids. If you ever want to bring small donations the old folks home, they  always need disposable razors, deodorant, hand cream, and socks in various sizes in winter. I think CVS and some of the other chains sell theses things in bags of multiples.  Each resident got a bag with these and other items from the three kings. 

Now it is high season with a vengeance. This means the traffic is terrible, parking anywhere in the village between 11:00 and 5:00  is impossible and there are three events/performances/fund raisers daily <G>.  If you need a workman for paint or plaster or whatever you will find your favorite is probably booked up for atleast a month. You start to look forward to hot April and May, when  all our visitors  LEAVE.  On the plus side this time of year the raspberries are ripe. A trip to the fields in Jocotopec nets you a large container of the ripest berries for about 10 pesos for a liter, bring your own container! These are the same Driscoll berries NOB you pay $2.50 for the tiny cardboard box. And yours are not ripe!!

The weather has been coolish. Last week we had a strong breeze every day so the day temps stayed at the low 70's. We also had some overcast days. Not clouds per se but overcast caused by the Colima volcano which decided to be cranky and spit a bunch of ash into the air. Only the Canadians with anti-freeze for blood are still strolling around in shorts! We also had about an hour or two of steady rain last night. For those of you not yet here you will be happy to know that the lake is STILL not going down. The park is still full of water and the  malecon is still impassible.

I have committed to one more year as garden Club President but many of the other officers are new this year. Harry has agreed to be the treasurer for CASA and I agreed to take over the annual compilation of recipes for the CASA cookbook.  The Garden club brought out the new Garden Guide and Planting Calendar and we have almost sold out the first printing. I think we have three books left. Between the clubs and the music concerts the social scene is as busy as ever.  Today we got out of town and went to the other side of the lake. Check it out in Mexico trips.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 27, 2005- Another year is drawing to a close. They went by so slowly as we waited to get to that magic age to retire.. now they seem to pass at warp speed! The weather has continued to be warm. Not as cold as last year and no.. we have not yet even turned on the little gas heater.

We are half way through the Christmas/New Years/Three Kings holiday season. Christmas here is such a joy. I am not sorry to say we are very hokey.  And very low-key. Before Christmas there are the posada processions,  and the naciementos set up in front of all the homes. . For the naciementos I love the tradition of the empty manger and putting baby Jesus in after the Christmas Eve mass.  That was probably my only stressful Christmas moment this year. The garden club bought the big nativity scene that goes on display in the plaza each Christmas. Last year Baby Jesus never appeared!!!  It seems upon investigation that he was lost or broken. (No one in their right mind would steal Baby Jesus.  Bad Karma squared!) I checked early this month and he was still not found. So now I was trying to find another that matched the set!! Not much luck as both size and color were not average and the original supplier had gone out of business. .  Plus the whole set looked like someone dropped it down the stairs at the Delegacion. Well at the last minute the town painted and repaired the set and a replacement was found. Phew! thank heaven..  I can't take this much pressure. Almost as stressful was chasing the garbage truck down the block last week, trying to give the guys their Christmas envelope. They got away from me as the dogs and I came out of the house. These bum legs don't run that well anymore <G>. So here is this old crip with two running dogs, hobbling down the middle of the street trying to yell for them to arrete! Some guy in a pickup truck passed me, took pity and told the garbage man by now almost a block away, that some crazy lady was chasing them with money.  Kind garbage man trotted back to me,  now almost collapsed in the middle of the street,  I handed him his envelope and we both exchanged Feliz Navidads.

There were  lovely decorations in the church for Christmas Eve mass.  The  live nativity scenes in the church square were VERY imaginative this year. These are nativity scenes from around the world and even the galaxy! The Huron Indian scene, the aliens, and so on were all very well done. As always baby Jesus was a little brother or sister under one year of age pressed into service. No animals this year?? Maybe a new rule??  I do remember last year that we all chased the loose calf around the courtyard.

After mass we strolled home to have a late birthday supper for Harry.  No mad holiday shopping binges here. Many of us gringos don't bother with cards or gifts for one another. I did do some Christmas baking for friends. That means hauling out one of my best hand created Christmas gifts.. the Bierbrauer family cookbook.  60 some pages of my Mom's incredible recipes and old family memories and photos. It was my gift to my family seven or eight years ago. For our friends' goodie plates,  I made fudge, pineapple macadamia fruit cake, and a bunch of other family cookies.  For Harry's birthday which was feted at the Saturday morning Hash House Harriers meeting  I  made Mom's famous pecan sticky buns.  Much better than cake!  Christmas day was our bunch of friends tradition of eating dinner at Mannix. As always the roast whole piggy and turkey were moist and wonderful. We all enjoy the dinner and seeing one another. Not having to cook and clean up is a blessing and they have all the the yummy side dishes. Lots of excitement when the server kid dropped a buffet pan and almost ignited his leg and the tablecloth when the sterno spilled! No worries, fortunately for the kid, everyone rallied around and beat it out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Toys for Tots was as always a wonderful thing. We seem to have more and more kids each year. Some schools have gone from one or two kinder classes to four!! Santa and the elves had a very busy early December getting to all those classes. We used a pick up load of boxed pinata candy, a pick up load of boxed crayons and coloring books and a pick up load of bagged peanuts in the shell to fill almost 3000 gift bags. This takes about a week of assembly line work. Well worth it when you see the class all dressed up in their Christmas best happily waiting for Santa.  Now  the whole town will be dropping off Three Kings day gifts at Barbara's bazaar. Tommie Thompson, and a couple of cronies drive all over town dressed up in their Three Kings costumes. They hand out candy and small toys all over the village. Then that evening we meet in the plaza to smash piñatas by age and sex.  Separating them that way cuts down on the mayhem when the pinata finally gets broken.  We will go to Guad to buy a good one and then get a big box of candy and confetti. They do not come filled and it is a messy, tedious job getting all the goodies into the pinata.  Then drop it off at the Delegacion office.  After three kings things will go back to just the usual high season madness. The village is very busy and will only get more so after New Years. All the Canadians will be here fleeing the frozen north!  It took me ten minutes to navigate through the stop lights to get to the gym this AM. There is very mixed feelings about how well our new lights are managing the traffic.  Things would be better if there were police to ticket the people holding up traffic to make illegal left hand turns! 

So that is all the news about our very low key, hokey Christmas celebrations. We don't have midnight madness sales here. We just all get together and try to make everyone's life a little happier.  Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the women are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! Especially Dart and the long suffering Dita! And Harry and Chris are very happy. Merry Christmas and a Very Happy and Healthy New Year to you all.

July 12, 2004-The lake is up to the wall on parts of the malecon (boardwalk sort of.)  The rains come every night and in the morning the sun shines as we walk the dogs and look at Mt. Garcia across the lake.  On fourth of July, Miss Dida  celebrated her second birthday. She is settling down to the extent that I can walk her on the sidewalk without a leash. She still has to be scolded for flying up to people and jumping up on them but she is getting better. She just assumes the ENTIRE world loves her! Woody is getting more frail. He will be 15 in three months. He still has days when he prances along with all his friends, but more often then not he stays by my side and watches the rest race around.

We have been out on some fun day trips. We were able to buy a copy of Tony Burton's out of print book "Western Mexico: A Travelers Treasury"  We have journeyed off to Tala and Teuchitlan and the results are in Mexico Trips. A couple of days ago we rounded up Rob and Cindy, Max and Janel, and Frank and Lee. This was a trip where the drive was really the best part. We were off to Santa Maria del Oro. This is an old gold mining town below Mazamitla.  We are at 5200 feet here in Ajijic. Mazamitla is higher and Santa Maria is higher yet. The road to Santa Maria winds up and down through spectacular mountains. It is a paved two lane with nobody on it except for the bus that goes twice a day from Mazamitla to Santa Maria. The views of the valleys and the far away peaks looked like the Himalayas. We saw a huge iguana strolling by the side of the road and a lot of the beep beep road runner birds! This area is famous for the wild flowers that spring up during the rainy season and there were already many blooming in shades of royal blue, lavender and yellow. We were following Jerry Smith's directions. He is a local motorcycle  touring enthusiast and he said Santa Maria was only a half an hour from Mazamitla. So.. as we left Mazamitla Harry offered to stop at the last Pemex out of town but we all said no..we are OK!! Fools.

We were driving the Jeep and a Honda CRV. Because this is the rainy season there were washouts, and rock falls along the road. There is no shoulder and the turns are hairpin. Once as Harry came whizzing around one of those hairpin turns we almost acquired a large black Brahma steer as a hood decoration!  The whole herd was strolling down the middle of the road. Two hours! later,  when we got to the old town it was quiet and sleepy for a hot Saturday afternoon, but some one came to be hospitable almost as soon as we parked by the square. A nice old man in his Saturday best came up to ask us if we needed anything. He wanted to know if we were looking for the hotel. Needless to say a BANOS was our first need. He told us to leave the cars there and escorted us down a nearby street to a little restaurant where we all used the bathroom and bought cold drinks. He was the town judge and was very proud of his town. We sat and talked to him and the bunch of men there eating pasole and drinking beer. One man spoke very good English. He said he lived on his rancho two hours away in the mountains. He gave us his card and said if we ever came that way it was very beautiful country and he would love to show us around. We bought the old man a beer and then he led us off to show us the rest of his town. He took us back to the square to look at the 250 year old church. There was a fenced off even older one next to it that had been damaged in an earthquake. Then he took us to his home right there on the square and apologized that his wife was not there to welcome us, since she was away visiting relatives that day. He was such a sweetie. Everyone we met in the town was just as welcoming as they could be. Only in Mexico. Of course now it is really late and we are starving. So we start back down and around the mountain to Mazamitla. As we were driving down at about  8000 feet or so we hit rain and fog, scary!! but we drove out of it in about ten minutes. When we got back to Mazamitla we stopped at El Troje the famous fajita restaurant for a well deserved dinner. We cruised on back around the lake and home. Long day and my driver was tired!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

June 8, 2004- Well our rainy season has started with a deluge and it was two weeks early!! The lago is almost back up to the wall by the park and nearing the end of the pier at the old posada.  While that is a good thing for the long term health of the lake, it is a bad thing for the four footed critters who are turned out there. Last year the cows and the mare herds had A LOT more pasture once the rainy season started. This year and right now they are all pretty skinny, there will be much less grass for all.   I don't know if their owners supplement them with hay and grain or just depend on whatever forage they find when they are turned out.  The foals are already being born and the mares will need good grass to keep their weight while they nurse. 

The ladies of the privada were invited to Alejandro's daughter's baby shower last week.  Janel and I were not the only gringa's there. We met Daniella and Becky, two sisters who came here as children, then went back to the states  and came back yet again to marry Mexican men. Alejandro's daughter is married to Becky's son. Complicated but at least it meant we had someone there to explain to us in English all the fun games that are traditional at Mexican baby showers! Janel and I were not stellar at any of them.  When you arrive a pretty favor of a clay baby bib or a rocking horse hung from a bit of ribbon is pinned to your shirt. Once all the guests get there you have to NOT say baby or mama in ANY of your conversation. If you do whoever hears it first shrieks and swoops down on you to confiscate your pin. At the end of the party the person holding the most pins wins a nice prize! We ate the yummy food, sat and chatted for awhile and then more games .

The next one  had baby clothespins suspended from a string. You had to take a clothespin and say an article associated with a baby. Each word meant  another clothespin held in your hand. You lost when you dropped one. Again I think  got five, ( but!!! I said them in Spanish: camisa, pantalones, leche, talco, zapatitoes) the winner managed to cram ten into her hand before they hit the floor.   We were really BAD at the rice and diaper pin one! You are blindfolded and the time is one minute. You have to sift through this bowl of dry rice in which there are small safety pins. I found two in a minute, Janel found one! and the winner found 30!!!

The baby food game we did NOT play and I am not sure we really understood it!! Two teams  of two people facing each other each with a jar of baby food and a spoon,  each blindfolded. Someone calls time and they frantically, blindly, try to spoon the baby food into each other's mouth! Which ever  team empties their jars first wins!! Of course a lot of it DID NOT get into the contestants mouths. As you  can see from the fuzziness of the picture there were hands and baby food flying every where. It was a VERY interesting game!

