• 26Jun

  Comfortable as a pig in mud

  blogging, knitting, maz odds + ends, weather 12 Comments

  

  The rain came a couple of days ago and we have been experiencing cooler than normal temperatures – not humid and VERY welcome.

  Paul and I went to a hotel in Nuevo Mazatlán for an overnight for Paul’s birthday.  We had a nice time swimming and lounging around the pool and had a very good dinner. But it was quite a shock to hear so much English spoken, as every waiter or bell boy spoke perfect English.  I think the best part was the bed…it was a king size with a feather bed topper.  Ours at home is just too hard!  It was fun to get away but I think next time we’ll go somewhere way off the beaten path.

  We had a housesitter stay at the house while we were gone, and it worked out really well.  So we now have options if we want to get away, and options are always a good thing.

  Paul has made arrangements to go to intensive Spanish classes in Guadalajara for two weeks.  He’ll be living with a Mexican family, and he is really hoping that this will be the boost he needs.  His Spanish is quite good and he has a very good accent, but his comprehension continues to be a problem.  He is going to scope out whether I would be able to have my vegetarian diet accommodated, and if so, I will probably go in the fall.

  I think it will be kind of nice to have a little time apart – we’ll probably appreciate each other more when we are reunited.

  The blog has had an unexpected benefit for me this week.  A woman who has been visiting Maz for years was making a trip down from Canada and offered to bring yarn for me if I wanted to make an order at her local yarn shop.  I hesitated for all of one second and am now the happy owner of the yarn, below.  Plus we had a nice visit and learned that she and her husband and another couple just signed the papers on a home near us in Mazatlán. They are really nice people, I hope to get to know them better.

  

  I am doing pretty well with the weight loss and exercise.  I set a really aggressive dieting regime for myself at first that I have kind of backed off from, but I am feeling very good about my progress.  I have not been weighing myself but my clothes fit a bit looser.  I’ll weigh myself on Sunday and may or may not report in!

  I have really been enjoying the exercise.  I get going with the iPod on my high energy music, and most days go for a half hour.  By that point I am dripping from my head to my toes.  I never knew my calves could sweat!  I tried the Zumba dvds I have again and think I am hopeless with the dancing, but it is a lot of fun.  Right now I am downloading (thanks, bit torrent) Tae Bo and Callanetics, two exercise programs I used to have years ago and really liked.  I have discovered that if I don’t have cardio around five times I week I feel off.

  I guess this post has turned into a hodge-podge, but one last thing that is great is I am going to make spring rolls!  I got so excited after reading Theresa’s post, and I have finally located all the ingredients!  I finally found the asian food store I had heard about (Toyo Foods, on Benito Juarez between 16 de Septiembre and the malecon) and they had the spring roll wrappers I needed.  I also bought jasmine rice and several sauces.  Yahoo!

  
  

  
  

  
• 21Jun

  Thanks, La Gringa!

  blogging, gardening, weather 8 Comments

  

  A few times recently I have said a silent thank you to La Gringa, an American woman blogging from Honduras, and I thought it would be a bit nicer of me to thank her publicly.

  First, it is drippy glass season again!  While I have more or less given up on crisp neat clothing for the duration of the summer (15 minutes after dressing, anyway) I hate to have drips all down my front every time I take a sip out of a glass.

  La Gringa’s post La Gringa’s Invention works like a charm.  A before picture of my glass and the puddle of condensation is at the top of the post.  Below, is my glass outfitted La Gringa style!

  

  All of us adjusting to life in a new country have certain things they miss or would like to be able to get more regularly.  One of those for me was fresh ginger.  I love ginger and while it would be in the stores now and then it often was pretty well past its prime.

  

  La Gringa’s post Grow your own Ginger inspired me to grow my own!  It grows just fine in a pot and I am enjoying being able to have fresh ginger whenever I want it.  And having never had really fresh ginger, I didn’t know the joy of just washing it off and grating it or mincing it as is.  The skin is so thin and beautiful you don’t need to bother peeling it. See a picture of a piece of just picked ginger, below.

  

  So thank you, La Gringa, for making my life a little better.

  
  

  
• 19Jun

  It was a pretty good one

  hummingbirds, weather 9 Comments

  Storm, that is.  Tropical depression 1E hit Mazatlán this morning and for a few hours there was torrential rain, crazy wind, windows banging, tinaco lids flying, and miscellaneous howling and scattered screaming here and there.  One neighbor told me that part of the roof on the school on our block flew off.  I watched some sort of metal plate swing crazily in the wind.  I saw a line of laundry flap off like a crazy nautical flag.

  Our timber bamboo whipped this way and that.  One piece must have hit the roof edge and even though it was more than an inch around it was cut clean.  Our bouganvillia got to whipping around and was pulled off the wall and now is a heap on the ground.  (We think we’ll be able to put it back up)

  All the plants on our new patio got plenty of water.  Most of them filled up to the edge of their pots and then ran over.

  The new backyard patio really took a beating.  Avocados from the tree next door flew everywhere.  Leaves.  Dirt.  The parrots in their cage were being whipped here and there, Paul and I carried the cage in as crap flew everywhere.

  It’s hard to really show how bad it was, but finally this is what it looked like. And this was after we had moved the birds, picked up all the cushions that had flown about, the dog beds, etc.

  During the worst of it I was just mesmerized by the scene.  I had been worrying about all the birds that live in our yard, especially the hummingbirds.  Then what should I see but our mama hummingbird (you remember her from the video where she was feeding her baby?) at the feeder pushing on a smaller hummingbird (we assume the baby) trying to get it to eat.  It was the most heart wrenching thing I have seen in a long time.  Finally I got too close and she flew off to the tree nearby.  I could see the baby was breathing, so I got the ladder and was reaching for him when he collected himself and flew off. Here is a one minute video of the scene.

  Paul thinks that my totem is a hummingbird, and I have to agree.  I feel a really strong connection to them, and I love the strong awareness I have of them as they live here with us.  I didn’t write about it, but we watched the baby get fed many, many times, watched his mom teach him how to feed and fly -- and to watch this heart wrenching scene today was pretty intense for me.  I am so glad it turned out all right.

  After the storm was over we had a lot of hummers sharing the feeder who would normally be fighting and territorial.  I think that they were so hungry from several hours without food that they basically called a cease-fire.

  We went out around 5 and walked around Centro with the dogs.  We saw a few trees down and a lot of limbs down but for the most part all is well. We heard that one person clocked gusts of 75 mph.

  The tropical depression fizzled out and the storm is no longer being watched.

  

« Previous Entries