Work

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What a Week!

Let’s see if I can recap the last week… I ended up taking a lot more work than I had planned for the week because it was from a good client I’ve been saying no to a lot lately and then I had a bunch of social engagements!

Tuesday started with my landlady’s mother and the handyman coming over to work on my lack of hot water and water pressure issues. She said that they guy who did the plumbing for the house completely messed it up and they really need to start over. They lifted up the tinaco (rooftop water tank) and that helped a bit with the pressure issue. But hot water will continue to be hit or miss until they can upgrade me from the crappy ancient water heater to an on-demand one that will be installed in my shower. While they were there, I asked if they could lift up my clothesline since it had gotten slack and my sheets were almost touching the ground. Not a problem and they put it up almost too high, knowing that after a few loads, it’ll get slack again and come back down a bit. So many of my friends here with Mexican landlords complain about how slow things are to get done, but I have no problems and am thoroughly spoiled!

Shortly after they left, Wandering Mike arrived. I settled him into his suite and then went back to typing because we were going out to dinner at Miguel’s with Contessa and Colin at Miguel’s around 6PM. I didn’t know what I wanted, so I opted for both a chorreada and a shrimp burrito, and I tried their limonada for the first time. It was, of course, a good meal. We’re lucky to have Miguel’s!

Wednesday started off badly. I was really over scheduled with work and the internet kept going down in the first hour of my day (6AM to 7AM). I couldn’t even get data on my phone to send and receive emails, and even if I could have, I had too much transcription to do to spend the day sitting in my truck waiting on emails! Thankfully, the issue resolved itself and I was able to work the rest of the day without any more problems. I had two Skype calls, one to a client and one to my mother. It’s nice that the internet here is good enough that I can video Skype!

Part of the reason that work was so overwhelming that day was that I was meeting a bunch of friends on the beach for a late lunch, including L&N, whom I hadn’t seen since I arrived. I got there around 2:00 and was back home by 4:00. It was a coconut shrimp and coco (chilled green coconut with the top lopped off so you can drink the water inside) kind of day! I don’t really like the restaurant we met at, El Velero, but this was the best meal I ever had there.

I paid for my lunch with having to type until past 9PM. I did something like a 13-hour actual day of work (plus the break). I can’t believe that used to be a normal work day for me.

Thursday started off fun. I didn’t have a proofing shift, so I went to town with Mike to get a cake at Panamá’s for Christmas dinner. We took a pulmonía from the embarcadero (a real treat!), got the cake, and came right back. It was just over an hour door-to-door to run the errand. I then had to do a small job and then I got to work preparing an appetizer for happy hour at Contessa’s (guacamole).

Mike and I headed over to the RV park around 4:00 and met up with Chris and Juan. Happy hour is meant to be just that, but it always runs late and there’s enough food for it to be a meal!

I got a late start on Friday and headed down to the City Deli to pick up some crema (sour cream) for one of the dishes I was making for dinner as well as beer.

Most of the day involved cooking. I put together scalloped potatoes in Contessa’s crockpot liner and then brought it over to her place to cook all day. Then, I came back and got a ham cooking for the meat eaters at dinner. Even though it was a small ham, it was way too much and I have a pile of leftovers to fill the freezer with, and this is after giving away as much as I could!

Dinner was great, with everyone bringing a dish or two. We all ate our fill and there was tons left! We sat around till about 9:00 gabbing and having drinks and coffee.

Saturday was pretty much a write-off. I was up shockingly late, nearly 11!!! I was just exhausted and stayed in. I wouldn’t have gone out at all, but Contessa organized a blogger convention thing for 5:00. So I headed out around 4:30 for a long walk around the Isla and then met up with the gang at Lety’s restaurant on the beach. Service was slow and the other blogger joining us was super late showing up, so we would have been better off going to dinner in town. But I had a wonderful meal even if some of the others didn’t feel that way. Their shrimp quesadillas never disappoint and, this time, they came with a side of really good guacamole! I also treated myself to a piña colada!

