This was the year that was....

Was a title of a television program back about 30 years ago, or so.
I use to save TV guides and ran across a few. Interesting to see that in San Francisco there were only 4 TV channels. Amazing!

How did we ever survive with that?

Now there are hundreds and nothing to see...... There use to be a few TV shows that would recap the previous year, but for some reason I failed to find any while zipping past all the channels that are on the satellite. So, last week was devoted to music.......

All those channels and I usually can narrow my viewing to about 5.
BBC America
The History Channel
The Learning Channel ( Which has too many shows with nothing to learn about unless you want to learn about Tattoo shops)
The Discovery Channel
CNN

And the only review of 2009 was a half our program that devoted about 50% to Hollywood and super star gossip from the past year.

Sad. Truly Sad.

Our other Satellite receiver picks up all the Canadian Channels and that is usually were I get the unbiased news programs.

There is local Mexican Channels from Morelia, and if I am adventurous I can point our C band dish and pick up tons of other South and Central American channels.

But in the big picture, TV is just noise to keep in the background while doing other work around the house. At least we don't have one in the bedroom. Don't need a night light. And besides all the experts always say that you should never watch TV in the bedroom. It's only for bed related use.......
Besides I enjoy reading much more anyway. Only problem is that the pages and letters get fuzzier more often then they use to.....


So, with nothing that I want to really remember for last year, I am starting out with a new clean slate.......empty.
No mush in my mind, I have erased it all, sharpened up the pencil. Purchased a new printer, cleaned my etch-a -sketch , cued, all refreshed for new fuel to whittle down into some lopsided perspective only a cantankerous open-minded old fart who has done too many things which can't be written about, can do.

Or maybe I can......

We will see.
We will somehow get through this year too!

Holiday Greeting or Merry Christmas!

To my politically correct friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with
respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of
others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions
at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally
accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the
calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society
have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily
greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western
Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed,
color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of
the wishee.

To My down to earth friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Import Export Business

When We crossed the border and this was the first time US Authorities had asked me "if We were bringing in firearms and ammunition into the US"? HUH??

I was going to ask the agent why they were asking that, or did they have a smuggling problem from Mexico, but figured this was not the time to have the whole car disassembled and my body cavity searched.

They do not have any sense of humor....I found that out crossing from Tijuana into California about 30 years ago.

This whole border thing is bizarre.

The amount of money being spent, trying to plug up a border that will always have holes in it is strange. You would think that there would be a better solution, since security is not the issue, after all, if it was, there wouldn't be 15 million "guests" using the US resources that the US taxpayer is subsidizing part of.
There is something else besides the need of money, since if that was all there was they would be with their families, working in Mexico.

I keep seeing Help Wanted signs in so many stores as we travel, starting in Patzcuaro, Morelia, Guadalajara, Mazatlan so on and so on and so on.

Maybe it's the chance to get away from the family, La Familia.....no wife , no kids, no buddies wanting to borrow a few pesos.....? Maybe it's the freedom to get the hell out of Dodge.

The draw to El Dorado of the North escapes me, and that is a topic that will continue to be debated forever, like the feud between the Hatfield and McCoys , this one will last way past my final breath.


I recently saw a couple of stories in the paper which had some PR news, justifying more government jobs. They keep trying to put a positive spin on these unresolvable issues.

First is the "war on drugs" which should just be labeled a corporate make work project paid for with an endless supply of money, and the second is a close runner up. The story was that the US Feds seized more than 6000 pounds of Marijuana worth 6 million bucks hidden in a shipment of door knobs in a truck. The truck was trying to cross in Calexico.

The other story was on the same day in San Diego, they seized thousands of counterfeit toys worth 2 million bucks. Knockoff Barbie dollars and "Jeep" toy vehicles, seems nobody had permission to use the "Jeep" logo.These were large trucks, the kind kids could drive around. Chalk one up for the Copyright Police Machine......
" They are just trying to protect people from getting ripped off. "

You would think that "Caveat Emptor" would be the norm, but I guess the government has long ago figured out that the citizens are too stupid to figure things out for them selves.

