Domingo 06 – Sábado 12 Enero 2013. (Dom 06th) Carmen finished
up with the final entries in the blog post covering last week. Dan
proofed, and added a few more comments. Then Carmen proofed and
edited some more. We go back & forth this way until everything
seems perfect to each of us, and yet when its posted we likely as not
will find a few additional errors to correct. Dan posted the blog
from the netbook and turned the little computer over to Carmen, who
downloaded a book from the Anacortes library. She spent the rest of
the day reading the epub book and jigsaw puzzling. Dan shifted over
to the office computer and added some pictures stored there into the
blog. Beer battered chayote squash for lunch. Like
delicious tempura. Dense fog all day – truly living in a cloud
forest today.
(Lun 07th) After trying to
find a way to pay our electric bill online, with no success, we knew
we had to go into the Fortín office and pay in person. Thought we
should also deal with our property taxes and other utilities too
today. First we stopped at the water & sanitation department to
drop off the “solicitud” Dan worked on yesterday, asking
the engineer to come out to locate the sewer line near our house.
Since we hadn't received a bill for our property taxes (impuestos prediales), which are due
this month, we went into the municipio building to ask how to
get a bill. They directed us to the Centro Deportivo, the
city sports center, which was set up to receive payments. It's only a
couple of blocks away, but when we arrived, there were huge lines
extending outdoors, and lots of people waiting in the bleachers –
we will try another day.
Next we walked in to the Cablecom
office back north across from city hall, to inquire about why we
received a bill for telephone service, about US$25 or so. We had
understood that telephone was part of our bundled cable bill. Yes,
the phone bill is part of the cable bill – they mail us a copy of
the bill so that we can keep track of our phone calls, and the
monthly charge on the bill can be ignored.
On we meandered a few blocks north to
the CFE building to pay the electric bill. Carmen waited holding a
place in line while Dan investigated the machine that sits in the
lobby there. It reads the bar code on the bill, and asks for the
amount due. Dan put money in the slot and out came the proper
change. Very slick! In doing so, he did not see that any receipt
was issued, so he came up into the office to ask the secretary there
how one got a receipt. She showed him where it was issued, silently,
from a slot at the very bottom of the machine. He picked up the
receipt there and found it was for someone else. He saw a women just
walking out the door, called her and traded her receipt for ours,
which she had picked up without checking the name printed there. The
machine works great, and we'll use this next time until we can figure
out the online thing, as the lobby with the cash machine in it is
open all the time.
(Mar 08th) We drove towards
Córdoba on the bulevar to the DHL depot to drop off the
monitor for shipment back to HP in Guadalajara, following the
instructions in the email Dan received. The DHL employee told Dan
that they would not take his malfunctioning monitor until they had
received the new one from HP. Since a physical one-for-one exchange
was not what the email had specifically said, Dan was a little
confused until the clerk explained the procedure. (After we got
home he called the HP office on their 800 number and was given a
tracking number for him to know when it would arrive here in Fortin.
He checked and found that it had left the HP warehouse in Guadalajara
and was now in the DHL center in Mexico City.)
Stopped by the IMSS hospital to get
papers for Dan's next doctor appointment and make the lab test date.
Tried to get Carmen's papers for her Orizaba appointment and was told
they will not be ready 'til next thursday. Walked the long blocks to
see if the ordered printer was in at the Ofix store yet. Nope. On
the way back to the car, we saw a meat mart catering to restaurants,
which is half a block from the hospital. Browsed thru there and
found really good prices. Kept our purchase down to a kilo plus of
beef arrachera or marinated flank stead. So delicious------
Spent a good bit of time today visiting
stores selling floor & wall tiles, and some bathroom fixtures,
getting some idea of the purchase decisions we'd need to make. The
last tile store happened to be at the east side of Córdoba. Across
from it was what in the US we used to think of being a “little
Mexico” shopping area, including a grocery where we purchased a few
items of interest. Before leaving the city we shopped at Home Depot,
seeing what their tile and fixture selection was like, and where Dan
picked up some electric boxes he knew we'd need for the bathroom
project.
Before going home, we stopped at the
sports center in Fortín again and this time the line was not so
long, so we started our property tax payment process. People here
are so friendly and helpful. We got thru the first office where we
had the tax bill printed out, after Dan pointed out his name on the
bill was printed incorrectly, due to the different name order we use
in the US. Here names are normally ordered “first name - paternal
last name - maternal last name” --so the bill had his middle name
appearing as his primary last name. This was changed and the bill
printed out again, so we could proceed to the line where payments
could be made. While waiting to proceed we looked at the bill in
detail, and then discovered several more errors on the paper. The
property address/location was the same old one we had been fighting
with when we made the house purchase. So, we decided to bail out of
the line and come back another day with proof of all the changes we
needed to make with the documentation.