Sunday was chilly. I was working yet again, so I only took a break midafternoon for a beach walk. There was an impromptu happy hour in the late afternoon and then Mike and I went to Miguel’s for dinner, where I had their steak platter (orden de carne asada) for the first time. Very good and surprisingly inexpensive!

Which brings us to today. Mike left early to catch the Baja Ferry and I finished up a small job this morning. I’ll be heading out to ride soon and then I’m going into town.

WHEW. I’m all social engagemented out and don’t plan to do anything for New Years! But it was a fun week and it was nice to spend time with everyone.

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Playing Hooky

I had a day of transcription to do, but by the time I got halfway through my work it was 1PM and I just had to get away from my computer screen, even if it meant have to come back home to the unfinished job.

Pad Thai was what I was in the mood for, so I decided to head up to the Golden Zone, then walk to the bank and Soriana. Getting to the Golden Zone felt like an eternity! I waited for ages on this side for a lancha, then I waited for eons on the other side for a bus. I waited so long that I considered getting into a pulmonía even if that would have meant a $100 trip to the GZ instead of just a $10 one!

Let’s just say that this was the perfect day for me to have given into my curiosity and bought a big fluffy doughnut with cinnamon sugar from the lady at the embarcadero because I would have passed out from hunger by the time I got to the restaurant! I thought I didn’t like doughnuts. As it turns out, I don’t like Canadian doughnuts. Mexican doughnuts are great. 🙂 And cheap! It was only something like $2!

A photo posted by Rae Crothers (@travelingrae) on

So the bus finally arrived and it was incredibly crowded, standing room only for me… until a gentleman got up and told me to take his seat! Chivalry isn’t dead in Mexico!  I was very grateful since it’s been incredibly humid the last few days and my knee is  being really bad, so I appreciated a rest between all that walking I would end up doing.

Like last time, there was no one at the restaurant, even though I arrived quite a bit later. I had the pork in my Pad Thai this time and it wasn’t any better than the chicken in terms of the meat being a bit bland. But that’s being nitpicky again because the Pad Thai was again worth the very long journey to get to it! Two stars didn’t even make my eyes water this time. Either I’m getting used to spice or the chef skimped! It’s such a shame the restaurant is tucked away out of sight. Hopefully, word of mouth will be enough to keep it running a long time.

Next stop was the bank. I make a withdrawal up to my daily limit each time I go by one of the two Scotiabank branches that are part of my normal routes so that I have a reserve of cash on hand since neither one is particularly convenient to go to in a rush. I always convert my big bills to smaller ones and have yet to encounter any reluctance on a teller’s part. I’m really glad I opened up the account because I am saving a bundle on withdrawal fees!

Right next to Scotiabank is Office Depot and I spent a blissful half hour in there getting a few things I need to do my taxes and close the books for the year, including separators with the month written on them. They are in English, which I guess makes sense even for Mexico since the months are so close in both languages, as well as French, with just January being the odd duck out in Spanish (enero versus January/janvier). I just love poking through office supply stores. 🙂

Then, I got a few things at Soriana. I was hoping to find Swiffer refills, even though I knew that was likely wishful thinking. I have to wash my floors a lot here because so much sand gets in and the only mops I could find last year were the string kind that just basically push the dirt around. So I came armed with my Swiffer. The refills are pricey (I go through up to four sheets to do the whole house), but the wet sheets both clean the floor and trap the dirt, doing a much better job than a broom and mop, so they’re well worth the money. A lady asked if she could help me and I just said, “Swiffer…” and she said they didn’t have any, but she could suggest something else. She handed me a reusable microfiber cloth that promises to do the same thing as the Swiffer sheets (and which are meant to clip onto a Swiffer-type mop head), only you have to dip the cloth in water and wring it out. More work, but more economical. At something like $30, it’ll be worth trying it!

I also treated myself to some new bedsheets, another attempt to bring a little colour into the house. A ‘full’ mattress in the U.S./Canada is ‘matrimonial’ in Mexico. Just an FYI. 🙂

By the time I got out, the sky had gone from grey to absolutely leaden. It’ll probably pour tonight. It was a pretty fast taxi ride to the embarcadero (taking yet another route I’ve never taken before, so I saw new things), a bit of a wait at the lancha, and then a short taxi ride home on this side, with the driver knowing exactly where to take me. He took some other passengers, too, and one asked what the heck we were doing stopping where we did. He was surprised that it was my house. Must have thought I live in the trailer park or the hotel, I guess… He hopped out and helped me with my bags. Gentlemen aren’t in short supply in this country!

