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Introducing Samuel and Annah Kelley

Bruce and Mary are leaving for Boston where they will marry off their eldest, Sammy, to the lovely Annah, completing the wedding trifecta: Three kids married off in 9 months. Not much of a feat when you think of Seven Daughters, Seven Sons, but they are pretty tickled with it. Please join them on this trip. Oh, and the usual reminder that if you are an email recipient of this post and would like to go to Bruce’s site to read this, simply click here.

The alarm goes off at 4:45am and we kick into gear as our favorite one-armed cabbie, Roberto, will be arriving shortly. He whisks us to the tiny, two gate, Merida International Airport (MID) and the next thing you know we’re in the air and on our way to Houston for the layover and then onto Boston’s Logan International which we find to be a much smaller airport than we expected but then there isn’t a lot of room right there, nearly on the harbor.

We claim our luggage and make our way to passenger pickup and after just a couple minutes we spot Sam in his two tone (mostly white with a rusty bullseye on the roof) Chevy Lumina making just his second round of the pickup loop.

“You were right Sammy, pretty easy to spot.” “I didn’t think you’d have a problem, pops.” There is a heat wave in Boston right now, we can discern no difference from what we had just left in Merida. But it’s going to get warmer yet. Sammy says, “Sorry guys but the a/c doesn’t work and” Mary interrupts, “That’s okay, Sammy were used to it.” Sammy finishes, “and my car has been overheating a little so I have to put the heat on to keep her cooled down, at least til we’re out of the city.” I proudly pat him on the shoulder, “Glad you know that trick, Sammy.” as he maneuvers through rush hour Boston and finally out in the clear to Dover, NH, where Sammy and Annah live in a brand new house.

Annah on Vocals and Guitar, In the Living Room

Annah greets us in the driveway of their Cape Cod home which is snuggled into a very quiet neighborhood and we haul our luggage in. Once again I am cursing our huge unwieldy new blue bag. Because it is such a monster we always over pack it. At check-in, while the Continental guy was processing our gate passes, I stood close to it and surreptitiously tugged up on a strap, successfully getting the weight down to 49# when he finally took a look. Anyhow, we haul our luggage upstairs and that’s when Sammy and I get into an argument. Because all they have is an air mattress in the spare bedroom he insists that we stay in the master. I end it by saying, “It’s a helluva offer Sammy, but no way, no how, we ain’t taking your bedroom and I’ll tell you something else, when you two come to visit us, you ain’t getting our master either, so that’s it.” And you know what, that airbed is pretty damn comfortable the whole week plus that we sleep on it.

After chowing down some damn good vegan food (sorry cannot tell you what it was) we relax in their living room and Annah entertains us for a couple hours playing guitar and singing. We had heard that she was musical but we are enthralled, her voice reminds me of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Sammy digs out a ream of her sheet music and I start going through it making requests. It is great fun.

The next day is a big one, we’re meeting the Moynihans – for the very first time! Sammy drives us to the wealthy suburb (the Edina or St. Louis Park of Minneapolis) of Wellesley and to the Wellesley Country Club, one of those $40,000/yr joints and that doesn’t count the monthly maintenance fee that has the members scrambling to treat their extended family to brunch the last Sunday of every month. Annah’s mom Kathy works there which is why it is available to us and when Patrick, a very fit twin to the late Ted Kennedy, arrives at Kathy’s station with the advertised, “How aaah ya?” we are off on the tour and it is impressive. We take Kathy’s car to the Henderson House, an old mansion maintained by Northeastern University. It is a lovely somewhat secluded massive stone block building with a staff and it is absolutely perfect with an outdoor venue that can easily handle this size wedding. Ironically Patrick had never heard of this facility but when he was sharing his ideas for wedding venues with a close friend. His buddy said, “Well how about the Henderson House?” “The Henderson House, never heard of it.” “Well you are a Northeastern U alumni right? They own it and it’s available to alumni for whatever you want it for!”

Then we’re off for a tour of Boston by car as we make our way by Fenway which you can spot from afar, by the famous Citgo sign, to

Kelleys and Moynihans Next to "Big Dig" Testimonial Girder

the wharf where we stop for lunch at the Venezia restaurant. Then it’s to the heart of downtown for a walking tour, and who better to give us a tour of the heart of Boston than Patrick Moynihan, former Sec of Transportation and MTA head. We take a portion of the

Paul Revere's Grave

Freedom Trail, seeing Paul Revere’s grave (lived into his 80s!), the Old South Meeting Hall, the South Church, Faneuil Hall, and many more historical sites too numerous to mention here. We cap it with our first, country bumpkins that we are, subway ride. We’re on our way to Fenway for a Bosox/Indians tilt. At the gate Patrick divvies up the tix and we and the kids are in the first deck, excellent seats about 20 rows up from the third base dugout. I look at the tix, $47. Patrick and Kathy are up on the third deck (not able to get six seats together) with the thought that we would move around as the game progressed. After the 4th inning they come down and there are some empty seats available by Sammy and Annah for them, so we can all sit together, but they tell us that we really should check out these upper deck seats, it’s really breezy and cool up there. We’ll I’m thinking I’m in these great first deck seats, why would I want to go up there but finally Mary convinces me to go as Patrick’s seat down here is somewhat obscured by a girder (this ball park is really well maintained, but some things that the new parks don’t tolerate, obstructing girders, are part of the character of these old masterpieces). We make our way up through security (?) to the “Pavilion” and wow. Our oversized seats are right on top of the action and we have our own beer vendor, food stand, and bathrooms just steps away and the section just in front of us has their own servers with portable credit card processors. It is baseball heaven at Fenway. I look at the tix, $87. And Patrick simply said it was cooler up here. After the Bosox 6-1 victory we head back on the subway and to the parking lot and then onto the Wellesley Club where Sammy’s car is parked, taking the scenic route along the Charles river. And it is Harvard everywhere, I had no idea the campus is so extensive, and I just love hearing Bostonians say “Haaavaaahd”.

Mary, Sammy, Annah in the Firetower

Friday we have the kids all to ourselves and we start the day off with a tour of Dover and then to an old firetower on the edge of town. What a view! We can see the White mountains to the west and all around us is thick forest with only the downtown of Dover cut out of the greenery. Sam points to other nearby towns but they are concealed by the forest. We drive back into Dover and we start a walk, going by the huge brick (is every structure built of brick out here?) building, originally a mill, on the river when my new sandal blows out. All the straps, one by one, each step I take, pull away from the sole and I am crippled. So we abbreviate the walk to a short stroll into Kelley’s Row (think we’d miss that?!) and take up a table on the patio overlooking the river. We order up some mighty tasty microbrews and I get into story telling mode, boring the crap out of the kids but one story Sammy has not heard before (that’s rare) that he finds interesting is the story of how, when the kids were small, we financed a new $200 freezer purchased at Wedum’s Supply through Wedum’s Credit and

Our Kind of Place

made monthly payments for a year. Funny from my generation to that of my folks, not a lot of changes, but from our generation to our kids, lots of changes.

We head across the street to a Chinese restaurant and I have sushi, Mackerel in this case, for the first time and I try some Sake, again for the first time. I am glad to have Sammy and Annah’s expertise in my ordering, they are quite familiar with this place as they have many vegan offerings. I find, as I expected that I love Sushi, the Sake – not so much.

Back home, Sammy and I face off in chess. We’d been playing online where he has absolutely dominated me so I can tell that he has a lot of things on his mind when I beat him the first game but that was it for me. At least I got one out of what I hope becomes a regular home and home series.

Saturday is BBQ day with the Moynihans and Sammy, Annah and Mary are busy all day with the vegan components of the meal. Patrick, Kathy and sisters Sarah and Kerry arrive about 4. Patrick has a for-meat-only BBQ grille house gift that he just picked up at Wal-mart on the way here and we break it in with a few Bud Lights before we think about anything more strenuous.

Annah’s sisters are a delight! Kerry is just back from Costa Rica and Sarah is just settling into a new place and job in DC. After hearing their stories, Patrick and I have to tell a few of our, “Back in my Day” stories, which seems to be the signal to pack it up and head on out because we are going to Portsmouth to see the play Peter Pan, which Annah’s brother John is producing. We find a place to park

Me, John, Kathy, Annah, Sam, Sarah, Kerry, Pat at the Play

in this very cool port city and make our way to the site, right on the water. We are shown to our tables designated “Kenickie”. I find that John was quite acclaimed for playing that part in a prior play. John comes over and we are introduced and he is a little out of breath but he is one of those kids that you instantly like. He is happy to tell us that the “good” Peter Pan is playing the part as two women trade off the Pan and Hook roles and John is right as this Pan is very good with the wire work. We sneak beers from a basket we brought in. I’m not much of a play guy but this is a lot of fun.

Sunday is golf and Porketta day at the Moynihans. We stop on the way to pick up the pork loin and then to Tuttles, the oldest family farm in America (sadly on the market) for cobs of corn and other assorted goodies and then on to the Moynihan’s in the Boston suburb of Natick. We are greeted warmly and we have a few beers to prime our swings and then us guys head to the course right in Patrick and Kathy’s back yard (well there’s a little copse of woods in between) and get to golfing. Mike, Pat’s best friend, a quiet, funny guy joins us and it is a hoot to hear him give Patrick crap and it works as lefty Sammy with his patented grass cutting line drives beats us both. We don’t even ask Mike his score as he is in a different league from us duffers.

Back at the house we have some beers on the deck as the women prepare the dining room for Mary’s Porketta the aroma of which is wafting around the house. This is a very impressive house without being at all ostentatious.

Dinner is a hoot as the girls love keeping their dad on his toes and Pat relishes every opportunity to defend himself. Kathy’s folks are there as well, Kaye and John. Kaye is one of the finest conversationalists (a lost art, in my mind) that I have ever met and she is thrilled that Annah is taking the surname Kelley as that is her maiden name, and it’s even spelled the right way, with two Es!

Monday through Wednesday are work days for us at Sammy and Annah’s although Annah is in Natick with her folks working on wedding stuff. Wednesday is also when everyone is coming in. But Sammy gets a call from Joey and storms have canceled his group’s (Joey, Meryah, Helen, and my Mom) early morning flight and it’s been rescheduled to early-evening. Then Sammy hears from our other son Anton (practically grew up with the Kelley kids) and his Mpls flight was also canceled but he was able to rebook and fly out early anyhow, and he tells of our friends Ike and son Karl who drove the 60 miles from our little home town of Princeton without doing the due diligence of checking flight status and are rewarded with nearly instantaneous re-booking on the same flight as Anton. Sammy is thoughtful enough to text Joey of this with Anton, Ike, and Karl now in the air and the Joey’s responding string of four lettered words is pretty impressive, to say the least. “I guess he didn’t really need to know that.” Sammy says.

Sammy picks up Anton at the bus depot in the early afternoon. They pick up long-time friend Pete later, and Annah arrives shortly after. We all go for dinner at a really cool place, Portsmouth Brewery in downtown Portsmouth, and I am talked into a “rack” of beer, their 8 most popular microbrews in 3 oz or so glasses on a wooden rack with the name of each engraved on the rack. I like every one. The food is great as well but the company even better as we talk old times.

