Domingo 21 - Sabado 27 Octubre 2012. (Sun 21st) Dan thought we
might go out for breakfast, but Carmen would rather go to a Chinese
buffet restaurant next time we are near one (there's one right up the
street from both of the Chedraui stores) on some future shopping day.
So, we indulged in waffles at home. Today Carmen reorganized the
bathroom items, where she found the missing new faucet handles for
the kitchen sink. We also put our living room TV in place on the
newly varnished and now well-dried shelves and supports. This was
after about a half day's effort for Dan splitting the cable signal
and wiring in all the components (receiver, CD player, VCR, two DVD
recorders, plus allowing for a computer and the Wii to be put in the mix too).
He's so happy that the cable here is still analog, which means all
the internal tuners in the devices will work independently for timer
recordings. If you opt for digital service, it means all the content
comes in only on Channel 3, so you must have an intermediate cable
box (for each machine, generally rented from the company) to select
the actual program channel that's visible to your recording device.
The time/channel setup features of your recording device no longer
are of any use. The option to get some free music channels seems to
be the only advantage to a digital conexión, just not worth it when
compared to the loss of utility in so many of our components.
In the late
afternoon we walked to the park. Then a half block further and had a
pizza. Enjoyed the park for awhile. Clouds started rolling in.
Rainbow across the sky. Birds singing, children playing, adults
strolling. Sprinkles came. People started leaving, booths were
taken down, so we went to one of the corner ice cream stores. Dan
got a yellow paleta of nanche. ( “Golden Spoon,” or
Byrsonima
crassifolia)...Carmen thought it tasted of
melon, and Dan thought it to be more like pumpkin. It had a few
large seeds. Carmen had an arroz con crema paleta, like
frozen rice pudding on a stick, with frozen strawberry jam down one
side...scrumptious. Meandered home by way of the grocery store for
milk. Lightly rain sprinkling all the way. Watched some TV and then
read in bed a bit before falling asleep. Another good day.
(Mon 22nd) Dan has been
trying to install the almost new HP monitor, which worked just fine
in the US. However that is not the case here, when connected to any
of our computers, as some interference pattern displays on top of all
the screen content. Sending a duplicate signal from the video card
to the VGA input on the TV allows him to make output adjustments, but
the HP monitor refuses to clear up –he's extremely frustrated. How
does spaghetti sound for lunch? Or, is it dinner, since after
breakfast we usually have but one large meal a day, in the late
afternoon. Actually there is the pan dulce (pastry) or dona
(donut) at mid-morning, and then maybe some fruit, vegetable and/or
crackers & cheese in the evening. We are still losing weight
slowly, or at least not gaining. Very soon we will reach our goals
where we will try to stabilize. Then we will have to somehow adjust
our eating habits, because we are quite satisfied the way they are at
present. Today Carmen baked some peanut butter cookies. The sugar
is different here. More crystalline, and it makes the cookie texture
different.
Bugs etc. Always wanting to live in
the tropics, one hesitates because of the insect problem. We must
say that they have not been a major problem. Few flies and
mosquitoes. An occasional cockroach. Thousands of ants but we are
getting along – sort of. However, when we took a pan out of a
cupboard and thought that some how a piece of banana was on the pan
and it turned out to be a dying slug, now that just got the best of
us. Last evening Gardi was excited about some tiny something that
was along the floor. Finally he got it by Dan's feet. Carmen got
the flashlight to see what kind of spider it was and it turned out to
be the tiniest cricket ever seen. A foot immediately stepped on it
and Gardi spent quite a long time trying to find his new friend.
(Wed 24th) Today we drove
to Orizaba to search for a carpentry store that Dan located in the
yellow pages. Carmen was handed the map and asked to get us there
and locate some parking. The parking being the difficult part. The
store was near the river and the streets were parked full. Carmen
directed Dan to the west side of the river and we found a lovely
large parking spot, but three blocks from the store. We walked back
and crossed one of the bridges over the river. There is riverwalk
access along the river at this bridge crossing, with a
habitat/display for some cocodrilos. We have walked along the
river before, but not at this area a bit south of the center. On to
the Carpintodo store, where for the first time here, we actually
found what we were looking for, some trim to use for additions to our
kitchen cabinets. Retail wood items are rare here, and so are good
carpenter's tools. They also had a great selection of cabinet
hardware. A few blocks in this downtown shopping area are closed to
auto traffic. We checked out the large Soriana supermarket, while
the clerk at the woodshop held onto our purchased trim piece. Lovely
area to walk in on this perfect weather day. Since we were parked
but a block from the big alameda park, where we had seen an
outdoor concert last winter, we walked around there and sat down to
absorb its ambiance for awhile. Certainly is designed for children,
as well as adults. Full of trees and flowering shrubs.