Both Janel and I really enjoyed the party. It was fun shopping for the gifts. When we went to the papelaria to get them wrapped, we met another older lady there  getting baptism gifts wrapped. We all had to look at one another's gifts and comment on how pretty everything was . We enjoyed  meeting all of Alejandro's relatives and daughter Sondra's young friends. Everyone went out of their way to make us feel welcome and comfortable at the party. We wish her and her husband much joy when the baby girl to be named Cassandra is born. She is expected quite soon, like in the next two weeks!

Coming events!!! A fun dog show and dancing horses!! scheduled for June 27th at the Hotel Rincon de Gustavo around the corner!! I may enter Dida and Woody in the beauty part, not the costume competition!!! It should be a hoot!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

May18-2004- It seems like time around here doesn't just fly it moves at warp speed. I am out of the wheel chair and walking pretty much OK. I get stiff and sore but it is slowly working out.

The wedding was on April 23rd and it was lovely. We learned a lot about Mexican civil law. For example in Mexico many people have two weddings. The civil one is required and then if you are well off  a big church wedding follows. Some parents don't even let the daughter go live with the husband until after the second wedding. For the poorer folks like Lucia, the civil wedding is the only one. All week the civil weddings are done at the town hall. On weekends they send someone to your home or wherever to do the ceremony. Lucia and Jose had the wedding on a Saturday evening at her home.  Harry and I as testigos or witnesses had to sign a bunch of papers that evening. I joked that it was almost as lengthy as buying a house!! All the participants and their parents as well as the witnesses sign a passle of forms. Here is abuelita or grandma, the marriage instigator.

After the ceremony the wedding party adjourned to the little evento place across the street. These are walled compounds, with open space, dance floor, kitchen and baths that are rented out for parties. Several days before the wedding, on her birthday, we had taken Lucia to Chapala to buy her an outfit and to get all the chicken and supplies for the party. The chicken was in a mole sauce and it was very yummy. We stayed until 9:30PM and by then the party was in full swing. I am sure it went on long after we left. Lots of relatives and friends and of course the whole family comes. We were honored to be asked to participate and we both enjoyed the whole wedding very much. So even though we are childless we have now married one off! It cost a whole lot less and was much more fun than many weddings I have attended in the states.

We just got back from a trips NOB (North of the Border). Harry says he is NOT leaving his home again. It was a long drive but I enjoyed seeing San Antonio, Texas and he did get a new car out of the deal. We are now registering cars with South Dakota! The dealership did all the paperwork. It is a done thing here, because you can register in SD without an inspection and no need for proof of U.S. insurance. You can renew through the mail. If you never take the car back to the U.S. you don't need to bother renewing the U.S. registration. As long as your FM3  papers are current it is no problem. Did some shopping there and thought to myself how little "recreational" shopping we do here.  We brought back a carload of "stuff."  Some we needed but I am sure not all of it.  <GRIN> It was fun to eat things we can't get here, like lobster, and fresh tuna.  I brought some Italian sausage home in the cooler along with Ghirardelli chocolate chips. 

This time of year the village is usually quiet as many people leave  to go back NOB. It has been hot , but the rain birds are singing and all the farmers are plowing fields getting ready to plant as soon as the rains come. We bought a small swamp cooler for the bedroom but it has not yet been hot enough to even turn it on. The village itself has gotten only sort of less crowded. Since that AARP article touting the "cheap" life here, the B&B's and hotels have been packed. Right now any house in the village that is listed at a fair price only stays on the market for a few weeks. Some never even get a for sale sign up on their wall. They change hands that quickly.  Like all things I suppose this to shall pass. But since all of us Baby Boomers will be retiring in the next ten years I don't think it will pass that quickly. I just wish that here on Independencia the construction was done. There are three houses currently being remodeled and between construction trash and workers cars, navigating down the street is tough!! Sometimes depending on where things are parked you have a hard time getting the wrangler out of the privada and onto Independencia. There is also talk of more crime in the village. Something about a gang of young thugs, breaking into houses. We have decided to add the spiked bars to the one unprotected wall that faces Duff's vacant lot and now we put the alarm on whenever we go out. You just have to hope the cops can catch them and lock them up.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

April 5-2004- It has been interesting around here. I now know that the house accommodates wheel chairs well, the web site has been hacked twice by a bunch of Turkish nuts and.. we are going to have a wedding. Lucia the maid has asked us to be the testimonios- witnesses for her marriage. It is coming up soon at the behest of her dying grandmother. Abuela raised Lucia and her sister Patty after their parents died. She is now in the end stages of caner and wants to see Lucia married before she dies. So we are planning this for after Easter. Stay tuned for pictures and details!! News at 11:00

February 6, 2004 -I  arrived home for good on February 1, 2003. I looked back at what I wrote as I was waiting there in New Jersey, counting off the days until Harry arrived to drive back with me.  "December 20-02- In a few hours I will be "leaving on a jet plane." Unfortunately I do know when "I will be back again." I return on January 1, for one more month. " I have been reflecting on my first year these past few weeks. My first year is different than Harry's. He was here by himself with me flying back and forth. This was our first year together.

Friends in a yahoo group who are planning on moving here often talk about exit strategy or plan B. In other words do you have a plan in case for some reason living here in Paradise becomes intolerable! Maybe we are just more resolute than they or we took more time deciding but we have never had a plan B. The only way I could see us leaving is because of some catastrophic health crisis but maybe not even that. We have been very pleased with the health care here. We find it in many ways better than the U.S.

In my first year I had times in those early months when I did have a moment of "panic" missing my friends and familiar routines.  I jumped in with both feet, taking on the Garden Club's web site  and going through major problems transferring this one to a new hosting service. I missed my techie friends! I didn't have time to sit back and reflect too much on my problems. Harry in his time here without me had joined a bunch of organizations so I was often a bit overbooked! There was often not much time to consider how much my life had changed and what I missed from my old one.  Then the routines of the new life and friends replaced the ones I missed.

I think by now I have settled into the retirement/Mexican mindset. That means:

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

August 3, 2004-When we first moved here we both thought that the terrace needed more flowers. We have spent the past two years rectifying that situation.  I thought of that and the incredible lushness the rainy season brings as I came down the stairs from the mirador. Looking down at all the roses and other things blooming made my heart very glad. If you click on the images they will get bigger.

Up on the mirador and down on the terrace the orchids are very happy. My collection has grown to 22 plants! I have both the epiphytic which grow in trees and a few  terrestrials which grow in dirt. What I count as a great triumph is that this year,  I am getting many of them to re-bloom. That was a feat I never accomplished in the states. I have to give credit to the beginner orchid growers group I joined. I have learned a great deal there on the care and feeding of orchids. I bring the blooming ones down to sit in their fancy showcase bowl on the coffee table on the terrace. The blooms will last for 3-6 weeks depending on the variety.

Recently there have been  articles about retiring to Mexico in ARP and  the Wall Street Journal. The Forbes owned Guadalajara Reporter  had an article about "reverse migration."  It discussed how many people moving here now are coming because they feel they have more personal freedom and less government intrusion into their lives here in Mexico vs. the U.S.... Kind of weird. I guess the previous migrants were coming to "find themselves." Now they are coming because they don't want to be found!  Also in light of all the terrorist warnings they say they feel safer here in banditoland!! ;-) then back in the states!!

The impact of all this on our lives here is  that the village has been packed even during what is normally a quiet tourist season and the prices of houses are still going up. People are coming here to just buy a house. End of story. No try to rent first, no try the lifestyle first, just buy something!  Weird!  If you check the what does it cost page you can see some recent prices of thing. Despite all this we are still happy with our choice. Maybe we will see some of you new immigrants around town!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

September 6, 2004- I celebrated my birthday on September 1.  For all those years my birthday  always meant that school or work was about to start. After 56 years it seems strange to consider my birthday as just a celebratory day during the rainy season.  No more celebrating it  sometimes at school or work! This was kind of a sad birthday as it was marked right after the death of my beloved Woody. He had almost 15 wonderful years. He was always the sweetest most biddable dog in the world. Harry and I also celebrated it with Harry  in a wheel chair!

On our HHH overnight trip to Sayula, Harry broke the 5th metatarsal in his foot and pulled off the tendon that runs along side it. My knee Doctor,  Dr. Tillo  operated to pin the bones back together. The bones don't heal together if not pinned. He has to spend 4-6 weeks completely off the foot. It is in a cast and once again we were off to the American Legion to get a wheel chair.  Thank god this house easily accommodates one. The stitches came out last week and on the 15th the pins come out and the cast comes off.  He will be glad to be mobile again! I will no longer be the chauffer! As always the medical care was superb. And also as always our friends rallied around to offer meals, help, errand running and whatever else we needed.

I was off to Barbara's Bazaar this Am with neighbor Cindy. Tom was having an anniversary sale with much of the inventory marked down 75%!!  Cindy and Rob bought and have almost finished refurbishing a rental home on Colon just above the carreterra.  So.... Cindy was looking for decorative stuff to make it even prettier.  I was just looking. I did find a lovely pair of wrought iron gates which I bargained for and got! They will be mounted on the wall in the back terrace and some lovely vine will then twine through them. 

The village is still hopping. This year it was never a quiet season. Parking and driving have been as bad as a normal high season. Weekends when the Guad squad descends it can take forever to get out onto the carreterra. Please , Please if you drive here,  leave those big wide SUV's at home. They just don't navigate/park well on these narrow streets. Friends at the B&B's say they are already booking up fast for high season so if you are planning on coming down Oct-March better book early.

The rains have been really plentiful. The lake is VERY full. The malecon near Six Corners has the water lapping at the sea wall.  Hard to believe that last spring Dida and Woody were running along the now disappeared road out there. It is just deep water now.  The liro is bad but the federals and the locals are hauling it out with heavy equipment and carting it to the dump. There have been more water releases from the upstream dams. Not sure if they are really following the Water Board's rules or just releasing it because their dams are full to bursting! Either way the water is up higher than it has been in over 10 years. And we still have this and next month when the Pacific coast hurricanes bring much rain.

Coming up this weekend, we have the Hash House Harriers- Toys for Tots walkathon . I will be the only walking entry from this house! It is scary to be thinking/planning for Christmas already. It is enough to be shifting the Day of the Dead stuff to the front of the storage closet. Got to get out my skeleton woman and all the other stuff for the altar. And I need to get the guest rooms ready for hosting our artisans again this year for the November Artisan fair. Right after that friends will be here for Thanksgiving . Life here as always is busy and full.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

October 25, 2004- Last week I got out the box marked "dead stuff."  No it isn't a place for the deceased, it is where all the Day of the Dead altar paraphernalia  resides. Harry started the tradition the year  I had to go back NOB and we have continued it ever since. We have our own twists.

Ours includes both deceased humans and deceased four footed creatures. Complete with ashes for the four footeds! Each year we add some more things. Last year we bought the skeleton woman and her skull flower candle sticks at the Artisan fair in November. In Mexico she is called La Calaca.  The sugar skulls are called calavera. We bought them this past weekend in Morelia at the tianguis de dulce. A whole market devoted to stalls full of candy! The flowers are traditionally the orange mums or marigolds with a dash of blood red cockscomb flower. 

In front of many of the pictures are personal items from the deceased. My Mom's has one of her small jade carvings, Dad's has a pencil stamped with the name of the company he started.  Harry's Dad's old Bulova watch is there by his picture. On the critter side we have Woody's old dumbbell and his leather collar. There is his poodle predecessor Willy and a raft of Cairn pictures. There are pictures of some of the old horse show champions and their ribbons. It is very pretty and very personal.  Even though you miss them, it does make you feel some how closer to all of them.

I wished this evening when we walked that I had remembered my camera. There was a strong south west breeze and the water was splashing up against the wall at the park. It was a cool picture and quite a sight from up on the pier. The park is almost completely  covered with water. The malecon and the sea wall are covered. I can again say I never expected to see the water where it is right now. The kids were playing soccer in the parking lot at the bottom of Calle Cinco de mayo. It is the only dry place to play, the soccer field and the b-ball courts are still under water. When we went to Morelia this weekend we crossed the bridge over the Lerma river. The water in the river was still high and flooding over the banks and some nearby trees. So even though we have had no more rain the water level should  stay up there.

