Are you someone that has to have things done now? Do you easily get upset when things aren't perfect? If so, you are probably better off staying in your neat end of the universe.
We are now waiting for our Wi-Fi and we will be all set up in a record 12 days. We have been freed from one of us needing to be at the house in case a workman or technician happened to show up.
The first dilema was easy. After going five days without our sattelite TV, a serviceman called and told me a couple of buttons to push and voila, we had TV. That was good news and bad news. The good news was we could now see the baseball playoffs, the NFL, and Jeopardy. The bad news was that as we got the networks through Seattle stations, we are now subjected to political adds.
The next was that our water came out in a trickle. My friend Brian showed me how to clean the water filters. Once I got through cleaning them I understood why we only drink purified water. On Saturday the plumbers came and put in a machine that steps up the water pressure. Unfortunately it leaked and they had to shut our water off until they could get replacement on Monday. Luckily, the house has a 1100 Litre "Tinoco". This is a cistern on the roof that held enough water until they returned on Monday and put the water back on. It was great getting showers at full strength. Our drinking water is delivered in 25 litre containers that we put in a dispenser. The water is 20 pesos ($1.60) for over six gallons and is delived to our door. An essential to good health in this climate is to drink plenty of water.
The internet is an ongoing problem. We are currently using the Marina Gardens community Wi-Fi to get online. This is unreliable and the signal is weak. You often get bounced off in the middle of something. Finally after waiting eight days the guys from Tel-Mex arrived to install our local phone and wireless internet. They grunted and pushed, but there was no ways they could string their wire through our outlets. They finally were able to get the wire strungs and voila, we had phone service. Alas, they had not brought a modem, so we were still without wireless internet. This was a Saturday and the Tel-Mex office would not be open until Monday. On Monday our friends Vincente and Yolanda picked up our modem at the office at the same time UPS was delivering a modem to us, so we now had two. The instructions for installation were in Spanish, so Vicente and Yolanda talked through the installation with the Tel-Mex office and got it set up with our user name and passwords. They told them that we are to watch the flashing green DSL light on the modem and when it stopped flashing out wireless would be available. When Vicente asked about how long that would be, the told him, oh, about three to five days! As of a day and a half, the green light is still flashing.
Other things have been working fine. The first week we used air conditioning a lot, but now ceiling fans are sufficient as the temperatures have moderated as well as the humidity. We have bought a new propane barbecue and I put it together in 24 easy steps!? We had our first guests over Monday evening and it worked great. We also got a new patio set, table and six chairs. We had brought our large umbrella with us in the van as well as two patio lounge chairs, so the patio is now in business.
We are now having our Spanish teacher come for 1 1/2 hours every Tuesday morning. Janice is talking to art class instrutor today to see if she can get signed up. I am playing bridge two to three times a week, wll re-start working at the library one day a week starting the first week of November. My two different groups of guys will be meeting again starting next week. My brother Steve flies in from Iowa on the 27th of October. I picked up the keys to his apartment. He will live in Mazatlan six months this winter. This will be the first time in my adult life Steve and I will live in the same city.
We have been eating healthy and feeling well. Ollie continues to thrive. Many of our US and Candadian friends will be arriving over the next two weeks and we will get the honor of watching each of them go through setting up housekeeping. This week we will get our first trip to Stone Island and next week we go sailing and then on a 70's bus on a pub crawl. Life is returning to normal in Mazatlan. Ole!
And this is called "retirement?" Anythiing but, I would say. There could be 10 days in a week, and here still wouldn't be enough time to do all the things available here. I like the fact that you comment on things that are a bit inconvenient, but take them in stride with good humor. Wish all NOB'ers did that. Welcome back.
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