Lynn grilled steak, lamb, and hot dogs for the whole family at a party thrown for me on our terrace. It was an amazing evening. Everyone sang “La mañanitas” before I blew out the candles on the cake at the right which is a mango cake, my favorite by far. The only way the party could have possibly been better is if Kelly and Christian would have been there. I am thankful to be here with my Mexican family and particularly thankful on my 69th birthday to have time with Grandma Conchita at this stage of our lives.
Lorena and I started in Genesis and have been reading through the Reina Valera 1960 version of the Spanish Bible together, two chapters at a time during the time we set aside for devotions on Wednesdays and Sundays. We are getting toward the end of Exodus and have been enjoying it immensely. We should have read straight through the Bible together a long time ago, but I guess better late than never. We want to kick up the number of days we do this, but we have not decided yet whether we want to use the other times for other parts of the Bible or topical studies. In that spirit, we read Psalm 37 last night. That Psalm is a true gift.
The plans for the house we hope to construct, God willing, came three weeks late, but very nicely the arrived the morning of my birthday. We love the plans. We are not going to do much celebrating today, but have plans for our Pad Thai cooking class on Friday, a big family blowout (not unlike those of Grandpa Milo) on Saturday with lots of meat (Cordero a la Griega, chuleton, Mexican hot dogs, etc.), and a visit to Aló Café early, maybe Sunday afternoon. We heard from both of the kids and lots of friends so it has been a very nice day so far!
Lorena bought tickets to a class on how to cook Chicken Pad Thai, Coconut coated shrimp with spicy mango sauce and papaya salad with cucumber. I am sure it is authentic because the instructor is from Mexico, exactly like all the Thai food chefs in America. The class sounds excellent. Everyone brings their own drinks and you can either eat the things you cook at the end of the class or you can take it home with you.
Lorena spent the night with Grandma Conchita last night so they could get up early to get ready for a bridal shower for the bride-to-be of one of Lorena’s youngest cousins. They had a great time, met some new people from the bride’s side of the family, saw Lorena’s Tío Abel, ate some good food, and are all a twitter about going to the wedding itself with the whole family, including Kelly and Christian over Thanksgiving weekend.
We now have a roof over parts of both the upper and lower terrace of the apartments. It is really nice, but that is not what this post is about. The post is about the working class area where we live and how it seemed like the whole neighborhood was involved in the installation of the roof. First, Milton (is that a Mexican name) the welder Lynn hired came over with his son and put up the framework with the help of one of Lynn’s regular employees, Rodolfo. He could not reach some of the higher stuff, so he went across the street to ask his friend, Jesus if he could borrow some scaffolding. Of course, Jesus brought that over and stuck around to help. Lynn was about two hours late with the actually roofing materia, so rather than go home and wait until he got here and then come back, they went over to the convenience store on the corner, bought some caguamas (Mexican slang–look it up), and brought the owner of the convenience store came along to join the fun. We all proceeded to talk about politics, religion, neighborhood drama and to berate Lynn while enjoying the caguamas while Lorena brought out a tub of refried beans, salsa, and a stack of tostadas for us to munch on. They all stuck around to finish the job when Lynn finally arrived. In the middle of all this, an older, retired neighbor who lives in the house with the green trees came over to the apartments to water OUR trees. There truly is community here–it is not all goodness and sunshine, but people do know and look out for each other in this neighborhood. I love Mexico.
I am profoundly less political this presidential election than I was during the last election in 2020 and I was profoundly less political in that election than the one previous to that. Lorena and I are watching the debate tonight, but for me, it is with a great deal of ambivalence. I am currently reading through the Old Testament of the Bible and it seems like we are in an era where the leadership of the USA is not dissimilar from the weak and evil kings of Judah and Israel. The political choice is a choice for the lesser of two evils. This is a time to focus on Christ. The culture at large is immersed in sin. Jeremiah and Elijah understood this. Part way into the debate, I am saddened by both sides. I am glad Jesus is King and God is the only true God. That is my politics today.
Christian’s birthday is past, but I have thought about it a lot of the last few days. It is a gift to have him as my son. It is not so much that he is so accomplished although few attain to the heights he has achieved at a young age (Summa Cum Laude Honors Applied Mathematics BS at 18, PhD in a VERY mathy aspect of Electrical Engineering–information theory, probability, and statistics–at age 23, 100% research appointment at MIT at 24, etc.), but that he is kind and not aggrandizing in the least. He got his PhD five years before I got mine and was instrumental in helping me with my publications, dissertation, and dissertation defense. He did stuff like help me get going on LaTeX, assure my equations were consistent, and all kinds of moral support. He attended both my dissertation defense and my graduation. The picture above was taken after my graduation last December. He always shows up. A gift.
One of the best days of my life was when Christian was born. He continues to be a gift that keeps on giving. It is hard to describe what has done, what he is doing, and who he has become. It is not necessarily talent and intelligence that got him to where he is, but attitude and work ethic. A book came out when Christian was 12 years old about doing hard things. I suppose the premise of the book was not so bad, but it did not seem like the two guys that wrote it had done anything that was truly hard. It was more about pushing an agenda, bragging about things just about anyone with a modicum of ability could do, and building a platform to pontificate. Christian actually DID hard things and he did them quietly in a way that contributed rather than sought self-aggrandization. He still operates that way. Few really knows the effort that was required to get to where he is and do what he does.