On the spur of the moment we sent Dida to the vet and Harry  and I went to Morelia for three days. f I ever wanted to live in a city Morelia would be it! The city is beautiful, with flat easy walking, gorgeous old buildings, great restaurants, and lots of museums and shops. We didn't have enough time to see it all.  We bought orchids at the Orchid show going on at the planetarium. The next day  we went out into the countryside for the craft towns. We got some beautiful enameled copper at Santa Clara. In Quiroga famous for guitars and stringed instruments we passed shop after shop filled with guitars and other instruments. There is another town that specializes in Christmas decorations and crafts made from straw. It has the coolest of names sounds like a Polish Indian... Tzintzuntzan! Say that three times fast! These are all less than an hour's drive from the city.  The wildflowers were still going strong and the countryside was beautiful. They have some VERY high mountains.

We were staying in this beautiful restored old hotel in the heart of the Centro historico. The last night I wandered into the Cathedral and saw an evening wedding of the rich and famous. It was incredible. The Cathedral has the largest pipe organ in Central America. They had some maestro playing his heart out on it. Brahms and Mozart.  This was while the guests were arriving and being seated. Long gowns and tuxes! Then 12 bridesmaids in incredible gowns, plus three little flower people in various sizes arrived. The bride's gown had more jewels on it then I will EVER own. Beautiful designs in seed pearls and lace. Oh and I forgot about the flowers. The tall towers of them all down the aisle. White lilies and roses. Later there was music and folkloric dancing in another part of the plaza and then fireworks.  Harry was back in the hotel room across the square with a belly ache. He missed it. We are already planning to go back with friends in January. Then we can spend a day seeing the monarch butterflies at the special preserve nearby. Plus see more of the city and spend more time in Patzcuaro.

All over the village the locals are getting their before winter repairs done. We don't clean gutters and shut off the outside water lines. We reseal roofs, paint, prune the trees, and in our case fix a major part of the terrace that had cracked and settled. It has new tiles now and looks great. All we need now is to have all the outside terrace tiles cleaned and sealed. Lots of houses coming onto the market for the winter season.  On Independencia just around the corner two for over $400K plus the just finished (six months ago) rehabbed old hacienda across the street from the end of the privada at $ 537K!!!! Our humble neighborhood is getting pretty upscale.

Time to go chill for a bit. We have a busy week ahead with a welcome to the many new neighbors party here on Friday. Eighteen people, both old and new neighbors. So since it will be an Italian feast I can shop and get it all ready gradually during the week. We will have a houseful for November as well. Both the Artisan fair guests and Thanksgiving guests.  I love it!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

October 2, 2004- You can not believe the lake level!! go and look at the pictures. In the past two weeks it seems to have been raining ALL OVER Mexico not just here. Remember that the Lerma river originates in the mountains near Mexico City. They have been getting rain from the remnants of Florida's many hurricanes. Over on this coast we have had some heavy rains form the Pacific hurricanes. And it has, all over Jalisco and Guanajuato states, been a very heavy rainy season.  The dams are all at full capacity so the spillways are also sending water into the river and the ground all over is just saturated. In two weeks the water came up and OVER the wall along the malecon going toward Six Corners.  It is two thirds of the way up the wall by the park.  Usually by mid September the rainy season is over, but we had a torrential downpour for several hours just a couple of nights ago. I never thought I would see this. It is very gratifying to see the lake return to its former glory.

 Harry is out of the cast and off the crutch and the cane. He started driving again this week. This will be our first  driving trip since he broke his foot in Sayula. We are off tomorrow to do the wildflower drive up to Tapalpa.  The end of the rainy season seems to bring them all to a very rich tapestry of color. I will post the pictures in the trips section. 

I agreed to run again as President of Garden Club. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Some of the other officers are dropping out so we are busy looking for a new slate for next year. We will be  hosting a Garden Tour to rise money some time in January or February . The money raised will go to the expenses in planting, pruning and maintaining the plaza. It should be a good fund raiser and we are choosing some absolute jewels of gardens for the tour.

We are still fund raising for the Toys for Tots. October 13th I will be making a vat of chili for the chili dinner dance to be held at Bananas. Then we have a golf tournament as the final fund raiser. Hopefully we will be able to raise enough money to do the same 2500 kids as we did last year.

 Hard to believe we are entering high season. Although the traffic on weekends seems like we are in the middle of it! The rains collapsed the road on the libramiento near Chula Vista Norte. That was over a week ago and the road is still blocked off and not fixed. Routing all that traffic through Chapala proper makes for MAJOR weekend backups. All over the village there are construction projects with dirt/brick or debris piles blocking the roads.  Everyone is griping that the costs for all types of building materials keep going up and up. Once the rains stop more people will start on roof repairs and general water sealing work.  Including us! The heavy rains mean we need to take the tiles off and reseal the terrace roof. Juan the new gardener also does handyman work so that may be a job for him.  The weather is cooling off just a bit. By 9:00PM I shut the terrace doors in the den and I often wear long pants when I walk Dida  in the AM. Still by noon you are changing back to shorts and a sleeveless top. I am eying the orchids and deciding where the more tender hybrids will go once the weather starts to cool off. The species are tough and can stay where they are in the trees. They flowered beautifully this year and I am thrilled at the knowledge I am gaining from the beginner's club. Harry has a pile of tickets here on the calendar for all the concerts and performances that are starting up.  It doesn't seem possible but life is getting more and more busy as October advances into November!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

November 29, 2004- This has been a very busy holiday. I belong to a private Yahoo group called Amigas. It is for women thinking of moving to Mexico and those already here. We that are here sort of offer an online support group for the ones coming along. Since  Thanksgiving and the feast of San Andreas coincided this year,  a large group of singles and couples arrived this week.  28 old and new friends came for turkey day at our house. Thanksgiving day coincided with the procession night for foreign visitors. After dinner a large bunch of us went to march in the fiesta procession from Six Corners to the plaza.   Then we all came back for coffee and dessert.  We have taken a bunch of them to Tonala to shop and yesterday we went with more to Guad to the Degollado for a concert.  They did house tours and went out for the lake side all neighborhood look see with Trudie at Eager realty. Some are serious about buying and some are only in the early stages of looking. Some are in sticker shock about the prices, some are not. I mentioned last month that two here on Independencia went on the market. The $400K one sold in a week. Never even got a sign on it. About right as it was newly rehabbed and pretty fairly priced. The $500K is a bit overpriced. And if you are going to shell out that much money you can go elsewhere with a view etc. Another two doors down from the one that sold is for sale. Again $400K. A much bigger lot and a different style of house.  We shall see how long it lasts. Within the village there is not  a heck of a lot for sale right now.  Friends were interested in one all the way at the end of Independencia just below Six Corners. $239K really nice they said. But.. already two contracts on it, within a day after they looked!!

The 9 day fiesta has two more nights.  The castillos /fireworks each night have been pretty awesome.  Sometimes we go down to the plaza and sometimes we just watch from the mirador. Anita and Ken, who were visiting were there every night. She and her husband will be back this summer for an extended stay and Ken may arrange for Anita to have her very own castillo for her 50th birthday present! Now that is the way to celebrate 50, your own fireworks display. Dida is as I type,  fussing, growling and barking because the cohetes are still going off randomly. Like most dogs she is NOT fond of the booms.  I am looking forward to our trip to the beach on the 3rd. I need a break from fiesta and company!

The lake is still up!! The park is still under water and you still can not walk on the malecon. It long since stopped raining, all we can think is that the dams are still way above capacity and are still letting water go. Last year as soon as the rains stopped the water started to recede a bit.  The lirio continues to proliferate and blows at the will of the wind. I looked from the mirador the other day and it looked like solid ground not water! The house rehab in front of us is taking some of our view ....sigh. I wish they had left the damn thing one story! I am slowly moving the more tender orchids downstairs so I can watch them and the temps and bring them in if it looks like a really cold night. Still they all stayed upstairs last year I was just dumber then!! Not in my orchid group at that time. So far we have not had much cold. I wear a sweatshirt when we walk Dida in the AM and close the house up each night about 6 PM. No sign yet of last year's two week cold snap. 

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 30, 2004-Reflections on the Christmas season. It is sooo different here. Much less pressure and in some ways due to tradition and circumstance much less that you HAVE to do. There are many parties and get togethers since we all like to celebrate the season. Starting with the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe  the whole thing seems much more focused on the religious aspects of the holiday. The only mandatory shopping we do is hams for the maid and the gardener.  Up until recently any shopping would have to have been in Guad and the prices there are $$$$. So we give one another gifts all year long as we find unique things in our travels and don't much bother with Christmas. Christmas cards unless you hand deliver them around town are not a tradition. The Mexican mail service just does NOT gear up for Christmas. Like a goof I told my sister to send me an orchid book and forgot to tell her to wait until after Christmas to order it. Duhh ...needless to say it has not yet arrived.  Christmas Eve we walked down to the church, went to late mass and came out to view all the catechism classes' live nativity scenes. These include most of the requisite farm animals and usually a live baby Jesus as well. It is a further hoot if he/she is swaddled against the cold and lying in the manger ...sucking on a bottle! These kids put a huge amount of work into this and the costumes, lighting and music are quite incredible. A group of our friends booked a table for the 2:00 PM seating at Mannix on Christmas day. The food/ wine and entire presentation are very well done. In addition to the turkey they also do two whole roast pigs for each sitting. The piggy parade comes just before the main course. Both are marched around the room on their platters for ooh  ahhs and photos. Then they plunk them down on the buffet table and start carving. They were very tender and juicy piggys. All of the dinner was yummy. 

The town is crowded now. We have many friends who forgo the entire tianguis for the next couple of months. They just hit the vendors at either end. It is really hard to get/walk through the whole thing. First off every grandchild in North America is here. And they are being shown off/introduced as their grandparents also stop to greet part time friends who have arrived for the winter. No problema ...IF THE WOULD JUST NOT STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE TO TALK!!  We have New Years Eve parties to go to and a New Years day one as well.  Then we need to get the candy to Walt, Tommy and Stewart for the January 6th,  Three Kings day celebration hand out.  Then maybe we will start taking down the decorations.

For the Christmas season we did have the grand opening of a major department store/supermarket right next door in the town of Chapala. Sorianas may or may not change the gringo shopping habits.  It remains to be seen if they will carry as large a number of gringo items as Super Lake and El Toritio. But at the very least it may eliminate some of the local gringos shopping trips into Guad. 

The lake level is still high. There is still water over the malecon and in the park. We did have one ughh all night and most of the day rain! Very rare for here and it fell on the 15th, the day of the Garden Club Christmas party.  We had to move the entire thing indoors at La Nueva Posada and I had panicky people calling me all morning wanting to know if we were going to cancel it!! Of course.. LNP is just going to throw out 115 turkey dinners, yeah right! That was the only rain we have had so who knows why the level has stayed up with no attrition due to evaporation. The water treaty for all states was finally signed and one of the provisions called for mandatory releases once upstream dams reached a certain capacity. All we can think of is that the capacity is still very high and they are being forced to let water go. The lirio is still there and they are still scooping it up and hauling it away in Joco. Some days when we walk Dida in the morning there is none there,  other mornings it stretches far out towards the center. 