Back home we kill time on the deck watching the Twins on TV waiting for Joey and the gang to finally arrive. Last we heard they had been delayed another couple of hours and we don’t expect them until midnight or so. Sammy and Annah bustle about the house trying to find places for a total of 8 guests to sleep and do a remarkable job of it. Finally Joey, his wife Meryah, our daughter Helen, and my mom, Margaret arrive and we hear about their awful day of travel, courtesy TransAir, which adds insult to injury by losing all their luggage. We all toast TransAir, several times, and then off to our beds and couches.

John, Pete, Sammy, and Joey Warming Up for the Stag Party

Everyone is moving pretty slowly this Thursday morning but as soon as Annah’s brother John shows up we start drinking beer. I am pretty sure it is past noon. It’s a laugh fest as the boys start doing lines from movies and plays. John and Anton with their stage experience are really hamming it up.

Well finally it is time for the boys to head out for the big stag party. Now if you’re wondering what a straight arrow, non-drinking vegan does for his stag party (thanks to best man Joey and John’s planning) it is this: Whiffle Ball, Dodge Ball, and Bowling. Oh my!

It’s Friday, tux, check into hotel, and groom’s dinner day, so we’re all off pretty early for our appointment at the Men’s Wearhouse just up the street from our hotel, the Crowne Plaza, which we find to be very nice (Kathy Moynihan did a heck of a job to get a group rate of only $89 per night!). We all got pre-measured in Minneapolis so the tux pickup goes pretty quickly and then Anton and Joey help Sammy get the first suit of his life. You see, the promotion was rent 6 tuxes and get the 7th free or a new $300 suit, so it was pretty much a no-brainer to opt for the suit, plus it is great fun watching Sammy taking suit-buying class 101.

Late afternoon, the bus that Sammy and Annah had arranged, is queued and loading and Helen hears via cell that my sis Cheryl is on her way to the hotel via the Logan Express so Mary gets the bus driver to hold the horses for a bit and soon enough there’s Cheryl and also Bonnie and Deb! Deb is Mary’s best friend and Bonnie is Anton’s mom and good friend as well. They quickly check in and the last of our group including Ike and Mary Fran and their two kids Karl and Anja board the bus.

When we learned that all three kids were getting married we did our calculations and figured out how much we could contribute to each and the reason that the groom’s dinner is being graciously hosted by the Moynihans is because that was the only way to stay at Sammy’s budget, our gift. And the added bonus is that instead of a stuffy dinner at some restaurant with only the wedding party in attendance, the whole MN contingent is treated to this event.

Annah, Kaye, Kathy, Sam, Harriet, and Mary at the Groom's Party

We arrive and Patrick and Kathy are right at the curb to greet the whole MN group and Patrick, knowing me by now, shows me directly to the Samuel Adams keg. What a set-up! A huge canopy, catered food, nice sound system, and lots of Moynihans. I meet Kate, Patrick’s sis who is a riot, there is no filter on her, and also his brothers Denny and Robert. But before we get too far into the night we all toast Patrick as it is, coincidentally, his birthday.

As the the sun sets John and his cousins get a bonfire going and someone puts on “Just a Gigolo” which is the Moynihan family get-together theme song and everyone is singing at the top of their lungs. Then John and a couple cousins break out the guitars and bongos and play sing-a-longs throughout the

John Playing "American Pie"

night, with Annah joining them after a bit. I am impressed that John knows every word of “American Pie”. We know the clans have melded when we see Bonnie and Kate up dancing.

Saturday dawns to a perfect day for this outdoor wedding. Cheryl, Mom, Mary, and I amble over to the nearby shopping mall where Mary gets her hair done in a french bun, I think they call it, and it looks pretty sharp. Back at the hotel we see Joey and Caleb, Helen’s husband who had just gotten off the Logan Express (he was only able to get a couple of days off from work) outside the door of the hotel and I join them in a smoke. Mary and I split a Backwoods cigar. Then it is time to get ready for the big event!

Mary, in Another Alexei Creation

Mary dons her pink custom-made dress (Alexei again) and with her new ‘do she looks great. I put on a tux for the first time in 40 yrs (prom) and we are off on the bus to the Henderson House.

We get our corsages and Kathy, world class wedding planner that she is, even thought to have corsages for the godparents. In Sammy’s case that is my brother Mark and his wife Connie. Pete and Josh (Sam and Josh go back to 2nd grade) usher in the guests and then Mary and I do our walk to the front of this courtyard which serves the Henderson House. The last up the aisle is Patrick giving away his eldest daughter Annah and I hear him whisper to Sammy, “You take care of my Annah Kate.”

The ceremony goes off without a hitch, the JP is very smooth and practiced. And, I didn’t
screw up the Unity candle part which I had never heard of before. When Annah had explained it to me (Mary was totally familiar with it) I think she thought I was some sort of pagan, being ignorant of this tradition, as this is a big part of her folks’ anniversary celebrations.

Ma and Pa Kelley, All Dressed Up

We do the receiving line thing and I am surprised at how large Sammy and Annah’s circle of friends is. We board the bus, the locals hop in their cars (Sammy is driving Patrick’s new Camry as he is not allowed to drive his Lumina to the wedding) and we are off to the Wellesley Event Center.

We enter the building and are shown to a foyer area where there are servers dressed up like right out of a movie bearing all sorts of

Pat and Kathy

fancy hors d’oeuvres. I see someone rushing towards me out of the corner of my eye, and it is Kathy, she wants to make darn sure that I am aware that there are lobster rolls. What a woman! I do find those and many other wonderful delights and of course the open bar. After a time we all move to the ballroom and we take our seats. The seating chart is done the way I like it, putting friends and family with their friends and family. Now it is speech time and Patrick, no stranger to crowds, tells of the phone call he got from his Annah Kate when she and Sammy were living in Boulder. He says, “I can’t wait to meet your young man, with a name like Kelley a good Irish

Grandmas Harriet, Margaret and Bridesmaid Helen

Catholic I am sure.” “No dad, he’s not Catholic.” “Well, that’s okay. Anyhow it will be fun to take you two out for a T-bone and chew the fat with your new beau.” “Dad, what makes you think he eats meat?” “Oh, ok, then we’ll get to know each other over a few Bud lights.” “Dad, what makes you think he drinks?” At this point the house comes down. Then Patrick charmingly welcomes the Kelley clan into their family.

Now it’s best man Joey’s turn and he starts with, “Yea sure, I have to follow Pat!” which gets a roar. And he gets a lot of laughs telling how his big brother’s favorite game when he was little was the “Trip Joey” game and then he reciprocates Patrick’s welcoming and it is a job well done.

We smokers hit the deck overlooking the golf course and I get out my Cohibas

Helen Leading a Kelley/Moynihan Cheer at the Reception

and share them with John and several others and we admire the gorgeous evening.

The food comes and my salmon is delicious and that is the report I get on the prime rib as well. Mary had the vegan offering and enjoys it, I must be truthful and say that I have no idea what it was.

The music starts up and it is time for the father/bride dance and the only C/W tune allowed commences, it is “I loved Her First” and every time they spin towards Sammy, Pat good naturedly points at him. Then it is time for the mother/groom dance and it is the Beatles “All My Loving”. It is Niagara Falls after the spring melt for Mary as that is the tune that we would always sing as a

Sammy and his Mom

lullaby to the kids when they were very little.

Then the married couple takes a spin and then everyone is on the floor. Everyone is dancing with everyone. Sammy is dancing with Pete, then with Anton, I think that is when he did his slide across the floor. Caleb keeps up with Sammy by doing the MJ coat flip off and on thing and as the night progresses it is getting harder and harder to tell that Sammy is the only sober man there.

The Wellesley Event center gives us the boot about midnight so most of the crowd heads to the Crowne Plaza and continues the party at the very nice bar there. I spend a lot of my time with the cool people smoking outside, the bar is very good about letting us take our drinks out. Old farts that we are, Mary and I hit the hay about 1:30 with the party still in high gear.

Sunday we actually sleep in til 10 or so. We head to the restaurant for the buffet brunch that Pat and Kathy are hosting for our families. We greet them and then Kathy sees some Kelley family friends and generously extends the invite to them as well. It is a fabulous buffet with, naturally, tons of seafood. I show great restraint in not hurting myself. Sammy and Annah are first and then one by one people are off, and finally we have the chance to thank Pat and Kathy for their incredible hospitality and generosity.

Monday is travel day for many of the MN contingent and Cheryl’s flight is about the same time as ours, so we are traveling together to the airport. Mid morning we hop the airport shuttle to the Logan Express and onto the airport. We are fortunate to have some quality time with Cheryl as her gate is adjacent to ours and her flight to MO leaves the same time ours does. We find an airport bar with, for an airport, amazingly cheap Bloody Mary and beers and I find myself telling Alexandria (our home for 29 years and where the kids grew up) stories. The time comes for us to board and with hugs we do so.

Our flight into Houston is routine as is the layover. We’re getting to know this airport pretty well. Our flight into Merida goes without

Th-th-th-that's All Folks!

a hitch and soon we are on the ground. Once again Mary is hassled about her insulin pump at customs but at least she wasn’t pawed by a security gal with dirty gloves like she was in Logan. We hang a left out the door to the taxi stand and 15 minutes later we are home. We throw all our gear into the bedroom, grab a couple beers and the Cohiba I had stashed and we sit on the promenade doing damage assessment til 2AM. What a trip!

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Once again Bruce has subjected you to a very long post. If you made it this far, congratulations! And a friendly reminder that Bruce loves reader’s comments. To do so simply click on the title of this post and scroll down. Hasta pronto!

Connie & Mary

It was a brutal work week for Bruce and Mary and particularly for their boss and good friend Connie. So they decided to go out Friday night for a little R&R starting with a mini happy hour at Bruce and Mary’s and then on to Elio’s in Progreso.

Connie arrives at our door about 5:30 and as we happen to be in the kitchen there is no need to call as we had instructed to her do, our silly doorbells are on the fritz again. We collect our drinks and head to the promenade and we all light up, Connie her cigarette and we our shared Cohiba Cuban cigar. It is such a relief to have this last week behind us. Connie is the project manager for the Canadian news site that we moderate and this last week was a perfect storm of difficult, sensitive stories, a glitchy software platform that we suspect of posting comments on its own, and strange policy decisions rendered by the news site’s liaison who is the boss of us all. Of course Connie is never really off work as she is tethered to a Crackberry and as we chat and relax she checks on a couple beeps.

We talk about Connie’s trip to Seattle to visit her sick friend and how cancer sucks. We talk of the new mods in training, good friends of ours and how it is a much more complicated job than it was when we came on board and finally we talk about how we better get in gear and drive out to Progreso before we lose our ambition.

We hop into Connie’s Suzuki SUV (actually she is car-sitting for friends back in the states) and take Paseo and Prolongacion out of town to the super highway to Progreso. We talk of the Meridano drivers, crazy SOBs that they are. A friend of ours Tonya, lived in La Manzanilla on the west coast and their big city was Guadalajara, one of the largest cities in Mexico. She had no problem tooling around that big city but here in Mérida she avoids driving whenever she can. For some reason these muy tranquilo Meridanos turn into Mr. Hydes when they get behind the wheel.