We got Christian a Garmin GPS smart watch for his birthday. It is about the exact opposite of the watch I probably would have guessed that he would pick, but after looking at it, I am amazed that he (again) made the perfect pick. I actually might get one of those the next time around. My Garmin Instinct is almost five years old now and going strong so I am not sure how soon that will be. I am excited to see how much he uses it. It pretty much changed the way I think about smart watches. I used it mainly as a GPS to track my exercise walks, but now I depend on the phone and message notifications that cause it to vibrate.
We are starting to figure out how to live here in Mexico. It is a lot different now than when Lorena lived her almost 32 years ago. Some of the infrastructure is a lot better than what we have in the states, but some of it is a lot worse. It has been a bigger change to move back into an apartment from a house than from the United States to Mexico–at least this part of Mexico. We are working with Lynn now to make a plan to get the house up on the hill in good enough shape for us to move up there so we can rent out the two (of six) apartments where we currently live. Our goal is to get there a week or two before Thanksgiving so we can be ready for the kids to come here with us. One of the parts that is almost no different is the availability of American chain restaurants–yesterday we ate at Shake Shake for lunch and then took Conchita and Lauro to supper at IHOP last night.
Coker & Co. of Granbury, Texas is close to breaking ground, God willing, on the house we hope to construct. We are working through the final design with Brad, the owner of the company. He is just amazing. We were very pleased with the design made by Larry, our designer, but Brad has added touches that will fundamentally improve the livability of the house. He made the pantry, living room, and laundry room bigger, added a sink to laundry room, added a closet to the office, and did it all without changing the footprint of the house. We are truly enjoying working through this process with him.
Lorena has been wanting to take more pottery classes since the time she took them almost twenty years ago at Linn-Benton Community College’s Corvallis campus. She found a place in a very fancy place in San Pedro with lots of other little shops around it and signed up for eight classes. She will be going there for three hours every Thursday she is in town. Today was her first day. There are three pottery wheels in a small workshop along with space for people to do other things. Today, there was a small group of woman doing sculptures at the sculpture table and two college girls working on the other two pottery wheels. Lorena says she loved it and cannot wait to go back.
I was asked to send a headshot for the updated website by the marketing team at Thrive Bioscience where I work. I have thought a lot about the fact that I am approaching 70 years old for a number of reasons, partly Biblical and partly that is when I will, God willing, start receiving social security. If I do not retire from full-time work at that point, just because of the nature of life, it should not be too much after that. The thing I noticed with this picture is that I am not only getting old, I am looking old. I embrace that. Since when I was in my mid-thirties, it slowly dawned on me that it is a gift to enjoy the age you are. And, since then, I have. I love being 68 for a few more weeks. It makes it so much more satisfying because Lorena still looks like a teenager.
Tío Lauro came over to the apartment last night so Conchita, Lorena, Lynn, and I could celebrate his birthday with him. We (again) cooked up a boatload of chuletón, ate way too much, sang La Mañanitas, and ate birthday cake. The apartment is perfect for entertaining small crowds inside and much larger groups out on the azotea. We are very grateful to be here now with people of such good will. We hope to do this as often as we can. Lauro is programmed to come spend the day with us next Saturday. I am hoping to take him up the hill to the remodel so we can see what progress has been made.
My University of Nebraska professor, Troy, just sent out his “first day of school” picture for his 26th year of school. Because of the advent of Artificial Intelligence, he decided he needed some formal education in computer and data science. He started an M.S. in Data Science about a year and a half ago and this is the last class of the first half of the program. He is picking up a ton of skills like Python, R, and a bunch of database and visualization stuff. It would not hurt me to take a few classes like that. I am sure I would enjoy them, but I am leaning toward something, maybe a little less practical and little more esoteric like something in Art, History, or Philosophy.
Lorena and I ran down to the Galería Mall in Monterrey to eat lunch at the SHAKE SHACK!!! It is just as good (the SAME) as in the U.S.A. There are actually three of them in the Monterrey metropolitan area. We are truly blessed.
Conchita, Lauro, Lorena, and I went into El Centrito de San Pedro Garza García today, had arrachera for lunch followed by coffee and a grocery shopping trip to Soriana. I decided to go home after that, but everyone else stayed to go to an evening street fair. They are still there having a great time, but I am glad I came home. What I though was a three hour even turns out was about a ten hour event (and that is ok!)!
We knew we needed to figure out how to get our prescription medications when we moved to Mexico and were pretty sure that was true for a lot of other things, too. The first thing we learned was that my prescription medications are just medications in Mexico, no prescription required. Then, we found out that the 5000 UI capsules of vitamin D3 and the vitamin K2 we could not seem to find anywhere online or in stores, was readily available just by asking the pharmacist where we got our medications to order them. The reality is that we have not find anything, so far, that we cannot get easily here in Monterrey.
Troy is out in the Sandhills of Nebraska again. I hope he views this as a major perk of his job. He sent this picture and several videos today. Imagine having to drive out their once every 4-5 months. And sometimes, he even gets to take his kids. I had no appreciation for that part of the world until I started my doctoral research which entailed taking pictures of the Platte River every fifteen minutes or so. The amount of wildlife, both birds and the four-footed kinds, was staggering. And the views, especially when appreciated over all the seasons, were breathtaking. The sad part is that I have never been there. I have only really just seen the pictures. The research we did was significant and I am glad for that, but I really hope I get to go there someday.