Our annual six? weeks of winter? has started. We shut the windows and doors around 4 or 5. By the time we get up in the morning it might be 48 outside. By noon or one it is 75 in the sun.  We bought a second little propane heater and it now stays in the den for nightly heat if we want it. And Harry got me a little electric heater for the bathroom. Now Chris the cold, shuts the door and  cranks it up when she goes in to shower and dress each AM. No more cold feet and shivering when you get out of the shower! In the afternoon around 4:00 if I am starting to feel chilled I follow Dida's example. Like a cruise ship junkie I go sleep in the sun on my deck chair. That time of day the sun hits well on the guest room patio. So I sit there happily settled between the huge fragrant pot of rosemary,  in flower and buzzing with bees, and the big jade plant. Dida usually joins me doing her lizard routine as she toasts her belly in the sun.  Against the wall the poinsettias are three feet and blooming in several different colors. The hardiness of Mexico's noche buenas never ceases to amaze me. When I think how we used to have to coddle the NOB ones. Here they are tough as nails. Once the sun sinks below the wall Dida and I go in and decide what to make for dinner. These days we do a lot of things in the oven! Happy New Year to you all, and may we have more peace and less disaster.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 22, 2003- The Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a big Mexican Fiesta. A group from the church comes around to collect money for flowers and fireworks about a week before. On December 12th the band starts playing in Six Corners and comes all through the village playing at the homes of the contributors. Here they are lined up in the privada.  I had just come in from walking the dogs and got a wonderful serenade as we watched from the gate.

Christmas is fast approaching but just like last year it is a joyous not a hectic celebration. This year for the first time in five years I have all the Christmas decorations out. After we sold the house we didn't have room for all of them in the rented condos! We went to Costco a few weeks ago and bought a nine foot tree wired with 2000 lights. It looks great with the high ceilings in the great room.  From there it was to Abastos market to buy piñatas for the neighborhood posada on the 20th. Harry the piñata man, indulged himself in a big Santa Claus, a reindeer, a Christmas tree, a small five pointed star and a HUGE five pointed star.  Then to the dulceria aisles to buy a case of piñata candy, a bale of confetti, and a ten kilo bag of peanuts. This is stuffing fodder for piñatas! What with the impulse purchase of the Christmas tree, the normal Costco stuff, and a neighbor riding along with us we were mashed in the car. In order to get the tree box in I had my seat up to the dashboard and rode home leaning against it.

 Schools are closed now. Last week we finished up the Toys For Tots distribution. First we had to make up 2500 gift bags. Here are the happy band of elves finishing up on the third day of assembly line work. That's me next to Dagmar in the purple sweater. Part of the reason Harry likes to take pictures is because then he doesn't have to be in them! After assembly it was two or three schools daily to get them all in before they closed for Christmas break. Below is a  line up of eager cuties is at  one of the kinder's where we were  handing out toys. There is no way to convey to you how much fun this is or how much the little ones love it. They shriek for Santa Claus and then sing us their carefully practiced Christmas songs.

This time of year everyone in the community draws together.  Christmas Eve the Garden club president takes the baby Jesus figure down to the plaza to place him in the manger. Then many of us will go over to the church yard to look at the students displays of live nativity scenes from around the world. There will be songs sung, stands selling hot spiced ponche, and everyone will be in a very festive mood. It is a lovely Christmas. Quite different from what is celebrated in the states. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Check Festivals or any of the highlighted lines above for more Christmas pictures from the village.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

December 1, 2003- The feast of San Andreas the Apostle ended last night. Woody is glad!  He is to the point that he has to be leashed and dragged out of the closet to get him outside.  Here is a recap of the week's festivities.

Each day of the fiesta is sponsored by a specific group of workers and honors one of Ajijic's barrios. The daily schedule includes 6 AM Maanitas (the skyrockets booming to wake you for mass) and the procession to Mass at 8 AM , the 6:30 PM procession to 7 PM  Solemn Mass of the day's sponsors and then burning of the Castillos at 10:30 PM.

Here is the schedule of sponsoring groups:
Nov. 22 Musicians
Nov. 23 Teachers, domestic workers, seamstresses, beauticians, professionals and the businesses of La Puerta del Lago.
Nov. 24 The employees of La Nueva Posada and the Eager Family
Nov. 25 The foreign community, the general population of Ajijic
Nov. 26 Shopkeepers, carpenters, bakers, credit union de San Andreas
Nov. 27 Farmers, ranchers, teens and youth of Ajijic
Nov. 28 Construction workers, suppliers architects and engineers
Nov. 29 Maids, Gardeners and their union
Nov. 30 The Ajijic residents who now live and work in the United States in the San Fernando Valley, Spring Valley, Watsonville, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Ana in California; Tucson, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico and Oregon.

We marched with friends Tuesday night, the 25th. We all carried candles, we had a good band and guys setting off skyrockets behind us!! It was a respectable showing of gringos. In early days there were often very few.  The Nov. 28th was put on by the maestros who are the crew bosses of all the construction crews. They had a really fancy band in the plaza and a castillo and two other big displays all set up in the church courtyard. It was a huge display. Really awesome fireworks. We went up several nights to watch and party. Each night required drinks of canela, a cinnamon tea spiked with brandy , we also did the paseo or walk around the plaza along with the young'uns eying each other up.  It was a good week of fun.

We went to Guad on Sunday . We went to the big international  book fair at the expo center.  Harry was glad to get the big book Master's of Mexican Folk art. We saw the book at the artisan fair last week. The Molinero family we hosted here during the fair are listed in the book.  A friend, Marianne Carlsen brings in craftsman from all over Mexico for this sale. She wants to keep these indigenous craftspeople in business. That way the art won't be lost. The family that stayed with us are potters. We had a great time with them and they will be staying with us again when they come next year . The fair had mask makers, weavers, potters, coppersmiths, knife makers, and embroidery/tapestry makers. The workmanship was incredible.

While in Guad we  also did our shopping for all the entertaining that will be going on in the next six weeks.  I got my Christmas tree. A nine footer!! it will look great all decorated. The stores were packed. The city people were also out starting their Christmas shopping. We will be making up the toys for tots packages this week and we will start elfing with Santa the week of the 8th. Busy, Busy

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

November 20, 2003- It is time for two months of fiestas!! Plus the social /snow bird season is kicking off. So life around here is constant busyness and fireworks! Harry has two boxes with hundreds of his handmade gliders waiting in readiness for the toys for tots visits. We went to the Chapala town hall the other day. Got the list of all the schools and their directors from the Chapala education jeffe. It is time to start contacting them and scheduling all the Santa visits. It is also time to drive into Abastos and buy the toys, and coloring books etc . Then our group, Hash House Harriers has  to make up thousands of little goodie bags. An elf's work is never done! Both our fund raisers did well so we should be able to hit all the schools we went to last year and perhaps some more even farther around the lake. 

Today was Mexican Independence Day. A national holiday that I could not help but compare to American 4th of July. Now maybe it is different in American small towns. But I did live in some small towns and I never remembered the whole town preparing for the celebration. Nor do I remember the whole town joining in and celebrating so happily  all day and half the night. The parade starts about 10:30 Am.  It goes from the plaza down one street, all the way down to Six Corners and then loops up to another street and comes all the way back to the plaza. Every school in the village, even the little kinders marches. There are bands, horse groups, homemade pickup truck floats,  beauty queens,  soccer teams, and even the karate school! The kids have been down in the parking lot by the park practicing their marching for weeks. What impresses me most is how the parents pitch in to create the stuff the kids march with for their routines. Unlike the states there are no fancy uniforms, no purchased pom-poms or flags. But there is wonderfully imaginative, home made stuff. One class of little ones all carried a clear ring of tubing, probably water pipe of some sort, with colored paper streamers attached.  The teacher blew her whistle, they counted off and put the hoop on left hand, right hand, then their head, and so on. This was done to music from a parent carried boom box! They all wore white shorts and a white v-necked t shirt. The little girls all had matching hair ribbons. They did a super job on their routine and they looked great. Other groups used colored paper pinwheels mounted on sticks, two liter soda bottles painted and mounted on either end of long sticks.  Another group carried small colored balls which got rhythmically thumped and passed from hand to hand.  The imagination and ingenuity was astounding. and everyone clapped and cheered and we all had so much fun. The parade ended at the plaza and the kids then race off to the rides and food vendors.  One of the bands settled down to play and one of the horse groups had their horses dancing to the music. The castillo or fireworks will be tonight at 10:30PM can't wait. We will soon be walking  down to the plaza to watch.

The little one with her water tube ring below is our maid Lucia's oldest. I love the little revolutionary's home made pony.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

October 4, 2003- We are not sure if the rainy season is over. The humidity has dropped quite a bit and we have had no rain for several days. Of course there are three hurricanes lurking on both coasts so who knows! The Guad weather men are saying that the rainy season is going to last for another month. The lake is still high and even if we don't get rain there is another water release scheduled.

Last week was supposed to be unscheduled but suddenly careened out of control! Back to that "what is there to do all day" discussion!  We were out all day or in Guadalajara, Tonala, or the country almost every day of the week. You can see some of those trips on the Mexico Trips page.  We took new friends,  Debra and James who are renting next door and here looking around, on an exploratory shopping trip to Tonala. Harry wanted a tequila sipping set for the aged stuff I brought from the hacienda distillery in Mexico Trips.  This is a pretty bottle and about six inch tall, thin, glasses.  The glass factories in Tonala have lots so he had plenty to choose from. He bought a frosted white set, very pretty.

In Tonala our good friend Trudie Nelson sent us to a new place. Forja Espanola- 013-691-0346-Av. Juarez no. 109,  Tonala. This place is a decorative iron work factory. Harry bought a beautiful wine rack and I got two metal angels for Christmas. The prices were great and the angels beautiful. This place is off a small road and down a dirt alley. There is no way we would ever have found it without Trudie's directions. The wine rack had to be painted whatever color we wanted and it was delivered today. Wine rack 1400 pesos, angels 150 pesos each! Just move the decimal point over once to the left for dollar price.

On Friday we went to Walt and Jean's B&B Casa Flores for a free lunch! Walt and Jean may start offering a daily Comida Corrida. Each day a different special. 1:30-2:30PM. For 50 pesos you get a drink, soup, the daily special plate and dessert!! We were testing out the Friday menu of iced tea, Aztec soup, enchilada, rice,   arracherra steak, and flan. It was delicious. They have a great cook!! As you can see from the plates nobody was starving!! Tentative menu-   Monday -B-ribs, Tuesday- Fish, Weds. -Pork Loin, Thurs.- Chicken Fajitas. You can call to check the menu at 766-1164. After lunch I had to fly to make it to my water exercise class at the hot springs pool in San Juan Cosala. So much for our quiet week!

The week coming up will be very busy with prep for the garden club speaker (I'm helping, she broke her foot!) new web friends arriving from the states, and getting food etc ready for the Saturday AM Hash House Harriers Walkathon. This helps fund our toys for tots program. So now you know what we do all day  :-)

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

September 21, 2003-Here in the village we have been celebrating Independence day and partying. On the 16th Tom Thompson had his party celebrating many years of bidness here in Ajijic. Tom owns Barbara's Bazaar where everyone shops for other peoples' castoffs. He gave all his customers an invite and a ticket. He had the great lady cooks from the no-name restaurant make sopas, taquitos, and tamales. Sopas are a little Mexican corncake pizza thing with refrieds, pork shreds, cheese and lettuce on top. Taquitos are little tacos, and tamales are masa and meat with chilies steamed in a corn husk. Mui yummy. Then we had pineapple empanadas for dessert.  The beer and margaritas were offered along with soda from waiters carrying full pitchers!

In typical Mexican party fashion, Tom just blocked off our street-Independencia, put out tents, tables and chairs and we had our party. The mariachi band was incredible. The dancers are Enrique Velasquez and his wife Belva. They are well known local artists and Enrique painted the designs around our gate.  It was a great party, sort of a cross cultural gringo and Mexican bash.

I want to put some pictures up next so that anyone who has been here can see just how much the level of the lake has come up! We had a cloudburst just before I took these pictures. Thanks Hurricane Marty!

Both these pictures were taken from the "boardwalk" at the bottom of Pedro Moreno. This raised walkway where the three people are standing, was once the old high water level of the lake. So you can see we are not that far from it!! The until recently  "edge of the lake was the reeds which form the green line of vegetation in the middle of the picture, just at the "bottom of the mountain. In the picture on the left the green stuff in the water right in front of the people is the lirio which has floated down from upstream. That is the stuff the Mexican's have been dragging out of the water and up to higher ground. It is a good thing/ bad thing plant. It does filter out a lot of the pollutants but it clogs the water ways. It make boating with any type of motor pretty impossible. Even getting through it with oars is tough. 

