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There has been a lot of work going on around Centro, without a lot of fanfare. We noticed these new street lights going up here and there on the blocks where the undergrounding of utilities has already been completed. The historic street lights in Centro are mostly the kind that are attached to buildings, so this is something new.

This picture also shows the new sidewalk surfaces they are installing. I’m not sure how the streets that get the brick pavers are chosen, but they look great.

You can also see that the City of Mazatlán likes their street trees shaped into a square or rectangle… usually trimmed entirely by machete, if you can believe it!

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Long ago when the city of Mazatlán was a small city, Calle Principal was the main drag through town. Actually, that’s what Calle Principal means – Main Street. Many of the houses were quite large and imposing. Now the street is called Belisario Domínguez – not the only change on this special old street.

Many of the large mansions have been broken up into several houses, some are restored beauties, some have been left to crumble away, and some are being worked on little by little.

Across the street from us is the gorgeous old ruin pictured above.  It is called El Chalet de Salvadora Chávez and is currently occupied. Occasionally there is work being done to it – mostly banging and hammering indoors.  Recently the work has started again, and the workers tell us they think they will be repairing the entire facade. What a treat that would be!

At the top of the post is a picture of how the house looked when we moved here in 2007.  If you want to look at a larger version of it, please click here.

In March of 2008 an article was done on the house in our local paper.  A link to the article is here.  And a link to the pictures of the house is here.  The house is about 120 years old and is L-shaped, with a courtyard inside.  It has had a variety of uses – including a home, a bakery, and a school.

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I’ll be taking pictures as the work progresses, but at this time the albañiles are working on the lower facade.  You can see their progress if you look at the darker cement in the picture above.  A larger picture is available here.  I’m making a unique category for posts on this topic – Chávez Casa.  Look for it in the Categories drop down at the left.

Friends who aren’t retired or who haven’t been to México will ask “what do you do all day?”

I think it’s a funny question because boredom has never ever been a problem for me.  I usually have way too many things going on, and some days I even have trouble deciding what to do because of it!

Some days I just like to play in my office-workroom.  Below is a picture of my main work table.  I have bins below full of fabric and yarn.  Mats for pinning things out on. On the right you’ll see a goofy felted purse I made.  A friend had given me some random inherited yarn and two already knitted sleeves…I decided to felt them. To the left of that is some material, as I still have two more pillows to make for the daybed in our rental.  It turned out great, I think.

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The picture below is of my sewing area.  All my machines have little cosies on them since the humidity even causes my sewing needles to rust!  Beneath this table are a couple more bins of fabrics.

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Next is a picture of my desk.  Kind of messy, but that is the way I work.  Under the cup is a felted coaster that really soaks of the drips from my glass.  To the left of my MacBook is my Kindle, and a lot of the time you’ll find me reading.  If you want to know what I’m reading, by the way, you can always click on the Books page, above.  I would say that is my favorite retirement pastime of all!  On the stack of Spanish homework left of the Kindle is my iPod touch, I use it a lot daily as I listen to audio books while I knit, or music while I exercise, or check my Twitter and Facebook and mail when away from my desk.

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Below is my latest knitting project, a shrug that is working up pretty easily.  I’m using some yarn that I bought inexpensively on eBay.

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Of course we walk a lot.  Pretty much every day you’ll see us walking the dogs on the malecón at Olas Altas.  Below is a picture from this morning.

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I’m always looking for birds.  There are woodpeckers living in the trees in Plazuela Hidalgo (Lion Park) and I got a picture of him yesterday, below.

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I’ve been lamenting my desire for a big cutting board so I headed to Casa del Campesino for one of these taco stand tree trunk ones.  David of Pizza Moreno schlepped it home for me on his moto, and our neighbor Barry loaned me his sander, so I guess cutting my vegies is a community effort!  I think it turned out great.  Now I need to find some mineral oil and I’ll be good to go!

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Sometimes I work in the garden.  The other day I named the day “Dirty Day” and spent the day on gardening projects.  I got a lot done – transplanted a bunch of plants and cleaned up the bougainvillea and passion fruit vine.  The vine is very vigorous and barely blooms and I could hardly believe it when I saw it had made a passion fruit, below.

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On dirty day I also planted my fennel.  You just can’t get fennel here so I decided to see if I could sprout regular fennel seeds that I use in cooking.  They sprouted, and I have my fingers crossed that they will thrive in the dirt and become a delicious fennel meal!

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I recently made new curtains for our spare room, which has french door windows.  We have shutter things inside the protections so people walking by don’t look in, but I didn’t like that the sun could blaze in through the top part in the afternoon.  So I made a little half curtain that lets you block the top but the breeze still can come in. (Maybe you have to be here…)

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Yesterday I made sourdough bread.  Whole wheat starter, with half whole wheat, a quarter oat flour and a quarter white.  It rose up beautifully and went into the fridge last night in two tortilla basket bowls that I use as bread proofing baskets. I pulled them out of the fridge to show you but I probably won’t bake them until late this afternoon so I’ll leave them in the fridge most of the day.

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So don’t ever think that you’ll be bored when you retire, at least if you have a lot of interests and a zest for life.