setfreeinmexico.com

Getting ready to leave for Minnesota for the holidays kind of ‘crescendoed’ for Bruce and Mary. Especially for Mary as she coordinated their work schedule with cleaning their 6,000 square foot house and last minute x-mas shopping and packing and coming up with the lists for all the stuff they can’t easily get here. Join them as they are logging off work on x-mas eve day.

We’re working holiday shifts and Mary got off at 4 and I am just logging off at 6. It’s been a hellish day working our online moderation jobs. We all know that most posters do their damage from their workplace and my theory is that these are the poor slobs that didn’t get the day off and they are angry!

Our suite and our work area, poolside just outside our suite, look like a tornado hit. Our stuff is strewn all over, sort of staged for getting packed or hauled to storage, about 100 feet away in the media room closet. You see, when we vacate for the owners we have to make our suite available for their guests which means all of our stuff is out.

I start to freak as we need to be to the bus station for the 8:00pm to Cancun. Normally the buses run every hour around the clock but today this is the last one to Cancun where we fly out tomorrow morning. But Mary has a plan and I just follow orders and we are on the street leaving behind a spotless house (Mary even has fresh flowers for the owners) at 7:15pm. There should be plenty of time to catch a cab for the two mile ride to the bus station. But, there are no cabs, at least no empty cabs, and it seems that the only cabbies operating x-mas eve are by appointment only. Oh boy!

So we put it into high, speed walking with all our gear, about 75 pounds of stuff, in the 85 degree heat. We manage to get to the station with about 10 minutes to spare, soaked in sweat.

The 270P (about $22US each) 4 hour ADO bus ride is uneventful but we are glad that we know to pack warm clothes as these buses are always over air conditioned. If fact, I see as we reach the outskirts of Cancun that all the windows are fogged up with condensation, on the outside. The driver has to run his wipers, which is weird when it isn’t raining.

We debark and we start marching in the direction of where I think our Hotel Margarita is. We’d made online reservations for this $40/night hotel about a week ago. Well, Cancun must have been laid out by the same drunken Irishmen who did St. Paul because in about 3 blocks we are lost. We walk by a hopping bar and a friendly gringo tells us where to go (Mary loves that bit, “Now you can tell us where to go!”). We were actually pretty close and we find it about 2 blocks later. The only problem, and now it is 1 in the morning, it is dark and the sign says it is boarded up for renovations. What now?

Mary calls the Hotel Margarita’s number from her cell and is informed that we should go to the Radisson, as they will honor the reservation. Well…ok.

We hail a cab and a 40P ride later we are checking into a $120/night 5 star Radisson for 40 bucks. Works for me.

After winding down in the bar we hit the sack about 2 and we’re up early for the next stage of our trip. After a quick breakfast we grab a cab at the hotel staging area and take the 50P ride to the bus station for the shuttle to the airport, about a ½ hr away. But as we arrive at the station our cabby volunteers to take us all the way to the airport for a total of 160P. Well that’s a no brainer as the extra 110P is only 30 more than the shuttle bus for the two of us so we have a fun time practicing our Spanish and English riding in comfort to terminal three.

Our flights are all on time, even the connecting one from Houston to Minneapolis despite the storm there. Naturally we’re going to be treated to a good old fashioned MN winter storm on arrival. Joey, our youngest, with his bride Meryah pick us up in her dad’s Tahoe and we’re off to their townhouse in New Hope a northern suburb of the Twin Cities. We relax with beer and movies and Joey, thoughtful son that he is, supplies me with a premium Vodka (his traditional , if a little early this time, birthday gift) for my nightly martini. He even has a proper shaker and martini glass. Such a good son!

The next day is Joey and Meryah’s party. Pam, Meryah’s mom, is throwing a party for the newlyweds and has

flown in from SC for this celebration. We have a bit of running around to do which includes picking up Mary’s mom in Princeton and bringing her to Joey’s where family and close friends are congregating prior to the event. I drink a couple beers and chat with Mike, Meryah’s dad. Then we head to the restaurant/bar, a favorite of the kids and we find a lot of people already there in the party room that is reserved us.

The food is served buffet style and is great with plenty of fare even for the known vegans (Sammy, Helen, and Caleb) and it’s great fun meeting and renewing acquaintances with Meryah’s family. I am glad to see Meryah’s grandparents, Kathy and Dick, again. Dick is a retired police investigator turned author who writes murder mysteries, naturally,

and Kathy is an artist with the uncanny ability of reading people. She’ll meet you for the first time and after an engaging meet and greet she’ll say something like, “I’ll bet you’re a martial artist, I can tell by the way you move.” And she’ll be right. Fascinating people. But of course all the cool people are out in the smoking shack. This is where Mike shows me the cool trick of dipping the end of my cigar (I have a spare Cohiba genuine Cuban cigar for him, as well) in rum. Uhmmm, good! I meet a guy named “Pepper” an admitted republican posessing a laugh like a Hyena, which drives Joey crazy but the guy cracks me up, he along with Karen, his SO, I think, only she doesn’t seem to like him much, calling him a “tight ass” and such which automatically sets him to howling. My Cohiba Esplendidos are about a foot long, so I make several trips to

the smoke shack before the night is out.