We enter Progreso and we inadvertently distract Connie with our conversation as we find ourselves on the very busy Malecon, along the beach. We angle around and make our way to the eastern edge of town where the street has turned into a very rough dirt road and suddenly we are there, Elio al Mare Restaurante. We enter walking by the large kitchen through a dining room to the patio seating area and take up a table next to the only other group in the joint, a bunch of gringos. The sun has just sunk below the waters of the gulf and off to the left we have a beautiful twilight view of the longest pier in the world stretching out into the darkening void of the tranquil ocean.

Bruce & Connie, Lights of Progreso Pier in Background

We are presented with menus and holy mackerel! There are a lot of choices. There is every type of pasta, carpaccio, fish, and meat. The server approaches us and Connie looking around the table says, “We all want drinks don’t we?” I say, “Connie do you know us?” She laughs.

Sipping on our beers and wine we discuss the menu and the women order penne pastas. Connie has a Penne Sicilian featuring tuna and capers and Mary has Penne Arrabiata, a spicy tomato sauce. I order a Tagliolini with shrimp and squid and we all share a Caprese Salad of sliced tomatoes layered over slices of fresh mozarella.

We chat about how cool this place is and Connie is concerned that there are only two tables occupied. I tell her to just wait, it is July on the beach and they start and go late and it is only about 9 at this time. Our food comes and all the dishes are pretty much perfect. Now don’t get me wrong, I am as far from a foodie as you can get, in fact once I ordered a pesado con crema de espinaca, fish fillet in a spinach sauce, at Las Vigas and I was nearly done eating and enjoying it very much before I realized that they had accidentally served me the chicken offering, in spinach sauce. So all I will say is my dish was very tasty to me and Connie who lived many years in San Francisco which practically makes her a foodie and Mary, cook extraordinaire, thought their dishes perfect. We linger over drinks, relishing simply relaxing with friends as the night darkens and the place fills up. We ask for la cuenta and it comes to 769P, about $61.50US for the three of us, including 15% servicio. We figure the bill, settle up and make our way through the crowded restaurant to the car and head back into Mérida. It has been a very lovely evening and we can surely recommend Elio al Mare, on the beach in Progreso.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce appreciates any and all commentary. To make a comment or to view existing comments, please double click on the post title and scroll down. Hasta Pronto!

Hola loyal readers. Last post Bruce was little full of himself, “wanting it all”, he said. As Mary pointed out to him, their lives are not so perfect. They still work for a living and have the normal stresses of everyday life (although certainly not to the level of their old lives). Although they have had much serendipity in their escape to Mexico there are some things they cannot escape and one is the fact that they are still Americans. Please permit Bruce this rare foray into American politics.

My morning routine has me opening my email (after I check my online chess games, and it looks like you have me in this one Kevin) and a twice daily email I get is from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Strib, many call it, and today the headline is “Five US Soldiers Die in Afghanistan Blasts”.

I’m going to keep this short.

As many of you know we moderate a Canadian news site and the war in Afghanistan is in the news every single day as Canadian forces are a major player. I can tell you that public sentiment is strongly in favor of pulling out. One common post is simply the listing of the names of the 151 Canadian soldiers who have given their lives to this “cause”.

Who understands this war? I have read a couple novels that have given me some insight to the region. One, in particular, West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamin Ansary showed me that Afghanistan and surrounding states are not countries as we westerners perceive such. They are coalitions of tribes with constant power struggles pretty much being the order of the day. In my mind there is no hope for a Democratic US allied country emerging from this mess and we should just get the hell out and let the tribes sort it out.

In conclusion I will let the tragically deceased Minnesotan, 23 year old, 1st Lt. Christopher Goeke, sum up my feelings in what the deeply patriotic soldier, shortly before his death, told his father Randy, “It doesn’t matter what we do over here, when we get pulled out, it’s going to go back to the same way it was — it’s just useless.”

Thanks for visiting, gentle reader. Bruce hopes that you will express your feelings on the war, pro or con. Healthy debate is the backbone of a strong democracy. To comment or view comments, double click the post title and scroll down. Hasta Pronto!

View of Captive Lake from the Cabin

Bruce and Mary are putting together a strategy for a lifestyle adjustment, and no they are not leaving paradise but they are looking to maximize all the good things in their lives. Please press on loyal reader and see how this strategy goes. For you email subscribers that would like to go to Bruce’s site to read this post, please click here.

Just as I was getting ready to log off from work, while munching on a tuna fish sandwich, I mentioned to Mary how our lives, today, would have been impossible to predict 3 years ago when this escape to Mexico was still just a dream. Here we are house-sitting a small mansion of a Spanish Colonial casa in the heart of Merida, Cultural capital of the Americas for the year 2000,  only 36 kilometers from the beach and we both are working jobs that we love (moderating comments for a Canadian News Website) from our computers, poolside. And another cool thing about our jobs is that our fellow moderators are, for the most part, our Merida and Minnesota friends. With our incredibly low cost of living and our moderating jobs we are, believe it or not, enjoying a higher standard of living than at any time in our old lives.

But, we want more! Yes we are feeling a little bit greedy but to completely sate ourselves we would have to spend the summers in Minnesota, where we would be closer to family and old friends and able to breathe the clean and fresh north-woods air. There is not a thing about MN in the winter time that I miss but we do miss the summers, in particular, the summers at the cabin.

Here are the hurdles we need to overcome:

1. Where do we live? Our St. Cloud house is leased out on a two year contract and hopefully in perpetuity.
2. Our house-sitting agreement, here, doesn’t allow for lengthy absences.
3. We face IRS issues working back in the States, again.
4. Transportation: We have not owned a car for two years.
5. Conventional health insurance in the States is not even close to affordable for us.

The health care issue is a thorny one but we think we have it worked out. Since we escaped back in February of 2008, we have been

Lipid Profile Performed by Clinica Merida

essentially “self insured” that is to say, without. But down here you can do that, with some luck thrown in. We’re reasonably healthy and the few meds we need are extraordinarily cheap down here. Our BP meds cost us each about $4/mo and my statin (for high cholesterol) runs about the same. With Mary’s diabetes, her test strips are actually cheaper on ebay than anywhere but insulin is about a third of the cost northwards and here you don’t need to spend a 100 bucks or so for a Doc visit to get that prescription. About the only drugs down here that require prescriptions are the class 3s. In fact for a medically self-directed person, Mexico is really cheap in that you can get virtually any lab work done without any Doc intervention. If you want a lipid profile, liver function, and CPK test done like I just recently did, all you gotta do is know how to ask for it. And talk about cheap, I got all the above tests done for about $60US which I paid by credit card. I got in and out of Clinica de Merida, without an appointment, in about 15 minutes and they had the results that afternoon.

And it’s not just lab work that is incredibly inexpensive but sophisticated tests are as well. I discovered this in the process of getting Mary off my back about checking on my health. You see I had an MCI (I hate the phrase heart attack) 6 years ago and the last time I really followed up on my heart health was over two years ago so I went to the cardiologist husband of Mary’s dermatologist (she had worried about a couple spots – benign) and had an EEG done during the checkup (total cost of the visit was $44US) and he suggested I line up an Echo Cardiogram. Now, ok gang, here is where I must come clean. We have a leg up on most folks down here in the fact that I have a sis-in-law, Lynn, an MD back in MN, who has generously agreed to be my virtual doc and she thought that the echo would be a good idea as part of the whole check-up strategy. So Mary called and made an appointment for me at Star Medica, Merida’s state of the art medical facility. The next day we taxied out there and after a little waiting I got in and had the echo done. The cardiologist on duty immediately did the written doctor talk interpretation (I scanned the translated report to Lynn for her opinion and… I’m going to live!) and I was presented with the test results complete with cool color pix. Down here, you own and keep track of all your records. The charge for this was $141US. Now that seems pretty cheap but when I did a little bit of Googling  just now I am really

Echocardiogram Results

impressed as it seems an echo at Abbott NW in the Twin Cities would run about $2250. Whoa! Well anyhow the above is just to illustrate how we have been able to self insure down here, but with the new lifestyle we’re trying to work out, what do we do to accommodate both worlds? This is what we came up with. This fall we are both signing up for the IMSS Mexican health care program which will cost us each about $150 for a year of coverage. This coverage includes all doc visits, hospitalization, and all meds, except for those events and meds relating to pre-existing conditions – coronary artery disease for me and Type I diabetes for Mary. But after one year on the plan even pre-existing is covered. So the strategy is to doctor up like crazy before we stay in MN for the summers and then either toss the dice and go without or we’ll contact the lovely Julieta Morales (my dentista Ana’s sis) and do as many of our friends have done and buy an international catastrophic health plan with a high deductible and no wellness care for about $170/mo for the both of us. We can afford that. So…we have cleared that hurdle.

Transportation. Hmmm, still working on that. I would love to buy a $1000 motorcycle (my motorcycle endorsement is still valid) but Mary has made it very clear that that is not an option. I will probably look into a rent-a-wreck car rental thing, if available, for the 3 months we’re back as I really don’t want to buy a car for 3 months a year. Any ideas, loyal readers?

The IRS. For those of you who read my post about filing taxes this spring you’ll remember that if you can satisfy the residency requirements of living abroad you have a $91,400 exemption from income taxes (not self employment taxes, the only relief from that for an American, no matter where in the world he lives, is no self employment or death, I am going to hold off on the second option). The residency requirement fits us to a tee, 270 days in said foreign country. And of course our jobs are completely portable, we can set up shop anywhere there is internet.

The house-sitting gig. We’ll we’re just going to have to give it up. To be frank, although this place is quite impressive it is kind of a pain

Our Good Friend Jaromey

to live in and keep up. And we have always loved the beach. So when the time gets a little closer we will put our favorite Francophone Ottowan, Jaromey, the Progreso property manager extraordinaire and close friend, on it. She tells us we can get a 1 or 2 bedroom house near the beach in the Progreso area for about 2-3000P about $160-$240/mo. We had contemplated paying 5000-6000P for a 3-4 bdrm so we could easily accommodate all three kids and spouses for X-mas 2011 and beyond but as Jaromey points out, why pay every month for all that capacity when we could rent a place like Casa Sol Mar, a beautiful property she manages (we stayed there with the Dyers in 2008) for the week or so the kids are down. Good point. When we get closer we will pin that down.

Where do we live in MN? Well, Mary’s mother, Harriet has just completed, with brother Bob’s immeasurable help a major renovation of the the family log cabin (where Helen and Caleb were just married) on semi-private Captive Lake, near Lake Mille Lacs, a famous MN walleye lake. This renovation has changed the cabin from a rustic summer abode to a modern, super comfortable lake home, without losing any of the charm. So we are hoping to make arrangements to spend summers there. A hang up is, this is a family cabin available to all of Harriet’s kids and their kids, who are all grown now. What we hope to do is much like what we do here, maintain the place and handle it like a hotel when others want to use it. In other words, we would have the place turnkey ready for the stay and then vacate. Upon our return we would do complete cleanup and laundry for our departed guests/family. And of course we’d pay utilities through the summers. We’re hoping this arrangement will pass the family council. We have already been putting bribes in place so we’re quite optimistic.

