Arco Norte Part Two

It appears that the Mexican SCT or Secretariat Of Communications and Transportation, has kept their promise to complete the Arco Norte by the end of July. This new system of modern high speed highways will allow a traveler to bypass Mexico City to the North. We can now exit Mex 57D just south of Queretaro and join Mex 150D just west of Puebla. All information is in Spanish of course but it appears that the highway is 223 Km long and has twelve toll plazas. Toll for the section from Queretaro to Puebla will be about $50 - $60 USA which, believe me, is cheap.

The Government has placed a map on the Internet here: Link The dots in yellow are working Casitas (toll booths) and the ones in gray are still under construction. This site is in Spanish but a I did a little digging around in it and came up with this Google Map complete with a short video of the route. Now if I could only figure out how to save the map...

The map is not very detailed but gives the general idea. The highway also extends past Queretaro to the West to bypass the awkward area around Toluca that we found our way through last year, which you can read about here.

Here is a link to my previous post on Arco Norte: Link

Birthday Party!

Saturday night was Norma's Birthday Party. Brooks and Linda drove up from Victoria with Jayde and Sierrah and many friends dropped over. Jayde counted 27 guests throughout the evening. It was a beautiful day with the temperature hovering around 30 degrees until the sun went down. We then lit up the patio heater that Brooks and Linda bought us a few weeks ago and it took enough of the chill off that everything was very comfortable. It is so nice to have a large outside area where everyone can relax and visit. It was a great time! Thanks everyone! I will be eating leftovers for a couple of days.

That is Norma at the bottom right getting her cake served by Jayde and Sierrah (with Linda the cake baker watching).

Busy As A Bee

Everybody's working in the garden!


Click on the photo for a closeup.

Not bad but it would have been a lot better if I had used my tripod! But then again, the bee might not have had enough patience for that.

Happy Days Are Here Again!

The optimists at the Bank Of Canada have declared an end to the recession in Quarter 3! The TSE rose sharply by 243 points today on this news. They also declared that the recovery in Canada would be faster and higher than in it would be in the USA. This news also caused the Loonie to rise to $.92 to the USA dollar. What does this mean? It means we are going to have a really good time in Mexico this winter. It means I will be able to take some profits out of the market soon and pay off my line of credit where the new motorhome has been sitting for 16 months. It means we can replace the stove and dishwasher. Happy days are here again!

Now we wait to see if they know what they are talking about.



And in the meantime.... Una cerveza, por favor..

White Rose

Norma has been unsuccessful in producing white roses this year This one is from the archives but has a timeless beauty. It was taken with my old Nikon FE2 and Tokina Macro lens on Fuji Velvia film (remember film?) and scanned into a TIFF file. If you click on it you will see a few dust specs introduced in the scanning process. Things are so much easier now that we are in the digital age!

Merida Flowers Show

Our friends Jonna and Mimi in Merida have been posting some fantastic shots of their lilies and orchids on their Blog. They had some water gardens and planters included in their house design and the results are nothing less than spectacular! Do yourself a favor and have a look at their site.

Jonna's photography has spurred me on to take more photos of my own in the garden.

Patio Inspiration

We used to have a six person hot tub. Back in the early 90's when it was new we used it a lot, at least three or four times a week, but as the years passed it saw less and less use. At the end it got to the point that it hardly ever got used. The granddaughters liked it when they visited in the summer but other than that Norma and I only used it a couple of times a year. It got hard to justify the waste of electricity and the high chemical costs to keep it going, never mind the maintenance. When the pump failed a year ago and we were given a $1000 estimate for repairs it was just the excuse we were looking for and we had it hauled away to the dump. This gave us the use of the 12 X 12 cement deck it was sitting on. We have since built a pergola over this deck and it is where my Yucatan hammock swings.

This left the upper patio with the old hot tub wiring sticking up out of the cement. I could not think of anything to do with it so it just stayed there waiting to be tripped over. Yesterday inspiration struck. I made a box 17 inches high out of left over cedar fence boards and wired in a patio light, switch and outlet. It is the perfect height for my glass of red wine to rest on between sips! Life Is Good!

Roses

I posted these with Picasa rather than with Windows Live Writer. Picasa allows a much larger file to be uploaded and you can see the results of this if you click on one of the flowers. The yellow rose works best.

Both photos were taken with my Nikon D70S and Tamron 90mm "True" Macro lens.

A Great Week

Finally! A great week in the markets. Two more weeks like the last one will pay for my winter in Mexico! My net worth chart is actually heading north for a change. Some day it might actually get back to where it was when all this started. So, have you got that Mr. Dow and Mr. TSE? Two more great weeks! I would even settle for ten more good weeks. Just make sure you finance my winter.

I have a prediction, actually two. One, the market will continue it’s upward trend and the third quarter will be looked back on as the start of the 2009 recovery. Two, what we are seeing now is yet another Dead Cat Bounce and as soon as the Bears come to their senses the market will take another plunge in it's continuing search for the bottom.

No matter which of these scenarios shows itself to be true, I will be able to say I am correct half the time which is better than 90% of the so-called advisers these days. Either way, Quicken looks pretty good and has stopped giving me dire warnings of my vanishing net worth. For now, Life Is Good!

Eyeballs and Stuff

When I bought my glasses in Algodones, Mexico last November they did a test that checked the pressure inside my eyeballs by blowing a puff of air at my eye and measuring the amount of deflection. After doing the test he told me to relax a bit and walk around. He then re-did the test and told me that he detected a "pequeño problema", a small problem. The pressure in one eye was higher than the other. He said it was not something to worry about but I should have it checked when I got home.

A couple of weeks ago I made an appointment with my local optometrist. She went through a large battery of tests, including the same one they did in Mexico. Another test was a Fields Test where you look into a box and press a button every time you see a flash that moves around the field of vision. She told me I had some minor sun damage and that the pressure was the same in both eyes but at the top of the “normal” range. I had also come close to failing the Fields Test with my left eye.

While I was there she inspected my glasses and said, “Did you buy these in Mexico?”. “Si, Mexico”, I said. She asked how much I paid and I told her $200 including the exam. She said she could not even buy the glass for that. She said they were very good quality but had no coating and that next time I should get them coated.

She then referred me to a specialist in Courtenay. This, of course, does not happen right away. They make you sweat it out for two weeks, time which I spent shopping for white canes on eBay.

The other day I drove down to Courtenay where they did the pressure thing with the blast of wind again and then did the same test with a different machine that actually pushes on the eyeball! They gave me the Fields Test again only with a much fancier machine. When they were done she told me she would send the results back to my doctor but not to expect a call from her. I guess she was telling me that I had passed! I am going to have to start wearing sun glasses to prevent further sun damage but otherwise I got a clean bill of eyeball health! Life Is Good!