Quick Trip Up and Back

      The better half and I returned this afternoon from the Quinta...four days of small and medium sized projects.   We repaired (upgraded) the main breaker box for our electrical feed....I made a minor fool of myself grumping about the electrical service interruption....asking neighbours if they had service (they did) and generally molesting people before checking my own box.     There was a bit of voltage drop early in the day due to the effects of high winds in the area, and this seemed to have done some damage to the two fuses...which finally gave their lives to protect our televisions, refrigerator, water pump and other appliances.

     I replaced them in a flourish of electrical engineering proweress and all was restored....

     We had a bit of rain and things continue to stabilize from the effects of a really cold winter.    The flamboyan trees that bloom so impressively with their mad flushes of bright red-orange  are probably going to be delayed until mid-June.   Not all is lost however, because usually when the bloom is delayed it also tends to be more vigorous and to last longer.   We shall see.

     I return tomorrow to the Quinta....time to renew my Mexican passport and time to continue with the never ending projects that keeping a house at the end of the road requires.   Perhaps the better half will be making a few postings during my absence.

Odds and Ends

    Just back from our blitzkrieg of Central Texas...stopping briefly to visit our son at his place of work in the salt-mines of New Braunfels and then to visit the perfect pair and their two daughters in Round Rock.   The Perfect Pair just returned from Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico after a week's vacation.    It was an enjoyable episode, and they look forward to returning.

     Oddly, not all was perfect, because my son-in-law left town with a nagging upper-respiratory problem and arrived in Cancun's international airport with chills and a peculiar tiredness.   He had gone to the doctor in Round Rock before departure to deal with the problem, received medicine, gotten a bit better...but once on the ground in Mexico, he was not doing very well.   Fevers, chills, and chest pain.     They called in the hotel doctor who took the issue very seriously...He made a prescription and suggested that my son-in-law was probably suffering from pneumonia.   A hot shower, some medicine, and a night's sleep seemed to restore him, but during the next days of basking, touring, eating, shopping, and generally doing enjoyable things he began to slide back again.  

      The doctor came and rendered a bit more aid, and told them to immediately seek assistance once back in Central Texas.   He told them to make sure to tell their doctor there about which medicines were used.    So, once back in Texas, the doctor said that , yes, in fact it was pneumonia...and perhaps he should have taken it a bit more seriously, and to continue with the regimen of medication and bed rest demanded by the Mexican doctor. He stated that the medicine prescribed by the doctor in Mexico was an excellent choice and, (silver lining) a lot cheaper.

      My son-in-law is feeling 10X better now...recovering quickly...and telling his buddies that it's probably better to have pneumonia in Playa del Carmen than somewhere else.     AS AN ASIDE, this kind of intervention is common in Mexico....and it is more personal and cheaper, almost always.   ALSO, the doctor in Austin did nothing wrong, because he was only trying to accommodate a patient (friend) who was determined to go on a vacation to which he had been looking forward...and a patient who reasonably thought he was having an early onset of the famous Central Texas "cedar fever" allergy attack.

          

     My better half and I are going down towards the end of the week...for a bit of R&R for the better half, and to prepare for a series of visits by various types of guests.   The better half calls "rest" working 12 hours per day by  doing detailed improvements to the gardens and interior and re-organizing the linens, utensils, and general appearance and function of the Quinta.

She is such a dynamo that Alvaro and I try to hide a bit because neither of us (especially the Old Gringo) can keep up with her pace and her assignments.

     It is time to go about my appointed rounds here in the McAllen area.    I shall put on my flak-jacket and head out.   (Where did I put my helmet?)

Thanks, as usual, for your kind attention.

The Old Gringo

        

Pleasant Interlude

      We are back up for a bit....some travel to Central Texas to see the grandchildren and the children.....and a little talk late this afternoon at the Mission Museum about the colonial city of Guerrero.

        Our business activity is good, a booking of some timid folks backed out choosing to believe the press and politicians while others have come and gone and others are booking for April and though the Summer.   This is all I am going to post about any of this matter save for the fact that my drive up from the Quinta and across the border was dull and boring and uneventful.