If you have been here you may remember that the kids made a soccer field on the beach. In the picture on the right the soccer field is under the water. The gov is cracking down on all the squatters on the federal lakeside land. They want all the fences removed before the water gets any higher.  Once the water gets back up and stays there, the only thing we are worrying about is the arrival of jet skis.

The weather man in Guad says we will have rain all week. It is raining again as I type. The Pacific coast hurricane season goes until the end of October and...upstream the water hogs are all flooded out, their dams are at 100% and once the rivers recede a bit they still owe us a water release!! So for the moment things are looking pretty plush here at the lake. Weird fact. A  few years ago the powers that be introduced manatees into the lake to clean up the lirio, only problem was the fisherman kept catching them and eating them!!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

September 6, 2003- For the first time in fifty years I celebrated my September 1st birthday and did NOT expect to be returning to school in a few days! It is still raining like crazy here.  Some nights it rains hard for three or four hours. The lake is up so high that the new garbage cans placed down on the beach are out in the water!! The second road closest to the lake is under water. That is good news. But don't decide all is well. The rainy season will end and the water will start evaporating again. Still it gives us some hope/respite as the Living Lakes people are meeting and voting as I type. Let us hope they choose our lake!!

The nights are getting cooler and the kids are back in school. The fall/winter social whirl is starting. MAS has sent out their fall/winter list of concerts and Harry signed us up for them all. Right now the Mariachi festival is in full swing in Guadalajara. We hope to go see some of the Charro competition tomorrow and then hear some music. I have been assured that the charro/horse competitions do NOT involve any sticking of bulls with spears or swords.

We did the final prep? before Garden club comes September 17th. The pots, yards and farm in the sky are in as good shape as they can be.  We had the tile murals we bought in Delores Hidalgo put up. This one is on the terrace wall right next to the escalera that takes you up to the roof. The other one is in the foyer bath and is a big pot of flowers with a blue and white border, like the tiles in that bath.  Both were put in by two nice young men who work for the maestro building a house around the corner.  They put the murals up and added ceramic towel bars and robe hooks to all three downstairs baths. They did all the work in a day and a half! Even painted the wall around it so no raw plaster showed. It looks perfect.

We are planning a trip to Patzcuaro for late September. And I will be going to Houston with friends in late October.  Hash House Harriers is planning a walkathon for Toys for Tots. I will be selling pledges and tickets to the breakfast at Lake Chapala Society on September 23rd. The walkathon is October 11th. I hope we raise lots of money so we can fill up the little ones' Christmas goodie bags. I am looking forward to being an elf this year!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

August 16, 2003- Update on the Lake! On Friday, August 1st,  we had tickets for a public meeting of the Lake Chapala Basin Commission. This was an interesting mixture of public presentations by  the prominent Mexican officials in charge of environment/water/Lake, and the local groups also trying to save the lake. The ticket money as well as the art sale (art donated by local artists) all went to support the group initiatives to save the lake.  As we always do things here <G> it was also a wonderful party , incredible setting ( at the top of a  mountain, private estate, incredible views of the lake) great food, good music and good art! What more could you ask for!! In this case positive information.

First speaker was Dr. Cassio Luiseli Fernandez, Sub-Minister of Environment for Mexico and National Director on legal issues for environment and natural resource matters. His presentation was "Solutions"  a list of initiatives to save the lake on behalf of SEMARNAT the newly formed committee of advisors for the Lake Chapala Basin Commission.

We learned that despite the fact that we complain about Guadalajara using the lake for drinking water, that only accounts for 11% of the water depletion from the lake. Mexico City also takes drinking water from the Lerma.  But it is agriculture along the Lerma river basin that steals 85% of the water resources for the lake. Over exploitation of the river's water resources and pollution of surface and groundwater  are the biggest dangers to the long term life of Lake Chapala.  The Mexican government and the Ministry of the Environment are committed to returning the lake to its original size.

We learned that the government is not going to cave in to Guanajuato and Mexico City's demands, that we just allow it to shrink to a "smaller lake. " According to Minister Fernandez, Mexico is paying the farmers to change over from old water wasting irrigation systems to newer more water efficient ones. The government is paying for classes  for farmers to learn ways to plant to prevent soil erosion.  They are also paying for re-forestation projects upstream. Both these initiatives will cut down on the amount of silt that keeps filling up the lake bottom.  The federal agriculture  dept. is pushing the growers to switch to crops that consume less water , yet are more profitable to the farmer. So upstream that means switching from wheat (they can't compete with U.S. prices) to vegetables.

In the cities they will build waste water treatment plants that allow the water to be safely returned to the lake. Farmers will be encouraged to save water by allowing them to get credit for banking/saving the water. They will be paid for this credit.  The cities/states upstream which divert a large amount of the river water into their dams will be subject to the decisions of the Federal Water Basin Commission Board as to using that water. This means if a water release is ordered they must comply.  The good news from the basin watchers is that as of July 14th the lake level has risen 37 cm. higher than last year. The rainy season is still ongoing, there is another water release scheduled for this fall and the rains have been so heavy upstream that the Lerma has been flooding its' banks.

Here in Ajijic the water seems quite high. Down by the lake where the dogs like to play, the water is almost up to the second road. Dida had to swim the other day when she was playing in the shallows with the big dogs! If the government follows through on these initiatives the lake can be returned to its old levels and the pollution will be greatly decreased.  We can all help by supporting the local committees that work with the federal boards and by keeping the pressure on the Mexican government. For the first time I have some real hope that the "powers that be" really are committed to saving the Lake. It won't die a slow death and it will return to it's larger unpolluted size.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

July 25, 2003- First Year Retrospective. We arrived here a year ago July 4th. Those first few weeks were a blur so now at the end of the month I am marking our first year. Well what do we think?? What have we learned/absorbed in a year.

First the climate/views. Walking by the lake and the mountains are a turn on every day. Coming from the east coast U.S. where it can rain or be grey for a week, it is just awesome to wake up to SUNSHINE and perfect temps everyday.  Yes it was hot for 5 weeks in May but I can deal with that once a year.

We have found good Doctors and institutions to take care of all our health needs. And the costs compared to the states are much cheaper. We do have insurance that covers here. But still case in point, the two minor out patient surgeries we had last month. Our Doctor drove us there and back and assisted the plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist and cardiologist in attendance. Total cost for us both, about $1000.00. I came here taking seven prescription meds. Dr. Lastra our internist has me down to two and I am much more pain free than I was in the states.  We just got the approvals back from the prescription plan we have and we expect our 80% reimbursement  payment for drugs purchased here to arrive soon.

So many of the pleasant aspects of life, going out to eat, traveling here in Mexico, household help, are so much cheaper. Lucia comes mornings, six days a week for  what it cost me for a once a week, 4 hours, house cleaning back in the states. You can indulge yourself without feeling guilty. I feel so spoiled sometimes. You are free to do and explore the things you like to do. In my case that means I can cook, or garden or wank around on the computer to my heart's content. Lucia gets to clean up the mess in the kitchen and Agustine does the tedious stuff in the garden.

We have met so many more wonderful friends and there is always a club meeting, a lunch date or a shopping trip or travel  afoot. Most of  the English speaking and the Mexican residents of the village go out of their way to be friendly to new arrivals. This desire to connect and be helpful with one 's neighbors is not an emotion often evident  up north. Everyone is  just too busy to care.

Despite all the horror stories one hears we have survived our skirmish with building/remodeling. I think even if you rent you may end up doing  some kind of work on your domicile. No matter how well furnished and "perfect" a home you buy, there are going to be things you want to change to make the place "you." It seems to me that as long as you follow the time honored rules: draw up a plan and a budget, research the contractor/builder/carpinteria, see previous examples of their work, talk to previous customers, and nail down a firm, written contract, that you can build or remodel without having a nervous breakdown.  I loved my house when we bought it but after a year it looks more like mine. 

OK bad things: There is crime. My laptop being stolen from the locked, alarmed car could just have easily happened back in the states. In the last few months people have been attacked at the gates of their homes. And because of that,  I do get tired of the endless locking and unlocking of door's and gates. Harry does set the alarm whenever we go out. Especially after all the workman in and out with the building.  The villagers helped in the apprehension of one of the bad hombres that attacked the gringo couple at their gate and forced their way inside. The other was caught a week later fencing the stolen TV.  But I still feel safer here than back north. Ten minutes from where we lived in NJ a woman was carjacked and murdered, This happened at 7:00PM  in a well lit suburban mall parking lot. A child was kidnapped from the front lawn of her well to do shore community. I can't condemn the whole village for a few bad apples and the Mexican villagers suffer from these people as well. At least here when they are caught they are locked up.

So life here for us is really, really good. We feel we made the right decision for our retirement.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart! And Harry and Chris are very happy.

May 25, 2003- One of the things that seems uniquely Mexican is that you can purchase one of ANYTHING. We are all so used to the stateside concept of things coming boxed in set amounts. Here you can buy 1 egg, 1 stick of butter, even just one cold capsule pill. And it doesn't cost more to buy in the quantity you want! We buy Woody and Dida's Pedigree dog food in 3 kilo quantities. It is fresher that way and it doesn't sit around as long as a 20 lb. bag. At the market the veggie guys will divide a big bunch of celery into the amount you want. They do the same thing with bunches of bananas and huge heads of cauliflower. Fresh tortillas come hot off the press in any amount/weight you want to purchase.  It really is nice to get the exact amount of what you want, and it means less waste since you don't ever HAVE to take more than you need. Considering that many of the foods here lack the preservatives that cover many U.S. products it really is the only way to buy perishable items.

The weather has made a quantum shift this week. It has been 30-40% humidity, and high 80's to 90 degrees for the last three weeks. The dust was every where and each day you needed major moisturizer after your shower. Then it happened. Wednesday and Thursday the humidity started to climb. By Friday at 4 AM we had an Industrial Light and Magic Show, Rain Storm. Pyrotechnics and it poured.... Friday was low 80's. and it rained again that afternoon. Early Saturday, around 4 AM it rained again and the day dawned cool and clear. Our AM walk with the Hash House Harriers was really pleasant. Saturday evening it clouded up and rained lightly again. The temps for the next four days are predicted to be mid 70's!!!  We are all hoping this is the official start of the rainy season. As I sit here composing this, a cool breeze is coming in the terrace door. Now that I have experienced what they call "dry spring" I guess I will live. It only amounted to about 5 weeks of hot dry weather and as long as you stayed indoors or under shade during the heat of the day you could manage. Most nights it was not too hot to sleep. Once the sun went down it cooled off. People here cope. We went up to the mountains to Mazamitla one day to avoid the heat. Many people go to the beach. There were only a few days when I said yuck!! it is really too hot today. And it made the tomato plants really happy. All the plants I started now have fruit on them.

The work upstairs is all roofed in so rain won't effect completing the job. The tile place is slowing us up a bit. None of the tile that we chose for the bath, or the barbecue/sink counter was in stock! It all has to be made and fired. Three weeks before it is done. Well at least all the dye lots/colors will match!! For now they are painting and making the counters and shower stalls onto which the tile will be placed. I will be glad when we are finished and there aren't five or six guys on the roof daily. Plus we will enjoy the views and breezes up there all summer.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

May 5-03-  Cinco de Mayo isn't nearly as big a celebration as Saturday  May 3rd's El Dia de Santa Cruz, translated as  The Day of the Cross.  Although it is supposed to be a celebration only for construction workers there were shrines set up all over the village. Our nice workman erected a beautiful cross on the roof of the house.  If you click on the thumbnail you can see the detail.

I have a certain foible; I love to learn how things work! I am the granddaughter of a man who built entire city blocks in Rochester, NY and my Dad while not a builder by profession, built several of our homes. Harry and I also had one built "from scratch."  I have pretty good knowledge of "stick"  built homes. So.. watching the building here was a chance to see an entirely new kind of construction. I think what amazes me more than anything is what magic they accomplish with such simple materials and nothing but hand tools. Norte, the builder shows up with a truck full of Makita pro power tools and it is more like putting things that came from some where else together, than creating things.