The night winds down and our eldest, Sammy, who was chauffeured along with his fiancé Annah directly

from the airport to the party by his good friend Travis, is our sober driver for the ride to Harriet’s house in Princeton.  In fact Sammy has been sober his entire life. Good friends and family wonder how far back in the line that recessive gene resides.

Sunday, the 27^th is another party, at Harriet’s. As we missed out on the traditional x-mas eve, here, Harriet has ordered up another one for us and Sammy/Annah. Mary’s side of the family, all much better people than I am, gather, again. We manage to finish off a $71 beef roast (I think I have gone native, when it comes to food prices, $71 for a roast just blows me away) and we get caught up with all the nephews and nieces and grand nieces and grand nephew.

At the end of the day we borrow Harriet’s 97 Park Avenue with 48,000 miles and Sammy once again is sober cab and we head to Foley to stay with my mother, Margaret, for a few days. This will be the third bed in three nights for Mary and me.

We are greeted with hugs from ma and my sister Cheryl, a prof at the U of MO. It’s always fun to see Cheryl as she doesn’t cut me any slack when I get to BSing. Only problem is, she is heading back to Columbia early Tuesday so our time together is short.

Monday we both work our regular shifts from ma’s basement (like many of the posters we moderate) and in the evening we have plenty of errands. First on our list is a stop at CentraCare, the medical outfit that owns St. Cloud, our former home, to get my medical records released. That ends up being more of a process than it should be but the gal is nice. I want my records for Lynn, my brother Paul’s wife, an MD. We made a deal that we will trade out her medical counsel for my personal training. Then we’re off to meet with our new tenants, Jon and Rhonda at our old house, which we find to be decorated way more nicely than it ever was when we lived there. They had originally moved in under a sublet with our original tenant Patrick and now we are meeting them for the first time. They are a wonderful couple with two lively boys age 10 and 8, I’m guessing, with a baby boy to make three. They would love to buy the house but they understand that we won’t sell until the market comes back to where it was, minus the realtor’s fee, since a realtor won’t be necessary this time. We ink a 2 yr lease with them and then we’re off to Target to get all the crap, like nutritional supplements, that is either unavailable or hard to find in Mérida. Then we have dinner at Red Lobster and then we’re home in time to watch the Vikings lose to lowly Chicago, in overtime, on Monday night football.

Tuesday we work again and this evening we have my deceased brother Neil’s boys over for Mary’s famous porketta. Simon’s and Christina’s boy Jordan is a little over one and what a load, he’s got his Uncle Eli’s genes. Eli, at 6’1” and about 280 is slated to be the starting center next season for D2 U of M at Duluth, the 2008 National Champs. After dinner I take on Amos the youngest in a best of three chess match. We’d been playing online chess but then he couldn’t log in, forgetting his username or password or something. He promises to get another gmail account and we can commence again. As this is about the third time this has happened I tell him to tattoo his password on his forehead, in reverse, so he can read it.

Wednesday, after work, we head over to Kevin and Rosie’s for dinner. We pull up at the same time as our good friends and former back yard neighbors, Pete and Judy. It is great fun getting caught up with our good friends as we eat aplenty: fruit salad and a home made pizza with a crust so good that Mary just has to have

the recipe. I’m glad that we make the effort to keep up with Pete and Judy, we’re usually not very good at that and of course Kevin and Rosie are life-long friends, in fact they are scheduled to visit us for a record third time at the end of January.

Thursday, New Year’s Eve and my birthday (who has a better BD than me, the whole world celebrates and has the next day off to recuperate) we take our show back on the road to Princeton and we have a very relaxing and fun eve at Harriet’s place starting with a nice dinner out, courtesy Harriet, and then we have Mary’s best friend, Deb and our good friend Bonnie over to the house to party. We are impressed that Bonnie has been taking drumming lessons for a year and a half and participates in jams all over the place. We are pleasantly surprised that both of them are planning on traveling to NH for Sammy’s wedding. We party until nearly 2 in the morning, almost a record for these old farts.

