Merida en Domingo
Greetings, loyal reader. Strap yourself in because Bruce is going to cover a lot of ground in this post as he is trying to make good on his original promise of getting this blog up to real time.
The summer passes like it does in the old movies when they show the days flying off the calendar. Our daily routine starts with Mary’s colorful breakfast of fruits and avocados, and of course for me, sardines for dessert. Then I take a look at my emails which include an average of 8-10 from Jana of Mérida Verde collaborating with me on our Living In Mérida fundraising, book writing project. Mary settles into her class prep for her English classes at CIS and I get to work on the book. On the typical day we would knock off for happy hour at 5. Then Mary would proceed to thrash me in dominoes, our game being Mexican Train. But she still holds the record for most points in one hand – 301. That was lots of dots.
We did get out and about, as well. We almost always did the Mérida en Domingo stuff, the Sunday celebrations of food and music, along with colorful vendors in la Plaza Grande. And our Friday night happy hours poolside at our crazy Canadian friends Jerry’s and Jasmine’s house became a tradition. Legally Blondes movie download
Settling into our new part of town, we checked out the local bars settling on El Arco for ours because litros, liters, of Superior beer were only 20P, about 2 bucks! And their botanas, free appetizers, were pretty good. We enjoyed sitting in the back garden area. We checked out all the different cocinas economicas, economic kitchens – little cafes that open up onto the sidewalk, in our new neighborhood. We settled on Luis’ Loncheria. We’d bring our own bottles of water and get stuffed on very good, home-made Yucatecan cuisine for 50P total.
With the help of Sharon’s mapa de rutas de autobuses, bus route map, we explored the vast Mérida bus system, which we employed frequently. Sometimes, if we found ourselves on the wrong bus, and we didn’t care about the time, we’d just ride it the entire route back to where we started. This is not a bad way to get a tour of various parts of this city of one million souls, for only 5P. Special movie
Mary’s teaching at CIS was not for pay, as neither of us has a working visa. We have the FM3 rentista, retiree, visas. So she did trade-outs for Spanish classes for the both of us. I must be frank, I hated those classes. Quite often it would be just the two of us and the patient teacher would tailor the classes to Mary’s expertise. Considering Mary’s level of competency is nearly conversational and mine is “Una mas cerveza, por favor” I just dreaded those classes. They were two hours of sweating blood for me, I felt like my brain would explode like the aliens in Mars Attacks.
My personal training experiences were gratifying. I’d signed up a 60ish gay Canadian couple, Rich and Les and I trained them one on two (sorry about that) and I also had Tess, an elegant lady in her late sixties, originally from NYC. I would bus to the gym MWF, get my workout in and then train my boys first and then Tess. This worked out pretty slick. But the pay sucked. Fitness down here is upside down from my experiences back in MN. In St. Cloud, MN, a Gold’s Gym membership could be had for as little as $25 per month. Here in Mérida, memberships in a modern gym run about $50 to $220US per month. This did not impact us as I had privileges for Mary and me at my gym, Pure Fitness, but where the irony comes in is that back in MN I charged $75 per hour. Here in Merida, the most I can get away with is 100P for one on one and 150P for one on two, paid in cash. But with the book project I had all the workload I wanted, anyhow.
A Nightmare on Elm Street rip
The book project evolved into an all-consuming monster by the time the deadline approached. After several meetings with Jana we had selected all our chapter headings and invited a couple experts outside our group to write the Gardening, Colonias of Mérida, and Wine chapters. And Jana, a fine writer, wrote several of the chapters, but all the writing flowed through me so that the book would have a consistent voice. In the actual doing of it, we found that we lifted very little (with permission) from Jane’s Living in San Miguel. Consequently, this project turned into way more work than anyone anticipated. But some chapters really required little writing, simply an intro to the subject. An example would be the Health and Wellness chapter. I wrote the one paragraph intro and then what we needed was the contact info for all the hospitals and clinics and we needed expat recommended docs, specialists, dentists, chiropractors, etc. The way it worked, I emailed Jana my chapter intro. She would in turn send out my intro to all 30-some members with a plea for the contact info. I would take this info and put it into a consistent format and edit accompanying blurbs. Then I would do another rewrite for Jana’s approval and if we were both happy with the chapter, we would put it to bed.