The finish work on he BR/Bath is a case in point. All that smooth plaster and beautiful molding was created by three nice young men, all of whom look about 15!! . Down below they sift the gravel/dirt through a big screen door thing, mix and make the plaster and the winch it up to the roof in a big bucket.  Like Jackson Pollack they scoop up the plaster and flick it onto the brick wall, then they seem to trowel half of it off, let it set (in this heat for only a few minutes) and then start the next layer by flicking on some more.  When it gets to the desired thickness they start smoothing the finish coat for a whole section of the wall or in our case one side of the building. The other guys are standing below on the terrace as "spotters" and are quick to point out a lump, bump or irregularity. They want that finish coat to be perfect. After the walls are plastered, they make the beautiful decorative cornices at the top. These look like a concrete version of carved molding. Which, I somehow assumed, came pre-made or pre-cast from some where and just sort of got plastered on. ...NOT!!! They make these beautiful things all by hand. Some string, a hand level, concrete nails and skill are all they seem to need. If you click on the thumbnail you can see that the cornice has a three decorative edges cut into it. Watching them make the corner was way cool. After Cinco de Mayo, fiesta land settles down for a bit until Mother's day, May 10th.  It is a huge celebration here. All of  Mexico honors its Moms. By then we will be up in the cooler mountains at San Sebastian. We are 4 wheeling with another couple, taking the back way in, up a dry riverbed. News at 11:00 and pictures next month!

The rainbirds/cicadas have started calling so we can hope the rains will be here in 4-6 weeks. It is hot and dusty now and the water level is down some. There is an early  June scheduled "water release" from the dams upstream. That and the rains will hopefully bring the level back up.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

April 20-03  Today is Easter Sunday. We have been through an entire Semana Santa and even a for a heretic such as I, it was really impressive.  Unlike the states, the schools here are closed the week before Easter. This allows the entire village to participate in the Holy Week celebrations. It started a week ago when the procession came from Six Corners all the way up Calle Hidalgo to the square and then the church. Prior to the escorting of Jesus on his burro, with palm waving villagers and singers, the streets are cleaned, and then strewn with fresh cut alfalfa . The green plants are then watered down to keep them fresh until the procession arrives. Once the whole group gets to the church there is mass and the blessing of the palms. Afterwards the Pasion de Cristo group has a big Mexican food fair in the plaza. We willingly partook of Pasole, Tamales, Tacos, Sopas, and Pastel to help support the holy week presentations.  Yummm

Here at home the building is going along quite well. The talk here is that remodeling is a real trial. The talk is about the work never being finished, crews/workers not showing up, the architect or builder holding you up for more money as the job nears completion and so on. Maybe we are just lucky or maybe we searched for/found a really good/honest architect, but so far none of those problems have materialized. All the steel superstructure for the tile roof above the mirador is finished, and painted. The BR and Bath is finished up to the boveda ceiling. The work has been top quality and well beyond the local specifications for this work. When they start again on Monday, I guess they will start on the plumbing and wiring.  We will keep you posted but so far everything is on time and on budget. It will be wonderful to sit up there when summer/rainy season arrives.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

March  23-03  I am working on this as Steve Martin natters on at the Oscars. I have been home now for almost two months. I'm sure that many recent retirees understand when I suddenly just start grinning like the proverbial "Mississippi alligator."  It is the sudden realization that no.. I don't ever again have to get up at 5:30 AM  to go to work. And.. here, after the nasty winter up north,  I  almost feel guilty when I get up each morning to cloudless blue skies and a day time temp of around 75 degrees.

My last two months have NOT been spent lolling around. Harry has embraced a social/volunteer schedule that is very full.  He is very happy to have a date for all his concerts and fund raising events! I got drafted to take over the Lake Chapala Garden Club web site before I left New Jersey. Once I got here I had work to do taking over that site and bringing it into this newer version of Front page.  I also changed the hosting service for this site and had a really tough time getting all of that changed over.

Then there was a lot of reconnecting with friends and a huge number of changes going on here at La Casa de  Nuevos Comienzos.  We bought some new furniture, sold some of the old furniture, changed appliances, painted rooms, and just signed with the architect to construct the mirador on the roof of the house. I am looking forward to the sunsets and the daily views of lake and mountains from my roof top terrace.  We took an overnight trip to the town of Delores Hidalgo to indulge my acquisitive lust for Talavera. Talavera is a lushly decorated and fired pottery. Like our oriental rugs each piece is individual; it all depends on the artist who painted it. There is a Talavera factory just outside of the town that probably supplies all the East coast fancy garden shops I used to frequent. Only difference was the prices!! We bought pots for the mirador, sets of beautiful dinnerware, and tile murals for the walls in the house. The PT Cruiser/burro had a full load to lug home to Ajijic. 

On the festival front, we feasted at the three day International Chili Festival, danced at the sumptuous Mardi Gras costume ball, a benefit for the Lakeside School for the Deaf, and watched the Mardi Gras  parades through the village. Now the streets are hung with beautiful paper lace cut outs in purple and yellow. We are going through Lent leading up to Holy Week and the passion play which takes place in the church square just before Easter Sunday. Friday night we went to a multi course Mexican fiesta dinner; a fund raiser for the Pasion de Cristo. Many of the servers were wearing the costumes they make for their participation in the Easter passion play. The passion play here in Ajijic village is considered one of the biggest and best in all of Mexico.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

January 23-03 Hard to believe that the days are dwindling down to a precious few. ..yeah right, precious can't come soon enough! We hope to leave on Jan 31 which should have us home by February 4th. I will again give you the travel blow by blow on Going South. Harry is flying up to drive back with me. We will again be stopping in Nuevo Laredo to register a car and also be carrying a lot of "stuff." This time we have the Guida Roja which is a Mexican road atlas you can buy on Amazon. Real maps might mean we won't miss the right turn off to the autopista at San Lois Potosi.   Thank you all for bearing with me as I slogged through these five months. I can't believe it is almost over. Again thanks for all your e-mails and good wishes.

January 6-03 Twenty five days and counting <G>. A special thanks to Nick P. at the Cafe Internet for help with a laptop problem. They are on the highway across from the Telmex office. They are going to be opening a computer? service center and I'm sure it will be successful.

The trip down with Dita was long but uneventful. She is a good and sensible puppy and a very good flyer. This time someone actually asked me for paperwork on her. And not the all powerful man with the stamp in the immigration booth! As we were passing out the door, after the green light, a woman with a badge of some form of officialdom stopped me and asked for her health papers. She was of course quite visible, being out of her box and on leash dancing about! I was trying to keep her from tripping the man lugging the bags. I dug out her health certificate and shot records and after the woman squinted at them for a few minutes she sent us on our way. So it pays to get them even if most times no one looks at them!

As always the time flew. I am not being judgmental here, but I can not say enough about the many serendipitous things that you enjoy when you live "in the village."  Harry has often written me about stumbling onto parades, pageants, and impromptu concerts as he walks around Ajijic. With the puppy in tow I got to see many of these same wonderful street events. We were often out walking with her in the days before Christmas and usually we happened upon a gaily costumed parade, complete with Mary, Joseph, donkey and singers. Then there was the band out practicing marching early one morning as I took Dita out alone.  You just don't get to fall into these little street events when you live somewhere where you have to drive for every errand.

Our neighborhood had a wonderful posada (Harry was in charge of the pinatas) the night after I got there. Armando, our neighbor and trusty plumber and electrician was in charge of food and entertainment. He blocked off the street, set up chairs and pinata rope, and arranged for  yummy tamales, posole, and a delicious hot fruit punch. Then we sat back to watch one of the morality plays with a cast of about twenty including a wonderful devil and his group of devilettes! Even not being able to understand it all, the acting was so good you got the gist. Christmas Eve we went to the neighborhood party held by Lucia our maid. It was just a few blocks  away over near Six Corners. There were bonfires, pinatas for the kids, and another of those morality plays, this one with a red costumed adult devil and his equally well costumed devilette son. The humor is pretty broad and even the little ones sitting up close were howling with laughter. The work that goes into these plays is amazing, Rigged up on Lucia's street were lights, and a sound system. The costumes were beautifully made. The actors were enjoying the performance as much as the audience.

All the village Christmas celebrations stand in such a stark contrast to the cut throat consumerism that goes on elsewhere. Christmas Eve many expats and Mexicans gather in the square in front of the church to look at the wonderful nativity displays from around the world. A friend of ours was there  in a huge antlered Santa hat, handing out bags of candy to all the children attending. Just like Harry becoming the pinata man, it was a small private way he celebrates Christmas. As you can tell I really really enjoyed my Christmas. I'm back here in NJ but not for long. Here is Woody and I with Dida at the lake, and  Dida sitting on the terrace waiting for Mom to come back. You know I will be there soon!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

December 20-02- In a few hours I will be "leaving on a jet plane." Unfortunately I do know when "I will be back again." I return on January 1, for one more month.

I can't wait to celebrate Christmas there in the village. Our neighborhood's posada-the re-enactment of Joseph and Mary searching for a room, will be held tomorrow night and I am really looking forward to it. I will be sure to post pictures when I get back. I am  thrilled to be making my last flight packing the maximum 125 lbs. of luggage, plus wiggly puppy aka "Dita in the box." Whatever is left here in NJ will be sorted and weeded down to what will fit in the Wrangler come 1/31. I will post all the news and photos when I get back. Then we can all get ready for another race south in a month's time. Once I get there for good, I will revamp the web site, leaving all the how to info but changing the message on the front page. Maybe I'll change the theme and colors too..depends on if I am tired of the sunflowers <G>. Thanks for all the moral support for Harry and I.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

November 20-02   I have been back for a week but was on a mission so now a week later I am just writing this. Having my honey there doing on the spot assessments makes some of your pre- conceived ideas change. The weather there is just about perfect for a convertible but we thought for safety reasons (theft, vandalism) that it wouldn't work. Harry doing on the spot study ,<g> says that many of the residents have them and no one he spoke to has had a problem. So I came back a week ago to look at 2002 leftover VW Cabrios and Jeep Wranglers. The Bright Blue Wrangler is sitting in the lot here at school. I picked it up yesterday. I think, in the height of post retirement giddiness that I am going to have the Mayan sun GIF I use here on the web site, painted on the doors  and  the web address painted on the back door. <G> I will take the top off when we get there and it won't ever go back on again. It can stay in the garage if it rains!

Despite all the talk about the lake drying up and the real estate glut, Harry has met plenty of newcomers. The younger ones like us are buying before they retire and renting the property out until they can retire. The two unit house across the street went to someone like that and our friends sold one of their rental houses to a fellow librarian who is also renting it out until she retires. As for the lake drying up. The water is higher now than I ever remember. It is up to the edge of the soccer fields on the beach. Maybe when they sort out the water rights argument the states upstream will start giving us our fair share of the water. An engineer friend has been on some of the fact-finding trips upstream. He says there is plenty of water, they just need to overhaul the inefficient way they use it and store it. As always in these political wrangles, tune in next week.

At the casa Harry spent his time on home improvement. Most of these projects were to surprise me when I arrived. The front gate has beautiful frescoes in dark forest green all around the arch. Enrique also painted more decorative borders in the foyer. These are in the same colors as the ones painted over the doors in the rest of the house. I spent a peaceful day rearranging all my kitchen stuff  using the new under the cabinet drawers that Jose put in while I was gone. Numerous trips by Harry to Tonala got me a huge painting of my favorite sunflowers and a carved art piece hanging on the wall over the bed. He took advantage of what I have mentioned before. He had many of these things custom made by the wonderful and talented local craftsmen.

Woody is more or less well and while he was glad to see me he then punished me by ignoring me for the first 24 hours. After that he decided he still loved me best and spent the rest of the week glued to Mom. Of course Mom then left again, so he must be really mad at me now. Harry says he has been very hangy  all this week. While I was there we went to a dinner party at a friends large and lovely casa. It is a huge house with a central courtyard with pool and bar. They have two girl standard poodles and Woody was invited to the dinner party as well. The one girl is white like him and they look like twins.  All three dogs had a ball greeting the guests. The funny part was later when the bartender/help was clearing the plates from dinner. All three dogs followed him, the plates and our hostess into the kitchen. The bartender had been busy serving all night and must not have noticed the extra, lookalike canine guest. Trudy said he suddenly looked down at the dogs, got a very shocked look on his face and turned to her and said "Tres??" Poor man must have thought  they were cloning poodles!