       My biggest probem, in reality, is chiggers.   I had to go out with the neighbour to a corner of his property which is adjacent to the Rio Corona.   There is quite a bit of heavy grass of various sorts, so I had the feeling that my task was going to include providing lunch to the chiggers.    In spite of spraying down after the fact the damage was done and my lower extemities, especially, were pretty much huge splotches of red, tied together by pieces of icky pale skin.

     Spring has certainly sprung.....everything is coming out and the sight is refreshing.     We might be seeing the northward migration of the Monarch Butterflies in a couple of weeks.   Various of the plants that we have placed around the gardens of the Quinta which attract the Monarch are right at the point of blossoming and this will provide us with a couple of months of presence of this noble creature. 

     In this vein, one of the best things for attracting the Monarch that people can plant is the low growing, weedy plant commonly called "blue mist" .   We have a small patch close to the house.   This patch is about 14 square feet, and flowers for about 9 months of the year.    During the two migrations of the Monarch there are up to 1,000 such butterflies crammed into that space during two episodes each day, early morning and late afternoon.

     This is not to overlook the  non-Monarch butterfly activity which in a way might be even more interesting.   We have several score....perhaps a hundred different types of these insects which certainly provide for a pleasant backdrop to our setting.

     During the next few days we shall be making other entries about going's on down at the place....along with other observations.    There is a lot of bird news.....like the inundation of white and brown pelicans (mainly white) at kilometer 84 of the Cd. Victoria - Matamoros Highway, who have invaded a series of small ranch irrigation lakes in that area...along with some white cranes that have black-tipped wings.   There are lots of other birds reminding us that they are still around and providing pleasant scenes of rural Mexico for everyone.    

Tomorrow, Driving into the Dawn

    Tomorrow will find me heading South by Southwest to our little adobe hut by the mountains.  I just finished reading yesterday's McAllen Monitor.    The reporting was, typically, full of contradictions, hearsay, and obfuscation and generally contradicted what I know to be true.   There was one admission, finally, in that much  (I would say the large majority)  of the information that swirls about in this environment turns out to be rumour which is not based in fact.

     As an aside, rumour in Mexico is usually fairly reliable.   During these days it has not proven to be so in this geographical area.

     What is going on right now in Tamaulipas State is the puffing and poofing of politicians declaring their  candidacy for various positions ranging from City Mayor (Alcalde) to Federal Congress (Diputado Federal) and Gobernador (you guessed it! Governor).    So, like in the United States people are being rewarded for long service to their parties....some better candidates are emerging....and some real dumboes are "probando la corona" (trying on the crown).    And, as it is said, before  all the campaigns are finished by early July, almost all the men will have had their opportunity to "probar la corona"....but in this case the term is frequently best translated to to "drinking a lot of Corona beer".     Mexican general elections are celebrated under the rule of "ley seca", or the dry law.   And the common joke in the past was that the elections are "dry" because there was nothing left to drink.

     Actually, the people are pretty serious about voting.   They have become more dedicated than in the past because now there are political parties and personalities that make the races interesting enough to bother to vote.   Tamaulipas is one of the last strongholds of the old, official government party...the Partido Revolucionario Institutional.....that held almost all public offices, local, state, and national from 1917 through 1995.    The main national leftwing party the Partido Democratico Revolucionario (PRD) has almost no carbon footprint in Tamaulipas, while the main rightwing party, the Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN), has been able to win a few major mayorships, some few Congressional seats in the national and state congresses, and a couple of national Congress senate seats  during the past few years.

     Times should be interesting for the next months...one nice thing about the elections now is that a person really never knows who might win nowadays.    In the last Presidential elections Lopez Obrador, the leftist led three months before the election 52%(PRD) to 29% (PAN), to 21% (PRI).     When the election was over, the count was 36% (PAN) to 34% (PRD) to 21% (PRI) and 09% (4 small national parties).    Three months after the election....because of almost deranged protests and blockages and moaning.....several polls were taken of the electorate in general, requiring the respondents to choose between the top two and only the top two candidates as if they were voting in a classical run-off.     The results were 63% (PAN) to 31% (PRD) and 06% (neither).    This might have been skewered a bit by the ire of the general populace at the PRD's activists blocking the entire Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City's elegant main boulevard, and essentially setting up shop and residence in the middle of this heavily used thoroughfare.....for a distance of about 40 blocks.