(Mie 09th) Considered
another walk into town to finalize the property tax payment, but got
involved with taking apart the final pallets, the bottom parts of the
shipping liftvans This material will be used for formwork of the
ceiling of the bathroom and floor to the terraza above.
Grueling work in the hot sun, but we got all the disassembly done and
the nails and staples pulled out of the wood. Trying to get a hold of
a carpenter who left his card with us in July. Seems that his line
always has a busy signal. Perhaps we do not know how to properly
dial here.
(Jue 10th) Finally more was
done on Carmen's teeth. Another root canal – next door to the
former one. Turned out to be worse shape than the first. How lucky
she was to have no pain. After this two hour ordeal, we did several
other stops before returning home. DHL had received the new monitor
to replace the one we had purchased in the US, so we made the swap.
Buying from our last computer from HP provided us with an
international warranty, as it turned out, a very good decision we
made back when anticipating our move to Mexico.
We thought we would try again to pay
our property taxes. This time the fellow happily typed in all the
changed info – like the avenue number that had been changed from 19
to 21, and the fact that this address is in the colonia of Las
Azaleas, and not Los Encinos. Also Carmen's name got put on instead
of just “y/o cop” (and/or coproprietor). Next we had to wait but
a couple minutes to go into the other office to pay. We asked for
and did indeed get our discount of 20% for our age. Also one pays
his garbage collection bill at this time. Garbage is collected twice
a week and costs us US$1 a month. The extremely low property taxes
here (less than 2% of those NoB) surely makes it more reasonable for
us to live here than in the US. Makes it possible for us to take a
vacation which would be financially impossible otherwise.
(Vie 11th) Gardi cat thinks
it is time for him to go outside and help the guys working on our
house. Actually two fellows are inside building a deeper platform
with concrete for our refrigerator to sit on. The present spot is
not deep enough for the frig to sit the proper distance from the
wall. Gardi went over to check it out, and the worker did not seem
to know how to react to the cat.
Dan trimmed back the bougainvillea on
the northwest corner of our property in preparation for tile to be
put on top of the wall there. He cuts and drops the pieces down.
Carmen then lugs them across the street and throws them into the
banana field. For some reason, she is able to carry the thorny
branches without getting cut up. Dan seems to get punctured each
time he carts a load over into the forest of banana plants. Dinner
today, eggs florentine...yum.
(Sab 12th) The crew arrived
in an unusually cheerful mood today. Yes, they are always a happy
crew. They had worked extra long yesterday, since after they got
home in the evening in Coscomatepec, they had to then finish the
rough-sanding of the beams to be delivered here this morning. They
got a ride from Cosco to Fortín on the truck doing the lumber
delivery, instead of taking a bus and then walking the 15 blocks
here. Wonder how far they walk from their homes to the bus in Cosco?
The beams look really good. Before the truck left, Dan went with
the fellows on the truck over to Frank & Ania's new house site to
pick up some posts from there that actually belong to Luis, our
foreman. These puntales will be used to support the slab
formwork that will be put up here in a couple of weeks. The crew
worked mostly on painting diesel onto the wood today, plus finishing
along the north roof edge. Lumber is stacked, stickered & drying
on the front porch and also in our back parking area. Carmen trimmed
back the blue blossoming bush along with general plant care.
Dan talked to a man about installing
new gas lines and measured where the addition's ceiling (& terraza floor) is to go, plus took trim
off the bedroom window that will be moved to another wall. We had
planned to go to Orizaba today to look at bathroom fixtures, but too
much going on. The fellow who talked to Dan this morning said he
would be back this afternoon to take measurements and give a price
quote on the propane line alterations. He never showed up. Does he
not want the job? Or did he just get busy? The hardest thing about
this building project, is locating people and things that we do not
know where to find. Even items for construction are in different
sorts of stores here than in the US. Keeping us happily busy though.
At 9pm a carpenter, recommended by a
lady a few houses from here, came by to see what we want built. At
this point it's a window repair and alteration (the window that the
cat door goes into, which was badly rotted at the bottom), and a
kitchen wall cabinet matching the base cabinets that were in the
house when we bought it. If his workmanship and pricing is good,
we'll start adding more items, starting with cabinetry in the new
bathroom. He is to be returning tuesday for more specific
measurements and price quotes.
