Visit with the kids

It was great to have Samantha and Jim visit together for 8 days. We did a little exploring, had some good food and even got a little painting done – my patio, kitchen and upstairs hallway are sporting fresh colors! They brought care packages that included some paperbacks (Life of Pi I really liked), toiletries, and oriental noodles. All of this stuff is more or less available here but a bit hard to locate at times.

We had a nice lunch in the central plaza in Guanajuato on a day trip there and also at my favourite fish restaurant outside of Queretero. Jim has a Costco card so we visited the one in Queretero for my first time. We bought a few things but I am still not fully convinced of its value to me. It was nice to be able to visit on Jim’s card while I am procrastinating. This last visit to Queretero did convince me not to return there unless I need something special - it is just another big smoky town and traffic jams are horrendous in the center. Parking is impossible.

We took a morning and visited the local botanic gardens in San Miguel, which are quite interesting. The preserve is built around an old dam that originally powered the textile mill in Aurora and one gets a good look at the impressive gorge at the business end. The dam is long since silted in and no longer functional. There is some great cacti and other high dessert flora in the gardens and some neat waterfowl in and around the old dam. Monarch butterflies are also quite common.

We also spent a good deal of time hanging out in the hammocks on my patio reading and chatting. They are both so busy with various projects that I get tired thinking about it. Jim has done quite a bit of construction work between gigs and came with a few neat tricks and a lot of ideas that my energy may or may not allow for implementation.

They liked the town and found the house quite comfortable. They were particularly impressed at 4:30 a.m. on May 8th with war-zone style fireworks that went on sporadically for about an hour and a half. The explosions sounded like they were coming from a variety of places but I expect they mostly originate in the nearby church plaza. The occasion, I believe, was Ascension Day although my on-line guide offered other explanations, including one that said it was a call to the slaves to get out to the cornfields. Some thought the Mexicans were just getting overenthusiastic about Mother’s day, which is a big deal here celebrated (always) on the 10th. I have heard fireworks here often before, although rarely so early, and so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

I am now ready to start construction on my fireplace. Back to the problem of getting delivery to my back yard of the necessary supplies.