Maybe that is one of the problems. No one has any "learned" street smarts. After all, once you get ripped off you kind of learn, not to accept everything without at least a little bit of scrutiny. That explains why my Rolex hour hand fell off, and the back says India?
Lots of government jobs, lots of make work projects, life is way to complex NOB.




Happy Holidays.......
But that's just my opinion.....
The editorial , not the Holiday Greetings.

Fantasyland….not Disneyland.

We are visiting Fantasyland. Things seem so foreign, distant, like you are in a horrible nightmare.

Kind of reminds me of a introduction of Rod Serling's old production.....

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead — your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Just think of all the people who have no idea what the Twilight Zone was.

Well unfortunately the dimension is that of uncontrolled chaos.

Traffic, Graffiti, Sky-high prices, Homeless people, Empty deserted car lots, Tons of for sale signs.

On the other hand.....

People still are going out to eat, the restaurants no longer have waiting lines to get in, reservations are no longer needed at almost every place and real estate prices are down to what they should have been all along.

On the way back to Northern California, to visit friends for the holidays and to renew my California drivers license which for some reason I need to show up to do, well OK , it's been 10 years since I had to go to the DMV office.

The only thing that has changed there, is that the lines are bigger, the appointment times instead of a week are now over a month away, and me reading the distant eye chart was a chore this time.

For the first time in my life, I missed reading all the letters correctly on one of the lines.........

That hurt!

The hair turning from brown to shades of something, that's bearable. But the eye chart, that really did it.

I notice that I am walking around with my reading glasses a lot more than I use to.

Not good......

On the positive side, it is sunny during the days, but the last few days it has been hovering around low 20's at night.......

Man that's cold.......Especially when I look on to check the temperature in some of my preprogrammed weather locations on my Iphone.

Morela, 77 to a low of 49,

Key West 81 to a low of 75.

Mazatlan 82 dropping to a chilly 59

Guadalajara is the hot spot with 90 falling to 64 at night

And Don't forget Patzcuaro 83 to 43 at night.

The cold spot on my screen today is Santa Fe, New Mexico. T he high is 23 and it will only fall to 8 tonight........

Gotta Love Global Warming!

Well, there is some getting use to, and it is not easy to get use to life across the border.

The garbage can.......

I enjoy road trips, but for some reason, I turn into a pig. Or at least the car looks like the insides of a waste basket.

It took me 2 hours to clean up the car today, I find lots of stuff.

I could build a 8 by 10 deck outside on the wooden stir sticks that I found inside the car, the ones I take when I purchase my coffee.

I usually will add the sweeter in the store, but for some reason, take a few wooden stir sticks, "for the road"

What am I going to do with them? Who knows, it's the immigrant mentality genes that I was burdened with I guess.

There is a positive side to it,too.

I retrieved about 36 dollars of miscellaneous paper money, and a small almond can container of change that amounted to another 20 bucks or so.

So we can go to dinner with a few glasses of wine, with my new found riches.
I also had a large zip lock bag of artificial sweetener packets.

Why buy them when I can slip 3 or 4 into my pocket while adding a few to my coffee.
OK, maybe not 3 or 4 but 6 or 7.

I use them at home......kind of a reward for my allegiance to that particular coffee stop.
I have a lot of allegiances although.

I will never have to buy sweetener again. Not in this life anyway, as long as I indulge myself to a bold dark coffee now and then.
On the bad side, a few of those packages have given up their seams, and required a Dustbuster to visit a few of the cubbies that are in the car. I also found some Japanese Peanuts and a dozen or so Corn Nuts......

The Corn Nuts were stale.

Several interface cords for my Iphone, and earphones, charger cords and some cord for something I no longer own.
Lots of ATM receipts. Does anyone ever have to refer to those things?

I should just stop taking them, after all, what are you going to do, argue with the machine after it steals an extra peso or two?

I don't think so.