I left the new digital camera with Harry. I hope to change the photo album this week. Thanks for hanging in here with me.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

October 15-02  This the Not News from Ajijic. Nor is it a "how to" since I doubt most people would willingly be in this situation. Usually you retire together. We moved together this June but then I had to come back this September for involuntary servitude. This is a reflection on the effects of the separation of a long time together couple and the realities of one in Ajijic and one in the U.S.

When we decided to do this, we both figured that 4-5 months with me flying in several times would be a piece of cake! Well...we were both fools!! To say that we miss one another desperately is an understatement! ;-) 

Harry and I  e-mail daily and have investigated NetMeeting to use the Internet for phoning and the land of prepaid International phone cards. Yes, you can phone Mexico from the U.S. for 6-8 cents a minute. But .. none of that is a proper substitute for the taste, smell and sight of my Harry. Anyone in a long term relationship can relate to how much I miss the daily chit chat, and the more serious discussions about work, family, even world events. My sounding board isn't there!

Woody was bereft for a couple of weeks and I hope he doesn't think I abandoned him. He has had some health problems and I hate hearing about it second hand. I never saw the morning glories I planted bloom. Ditto for the poppies which will probably be finished blooming by the the time I get there early November.

Then there are the logistical things. My network goes down at school, or Harry has his current problems with the modem in the laptop. The first time I didn't get an e-mail from him for 24 hours I almost had a heart attack. Especially since I realized that NO ONE there had my NJ phone # so email would be the only way to notify me if he had an accident. Ones' long distance imagination is particularly lurid!!

All right Chris, enough.. I'm not whining to you all..just maybe offering an explanation as to why the web site is no longer updated weekly!!! It is a bit too painful right now. The News from Ajijic will be happy when I get back. I'm going 11/1-11/11..needless to say I can't wait!

September 6- 02   Lake Chapala was accepted by the Living Lakes Foundation! Of course we are on a one year probation so we need to keep planting trees and doing all the other things we were doing. Weatherize the rains are still coming and the lake is still happy! Perhaps because when the Virgin of Zapopan was at the lake a halo was observed around the sun. This was construed as a sign that once again the Virgin is gearing up to save the lake. Divine intervention.. as Martha would say, "It's a good thing." 

Time Magazine's midsummer cover story on retirement and the stock market meltdown lists the Lake Chapala area as one of the places to move to under "How to Retire Cheaply and Well" Our  "large colony of U.S. retirees" already know that! Most of them here are busy now with the coming fall kickoff of the Ajijic Film Festival, The Little Theater season subscriptions and the Opera Buffs. The Garden Club will be touting change of season plantings as the weather gets a bit cooler. This weekend and the rest of the month will be the annual Mariachi Festival in Guadalajara. It still makes me laugh when people from the states say "but what do you do all day long?" I still have not found the time to make it out to the baths at San Juan Cosala for one of those all day spa treatments days!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

September 19- 02 The rains have been heavy and the lake is smiling. The Virgin and that halo around the sun probably has something to do with it!

On Saturday the young men set free their small hot air, gas powered balloons. The launch site was  the soccer stadium. Then on the 15th Harry watched the Independence day celebrations  culminating with a parade of all the school kids marching proudly in their new shoes and school uniforms. Add in Charro maids riding side saddle and pickup bed floats with perfectly posed kids not moving an inch. Music was provided by the school bands and of course a local beauty queen was there. Miguel our gardener who also works for the town, was very proud of his handiwork! There in the town square were red, green and white banners he had worked so hard to hang. 

Which segues into my praise for Mexican craftsman. All of them. Unlike in the the U.S. where any workman? wants $60.00 to just show up..and then he doesn't the first two times..and then the work is not often stellar...the average Mexican craftsman is very tenacious about doing it right. Jose Espiritu, the carpenter who just finished up in our kitchen has done a wonderful job. With him everything must be perfect. He is a true old time craftsman. All my under the counter cabinets are now fitted with sturdy, smooth rolling drawers (With these knees, I promised myself, in the new house I would never have to crawl into a bottom cabinet again!)  He took doors from the cabinets to be sure the paint would match. He did the same thing with the armoire in the living room and the big painted book shelf in the office. He added shelves to both units and it looks like they came that way originally!

When Rafael Morale the upholsterer did the recover on my cheap chair from Barbara's Bazaar he made it look brand new. And when he fitted the cushion he had made for the bench in the office, it was obvious it was a bit too big. He was aghast that he had made a measuring error and took it immediately back to the shop and was back in an hour with it now the perfect size. Fat chance of that kind of service in the U.S. ! Even our Miguel who is "of a certain age" and should not be climbing ladders! was proud of how well his banners looked hung high in the town square.The care they bring to their work is one of those wonderful perks of living here.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

August 26-02  The Guadalajara Reporter noted that the lake is up 50 centimeters! They also said that the heaviest rains are August and September. So.. if the rains continue we should see even more improvement by the end of September. The Virgin of Zapopan was here at the lake this weekend and according to past religious history, I think the continued rains are a lock!! There was also a vigil for the lake this weekend. For now, with our local representatives in Africa pleading the lake's case we can all keep our fingers crossed.

It does seem to be a bit cooler at night and in the early mornings. All the kids here in Ajijic are back in school. Harry is joining a local committee that is trying to help all the public schools here in the village. Some kids who received scholarships to the technical high school outside town, couldn't afford to take advantage of the scholarship because they couldn't afford the bus fare out there! It amazes me that the local bus companies charge the kids who need to take a bus to get to school. As a child in the city of Rochester I had a bus pass that allowed me to ride the city busses during the school times for free. Maybe Harry's committee can convince the bus companies here to do something similar.

I will be heading back up to NJ for a few months to finish up a contracted job. So.. Harry and Woody will be here holding the fort. I can still work on the web site from there so have no fear. Plus I will have Harry here as the eyes and ears of Ajijic!

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

August 22-02  The rains are still coming daily and the lake looks happy. This morning it rained until late, maybe 8:30AM and Woody and I were treated to a beautiful rainbow arching from the lake to over the mountains.

Last Friday we went to Costco and the big Mexican grocery store near Home-Mart. We made it to Guad again this week and our inner city navigating is getting much better. We didn't get lost and we made it from the city to Tonala on city streets all the way.

The Friday trip made me reflect on a recent dust up via the Internet. International Living magazine charged a bunch of people a goodly price to bring them to Ajijic for a week and do the retirement intro bit. We were asked by our neighbors who were part of the group hosting, to speak as residents to these people. Apparently after this junket, the editor of IL went onto their subscription e-mail newsletter and blasted Ajijic and the Chapala area as not a good choice and really nothing more than an "american suburb."

Well maybe but again maybe not. I will admit that I do really like having reliable internet service and some American goods and services when I want them. But this is still very much a foreign country. I just happen to think unlike Belize, Ecuador, Peru, Ireland, or France (some of IL's most recent picks) that the climate, political stability, and cost of living here is a very good match for me and mine. I also think IL has major amount of nerve charging people top dollar to come here and then panning the place after the fact.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

August 12-02  Thank the capricious airline gods, Harry made it back just fine. A far cry from his leaving last week. He got there at 7:30AM and discovered that Continental had cancelled the flight!

We had a wonderful anniversary. Dinner at Toscana and then just as I was about to go to bed a trio on the terrace singing Spanish love songs! I had a wonderful 30 minute serenade. It was certainly an anniversary with something old and something new. I often thought during the day of the two of us 34 years ago, just starting our lives together, a great new adventure. We are starting another great new adventure on this anniversary. Who says life doesn't travel in circles.

Speaking of great new adventures, Friday evening I went to the opening party at Casa Flores B&B. It is about three blocks up the hill from my house on Calle Zaragosa. Walt and Jean Smith have done a phenomenal job. We had been corresponding before we left NJ. We were surprised to learn we had homes so close to one another. When we both arrived here a month ago, I hiked up the hill to see their house/project. It was then a bustling, chaotic, construction site. In just one month it has become an oasis of flowers, pools, and fountains at the top of the hill. They only have four rooms so it is very private. All the rooms have private baths and patios and it is a short walk to the plaza and the center of town. David their construction jeffe did a wonderful job of decorating. All the party guests were impressed. I will certainly use it for guest overflow. Close to me and wonderful rooms, views and food. I had great fun, helping test out the breakfast menu the week before the opening day party. If you need a place to stay do check the web site.

The Houston Children's chorus is in town this week. They have been performing here in Ajijic as well as Chapala and San Antonio. There was also a celebration on Oaxcan crafts and culture in Chapala over the weekend. These are the craftsmen who make wonderful, wildly painted monsteros and beautiful beaded jewelry. The square at Chapala was crowded both Saturday and Sunday but it was worth the crowds to see the beautiful artwork and the crafts.

Still beautiful weather, cool, breezy and in the low 80's. Still raining most every night.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

August 9-02 This is a late bulletin. Usually I post the news on Sunday but I was getting Harry to the airport and then dealing with a sick Woody. After two more visits to Dr. Ladrone he finally seems to be on the mend. Poor child had diarrhea so bad that he was waking me up two or three times a night so I could let him out. Midweek I came down with a cold so minus Harry, poodle man and I have been hunkered down in my bedroom, just taking our meds and trying to get better. Engracia says I have the grippa, which is I suppose the human form of the plaga, that the plants get! She has been keeping me supplied with tea and soup just like my mother used to do!

It is a testimony to the expat camaraderie that all our friends who knew Harry was gone, kept checking in to see how I was and did I need anything. I kept some of the dinner invitations early in the week but by Weds. I was feeling so crummy I had to beg off. I didn't even make Woody's follow up apt. with Dr. Ladrone on Thursday. Today, after my morning ration of Contact capsules and cough medicine, I do feel better. Just in time as Harry will be back tomorrow afternoon ready to celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary. Today I will go to the new Italian restaurant, Toscana, and make reservations for tomorrow night's anniversary dinner. It will be good to have him back.

I tend to think of myself as Zena, warrior princess but I missed him terribly. I give anyone who retires here alone, a huge amount of credit. It isn't so much having someone to share the work as it is just having someone to share the entire experience. Someone to bounce things off. Not the even the major stuff, just the small stuff. Like hummingbird weirdness. Harry has missed the  spate of terrace hummingbird weirdness. The pair that lives on the terrace are very territorial. Up until now that has only been transferred to running off other birds. Recently, in a maneuver that resembles something from star wars, the hummingbird whirs up to the very edge of the terrace roof and stops in mid air, he hangs there staring? at me as I sit at the table. It is almost as if he is studying me. Then he whirs off going about other important hummingbird business. He has done this every time I sat out there this week. You wonder what is going through his little bird mind. Is he reporting back to the hummingbird high command?  Are they doing a census of the concentration of humans in their territory? It is so weird, especially his ability to just sit there suspended in mid-air as he looks at me. Harry saw him do it once but he hasn't been around all week to see him repeat it.

Have not done much shopping this week so no good buys to report. The rains are still almost nightly so the lake is still rising a bit each day. My horse herd seems to have been rounded up so I have yet to see the bay mare's foal. Woody and I are on the mend and Harry will be home manana.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

July 28-02 Plant Lust is an interesting disorder. It is a subspecies of obsessive compulsive disorder that compels people to buy carloads of bedding plants in the spring and spend days planning and planting their porch pots and hanging baskets. Anyone afflicted with Plant Lust and living in Ajijic can be compared to a person with an alcohol problem being in charge of a distillery! This past week I have sunk deeply into the morass of Plant Lust.