So this is our new definition of paradise – autumn, winter, and spring on the Mexican Gulf Coast, summers at a MN lake cabin. Really does it get any better than that?

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce appreciates any fine tuning to his big ideas that you may have so please share. To make a comment, or view existing comments double click on the post title and scroll down. Hasta la vista, baby!

Mary en La Playa de Holbox

Greetings loyal reader! Please join Bruce and Mary as they celebrate Independence Day and Canada Day, Mexican style, with a trip to Holbox, La Isla de Pirates. BTW: Bruce web guru that he is (not!) has discovered that most of his subscribers get their latest posts via email and never visit the site. That is fine but by doing so you readers have no chance to add to Bruce and Mary’s vast fortune by clicking on the Google Ads. Bruce just checked and he has $30US to date and hopes to someday get to that magic $100 figure which will trigger Google issuing its first Bruce check. At the current rate this will happen in 2015. Maybe with your help, Bruce can get his first check in, oh say 2013 or 2012. So here is the plan, gang, when you get this post emailed to you, click on this hot link, SetFreeInMexico and then click those ads like crazy people. Muchas gracias, mis amigos, for your attention to this most crass of appeals. Oh, and one more thing on this subject. Many of you loyal readers make comments by replying to the post emails. By actually going to the site you can share your thoughts and opinions with the whole world wide web! And now let the Holbox story begin!

We have been hearing about Holbox the Pirate Island for a while now and with the quirk in our work schedule for our Canadian employer (Thursday and Friday off work as July 1st is Canada Day) we decide to take advantage of these unplanned days off with a trip to Holbox. So we scout car rentals and check maps and at noon on Thursday, July 1st we head out in our agency’s base rental, a VW Pointer, sin clima, without A/C (I am such a cheap sucker).

Mohan (Tel World Travel Agency), the car rental guy is right, taking Av. Perez Ponce at Walmart to Av. Aleman will take you directly to Hwy 176 and to Tizimin, the second largest city in Yucatan and the halfway point to Holbox which is NW of Cancun. And everything has been going so swimmingly, we’d been enjoying the change of scenery from low scrub jungle to higher jungle surrounding acres and acres of pasto, pasture, supporting the countless Ranchos. And we’d been enjoying the names, like Rancho de Sacrificio (not going near there during any Mayan high holiday) and the road signs are great, as well. Our favorite is, No Manaje Cansado, Su Familia Se Espera, Don’t drive while asleep, your family will wait for you.

But our happy go lucky traveling quickly comes to an end when Hwy 176 disappears into a one way road that dumps us off at a glorieta (roundabout) at Tizimin’s central plaza. The open highway had signs every kilometer it seemed like but now there are none. We circle the glorieta and exit heading the right way, we think, but soon we are hopelessly lost on a road heading out of town, the wrong way, we think. We stop at a minisuper to get some water and ask directions and we are assured that we are heading the right way and we congratulate ourselves on being so lucky but soon a sign does appear, Rio Lagartos 88km. We know instantly that this is not the right road so we turn around and about 3 sets of directions later we are on Hwy 27 heading towards Colonia Yucatan, the right direction. This drive is starting to get long and the ranchos, once a welcome break from the normal Yucatan scenery are losing their charm when finally we find ourselves in Chiquila, the port city serving Holbox. Yea!!

We take the first right turn off the glorieta at the foot of the pier and find Don Patricio’s parking lot (Mary had read about this dude

Cantadore Miguel and Bruce

in a blog) and we quickly park where the old guy waves us, grab our gear and hoof it to the tix office on the pier. Only to be 5 minutes late for the ferry and sure enough we can see it just a couple hundred meters out making its way to the low shadow on the horizon that is Holbox. Ok, it’s 5:05 and the next ferry is not until 7, what to do? Dumb question, there’s a cantina over there, right on the beach! We mosey over and grab a table next to the house cantadore who is crooning away on his way out of tune guitar with his buddies, including the owner, keeping him company. We order a litro of Sol for 35P and relax. It is hot and humid, the salt from sweat is gritty on my shoulders, but the beer is cold and the view is fantastic. Miguel the cantadore introduces himself and sings us some songs but he will not take a tip, he is retired at 62 and this is what he does, hanging with his buds, soaking the suds, and telling stories in between songs.

Suddenly it is 6:30. We grab our stuff and head to the tix office and board the 66 passenger Ferry (it is air conditioned, que bueno!) and quickly we shove off. In about a ½ hour we are moored at the Holbox pier and there are number of “taxi”s, golf carts ready to haul visitors. We have read that there are no cars on the island which we find to

The Holbox Pier

be mostly true. One cabbie hollers, “Veinte pesos, solos veinte pesos”. Hmm that ain’t bad, about a buck 60 for a cabbie. We start quizzing him about accommodations (we had arranged for none, which is why we were bummed to miss the 5:00 ferry as now the sun is setting) and sure, he says, there are lots of places on the beach and cheap. As we are exiting the pier a gringo-looking dude approaches us and we listen to his spiel: A house this night for 500P (about $40US) and a cabana the next for 300. Hmm, sounds interesting. We tail him in his personal golf cart for a mile or so and then we pull into his little complex behind an abandoned hotel/restaurant. We debark and our cabbie is happy to wait to see if this place agrees with us. We walk into a garden area with several hammocks strung, one occupied by a very relaxed but high tech (laptop on a stool next to him) local and we are shown the common baths for the cabanas and then the “house”. It is a very large cabana with a second bedroom in the loft and a full kitchen. It is really cute and more importantly it is now dark and a little tough to do much more hotel shopping. “We’ll take it.” we tell Dave the owner, a Swiss national who is in his 10th year of this project, named Ida y Vuelta, Go and Come Back. We shell out the 500P in cash, he takes our first names verbally, gives us the key and that is that.

We unpack some stuff but the main thing I want to do is take a dip in the Caribbean and cool off. We head directly to the ocean, about 150m away across the the road to the pier and I wade out into the shallow moonlit waters and dive under. Very nice, I needed that, and the sugar sand is one thing I do miss about the Caribbean. Mary shields me with a towel from passersby on a beach stroll as I

View From the Loft of Our "House"

change back into shorts and tank top and we walk the beach road to Centro about 600m away. It is a quaint area with a skinny main street with lots of personal golf carts and taxis bouncing by on this dirt road. There seem to be equal numbers of locals, gringos, and Europeans. We spot a minisuper and find that we still have an hour and a half to stock up on beer and wine for the night and right across the street is a roof top joint called Restaurante TikiTiki. What draws my attention is the whiteboard out front with 2×1 Piña Coladas scrawled on it. Man, I love Piña Coladas, “Let’s check this out, Mary!”

We walk up the stairs and see a table of a pair of good looking, young couples hablando, talking, in Español and sitting right under the lone ceiling fan on this very warm and humid night but that is okay as we make our way to a table overlooking the street. Tomás approaches and presents his menu and practices his English with us as we do the same with our Español. We order up a beer for Mary and my first Piña Colada, complete with a dash of nutmeg and it is excellent! Que Bueno!

Fish and Pasta at Restaurante TikiTiki

Mary looks over the menu and chooses the pasta garlic dish and I see Pescado Chenchado. I ask Tomás what kind of fish dish this is and he explains that the chef’s name is Chencho and this is his style. Ok, I’ll take it and I am rewarded with couple of tasty fillets done fairly close to Vera Cruz style, only better. Mary’s pasta? Not so hot unfortunately. We have another beer and Piña Colada and enjoy the roof top view of the action on main street below us and when the check comes it is 250P, with tip 300P, about $24US.

On the way back to our “house” we check out a number of hotels and resorts along the beach road (the ones that still have open recepciones) and find that the best deal is a room at the Mawimbi resort right on the beach and pretty fancy looking. The gal who tells us to check back tomorrow says it appears we could have a room for 900P, about $72 which sounds workable.

We head back along the beach road on the way to our little complex and it is so dark. We aren’t used to that, living in the big city of Mérida. We make our way around the cabanas and into our unit and put our beers and wine into the fridge and then park ourselves, after a good hosing down of bug spray, at a little table outside out door and fire up a Cohiba. It is still hot and humid and I strip down to my skivvies in the dark. I have no luck in talking Mary into cooling off in the same fashion. We finally hit the sack about midnight and the fan doesn’t quite cut it and it is a rather sleepless night for the both of us.

I’m out and about shortly after dawn, trying to find some coffee and I bump into Dave the owner and I tell him that we will be checking out. Old farts that we are, we need a private bath, a cabana with common baths just won’t cut it. It’s kind of too bad because this place is really cool, our kids would probably love it. Dave is very nice and offers to store our stuff if we cannot secure another place before 11 check-out.

Mary and I walk up to the beach road and right on the corner is La Iguana, a 9 unit hotel in 4 or 5 buildings surrounded by beautiful gardens which are home to zillions of Minnesota size mosquitoes. Our Meridano mosquitoes are pesky, hard to swat suckers but these are of the 1 quart capacity and when they completely cover your calves it doesn’t matter much if they are easy to swat. We jump inside the room and slam the door shut to find a very comfortable, clean, modern room with an absolutely gorgeous mini-split A/C unit in the wall right over the bed. And it works! This room is 500P about $40 and is definitely in the running but we want to check out some places right on the beach as well.

We fight through the mosquito horde to the beach road and start scouting. There are a number of nice resorts on the beach but pretty pricey as well, at least to us, running $150 to $220US/night. We stop in at the Mawimbi, again, and evidently there is some confusion as the unit available last night has suddenly gone from 900P to $120US. The switch in currency is almost more aggravating than the price hike. No thanks.

We’re at La Plaza Principal and there is a server hawking breakfast at his sidewalk cafe. This will work. And finally we get our coffee! We both have omelets and then we backtrack to the Ida y Vuelta to get our gear and we book our room at La Iguana. The lad in recepcion was right this morning, the bugs are not nearly as bad as we approach midday. It is hot and muggy and we both shower for the second time today and then we just lie under the mini-split, enjoying the cold air it is dumping onto us. And now to the beach but first we have to get supplies. We ask a couple locals for grocery stores as all we see are the mini-supers and they are expensive for beers. We finally get it through our thick heads that there are no grocery stores like Walmart or Issteys on the island, you have to go to Chiquila for that. All there are is smaller and larger supers. We stop in at the biggest one in the area which actually has produce, eggs, and even sundries, only to find that a 6 pack of Tecate is exactly the same price we paid last night, 75P. I do score the exact same wine, a Chilean Merlot for only 80P instead of the 100 last night, so yea for me, I guess. Now we’re ready for the beach.

Holbox Beach From In Front of La Iguana

We grab our portable chairs, cross the beach road and set up about 20 feet from the aquamarine colored surf. It is a perfect day, no clouds, and a cooling breeze but not so strong as to blow away our sun umbrella. First I take a cooling dip, stepping thru the seaweed that is washing up on shore. It collects in not so beautiful mounds and fingerlets that extend into the water and it doesn’t exactly add to the experience but the sugar sand bottom and cooling water (just barely cool enough) are certainly good enough for me. I rejoin Mary on the beach. We crack some beers and light up a Cohiba and bake.