I hate the thought of trying to go to our bank, HSBC and try to explain that the machine shorted me a 500 peso note.

“Oh Yes Señior, we will look in to it”. (I don't have that much time to wait for that investigation....)

Also found were dozens of autopista receipts....one never knows when you need to prove that you paid at the last caseta.

Lots of dried up candies, a few petrified sticks of gum and a lot of dust, including pet hair from our dogs.

I was also looking for the screw that came out of one of my eyeglass frames.....(I kinda doubt that I will even see that one....)

Well at least I don't toss stuff out the window, I leave that to the locals to do that!

You may wonder why it takes me hours to do this.

Well every bit of paper or business card that I find, I will usually read over and decide if it really is worthy of the trash can or not.

Such thorough scrutiny takes time.

Oh, and I had a coffee during that time too.

Up against the wall............. you criminal!

One of the many things that I enjoy in life south of the border is the freedom. For some reason, there is more freedom to make an ass of your self here than NOB.

Up there , someone will protect you.
Or the ACLU will file a lawsuit seeing untold millions for making you feel bad, especially if you fail at something.

In Mexico life is filled with failure.
Life is also filled with success.
What a concept.

When I was growing up, I remember the Fuller Brush Man, coming to our door, ringing the bell and coming into the house, unfolding his specially designed suitcase, where he miraculously had hundreds of items to show my mother.

Well, to me a kid they looked like hundreds of items, there probably were only 30 or so.

Before he left, even if my mother would not purchase anything, he would always give her a gift or something. Usually it was a blond handled yellow round scrub brush.

The salesman would politely then pack his case and leave, maybe coming back in a year or so.
The only other people that would come to the door was the garbage man, who once a month would come and collect the money for the garbage service.

Today I read, on my online edition of USA Today that Door to Door Salesman are having the doors slammed in their face by municipalities enacting ordinances which will require background checks and permit fees .

The US Supreme Court has ruled that going door to door to communicate a message is a First Amendment right.......

One of the many nice things in Mexico are the door to door sales man. Updated to be the door to door salesman who drives a truck and actually delivers something to you.

There's the Gas man, there is the Knife Sharpener, There is the Fruit and Vegetable Truck, in some smaller communities I have seen a mobile Carneceria.

Don't for get the milkman and ice cream man.

But NOB they are harnessing door to door activities......

Pretty soon you will not be able to go next door for a cup of sugar.
Freedom slipping through the cracks.

What would Red Skelton do ?

Here little salamander.......

In Northern California, Sonoma County to be exact, The Wine country, my old stomping grounds. The local paper reports that streets are being closed in order to build ramps so that the Tiger Salamander can safely navigate in their habitat.

The streets will be closed until some time in early February.

This is being done as another "feel good" project and is being funded by who else, the taxpayer.

Mexico probably has had more animals run over, chopped up, fried, boiled and roasted than imaginable. But in in Northern California, money is being spent so that the salamander can survive.

And they say the US is broke.

Obviously not.

If you told the average person in Mexico that this was happening they would look at you like you were crazy.

And they are. With all the other important issues of the day, the money and resources are going to do this is beyond belief.

I wonder how they would taste in a stew or perhaps a taco?

Probably a cross between a baby seal or chicken.....

And life goes on.........

Some facts about Thanksgiving.....

Some of it useless.....

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Minnesota is the top turkey-producing state in America, with a planned production total of 52 million in 2009. Just six states—Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia, Missouri and Indiana—will probably produce two-thirds of the estimated 272 million birds that will be raised in the U.S. this year.

The National Turkey Federation estimated that 46 million turkeys—one fifth of the annual total of 240 million consumed in the United States in 2008—were eaten at Thanksgiving.

In a survey conducted by the National Turkey Federation, nearly 88 percent of Americans said they eat turkey at Thanksgiving. The average weight of turkeys purchased for Thanksgiving is 15 pounds, which means some 690 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the U.S. during Thanksgiving in 2008.