Saturday Mary, Harriet and I head up to the family cabin on Captive Lake to prepare for hosting the kids, sans Sammy who is already winging back to NH, for a long weekend. The first order of business is to shovel the foot deep snow on the 100 foot long driveway as this is the first cabin visit of this winter. A dramatic rebuilding of this lake cabin has included winterizing and with the Fuego Fireplace I Installed 30 years ago it is a really cool place to spend a MN winter weekend. The kids, Helen/Caleb and Joey/Meryah make their way up and we party the whole weekend, playing games, sitting in front of the fireplace telling stories and watching movies. Mary’s sis Sue joins us Saturday and she and Helen, the two English degreed women dominate The Dark & Stormy Night game which we thought Helen would enjoy for a gift, but not this much. Caleb is strong as well at a game that you couldn’t pay me to play; I don’t need a game to demonstrate my lack of knowledge. But at least Mary and I dominate, well we win at least, a couple games of Trivial Pursuit.

Sunday we bid adieu to Helen and Caleb at half time of the Vikings/Giants game we watch at the Blue Goose while downing a couple pitchers of beer. In the evening we share a big bowl of popcorn as we watch Avatar on the downstairs TV. I had downloaded the movie in Mérida and jacked my computer into the TV via S-Cable. Great movie, I recommend it strongly. BTW: James Cameron is another Canadian. Do Canadians secretly control our entertainment industry? hmmm.

Monday Joey/Meryah and Mary, Harriet, and I caravan to Princeton. We have lunch at the Finish Line and then we see Joey and Meryah off.

Tuesday is getaway day and we’re up at 4:30am and down to Sue’s at 6. I drive us in Harriet’s Park Avenue to the airport and we have a tearful goodbye at Lindbergh International and after a non-eventful flight, with a layover in Houston, we find ourselves in Cancun again for the four hour bus-ride to Mérida and finally we are home again.

Whew!

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce apologizes for this 2300 word post and realizes most of you probably never got this far. But hopefully family and close friends got some entertainment from this traditional annual if wordy account. And be sure to click on those Google ads. After a year Bruce is looking to crack the $20 barrier. Hasta Pronto!

We got a Skype phone call from Joey, our youngest, Thursday evening, November 12^th this last fall and as much as we like shooting the breeze and getting caught up on his budding career at General Mills we were a little surprised to be hearing from him that particular evening. Typically we have a chat after every Vikings game kibitzing Childress’ idiocy in not being able to figure a way to capitalize on half the opposing defense keying on AP and praising our new hero Brett Favre, so we wondered what prompted the call. So when Joey said, “Well the main reason I called,” we kind of held our breath, “is that Meryah and I are getting married tomorrow.”

As Keanu would say, “Whoa!”

We quickly told Joey that we love Meryah a lot, in fact, as we reminded him, if for some reason it came down to a choice between him and Meryah, we’d pick Meryah. We’re delighted with the news, we tell him, but why now?

Now to give a little context, it must be shared that our daughter, Helen, the middle one, had announced her engagement, last April, to Caleb, with their hippie wedding scheduled for this coming June, and our oldest Sammy had announced his engagement to Annah, last August, with their big Boston wedding scheduled for this coming August. And when Mary had eyed Joey with this ammo, in regards to their five year relationship, Joey had simply shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me, there’s nothing happening with us anytime soon!”

We reminded him of this (in his mind) badge of honor that he’d been sporting for close friends and family, to be told, “Well, things have changed.”

Joey went on to explain that Meryah’s recent malaise and discomfort edging into pain was diagnosed as a gall bladder problem that likely would involve surgery. They had done their research and found that said surgery would run around $12,000 and like millions of Americans, although gainfully employed as a pre-school teacher, she did not have health insurance. Joey, on the other hand, employed by a fortune 500 company has the gold standard in all benefits including health care.

We hear further that Joey had done his research with HR and with a little bit of paperwork and a very small bump in monthly pmts, Meryah would be covered the instant they are pronounced husband and wife.

Happy to admit that he is lucky to have found Meryah and luckier yet that she puts up with him and that their marriage was an inevitability, Joey does sum up the current situation by saying, “All I know is that if we lived in Canada, we sure as hell wouldn’t be getting married right now.” Ahh Joey, you’re such a romantic.

So, the next day, at 3:00pm, Friday the 13^th, 2009, Joey and Meryah took a half day off from work and got married in Hennepin County Courthouse. The honorable Judge Kline said, “This is a nice way to cap a week of putting bad guys in jail.”

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. How about that? Bruce and Mary’s three kids, in reverse order, are all getting married in the space of less than a year, que cosa! Stay tuned as Bruce pens his Holiday 2009 post listing most and least favorites, with Joey and Meryah’s party being at the top of the list. Hasta pronto!