A couple hours later, we are both well done so we pack up and head to Centro for an early dinner. This time we pick one of the big beach front restaurants a couple blocks from the heart of downtown. Fishing is the number one industry of this island, so there are lots of seafood entrees to pick from. With Mary’s strong encouragement I pop for the lobster (240P) and they offer it a number of different ways. Now I haven’t had lobster since before the days when you had to be a bank robber to afford it but I must tell you, it is my absolute favorite dish. Back in the 80s living in Alexandria, we used to regularly run out to the Fireside on Fridays when Sonny would offer his 6oz Lobster tail special for, get this, $5!

Back to the present: They offer about 4 treatments of lobster and the one I pick is a wine and mushroom dish (Thermidor). They

Bruce's Lobster and Mary's Chicken Cordon Bleu

carve the lobster out of the shell, mix it with this awesome wine and mushroom sauce and shovel it back into the split shell. It is incredible! But it made me realize, and I guess it has just been too long, that I love the taste of lobster so much that I should have ordered it simply Con Mantequilla, with butter, only. Que lastima! But I do not regret it. Mary has the best Chicken Cordon Bleu of her life, she says and it is good as I finish her dish in my usual fashion. Mary claims I married her because she could never finish her meals. We settle up with our server, Rolando, and once again we deal with the hidden propina, tip. As we have seen too often, the check has the total circled numerous times in pen through the tip amount, in an attempt to obscure it. But I reconcile the bill as I always do, spot it, and ask Rolando, propina incluida, tip included? Si, señor the embarrassed Rolando says, eyes darting. Well, as usual it is only 10% and, as I am feeling generous, belly full of Langosta, I give him an extra 5% and I make sure to tell him, por ti, Mas propina, for you, More tip.

Bruce, On his Swing

We make our way to the palapa bar between us and the beach because Mary really wants to finish our drinks sitting in the swings they use for stools and we do so listening to a couple of young Germans talking about the World Cup. I ask the bar keep which of the many bottles of tequila sitting in front of me is lo mas mejor, the best, and he tells me it is Cazadores. Then he makes his way across the dirt street to buy a couple sweet treats at the stand where his little one has beckoned him.

We make our way back to La Iguana by way of the beach as the sun is setting in a clear sky and we hope to see it sink into the ocean which is always pretty cool. We notice that only one of the high class resorts along the way takes the time to daily sweep the omnipresent seaweed from its shore. We find ourselves in front of our hotel as the sun lowers to the horizon and we hustle to our room to grab some wine and beers in hope of catching the sunset from the chaise lounges in the sandy patio fronting our little resort on this hot, muggy night. We rush through the bug storm, get our supplies and stake our stations with the first order to douse ourselves in bug spray before the buggers carry us off. We do so and of course the sun disappears into a haze on the horizon not to be seen again tonight, but what the hell, we have beer, wine, and another Cohiba, things could be worse.

Well, actually, things are worse. About the time our Cohiba has played out, other biting things that are immune to mosquito spray have reconnoitered us, and after entertaining ourselves despite the onslaught, by watching the beach road traffic swatting themselves, we give up the battle in the twilight and sprint back to our refuge, staging our individual  long jumps into the room so as to not drag more mosquitoes in than can be helped. We fire up the mini-split, take our third shower of the day, and once again lie on the bed feeling the absolutely luxurious wash of cool air dumping from the mini-split’s rotating louvers. We have found, at least in July, it never cools down here in Holbox. It is a steamy, tropical jungle island around the clock.

We’re pretty played out so we just fire up Die Hard, the original, on my laptop and Mary makes it about half way through. I am right behind her.

We’re up early the next morning as we have arranged for a taxi to take us to the pier at 6:30 for the 7 ferry. The next ferry isn’t until 9 and missing the 7 ferry would guarantee that we would have to pay an extra day of car rental.

We have everything packed and by the door before we take a deep breath and bolt through the gardens to the beach road and we only take a few bug casualties. It’s 6:20 and we stand on the road swatting mosquitoes for ten minutes and at 6:30 the taxi is a no show so we start hoofing towards Centro.

Early risers are out and about in their private golf carts this steamy morning and we see a few taxis but they are already occupied. Downtown we are directed to a taxi stand but nobody is tending their vehicles. It’s about 6:40 and we are starting to panic as we ask another local about taxis and she just vaguely gestures southward. We walk a couple blocks and ask another local and he asks why we want a taxi as the pier is only 600 meters ahead. I look up and focus my eyes and right he is. I grab all the gear and Mary jogs the remaining distance and I catch up just as she has secured our tix with about ten minutes to spare. We join about a dozen others in a waiting room by the snack stand and relax. There is a small ferry moored right next to us. I notice a lady and her young daughter walking by us. I am curious as I step onto the pier to see where she is going. At the end of the pier is a larger ferry that looks remarkably like the one we took here from Chiquila and I see her boarding. I ask the tix taker if this is the Chiquila ferry and it is and it leaves in cinco minutos. I jog back noticing a sign that shows departure times for Chiquila and one other port, the other place is evidently where this smaller ferry is heading. Mary and I grab our gear and board the correct ferry and we find that we have started a stampede, as the other passengers in the waiting room, 20 some by now, are hot on our heels. And these are all locals except for one young gringo backpacking couple. Whew!

The rest of the trip is routine as we get back to the car rental agency in plenty of time and we are happy to be car free once again.

We find that we are glad to have had the Holbox experience and if you are a typical tourist with a lot more money than we have, Holbox would be pretty cool because you’d be staying at a 5 star resort on the beach which I imagine is fogged and pretty bug free and you’d be taking the whale shark tours, snorkeling, and the whole bit. But if you’re us, and we are, Holbox is “Mosquito Coast” and thanks but no thanks, for seashore we’ll take Progreso.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. And please feel free to comment, we know others who have  loved their Holbox experience and Bruce would be happy to post your impressions. Hasta pronto, mis amigos and please pass the bug spray.

Bruce & Mary Toasting Their Anniversary

It’s hard to believe that this is Bruce and Mary’s third anniversary celebration in the Yucatan. Please join them as they celebrate their 36 years of wedded bliss, er, ahh, weddedness?

I’m glad to be gainfully employed now, here in Mérida, and doing by some standards better than we ever have, because that means that I probably will not give in to my cheap inner self and diminish in some fashion, our 36th wedding anniversary.

Our anniversary was actually Thursday but, as that was a workday and a school night we have decided to celebrate today, Saturday. We begin our celebration by sleeping in. Then, having accomplished that we get our act together and walk up to California gym, our gym and we each have a very righteous work-out. We’re a little disappointed that we do not see any of our poster boy pals, but we are a little earlier than usual.

Back home we clean up and immediately head to our neighborhood bar, El Luceros, to watch USA vs Ghana in the World Cup, we’re a

3 Bald Gringos Watching Futbol in a Mexican Bar

little late as our boys are already down 1-0 on an early Ghana goal. The place is packed but luckily our usual table with a clear view of one of many big screen TVs is available. We spot our pals Neil, Pete, and Linda at a nearby table in the big room and we’re a little surprised as we thought they were going to watch the match at Dave the Brit’s deli (not an option for us, no beer) but we find, as we join them, that for some reason he couldn’t tune it in on his cable. The first half ends with Ghana up 1-0 and Pete and Neil are upset with the Americans’ lackadaisical play. I am surprised at their disgust as they’re Brits, Neil from England and Pete from Wales, but Pete does have dual citizenship and his wife Linda is American. Evidently the American coach does as Neil suggests and puts a “torch up their a**es” as they swarm Ghana in the opening minutes of the second half and tie the score with a penalty kick. The regulation ends in a 1-1 tie so they go to a 30 minute overtime and at about the 20 minute mark a Ghanaian player scores on a helluva athletic breakaway. I was about to tell Neil that I guessed the bar was so packed with football fans because the locals were here to support USA, their neighbors to the north, just as every Gringo I know has been supporting Mexico in their World Cup bid, but wrong. The whole bar erupts with cheering and noisemakers when Ghana scores and again at the end of the game when they win. I take this personally as I survey the scene. Neil, generous soul that he is, speculates that a Ghana win perhaps advances Mexico’s chances. I doubt it. We say our goodbyes and head home where we gussy ourselves up in our wedding wear (Helen’s wedding that is), Mary in her custom-made dress, and I with my custom-made guayabera and linen pants. This marks maybe the third time in 2+ yrs down here that we have dressed up.

Bruce & Mary at Rosas y Xocolate's Roof top Bar

We walk the 4 blocks to the new Boutique Hotel, Rosas y Xocolate, Roses and Chocolate for our anniversary night out. The sky is overcast but with no rain and it has cooled down mercifully for us in our fancy clothes. We enter through the main door to the dining room and passing through we climb the spiral staircase to the rooftop bar overlooking beautiful, tree lined Paseo Montejo. We pick a table at the concrete railing and take in the view as the bar keeper quickly scurries over to our table to take our orders, a Bohemia Obscura, my most favorite beer in the world and for some reason Mary orders Tecate light, ewww! I light up my Cohiba Esplendido to share with Mary and life is good. We take to the sheltered horseshoe shaped bar when a slight mist develops and we reorder our beers. Mary has come to her senses and orders a Bohemia as well. Mary espies a huge green parrot high up in a tree next door and snaps a pic of it. We are having a perfect moment and we stretch it out by slowly sipping our beers on ice and puffing away on the Cohiba when it is not resting in the cigar cut-out of the black Onyx cenicero, ashtray. Everything about this place is first

Bohemias y Puro Cohiba

rate.

Finally our stomachs tell us it is time for dinner. We climb down the spiral staircase into the garden but we decide to take our dinner in the dining room proper as it is heating up again and we wouldn’t mind some air conditioning. We are seated at a table for two at a window facing Paseo and presented menus and asked about drinks. Mary has her usual beer but I ask for el vino rojo de la casa, the house red wine. Mary gets her beer and I am presented with two choices of red wine. I taste test them both and decide on the Chilean Merlot. I am no wino but it tastes mighty fine to me. Mary orders an appetizer para compartir, to share, a salad. But first we are served little tiny slices of bread, one with raisins and the other a sesame seed variety. Both are scrumptious and look funny sitting on our huge platters where we butter them. We marvel at the simple but elegant silverware. I hold up the spoon and see my reflection in it .Mary says, “But first there is no spoon.”

Mary and Carol

Carol, the owner, born in Mexico City, raised in NY and formerly out of Florida, his base of international travel for 35 years, comes over to say hi and we have fun telling him that our girlfriend, Connie, thinks he is hot. He says “Really, you know I am 64.” Well you’d never know it. I tell him that I would put him at my age, 57, or younger. He tells a charming story of his vodka tasting party attended by a number of 20 somethings and then he is off, wishing us, “Buen provecho!”

Our salad comes and it may be the best salad I have ever had. It is arugula placed artfully on a white plate splashed with a stripe of chocolate! Sandwiched in the mound of arugula are thin slices of firm, succulent pear and bits of pistachios. Hmmm!