      Okay....just wanted you all to know that I only have brief periods of derangement.   With certainty of my path, now, I shall finish my preparations and perhaps make one more entry before heading down tomorrow morning. 

As usual, Thank you all for your investment of time and interest.

The Old Gringo       

    

Mundane Things About Coming and Going

     Right now, I am starting to plan for another jaunt back down to the Quinta, where a stay of a little more than two weeks is anticipated.   We have a couple of clients coming down....one Mexican couple, I think from Mexico City, and another couple who are birdwatchers from up north.

     My to-do list is pretty much done.   While finishing the various bits of shopping that must be done, it dawned on me that our readers might be interested in the reality of going back to the border as it pertains to "special shopping realities".

     Alvaro's brother-in-law, Efrain, who is a very helpful and competent personality came to the Quinta two days before my departure this time, and gave me 200 American dollars and asked me to buy him a new Stihl weed-eater.   A couple of days before, my neighbours, who were staying at the Quinta while they supervise the beginning of construction of their new house next door, asked me to buy some Excedrin Migraine, and they gave me five one-dollar bills.

     Taking last first, the neighbours are very well-to-do and cosmopolitan, and they have the most luxurious HEB grocery store in North America just 10 blocks away from their home in San Pedro de Garza Garcia, the most wealthy city per capita in all of Latin America.   That HEB has a huge pharmacy, both for prescriptions and over-the-counter remedies.

     Both these parties are from different strata, one urbane and sophisticated and the other rustic and traditional....both parties being what they are by their own preference.     BUT, they share the notion that if something is bought in the United States of America....and more especially in Texas...that it will be better and cheaper.    It must not be bought unless it is clearly stamped "Made in America".

     In any regard, I finally found out that Stihl no longer markets around here anything labelled "Stihl".   It is a German company and they have established a completely independent subsidiary under the trade name of ECHO in the United States....and these products are the "sons" of Stihl, but American made.   I struck out then to find professionals using the these weed-eaters....around commercial buildings, cemeteries, etc. and had some success in learning that the ECHO weed-eaters are very highly regarded.   They rev higher...up to 12,000 and 13,000 RPM's.   BUT, they require a slightly lighter oil additive...MANDATORY!

     In any regard I bought one medium heavy duty ECHO weed-eater for Efrain, with a no-extra-cost 5 year warranty, along with the appropriate plasti-string, and now hope that it will be what he is expecting when I arrive.

It was 185.00 with the tax, oil, and 095 string.     Then, I searched out the Excedrin and found two boxes of 24 tablets each on a "buy two and take a dollar off" deal.   That was a total of four dollars.

     Now, here is the point of this whole thing.    It is difficult to judge what the actual amount of cross-border trade is between Mexico and the United States, because these purchases are NOT calculated into the statistical mix.   Mexicans who come and go each day and who come and go over a period of an extended stay almost always go back with the 300 dollars/person daily personal import limit.     Sometimes they have errand-gringos to do their shopping for them.    Pretty much the same thing exists for Gringos coming back from Mexico with junk, Tequila, fine handcrafts, dental work, etc.   These things are not put into the regular governmental calculations of cross border economic activity.   Such above-mentioned things can only be estimated.

      Mexico and Canada are the two biggest trading partners of the United States, and visa-versa, especially when it is considered that these "daily billions" on both borders cannot be estimated.      This considered,  these two trading partners become even more  important in the mix of North American economic power.   I am pretty much a free-trader....and would probably be an unbridled free trader if we could  prohibit the import of anything made in  Red China...and the export to the same country.    American industrialists are fooling themselves if they think Red China is any sort of "trading partner" much less an "ally". 

      Red China is the one country where the communist party leadership pretty much sees my grandchildren as organ donors for the children of the communist party leadership.   But that is another story. 

Some information sources we use

Breitbart.com
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics
We draw information from these and other information services that will be being posted here during the next several hours. Thanks for your patience as we try to build this entire blog into a decent, minor leaque hidey hole for people who would like to do their own reasonable speculation, rumination, and deduction.