As with any group project it’s always just a handful of members who do all the work. In this case it was Laurie who did the most. Laurie, a tall, attractive 50-something woman, came to Mérida as a college student on a study abroad program. She fell in love with a local and never left, much to the consternation of her folks, I’m sure. Laurie gave us a ton of info in all areas, but she would do them in the form of sporadic “brain dumps”, massive amounts of info that I would first have to categorize and then file for current or later formatting and inclusion.
By mid-June it became apparent that we would not get enough contact info from our group. This motivated Jana to explore a partnership with Brazos Abiertos
, an AIDS non-profit based out of Houston but with an outreach program here in Yucatan. An agreement was struck and their info began to flow in.
A Merry Little Christmas
In mid-July Jana and I met for a working lunch at La Villa Maria, a classy restaurant on Calle 59. Among other things, we discussed a deadline for the project. We both agreed that we wanted the book on the market for the holidays and we guessed that a mid-September date would be necessary for this to happen. Jana said she would schedule a meeting with Yucatan Today to discuss a quote for printing and a timeline. At this point we both agreed again that, if need be, we’d do a “down and dirty” first edition if that is what it would take to make deadline.
A week later we met with young Andrea, the 30 something GM and daughter of the founder of Yucatan Today, the top tourist publication of the Yucatan and the number one tourist website in all of México. Andrea, 6’ tall and stunning, of both gringo and Latin blood, and completely bi-lingual, is extraordinarily talented and with the help of her editor Juanita, a 50 year old Canadian, we were walked through the entire process and given a vision for the book, in printed form. Andrea was already somewhat familiar with the project as her American mother was a member of the group. Within a couple days they gave us an extremely competitive quote with a September 17th deadline to make the holiday market. Jana gave them the go ahead.
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Now it was the book, day and night. It became all consuming in late August when Mary went home for a family fix; she’d been really missing the kids. Then I spent all my waking hours, outside of the personal training, on the book. Jana, even with her incredible social calendar, devoted herself to the project. It was an odd arrangement working with Jana in that her most productive time was from 10pm or so until maybe 4 or 5am. My day commenced at 6-7am. Consequently we almost never communicated in real time. At this point, with Mary gone, I’d work well into the night and Jana would work through the night. Consequently, every morning, I would wince and look through my fingers at the 10 or so emails of no holds barred critique from Jana. I actually used this to my advantage in pushing through the real estate chapter. This was one of the most important and one of the last chapters to be written. After nagging Jana about this for some time, I did a little bit of googling and wrote the first draft. It worked like a charm. Please understand that I know little about real estate in the US and nothing about it, in Mexico. Jana has been involved in several real estate transactions, here in Merida. That next morning I got a scathing critique of my first draft. After a few more volleys, we put the chapter to bed.
Sharon came back to reclaim her house at the end of August for her fall semester teaching duties. Jana, to keep my focus on the book, and maybe out of kindness, offered for our temporary residence, her other house which they had been renting as a vacation property. We moved the whole six blocks to this romantic west coast style house, complete with pool and gardens, and set up shop. When Jana upgraded her computer she generously gave Mary her old IBM laptop and I put her to work editing and proofing. buy Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
I Spy the movie
On the eve of our deadline, I got two brain dumps (one from Laurie) and a request to rewrite a chapter from Jana. She pretended as if she had never been involved with “putting it to bed”. Amidst the most profanity filled night of my life we got the thing done. Accompanied by Jana, we presented the CD to Andrea and Juanita at their Yucatan Today offices at 2:00pm September 17, 2008, right on deadline.
Thanks for visiting, gentle reader. Do you think Bruce and Mary’s part in the book project is done now? Not hardly. Please tune in again soon, as this blog hurdles forward in time to the present. As usual Bruce appreciates any and all commentary. Hasta luego! Stealing Beauty
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