We are served more breads and then the entrees come, a Chicken dish for Mary and Pescado del Dia, fish of the day, for me. The presentation is deceiving in that at first you think you’re looking at a classic gourmet presentation with about 200 calories of actual food until you realize that the bowl shaped platter is huge, seemingly dwarfing the entree but the tower of food is very generous. My fish steak sits atop a tall bed of nopal, seasoned cactus, all on top of a meaty tortilla base. It is very good, but you want to be a nopal fan for this dish, which I am, as the nopal taste is very strong. Mary’s chicken dish consists of chicken breast sitting atop a lentil salad with some arugula and lettuce like mache and it is fantastic (she shares!) There is a bit of guyaba puree on the side which complements the flavors incredibly well.

Pescado del Dia

There are no leftovers!

We are patting our bellies as we notice a couple coming in the front door. It is Juanita and Jan (Yon)! Juanita is the editor at Yucatan Today who published our book and she is a good friend we have not seen for quite awhile. Juanita is there with her husband, meeting another couple, to write her restaurant of the month review and this month she is featuring Rosas y Xocolate. We get caught up and then see them off to the table where their friends await.

Mary is served coffee and I still have my vino to finish when a plate comes bearing a triangle of dense, moist chocolate cake with a dallop of icecream on top with a lit candle. On the plate is scribed, in a drizzle of chocolate, “Felicidades!” Courtesy of Carol. I don’t have to tell you it is to die for, especially for a chocoholic (Mary hides it in the house) like myself.

Our Just Desserts

We ask for la Cuenta, the check, and after a 20% tip, the whole evening comes to 869P, about $69.50US, not bad, eh?

We say goodbye to Juanita and Jan and in the process meet their friends Ralf who has a T-Shirt shop in La Gran Plaza, and his wife Maru who has a cookie business, and then we’re out the door walking Paseo on a Saturday night wondering how an evening could be any more perfect. To you Mary: I am truly a lucky man.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce and Mary have found that the longer they live in Mérida the more enchanted with the city they become. Mérida is truly muy bonita and muy tranquilo. Hasta pronto!

Wedded Bliss Looks Like This

Bruce and Mary have just completed their annual pilgrimage to Minnesota with the highlight of the trip their daughter Helen’s marriage to Caleb Thilges. Please allow Bruce to take you on that whirlwind tour.

We flew out of Merida directly because I screwed up and didn’t book tix until the usually much cheaper Cancun flights had risen to the Merida prices, but both Mary and I were kind of glad because we hate that 4 hr bus ride to Cancun and all the messing around that goes along with that trek. So the flight with the automatic layover in Houston was nice and uneventful starting with a 5:00am taxi ride and ending with our youngest, Joey (the one who eloped with the lovely Meryah in November) and his new wife picking us up at Lindbergh Int’l and ferrying us all the way to Mary’s mother Harriet’s house in Princeton and then Joey and Meryah made us drink beers on Harriet’s deck until 2 in the morning, the buggers!

Luckily that was a Saturday night and we all could sleep in the next morning.

That next week we settled into Harriet’s place and set up our work stations for our online moderation jobs. Our friends posit that we are nuts to maintain even an abbreviated work schedule when we are on holiday, and maybe they’re right, but we have such plum shifts that we don’t want anyone else to get used to working them. We’ll see next time.

The first event is the three for one shower the first Friday evening we are back. Mary’s sis Sue is the party

Joey & Meryah Open Gifts

planner for this rather unique event. As I mentioned earlier Joey eloped in November, Helen’s hippie wedding date is June 4th and our oldest Sammy is having a high society Boston wedding August 14th. Now did you get that? All three kids are getting married in about 9 months. I think we are setting some sort of record. Well anyhow, as the week progresses and Friday is here I find myself in the role of a happy mule, setting up chairs, tables, and other simple duties that even I can understand and I gotta say Sue is one helluva shower planner. The couples’ close relatives are seated on the deck and the shower begins with introductions around, and advice for the couples. Mine is simply to instruct couples that future kids should listen to their dad, but the one I liked best was Mary’s brother Bob’s, “Husbands, you need to realize you have a choice, you can be right or you can be happy.”

Then the games begin and Bob and I take shelter in the living room and proceed to commiserate about what the hell are we doing at a shower, neither of us has ever been to one before and has the world changed that much? Damn.

The gift giving begins and then people start making their goodbyes and heading out. Helen, Sue, Harriet, Mary and I end the night around the living room table recounting the event, with the women, directed by Sue, addressing thank you envelopes for every gift for every couple. I was happy that my only duty was to drink a martini.

Deb, Mary, and Mary Fran at May 17th

We’re up early the next morning as this day is Mary’s 41st annual May 17th celebration (we’re not really that old, Mary started this at a very young age with the motivation shrouded in mist), or as it is more commonly known now, Mary Dahle Day (her maiden name, as this event precedes me). The event has changed this year as Helen, who has taken over as main organizer, has instructed people that this party is potluck, so instead of the 20-30 dishes they usually prepare they have it trimmed down to maybe 10 between them. So we’re out the door by 11 something and at Kevin and Rosie’s place in Sauk Rapids at noon sharp as planned. Since we have been MN homeless since our escape to MX two plus years ago, Kevin and Rosie have been so generous as to allow us the use of their home, a perfect party house with a huge backyard. Joey and his gang are already here, and partying. Joey had heard the stories about the original May 17ths which commenced at 10am sharp at River Side park in Princeton, our home town, with the cracking open of a case or two of champagne, and was thusly inspired. It is a beautiful sun-splashed day, in fact the weather our whole time back has been excellent, this is not your father’s MN weather. Helen officially begins the celebration by doing the traditional toast to comrades gone and the party begins in earnest. The food is excellent as everyone made good on their potluck responsibilities. After a bit our eldest, Sammy begins polling for a basketball game. My old guy dream team and reigning champs could not make it from Alexandria and it seems I am the only old guy willing to lace up this year so we just form two 4 man teams and we play at the neighbors’ hoop as we did not want to press our luck and haul our former neighbor’s (Pete and Judy) 800# portable hoop (base filled with sand) this year. In

BBers Bruce, Pete, Sammy

prior years we have: nearly killed Judy’s dad when he helped us load it (boy, what a strong old guy!), scratched the hell out of Kevin’s nearly new PU, and last year we nearly took out the side of Pete and Judy’s boat with the damn thing. My team wins, with several breaks (Sammy and I wonder what is with these young guys, huffing and puffing?) but there is no joy in it as the old guy/young guy tradition has been broken.

Back to the party: Although the kids’ generation dominates, many of our old friends do make it, and we party until late, or I do, with the kids, as our generation doesn’t do “late” very often. Kevin, our host, is back from his wedding DJ gig at about midnight and he is happy to see the cops have not arrived yet. Someone, I’m not sure who, has done a good job keeping the patio sound system from broadcasting to the entire neighborhood.

Joey’s friends (and mine) Andy and Cory have been regaling me with stories of misdeeds from their youth, reminding me of myself doing the same thing with my folks. You know, the parties while your parents were out of town, thing. And they remind me of what a fearsome character their group thought I was. I remember that Sammy’s group loved to hang with us in the kitchen and talk politics and ethics. Helen’s group mingled with Sammy’s and had a bit of an artistic contingent but Joey’s buds, they would sneak into the house via the walkout and for some reason let themselves out through the front door. I’d be in the living room watching the Twins or T-Wolves as these kids would file out saying, “Goodnight Mr. Kelley”, and I would wonder who the hell these kids are, as they all looked the same to me, and I would wonder where the hell did they come from. Well anyhow Cory and Andy are telling me about some stunt that involved sneaking around our old master bedroom. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if I can still inspire that old fear? I say, “So you guys were in my bedroom?!!” Cory starts backpedal-ling, “Wwwwell, nooo, actually, only Joey, actually went in your bedroom!” I kept it up for a bit, winking to my nephew Simon, sitting next to me. Joey told me later that Cory had quickly found him and warned him to “Stay away from your dad, he’s really mad!” What fun!

The next day is cloudy and drizzly and we’re hoping the rain does not affect our Twins game. Joey, good son that he is, had gotten 11 tix for the sold out Twins V Rangers game this evening in the new outdoor Target field which has been raved about by everyone. After cleaning up and having a cocktail and cigar with my close friend and host Kevin we head to Princeton where we while away the afternoon with Harriet. Joey is with us and Sammy is with his contingent in St. Cloud and Joey is texting back and forth on his new Droid, his cell drug of choice. Finally it is decided that we will drive to Elk River and they will drive to Big Lake, both of us picking up the northern spur of the brand new light rail, to Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. Our trip goes without incident and we are very impressed with the new light rail but around Anoka Joey gets a call from Sammy, they missed the light rail and are racing to downtown via Pete’s car and beyond that, he is too frustrated to talk any further. At least they make it in time to catch opening pitch and we watch a great game that has the Twins coming out on top 6-3 but the game is marred by a game ending catch/collision between Span and Hudson with Span holding onto the ball to preserve the win. It is pretty cool that virtually nobody leaves the park until both players are on their feet and walking off the field. Target Field is very impressive and I invite you to check it out on other blogs. The special Twins light rail run is jam packed with standing room only when we board for our trip back. I find it curious that there are no handrails. Every rickety bus in Mexico has handrails. Eventually enough people debark that we able to sit and, all in all the day has been an excellent experience.

The following Wednesday has us heading up to the cabin to host Kevin and Rosie for dinner and to get a jump on prep for Helen and Caleb’s wedding there. On the way we stop at the “Meat Store” just outside Onamia and pick up some Rib Eyes. I am dazzled by the prices: $7/lb for the two remaining bone-in steaks and $12 for two more bone-less steaks. That is the one thing I don’t like about coming back to the States, sticker shock.

Finally at the cabin we start prepping for the meal and in short order K&R show up in brother Keith’s Tundra PU with our patio set which Pete and Judy have been very kindly storing, but we need it now, and also Kevin’s back-up Bose sound system which he has generously offered for the wedding, here at the cabin. K&R are properly impressed at the grand renovation of this old log cabin with a completely brand new lower level and cool new landscaping with a new ground level patio lakeside. Kevin, master BBQer that he is, prepares our steaks perfectly – Kudos to Kevin! After cocktails and watching the sun set over Captive Lake, a small, semi-private lake, K&R head to the nearby Indian Casino/hotel to ply his formidable skills at the hold-em table.

Thursday Mary spring cleans the cabin, I take care of outside duties, weedwacking and such and then Mary gives me other prep duties that I am capable of – the happy mule once again.

Roger and MaryLou, groom Caleb’s folks show up in their camper and trailer and after helping Roger set up we head to the patio fronting the lake and sitting at our patio set’s new home we start happy hour. I barely knew Roger before this day, but by the end of the day we are great pals. The kids all join us by early evening and Joe, Caleb’s best man and SO Kelly are here as well.

Friday, June 4th, wedding day, is abuzz with prep activities while Sammy motors the 130 miles to the airport to pick up his fiance. While Sammy has been done with work (math teacher at York Co. Community College) for a couple weeks, Annah, an el-ed teacher, is still working and Sammy says she does a pretty good job of not hating him as he sleeps in every morning. Joey’s better half Meryah runs the command post of this whirlwind of activity with total aplomb as we grunts do as ordered. I never dreamed that such a small wedding could involve so many details!