After we finished unpacking I spent a day on the terrace scrubbing the plethora of pots that I transported here. Now they were begging to be filled. Harry and I have friends visiting, so we asked them if they wanted to spend a day driving around to the local vivieros. Dave and Sonia joined us for a day of serious horticultural acquisition. Of course having them with us some what limited PT Cruiser carting capacity. That and the incredibly cheap prices meant I had to go back to the nurseries three times-three car loads full ! to get everything home. I won't bore you with what we purchased and all the prices, I'll offer this one example, which I went back for on Saturday morning. A dwarf fig tree, probably already 5-10 years old, nicely trimmed to espalier (flat) shape, loaded with nearly ripe fruit...90 pesos..the large clay pot with three lions heads on the side that it was then planted in 110 pesos. In dollars less than $25.00. The same set up at home, easily somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.00. As you can see until I run out of space on the terrace, I will not be cured of my Plant Lust any time soon. I will be posting new pictures soon. I didn't bring a digital camera but I'll get them onto the PC trust me!

Good Buys- We have decided to try a different place for breakfast each Sunday after church. So far we have done Casa de waffle and the Tapalo, restaurant on the square. Yesterday we went to Villa del Pastor. We have been there often for lunch or dinner (which is very good) but the Sunday brunch starting at 10:00 was outstanding. For 60 pesos a person you got your choice of omelets, fresh squeezed orange and mango juice, four kinds of fresh fruit, yogurt, cereal, mushroom crepes, beef stroganoff, hash browns, refrieds, some sort of candied sweet potatoes, rice pudding, and more! You can sit outside or in and the service is great. The restaurant is on the Carretara, west side of town a bit past past El  Serape, even if you don't have a car it is worth the walk! I had a mesquite grilled leg of lamb there last week that was out of this world.

Here at the casa we are finally unpacked. We had an electrician put in an exhaust fan over the stove and lights under the cabinets. Telmex hooked up an extra phone line for the PC. We have been to Guad twice and we even found HomeMart (Mexican Home Depot) and both times we didn't get lost!!! Now we have the fun part, decorating.

Well that's all the news from Lake Chapala, where all the woman are beautiful, the men are handsome and the dogs are extraordinarily smart!

July 14-2002  

Dear Toto,

This is how I know I'm not in Kansas anymore! When I walk your big brother Woody, I can look up at beautiful green mountains surrounding a lake. Sometimes they are wreathed in cottony white clouds.

The television shows sometimes have cool subtitles in another language.

All of our friends have welcomed us and introduced us to even more new friends! Everyone wants to help you settle in. Any request for information or help brings loads of people with advice. A special thank you to John and Marianne, and Joel and Sue.

The sun comes up much later (closer to the equator, nearer the middle bulge of earth? or mountains block it?) Conversely the days stay lighter much later. It doesn't get dark until almost 9:00PM. Now like cosmopolitans we don't eat dinner until 7:00 or 8:00. But like frugal people, the car sits in the garage and we walk to do all our errands.

At the market I can indulge myself in massive bouquets of gorgeous flowers for 80 pesos! That bought two big bunches, one with lilies, Birds of Paradise and a whole collection of other blooms. The food especially the fruits and veggies taste so much better. We had fresh strawberries the other night that tasted like the ones I used to pick as a child. As Mario Batali says, buy what is fresh, local and in season.

Instead of spending half the day in front of the computer, I have to remind myself to log on and pick up e-mail. I no longer hit MexConnect twice a day for my Ajijic fix, I'm here!!! Of course with all the rain the phone service has been erratic to say the least, so sometimes I can't log on.

I am relishing freshly ironed clothes and someone who cleans the house far better than I. Miguel and I are coming to an understanding about who is in charge of the gardens, but.. Harry has decided to go to the garden club meetings with me.

So you see Toto this wonderful place is better than Oz or Kansas!

July 21-02 Yesterday poodle man took me shopping. Usually when we go for walks, I just follow him to the end of the privada. He then turns left and goes down Independencia turning onto Pedro Moreno and thus to the lakeside. Yesterday he turned right, I assumed he was headed up Independencia to see his friends, the kitten and the puppies. After chatting with them he kept going. He was headed for the plaza. On a summer Saturday afternoon it is crowded with Guad weekenders and it is a really hopping place. He loves anywhere that is full of kids, especially toddlers. I just assure everyone he is muy tranquil and he soon has tons of admirers. While he was strolling around kissing babies like some politician, I was checking out one of the street stands selling beautiful embroidered clothes. Everything very well made, light fabrics and ice cream colors. There I am trying on clothes over my bike shorts and tee shirt, checking the fit in a long mirror propped against a tree! I got a long dress, a pants suit, two blouses and a braided belt. The embroidery and workmanship was lovely. 800 pesos later I drag off my dog and my shopping bag. Ice cream is not supposed to be on his low fat pancreatic diet! The politician and I cruised on home.

For all you lake watchers it is raining every night. Stuart McGowen a neighbor, has markers set up on the dry part. He says we are about 15 centimeters up from the receded shore line. I love my early morning walk there with Woody. The clouds around the mountains are different every day. Each morning we check the heavy bellied mares in the horse herd grazing free. Most have already foaled but two of the mares look to be due any day. Some morning there will be another new baby there. The herd jeffa is a beautiful dark gray mare. At first she kept a good watch on Woody but now she knows he isn't a chaser so she is not so suspicious. Some of the older foals are now big and brave enough to stay together. They leave Mommy for a bit and play. It is so neat to watch them running, bucking.

Easter-4/02.

It does seem funny when people ask us "What are you going to DO there??" As if we were going to be bored!! NOT!  When we went for Easter we thought this visit would be relaxing. Unlike Christmas we wouldn't be madly trying to schedule/change the phone, the utilities, the cable, the alarm people etc. Relaxing??..Take a look at the week's doings

Saturday: Arrive from the airport about 3:00 PM. I ..usually the lucky one,  catch the red light at customs. ARGHH!! Here I stand, laden with an   Easter ham, other food stuffs and corms and tubers of iris and daylilies, all in my luggage, according to the immigration form I just filled out, none of it is legal!! As we shuffle over to the table, I put the carry on bag with all the contraband at the back of the luggage cart. First I hand him the huge suitcase which weighed in at 95 lbs. (they charged us extra at the check in at Newark!) He had to  take his time sorting through all that. Then another heavy one. Then, Thank God, the entire flight crew from the plane straggled up and he went to check all of them.  When he got back to us he looked at three more big bags and bless his tired little heart he just waved us on through! Once we got to the house we dropped off the bags, refrigerated what needed to be cold and went off to shop at El Torito for the rest of the feast. Why bring food? aside from my being anal retentive, Easter week is the biggest holiday in Mexico. The gringos and the natives would have been shopping and preparing all week. I wasn't about to not have the ingredients for my menu. Of course they had everything we needed, so much for my obsessions and my sore back from lugging that eight pound ham a zillion miles to Ajijic!. Go to Bruno's for dinner. It is good to see Vicki. She finds us a table even though we don't have a reservation and the place is packed. Go home, unpack, See Joel and Susan our neighbors across the street who invite us for drinks and to meet other neighbors on Weds. Fall into bed.

Sunday: Up early-time difference, strange bed. Start my cooking. Go to Easter mass with Harry.  Jack calls wanting to bring an extra for dinner, someone who is alone today, No problem. Water plants, spend some time potting up the stuff I brought. Cook some more..Dinner at 4:00. I am roundly kidded about bringing avocados to Mexico. Sort of a Coals to Newcastle thing. Yes, I know you have them here but I wanted ripe ones for my cold avocado soup!! We make arrangements for me to go up to Jack's house to install some software on his PC, and for us to go with him and Skip to Guad to Abastos market another day. My pineapple upside-down cake, made according to the high altitude instructions, is a great success. Fall into bed.

Monday: Get up early and while it is still cool go for a long village ramble with Harry. Stop at a couple of the abbarotes for veggies. Come home, shower. Go back out. Stop at Eagers to bring the English PC keyboards, talk to Kevin about the rental, Get directions to Costco etc from Diana. Go to Guad and for the first time WE DON"T GET LOST!!!   We don't end up snarling at one another!!! We do some shopping at Costco and Mega Mart, have lunch, and come home again without getting lost! We go to the Japanese viviero to buy a big pot for the gardenia and to the cheaper guy across the street for terra/dirt. When we get home I talk to John and Marianne and invite them for dinner on Thursday. Eat Easter/ ham leftovers, Fall into bed.

Tuesday: We both wake up early and work on the terrace while the day is still cool. Plant the gardenia, move the now empty pot outside. Plant all my kitchen herbs in another big pot. Shower, Harry takes me up to Jack's to do the software and he is off to the viviero for more plants, terra, and to run errands. After I sort out Jack's PC problems, we make a date to go to Abastos on Wednesday and Harry arrives to pick me up. Home to unload plants and stuff,  then off to Chapala to the bank to spend an hour doing paperwork to add me to the account he opened in January. Then to the tianguis in Chapala to shop.  We are looking for bar stools for the kitchen--no luck! Home unload, Actually manage a siesta. Call Guad and schedule Seymi for Saturday afternoon at our house to finalize move. Have dinner, actually watch some TV,  Fall into bed.

Wednesday: Up early, plant pansies in the gardenia pot. We do a bunch of pruning, and leave the clippings for Miguel to clean up. Plant the new roses we bought at the Chapala tianguis. Shower, change, meet Jack at 9:30 to go to Abastos mercado in Guad. We have a great time wandering around Abastos and then we go for lunch to a Mexican restaurant there in Guad. Home late, unload stuff. Brief siesta, than to Joel and Susan's for drinks, then out to Pimienta Negra with them and newly met, Bob and Judy for dinner. Make arrangements to go to Bob and Judy's house  to see the metal circular staircase they had fabricated for their mirador. It might work for the mirador we are planning. One of the joys of Ajijic is the way all of us "new immigrants" try to help one another. Home late. Fall into bed.

Thursday: Up early, Harry decides we need an orange tree for the now empty big pot. Call Sebastian to suggest dinner Friday and Gordon is home !! Yeah. We decide on dinner in Chapala on Friday night. I make the cold shrimp salad for dinner and we shower and go off to look at the rustico places for bar stools. We don't find any, stop at the vivieros and Harry buys dahlias and an orange tree for the pot. We plant it when we get home, clean up and I decide to attempt cheese biscuits for the dinner party. The high altitude doesn't get me and they are really good!  Dinner is great and the conversation even better. John and Marianne have lived here for awhile now and we both benefit from their experience. We make a date to go to Jacotepec for lunch on Saturday with John and Marianne. They leave late. Fall into bed.

Friday: I labor all morning with the Mexican dictionary writing out instructions for Miguel, the gardener. Did you know that abano means both fertilizer and season tickets?? Anyway I have the liquido abano (liquid fertilizer) schedule all worked out on the calendar, which I put in the bodega. The pails are marked with gallons and I now know the Spanish word for scoop! When he arrives I go over the whole thing with him.   Later we go out and do some more hunting through the rustico places but still not what we want. Joel and Susan call and we arrange to go out to dinner with them and two other couples Saturday night! Pick up Gordon and Sebastian and off to Chapala for luscious shrimp empanadas and red snapper Vera Cruz. Home late. Fall into bed.

Saturday: Harry drags out the bags and sigh.. we start the very limited packing. Most of what we lugged there stays. We are actually leaving two of the smaller bags there. Boy, is that a weird feeling. I end up doing the liquida abano myself! since Miguel didn't do it yesterday. I'm not sure if it is the Mexican male don't take orders from women thing or as Harry said, he wasn't feeling well and he went home early. We change and  John and Marianne pick us up at Letty's as we return the rental car. We go to Jacotepec and have WONDERFUL pizza and salad at this little restaurant. American chef, Mexican wife. He also makes great Italian sausage. Home at 2:00 Sit on the terrace in the sun, storing up the images. 3:00 the young lady from Seymi arrives and we go over all the paperwork. A bit later shower, change to go out to Bob and Judy's with Joel and Susan to look at the metal staircase, have drinks and meet another couple Duff and Sharon. Bob and Judy's house is gorgeous! They have been working on it almost a year. I lust after her double pink oleander bushes in pots! Then all of us are off to La Bodega for dinner and the music/guitarist is so great that even though we have to be up at 4:00AM for the plane,  we stay late.  I'll sleep on the plane!! Fall into bed.

It was fun, it was hectic, but it sure wasn't BORING!! And I didn't have my dog or my computer with me. Plus we both plan on doing some volunteer work.  We will not lack for something to do!!

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