I’ve been on a roll lately (hmmm…a blogroll) finding people blogging about their lives in Mexico. Check them out:

Family moves to Merida – their ¡Vamanos! blog is about their life in Mérida. The whole family moved for Dad’s work, and they expect to stay in Mexico until 2010.

Larry & Indra in Progreso write Yucatan Rebirth. They are almost done building their house, and their most recent post gives a nice tour of Progreso.

David Lida in Mexico City – Very interesting writer (of several books) His posts are always relevant and I have added one of his books to my Amazon wish list.

Mexico Bob lives and works in Irapuato. He seems like a very nice, genuine, intelligent person – and his posts are well written and interesting.

Our final link is to a page on Mexico Guru with a quiz that will help you decide where to retire in Mexico. Fun and harmless.

I told you all in a previous post that my career was in property management. One of the main things property managers do is to make sure the structure stays sound….protect the roof, keep water out, etc. But my work life was in the Pacific Northwest where wood is used for everything! It will rot if it gets wet! My new life with cement and tile is taking a bit of getting used to.

I get aggravated by bad planning. They do this a lot around here…the patio needed to have a lip at the doorway so the water will flow towards the drain – I get that part. But why not install the door so all the water that hits the door doesn’t flow down and into the house?

I’m not satisfied piling towels where there are problems, so I had to figure out a work around. I took two of the metal seed guards from our bird cage and they keep 95% of the water outside where it belongs.

Our kitchen window is another case of bad planning somewhere in the last century. See the scupper (downspout thing) that dumps its water right on top of the window? Grrrr. So I took one of the plexiglass inserts to the seed guards and taped up the bottom of the window. As part of our backyard renovation we are going to have a long roof for this side of the house that will keep all three windows on this side nice and dry.

Here’s another funny solution. Above our office, upstairs, there is a long wide window that I just love because it turns the stairwell into a chimney and evacuates the hot air nicely. But if it gets to raining hard the water will bounce up and in. I needed a way to be able to close them – fast – without running to the garage for the ladder. So, if you look carefully you’ll see that each window has a piece of cord tied around the handle which are hanging down in the center of the doorway right now, since the windows are closed. Kind of dumb looking but it works! (It kind of reminds me of a contraption I built as a kid so I could turn the light switch off from my bed when I heard my mom coming…)

It has been raining a lot the last few days. We’re ready for it to stop and give us a couple days to dry out, but really, we’re not complaining. Everything is green, the streets are clean, and the dams are filling up. That’s good.