Best Man Joe, Caleb, Helen, and Maid of Honor Jen

Finally all guests have arrived, immediate family, uncles, aunts, and grandmas and I do a head count for setting up chairs. Helen had projected 28 guests and there are 27. The ceremony begins with Helen, radiant in her dress, a white chiffon with blue sash, custom crafted in Mexico walking down from the second level deck and joining Caleb in his mod tan suit with matching custom made blue tie and a pair of extraordinary boots, at the lakeside edge of the patio. They are framed by Captive Lake and the summer blue sky and the scene is softly lit with the heavy sun behind them, low on the horizon. The Rev, Joey is officiating, now that he is official. He is still living down the fact that one of his co-workers had to point out that he’d misspelled Joseph on his online certificate which he was proudly displaying in his cubicle.

Joey reads the text that Helen had prepared and then the couple state their touching and heartfelt vows and they are one. And the feast begins. Everyone has brought a tasty dish and my trim brother Mark amazes me again. He is 9 months and 1 day younger than me and he can still eat like a teenager downing two heaping full large platters of food. If I did that you’d

Rev Joey and The Newlyweds

have to call 911.

The evening winds down, the freshly minted wedded couple heads to the nearby hotel, and we see the individual parties off down the gravel road. And it is down to the hard core, Roger, Joey, me and Mary. Finally I am nodding off and hit the sack to find out that Joey and Roger told stories until 3am.

The next day, Saturday, is reception day but first we have to clean up and shut down the cabin. Thankfully, late last night Meryah had directed her minions in assisting her in food teardown but we still have a big job to do today. Finally everything is packed, cabin cleaned, and garbage stuffed into the Park Av. It’s a cloudy drizzly day but we have had exceptional luck, with every outdoor fest in our itinerary blessed by the MN weather gods.

Mary and I, Sammy and Annah stop off at Harriet’s in Princeton to grab an overnight bag and then head to our hotel in the cities. Mary and I clean up and she puts on the same gray custom made mother of the bride dress and I don, again, my tan linen pants and white custom made white Guayabera shirt. I think Alexei, the tailor, owes us a kickback by now. Sam hustles us over to the the reception hall, the rustic event center of a Twin Cities golf course as our early presence has been requested. When we get there though, we wonder why, as Helen has everything under control. This is fine by me as I share a contraband beer with Kevin who, with Rosie is supplying the music tonight.

The First Dance

Guests start to arrive and Kevin starts his sound machine. Then Kevin introduces the wedded couple and they do their dance to Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple’s version of Bridge Over Troubled Water. Then the moment I had been fearing arrives, the father/bride dance. When Helen had visited last November we had decided on Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called To Say I Love You. Helen puts me at my ease and we discuss a spin as we dance and we actually do one. Then with my confidence boosted we do a spin out and spin back. I am happy to hear that I did not make a fool of myself.

The dancers are filling the dance floor as the night heats up and I find myself truly dancing like a fool now, but Deb, my frequent partner, Mary’s best friend

Father/Bride Dance

doesn’t seem to mind too much. At one point I see Bill on the floor and his SO Mary sitting and I spin her onto the floor, get her dancing and hand her off to Bill. I am on fire! But not to be outdone, Sammy’s groomsman-to-be Anton puts on his dancing Jones and is wowing the crowd. Just to show there are no hard feelings, Anton and I do a cheek to cheek. Now we’re cool.

We’ll I am sweating like a pig, I need to cool off on the really neat patio out the front door. I grab my Cohiba genuine Cuban cigars for all the important, cool people. Best man Joe, nephew Ben, and others light up. These are Esplendidos and the deal is, I explain to my happy recipients, is that you have to smoke the whole thing as these cigars are about a foot long (slight hyperbole). Everyone is happy to oblige and I am of a mood to police this action and do. At this point Jen, Helen’s lovely bridesmaid asks what is our secret, why have Mary and I been together so long. After pooh, poohing her she remains insistent and I tell her and others what I told Mary on the way to the courthouse and this is how we have lived our lives together, “Well, babe, it’s just you and me now, against the world.” I don’t think she is very impressed with our “secret” but it is what it is.

The night has flown by and we are called into the ballroom for one last dance which involves some sort of

Annah & Sammy Rockin' Out!

a scrum with Helen’s group. And then time to leave. There is a shuttle to the hotel but I want to help Kevin pack all his gear and Mary Fran is good enough to hang with me. Kevin is amazingly organized and it takes just a few minutes to get it done and then Kevin tails us to the hotel. Mary Fran and I sit in the back seat of their new Prius with good looking son Karl at the wheel with pretty sister Anja in her sleek red dress, at his side. I stay quiet as they argue over directions and Mary’s instincts trump Karl’s recall and we are in Deb and Bonnie’s party room shortly. There, we tell stories until 4am.

I am awake at 8 the next morning. That’s the problem with getting old. No matter what time you go to bed, you always wake at about the same time. Well I need to ferry my sis Cheryl to the airport for her gig in Santa Fe, anyway. She is presenting at the science conference there. So first we see Helen and Caleb off to their uptown apmnt on their way to their honeymoon cabin in remote UP, MI and then I find ma – Margaret, and Cheryl and we head out. Mary is meeting up with Bonnie and Deb for breakfast, I get a vending machine roll. Better luck next time.

Mary rendezvous’s with me and ma at Harriet’s and then we motor over to Foley where we will spend the last few MN days with Margaret decompressing and putting in a few work shifts. It is a very relaxing time and I am happy to do a few chores for ma.

Wednesday, is getaway day and nephew Simon with his one yr old son Jordan are happy to give us a ride to the airport which is a very good deal for us, as it is a good 80 mile trek and public transport is a little difficult out here in the MN sticks.

So, of Helen and Caleb’s wedding and all the other events, this is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Thanks for visiting, gentle reader. Bruce covered a lot of ground and he would like to say to anyone still reading, give this reader a medal! But now that Bruce and Mary are back to their regular Merida routine, posts will be regular again, sort of, and much shorter! Hasta pronto.

Bruce & Kevin - Damage Assessment First Happy Hour

A part of Bruce and Mary’s old life back in the States that they have really missed is the Friday night happy hours they used to share with their St. Cloud friends at brother Neil’s place (one of Joey’s pals, when announcing that he was going to “Uncle Neil’s Place” for happy hour was asked, “Where is that bar, never heard of it?”). And before St. Cloud it was our Alexandria friends who we partied down with, every Friday night. Let’s see what happens in Mérida when Bruce and Mary introduce that time honored tradition of Friday night happy hours to their Mérida friends.

We’d talked about it for a long time and we finally decided to kick off the first Mérida Happy Hour back in January when Kevin and Rosie were visiting. Kevin and Rosie are very social and they had met many of our Mérida friends on prior visits so we knew they would enjoy it, as visitors, so we sent out the invites. The invite went something like this: Please join us for the  first Mérida Happy Hour this Friday. It commences at 5 and ends….. In an effort to keep the hosts responsibilities minimal (to encourage lots of hosting volunteers) everyone should bring their drinks and a botana, snack, to share. By the end of every happy hour a new host shall announce themselves and the tradition shall continue. Absolutely no RSVPs, come if you like, don’t if you don’t and the first rule of Happy Hour Club is…. there are no rules, the above are just suggestions.

Well that first happy hour at our place was quite the success with about 25 people showing up, including our local friends Enrique and Mary (not Maria) who, in typical local fashion did not show until most guest were leaving. Well it didn’t make much difference to us as Dave the Brit and his entourage kept us up until 1am anyhow.

The next weekend our good friends Lorcan and Lexi hosted, at their cozy house in Centro, with its beautiful gardens and patio. We were the first there and helped them set-up and again it was quite the crowd but with a number of different folks who were new to us. The local contingent showed about when we were leaving which caused all future Happy Hour invites to not be open ended. Now, quite explicitly, invitations  state that the hours of Happy Hour are 5-7.

The next happy hour was at Dave the Brit’s new fish and chips place on Calle 59 in the heart of downtown

Happy Hour Club at Captain Flint's

and gringo gulch. Cap’n Flints was not slated to be open for a bit but Dave thought this would be a good opportunity for a trial run and it was a huge success. Dave started off with botanas of breads and cheeses and then quickly served up his fish and chips and deep fried empanada type things that Dave’s right hand man Varon had essentially invented. Very good but not too heart healthy as you can imagine. Again there were a lot of familiar faces and another batch of new ones.

The next happy hour was hosted by Enrique and Mary, our local friends and they live way out in Fracc. Francisco Montejo. This was the first happy hour that we could not walk to. Our taxi pulled up at Enrique’s brand new house in a brand new development and boy, were Lorcan and Lexi glad to see us. They were the first guests to arrive, we were the second. You see, Lorcan and Lexi’s Spanish is quite a bit better than the average gringo down here but not quite up to conversational levels so they had been struggling. And soon we were joined by a neighbor Alberto who treated us to his Tamarindo Margaritas (quite good) and soon Dave and his entourage showed up along with a few others and the evening, for us, was capped by Alberto tuning up his guitar and crooning some Latin love songs for us. It was a very enjoyable happy hour (but smallish due to the far out location) and one that we were happy to have shared with Dale and Judy, church friends of Mary’s mother Harriet, who were in town for just a couple of nights on a bus tour of Central and SE Mx.

Alberto Serenading Us at Enrique and Mary's Casa

Then for the first time, no one volunteered in response to the weekly Wednesday batch email that Lorcan, bless his soul, had taken upon himself to send out informing of the next happy hour host or soliciting one. So, we decided to meet at El Lucero del Alba, our neighborhood bar. As we are the founding fathers we chose our bar and a fine one it is with reasonable beers and free, most excellent botanas. We were the first ones there and we helped our server buddies Filipe, Lucio, and Enrique bunch tables together for this gringo onslaught and leading the charge was Dave and his entourage followed closely by Lorcan and Lexi. We had about 20+  turn out and it was fun but it was difficult to mix as you had to hop from table to table to do so.

Mary and the Hard Core of The Happy Hour Club

We missed the next happy hour which was hosted by Debbie our good friend and it was the doozy of the bunch as 45 people attended. We heard a lot about it at the next happy hour that we attended (I know, we the founders dropped out for a little while and boy did we get crap for it!), again at El Luceros. Once more no volunteer stepped forward and Lorcan and Lexi and Mary and I discussed this at length as things like Happy Hour are important! We agreed that this Happy Hour club had morphed out of all recognition. We looked around the room and we knew maybe half of the people and we also knew why nobody was volunteering, it had grown too big! So we decided to do one last call for a volunteer and if no one stepped up, we’d take a break for the summer and reassess in the fall. And that is what happened, no one stepped up and we are on break. But I like my idea better. Once we get back from MN in early June (we have some things to attend to like Mary’s annual May 17^th celebration and… something else…. oh yea, our daughter Helen’s marriage!) I will propose, because why the hell should we take the summer off from Happy Hour(?), that we, on the sly, start all over. Only this time it will be only the hard core, our intimate group (you know who you are) and we will all be sworn to secrecy. I am thinking of passwords and secret hand shakes. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Once again it is another case of be careful what you wish for, for Bruce and Mary. But maybe next time they can do Happy Hour right and it will be a cause for celebration for all of their Mx days! Well that was a little over the top, but what the hell you can never underestimate the power of Happy Hour.