Next we drove back towards Fortín and
stopped at the Chedraui store. Bought various things, then left our
car in the parking area under the store, and walked down a block to a
Chinese buffet for lunch. Then on to a Waldos dollar store. Back to
the car, and one more trip into the big store for perishables. On
the way out of town we stopped at the Maderas de Orizaba, a
lumberyard. The lumberyard in Córdoba stocks only large pieces of
wood, and one must special order anything, which they'll cut to order
to your dimensional requirements. Here in Orizaba there was a
selection of plywoods from Boise-Cascade, plus some pre-cut dimension
lumber & trim boards (all, however, rough cut, as carpenters here
must supply all the sanding & finishing labor). A good find for
us, and they will deliver to Fortín for a 50 peso charge. Got a
fillup at a convenient Pemex station, where the ladies gave the
windshield a cleaning too. Shortly thereafter, Dan stopped by the
curb and suggested to Carmen she should take a turn driving. He is
afraid she might forget how, and not feel comfortable driving here.
He had just run thru a light turning red, with a cop standing at the
corner and thankfully, not watching.
With Carmen behind the wheel, a few
blocks later, there was a light at an intersection that seemed not to
be working, at least no colors could be seen on it with the low
western sun shining into it from behind us. Carmen was about half
way thru the junction, along with a car in the right hand lane beside
her, when from the street to the right came barreling out two rows of
traffic with their horns blaring! Guess their light was
working, and they nosed around the two cars until the light changed
again. On we came towards Fortín and in Cuautlapan there beside the
road was a lady selling pineapples. We think we could smell the
ripeness of the pineapples driving by on the road. No traffic
behind, lots of parking area and good entrance and exit, so what
could Carmen do but whip the car right around the stand and park. We
bought three good sized ones, at about US$0.75 each. Talk about
sweet!
Down at the Metlac river bridge we
decided to take the old back road into Fortin for a change of pace.
As it's always fun to do and see something different. Actually this
used to be the only access into town from the west, but a less steep
new road is now the main ruta libre from Orizaba, now coming
up into the south end of Fortín. We had walked down this old road a
couple years ago with Ania on a hike into the Metlac canyon. The
road surface has suffered due to lack of maintenance, and it was
difficult to avoid the potholes. Now, we did not remember quite
where it came into town, which proved to be at the far western end of
Avenida 1 which runs along the northern edge of the park. Stopped to
check on our paint order and no, it still was not in yet.
(Thurs 25th) Dan spent
most of this day with personal finances on the office computer and
Carmen did a major deep cleaning in both bathrooms. Oh my! What be
this? Another new born besucona (“smoocher”) or gecko,
with its egg sack still attached.
One
of Mexico’s most endearing reptilians which was snuck in cargo
ships from Asia and now lives wild, ranging from South America to
central Mexico residents is the gecko,
known
as guerita
(blondie)
in the coastal towns and villages where they are common. When you
hear their homey clicking sound (for which residents affectionately
call them besucona,
the
“kissing one”), don’t be alarmed. Quite the contrary, for each
home cannot be without its resident gecko to properly cleanse it of
gnats and mosquitoes.
Check this webpage:
(Fri 26th) While on our
almost daily walks into town, we had a realization. Mexico tries
very hard to make certain that all adults are registered for
elections, and actively promotes voting in public service
announcements and on billboards. It seems in many ways to be more
democratic (small D) than the US, which holds itself as the paragon
of free elections. We have been noticing two vans parked at the edge
of the park – sole purpose is for voting registration. Now isn't
that a bit different from the US, where our two major parties are
sparring over who gets to vote?
Our paint order has still not arrived
at the Sayer paint store. We finally checked at the other four
places in town that sell paint and no luck there either. We are
trying to buy an acrylic enamel and a clear varnish for outdoor use
(water cleanup, low VOC's and easy on the environment & our
lungs). Picked up another lock that we had left at the locksmith's a
few days ago (for our back gate), plus had hopefully our last needed
key made, for a bedroom this time. We have certainly given them a
lot of business. Meandering home in the heat of the day, we
purchased some red ripe tomatoes from a tiny stall in front of a
house that always has a nice little selection of produce.
We spent some time cleaning the floors.
Discovered that the few shiny tiles in the dining room need dried
with cloth after mopping or they leave water spots. Gardi cat had to
walk on and check out every wet floor. Dan moved some tool boxes
from dining room to hall and kitchen, in preparation for building the
cat walk near ceiling and rebuilding the cat tree we brought along.
Carmen fertilized the rhododendron out front and Dan cut the lawn
since Carmen assured him it would rain during the night. Finished
the day with a movie. Seemed to be a Chinese movie with English,
dubbed in and Spanish subtitles,
(Sat 27th) Rained last
night! This morning Carmen finished cleaning the floors upstairs and
cleaned some windows, while Dan pulled more nails from our salvaged
liftvan lumber. Then we put four 2x4s in the car and drove the nine
blocks to Frank's construction site. Here we used his table saw,
since we did not bring our radial-arm saw down with from the US, and
he didn't want to make a possible mess of it with our hand-held
circular saw. Ripped the boards into 2x2s in preparation for
building a cat walk high along the wall above the living room
windows. Ania and Frank drove up just as we were about to leave.
Ania gave us a tour of the construction and pointed out all the
little things one might not notice. Really will be a lovely house
when done. We finally wore out, after a week of non-stop projects –
nap time, after a tall fresh orange juice. Ania had told us that we
have a hierba santa plant out in the backyard and that it can
be used as a wrapper around baking fish. Today was the time to try
it out, and we can now report it was truly delicious.