The cranberry is one of only three fruits—the others are the blueberry and the Concord grape—that are entirely native to North American soil, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest pumpkin pie ever baked weighed 2,020 pounds and measured just over 12 feet long. It was baked on October 8, 2005 by the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio, and included 900 pounds of pumpkin, 62 gallons of evaporated milk, 155 dozen eggs, 300 pounds of sugar, 3.5 pounds of salt, 7 pounds of cinnamon, 2 pounds of pumpkin spice and 250 pounds of crust.

Now cook the turkey, make the pie, consume a obscene amount of calories and promise to go on a diet after the 2nd piece of pie......

Yeah sure!

Remember that this day is one which we should observe more than just in November, we should be thankful through out the year. There is always something to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pepe La Fue

While on the road, we are forced to eat out. It has both benefits and drawbacks. The benefit is I don't have to cook.
The drawbacks are that the food is sometimes awful to passable and occasionally good.

Yes, I know you are saying, oh, poor boy.

Well you don't have to suffer as I do.

Last night in Ciudad Obregon, we went to a fairly nice place, not our usual Taco Tico place, we figured a nice quiet place with a bottle of some Spanish wine or maybe some good National wine an appetizer plate and a nice quiet dinner, enjoy a little time with La Senora.

Enter a middle age, no sorry, I am middle aged and she had at least 10 years on me, you know the kind, the one that you see in novellas, the 70 year old, rich mother, poofy gray blue hair, who is probably widowed after nagging the husband into the ground or he got shot for having one too many casa chicas.

Well the party sits down and all you can disern is that she either has not taken a bath or shower in awhile, (she is definitely not French) or needs to for some reason mask any fresh air around her or enjoys sensory deprivation of scent receptors in her nose or just thinks it's fashionable to douse herself with cheap perfume.

Ok, I don't know if it was cheap perfume or not, but it was STRONG.

Kind of overpowered any enjoyment of the dinner we had planned.

The wine tasted like lilac or something like that.

My Arrachera tasted like lilac or something like that

My wife's trout fillet tasted like lilac or something like that.

The doused madam was oblivious to the cloud of gas that surrounded her and her table along with half the dining room.

This is not uncommon of older ladies......

Do they not know how crappy that smells when one dab will do, instead they slop enough scents sufficient enough for all three floors of a New Orleans bordello?

(Not that I would know anything about that, I have just been told about things like that!)

Just my observation.....
We asked to have our dinner continue on the other side of the dining room.

It didn't seem to make that much difference.....our smell receptors were beyond resuscitation.

Next time back to TacoTico.

Filler' Up please.

Mid November we pack the car and trek away from the mountain trees for a bit, visit friends, get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving and spend some time with friends ,family before the Christmas rush, you know the drill.......

We start with the beach for a week, then the newly repaved roads.

It is amazing that in Mexico they are always working on the roads.  The Autopistas (toll roads) are in pretty decent shape, much better than north of the border.

Arizona, although cash strapped has a great highway and freeway system. During our last visit to Tucson and Phoenix, I commented to my wife the spotless condition of the interchanges, no garbage, graffiti or overgrown anything.

Meanwhile in my old native California, the roads are full of pot holes, graffiti adorns any vacant space of concrete and garbage is found anywhere your eyeball happens to rest.
Certain not as bad as many parts of Mexico, but still the contrast between California and Arizona are worth noting.

I wonder why?

In Mexico we have passed many new overpass projects which have been and are continually updated and remodeled. Look at Morelia for example. In the 15 or so years, they have redone the periferico and continue to add and work on it. They have improved the highway to the airport, they are currently redoing the road outside of Morelia which goes to Salimanca, and spend considerable time improving roads.

Look at Patzcuaro, the periferico which was once a bumpy horrible treck around town, now sports a 6 lane boulevard with stoplights and eliminated the topes, (well most of them) that added time and reduced your shock absorbers to useless hunks of metal.

The roads are certainly not pothole free, but they are extremely decent comparing to 10 years ago , and certain states up north. I don't hold too much hope for decent freeway maintenance in the states....Seems they have better places to spend money on...
that's another story!