Bruce Working on 2009 Taxes Poolside, Naturally

Last year, 2009, was Bruce and Mary’s first full tax year living in México. Now Bruce is no whiz at taxes having given up that duty to his ever steadfast and painfully honest accountant Wayne, but now things have changed. Let’s see what happens when Bruce is on his own again, one on one against the taxman.

I called Wayne up over the holidays to get lined up for my 2009 taxes. Wayne had done our 2008’s, when the only income we had was the rental from our house and the short time in early 2008 when we were still living our old lives, working for Chassis Liner and Merrill Corp. As usual, Wayne had worked his magic and gotten us pretty substantial refunds. However on this call, everything changed. “Wayne, how’ya doing buddy? What’s new in Alexandria?” He proceeded to get me up to speed and to tell of a mutual acquaintance who had looked at property around booming Alex in the early 80s, just like I had, I tell Wayne. Well, the only difference was he actually borrowed the money and bought the land. I didn’t. Now, he’s splitting time, early retired, between his lake home on the chain of lakes and his condo in Hawaii. Wayne and I commiserated, but he reminds me that at least I was able to run away to México while he is still, at age 62, slaving away over taxes for guys like me. Time to get down to business. I explain my situation: We’ve lived in México all for all of tax year 2009 and our income from the Canadian outfit for which we online moderate is not huge but significant. He says to me, “Sorry Bruce, that’s ‘world-wide income while living abroad’. Don’t know a thing about it, can’t do it.” When I start whining he tells me that he understands there are a lot of tax preparers in CA that handle that sort of thing, maybe I can find someone there.

Now what?

Well I ignore it for a couple of months, it is flat out not any fun to think about, but March rolls around and when it still hasn’t gone away I start my research. Number one, do I even have to file? After all we live in Mexico and a Canadian firm pays us. We don’t drive on American roads, we have no 911 that we can call (policia protecting our butts now), and no one is going postal (Mx mail ain’t that bad) for us down here . It’s not that we’re not solid, taxpaying democrats, happy to pay for our infrastructure, it’s just that, right now, we’re not using it. Well the US of A feels like that way to a certain extent. I discovered that all Americans under age 65, everywhere, have to file a return, if you have a minimum income of $12,000 (married-filing-jointly). However, if you’re living abroad and qualify, there is schedule 2555 that gives a $91,400 exemption. I did the worksheet and we qualify, Que bueno!

So I went to the IRS website and learned about e-filing and chose a company among the many on the list, 1040Now, and got to work. After much trial and error I thought I was ready to go and low and behold, there are no taxes to be paid. But then I found an error on form 2555, I had missed a zero on our online moderation income and so I showed a negative income on my 1040 long form. What’s up? Oh yea, form 2555 only exempts my income and with the right number in there that exemption is greater than the rental income I had reported on schedule E. I still had to report our moderation income, duh. So I checked out how to do that. We received no W2 or the Canadian equivalent because we were not employees which is essentially when I realized, Doh, we’re independent contractors. So young man, go to schedule C. I did so and at least we qualified for the C-EZ and I filled it out. And that is when I discovered the good old self-employment tax. After some more googling I verified that there is no way to avoid SE no matter what you do or where you live in the world. And that nasty straight rate is about 15%, ouch!

Well, we considered, briefly, ignoring our self employed income, after all who’s to know? Our company does not file 1099s with the IRS. But then, like a little voice in the back of my head I  remembered what my insurance agent, CPA, brother Mark once told me, “They catch you fooling with your deductions, they’ll penalize you and charge interest. They catch you fooling with your income; they’ll throw you in jail.” Yea, I guess we owe, and are going to pay, a chunk of change.

So I completed the filing, filled out the ACH payment authorization and clicked “submit” and waited to see if this filing was correct and would be accepted.

The next day I checked and the filing was accepted and a couple days later I checked our GMFCU account (General Mills Federal Credit Union – love those guys, especially Gina who handles our account) and our Fed taxes had been snatched out of there. Fed taxes were a done deal, signed, sealed and delivered.

Now onto MN state taxes. I emailed the state revenue site and stated our circumstances and found that although we wouldn’t owe taxes we still had to file. And that is how these free tax outfits like 1040Now make their money. They charge for the state return. So I filled out the return, payed the $16.95, and clicked submit. The next day I logged in and saw that it had been accepted.

And that, my friends, is how we handled “Living Abroad While Earning World-Wide Income”.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. If you have any questions about the above, please comment. Bruce is not a tax accountant but he does play one on TV. Hasta la vista, baby!

A Mexican Picnic

Bruce and Mary are in México for Easter for the third year in a row. They’re not very religious and certainly not Roman Catholic as is most of this country. Let’s see what Easter weekend is like for this zenner couple.

Good Friday is weird, here. We are working our shifts, holiday shifts as it were, since for our Canadian firm this day is an official holiday. Our Canadian friends are surprised to hear that it is not in the States. As this relates to our jobs, most of the posters to the online forum that we moderate are at home, not working, which means that they’re not at their work desks informing the whole world of their awe inspiring insight to every story that hits our Canadian news website. In other words it is a slow day and only a skeleton crew is in place.

We log off and I make some online chess moves in the games I am playing with Kevin D, Sammy our hijo major, and his old chum Josh, who is almost a member of the family. Then we figure we’ll head out for a bite. There is no traffic and it is eerily quiet. We don’t even hear any music in the distance which is really weird. At the corner of the block we find our favorite bar El Lucero del Alba closed. Hmmm. We reverse directions and walk a couple blocks to our favorite cantina, La Gran Lucha. Closed. We walk over to El Choperia, a nice Brazilian/Mexican fusion restaurant/bar. Closed. We walk further down Calle 56 to the Jazz Club. Closed. And that is when we give up and head home for our own botanitas while we watch a couple of movies.

Saturday starts promisingly with a bright sky and warm temps, it seems we may be getting back to normal after all these nortes. We do our usual routine, working out at the California gym where I make a couple more friends, Ramon and Roberto. Ramon is pretty impressive, doing front squats with three plates.

Then we do our weekly shopping at Wal-Mart (we never shopped at Wal-Mart in the states for the reasons that people don’t, but it is different here) and the rest of the day we just relax. We’re saving ourselves for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, beach day for us. We took Monday off because we have to finish up our FM3 visas renewals but what that means in this story is that Monday we can sleep in.

Sunday dawns the gorgeous day we were hoping for and after we fool around on our computers, drink a couple gallons of coffee, and have some breakfast we are out the door for the beach. The last time we took the Progreso bus to the beach on a Sunday morning, they had, because the bus terminal is on the Mérida en Domingo biciruta, bicycle route which is closed to traffic, temporarily staged buses on a nearby street with personnel manning card tables selling tix. But we can’t remember exactly where that is, so we ask the cabbie if he knows where the Mérida en Domingo Progreso bus terminal is set up and he says, “Si, si.” So we hop in and take off.

Well after we have gone in a complete circle I am starting to get angry and the cabbie starts making excuses because of the biciruta. So we just get out, in the vicinity of buses we can see staging, pay the 30P taxi fee and hoof our way down the block to the staging area. Well, this ain’t the place, one of the drivers tells us and the directions he gives us are to the regular Progreso depot. We walk the two blocks and sure enough, people are lined up down the block to buy tix inside the depot. I guess the Progreso buses don’t care about the biciruta anymore.

We stand in line for probably about 20 minutes and spot our friend Bob, owner of Las Vigas, one of our favorite joints downtown, and wave at him. At Mary’s suggestion I butt in the bus loading line while she stays in the tix line and just as she gets to the window, a heavy set local gal butts in front of her and then takes forever to buy her tix. Meanwhile they are holding up one of the buses for me and Mary who are the last to board and wouldn’t you know, Mary gets the last seat and I get to stand the whole way to the beach. By this point you could grill a T-Bone steak, medium well, on my bald head. The whole point of coming to the depot was to guarantee seats, as we knew that hopping the bus at our usual stop on Av. Cupules, it would be standing room only. So we wend through town and by the time we get to the aforementioned bus stop I calculate that if we had stuck to our normal M.O. we’d be sitting on the beach right now. Grrrr!!

Well, the bus keeps on adding people at every stop and by the time we hit the superhighway, the bus is completely stuffed. But finally we do hit the depot and we debark into the hot sun with our beach gear and it is a good day once again.

We weave our way on the packed sidewalks to our cerveceria on the corner of the malecon and it is wall-to-wall people. The malecon is closed to traffic and there is a soundstage with live music going and beer and food vendors are filling the street.

Mary stops to get us a litro of Superior while I go on ahead with our gear to stake out our spot on the beach and it is busy, the beach is packed with middle class Yucatecans. The upper class is sitting in the shaded palapa restaurant/bars that line the beach. As I am getting out our portable beach chairs and beach blankets I see all manner of gerry rigged wind (it is breezy) and sun shelters. Families are setting up picnics on blankets and short legged collapsible tables.

Mary joins me and the first thing I do is take a dip in the green water. It is warmer than I thought it would be

Bruce Enjoying a Cohiba

and there is a genuine surf, in fact as the waves break I can actually feel a mild undertow pulling me back into the ocean. Back on shore, Mary pours Superior into our plastic glasses and after toweling off I light up our Cohiba cigar. We are right where we want to be, physically, mentally, and spiritually. What a perfect day.

Mary and I make small talk while enjoying the incredible people watching. I am caught up by the 12 yr old, sunglassed entrepreneur right in front of us. He has a big box of kites which serves as the anchor for the half dozen Styrofoam kites he is flying. The kites are in the shape of airplanes and spinners, wings with cores like an old fashioned lawnmower that spin at about 10,000rpm. This kid is cleaning up and looking so cool in the process.

Posing Amateur Body Builders

I go for a refill and when I get back I find Mary with a bag of popcorn from a beach vendor. The popcorn is drenched with hot sauce and for 15P we have the best popcorn we have ever had in our lives.

The afternoon is waning but the beach and the malecon are just getting busier and busier. However, we are starting to burn and it time for a real meal. I return our litro for the 5P deposit, while Mary packs up, and it is 3 people deep at the counter and everyone is drunk and not very polite. People behind me are putting their empty litros in front of my face for refills. Finally I get my 5P back and find Mary on the beach. We decide it is just too busy at the beach side restaurants so we head back towards the bus depot and we remember a place along the way that looked kind of cool. We find it quickly and sit down in the shade.

Nick, fluent in English, having been raised in CA shoots the breeze with us as he takes our order. The beers are reasonable at 20P but the food is a little pricey. Finally we decide to split a 95P chicken burrito. It’s the perfect amount of food and after settling up we hit the road and arrive at the depot just as they are loading a bus for Mérida. We are one of the last ones to board but at least we both get a seat this time.

Forty minutes later we are debarking at Calle 47 to hoof the remaining 4 blocks home. We are beat but quite content; it has been a great day.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Feel free in sharing your Easter 2010. Bruce would love to hear about it. Hasta Pronto!