"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Month: November 2024

Cabinet doors and neighbors

Lynn contracted with our neighbors, Richie and Chuy to install the doors on the cabinets below the kitchen counters in our apartment. They did a great job. Richie introduced himself to me as “Richie” and now everyone in the neighborhood calls him “Richie the gringo” and laughs. Before that, they called him Ricardo and think that Richie sounds extremely pretentious. Actually, it is kind of not Richie’s fault because he spends a lot of time building houses up in the States and that is what they call him there. I LOVE this neighborhood.

Missing Warren

Election time and Thanksgiving are two of the times my now passed on friend Warren Bone and I talked. Maybe it is the time of year or maybe I am just getting old and nostalgic, but I have been thinking about him a lot the last few weeks. This picture was taken on a sloop in a bay on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I hope to see him again someday.

2024 USA Presidential Election

I am grateful for my family. Grandma Conchita and Tío Lynn bought a steak and are bringing it over to grill and listen to the election results. We are ALL Trumpistas tonight! The dynamic down here in Mexico is VERY interesting. With Trump putting pressure on Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum to stop the human and drug trafficking of the cartels or he will impose huge tariffs on Mexican imports, she is in a really tight spot because no one has a lot of control over the cartel. If the tariffs don’t work Trump says he will send the Marines which changes the equation dramatically. Interesting times.

Helping a PhD student

I spent a few hours this evening running some measurements on images captured by a PhD student as University of Kansas using the GRIME2 software advanced during my doctoral research at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She did a great job gathering the images. I actually acknowledged her in my dissertation defense and used a couple of picture of wildlife (bison and deer) that wandered in front of her camera during the course of her research. It truly is a joy to be part of this greater community of Natural Resource Sciences research in the Midwest–could not find a nicer group of people anywhere. Jessica plans to use these results in one of the chapters of her dissertation.

Hanging out with family

One of the nicest things about living here in San Pedro is the opportunity we have had to just hang out with Lorena’s family. The one’s we see the most are Grandma Conchita and Tío Lynn with Tío Lauro a close third. We now have a couple of really nice places to hang out–the living room of our apartment and, when the weather is nice, the main terrace where Lynn usually grills us something. It is amazing that we are now in November and the weather is still just amazing. It is currently 83° and is expected to drop to 73° at about dinner time.

The entire apartment building is really taking shape. We really could be at the point where we need to move out from the apartments and up the hill to our house remodel so that Lynn can rent out what where we are living now. We have been accumulating all the little things needed to just live daily life like an electric tea kettle, art (mostly from Tío Lauro), house plants, a small oven (no of the apartments have one) which also serves as an air fryer, etc., etc.. We have never had an air fryer before and we are honestly amazed by the thing. We are getting to like the neighbors so much here that is hard to think of moving. We are not sure if the culture of the neighborhood will be as friendly, but this is Mexico so it probably will be.

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