Gah, I’d better get back to work. But I think I have the next three days off!

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Hunkering Down

I have somehow managed to find myself swamped with work through the weekend. Because of this and my needing to make a withdrawal at the bank, I decided not to do any overtime today and instead go to Maz after my shift ended at 2:00, then hunker down and work for the next three days.

The nearest Scotiabank to me is the one on Ejercito Mexicano, about 1.5KM from the embarcadero. I walked there and on the way noticed several stores, even hole in the wall abarrotes, that said ‘recarga TelCel aquí’ (recharge TelCel here). I’ve been meaning to put money on my phone so I can make and receive calls, but the website has been so terribly slow that I haven’t had the patience to do so. I’d never put money on the phone from a vendor before and decided to see if that’s easier than using my credit card on the website. Is it! I gave my number to the clerk, told her I wanted to add $100 to my account, and she punched it into what I assumed is a cell phone, although it looked like a big old Nokia from 10 years ago.

After about 30 seconds, her phone dinged and I got five text messages confirming that I’d added the $100, what my rates were, special promotions, etc. Super easy! That’s all I had to do because I was going to use the money for calls and texts. If I had wanted to buy bandwidth, I would have needed to send a text message to that effect.

I just checked the text messages and one of them says that my $100 got me $100 in bonus time (saldo regalo/gift balance)!!! I can use that for calls, texts, and bandwidth at full price. Wow! I remember from last year that I pretty much spent the winter making calls on only saldo regalo, but don’t remember it being that generous.

The Amigo plan (pay-as-you-go) rates are also pretty amazing. Get this, I only pay $2 per minute… to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. I have been staring at those numbers for the last five minutes trying to figure out what I’m reading wrong. That’s 0.16CAD per minute. There has got to be a catch. I am going to have to call someone in Canada to see if this is true! Skype is free, of course, but it’s good to know that I have the phone as a backup! I just skimmed the fine print and it looks like I can use my phone in the U.S. as though I was in Mexico, which is very interesting. I will get back to this as this plan sounds like a game changer because I could keep my TelCel account active when I’m home and use my Mexican SIM when I’m in Montana!

But I digress. From the abarrotes, I crossed the street to use the Scotiabank ATM, where I was able to take out $4,800. It came out in all $500s, plus a $200 and a $100. Ouch! I much prefer withdrawing from Santander, which gives some small bills… but I don’t miss the fee! I went into the bank and asked to change the $4,5000 worth of $500s to $100s and $50s. Not a problem. The teller ended up giving me almost all $50s! I really didn’t mind, of course, but that made for a rather impressive stack of bills!

Since the big Waldo’s is just a block or two further down the road and I needed a few things for the house, it made sense to head there next. But since I was still on the Scotiabank side, I decided to have lunch first. I knew there was a Rin Rin pizza by the big Ley (where I didn’t need anything this time), but they wanted over $30 for tiny slice with a drink. Pass! I went to the Chinese place instead and had a nice lunch for $48.

Then, I climbed up and up and up and up and up and up some more to get to the pedestrian overpass to cross Ejercito Mexicano and then came all the way back down to ground level. Whew! I still prefer that to playing frogger in front of the Scotiabank!

Waldo’s had everything on my list… and a few things that’s weren’t. For those who don’t know, Waldo’s is equivalent to a higher end dollar store in Canada and the U.S., like Dollar Tree. I especially needed some plastic containers for storing leftovers and the like since the ones I bought last year weren’t in the kitchen when I arrived.

Walking back to the embarcadero, I was struck by the fact that this was my first time walking down Gutiérrez Nájera in that direction and that everything looked so different!

There was a short wait for a lancha, but I was back on Isla in a flash.

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I made a quick stop for beer ($90 for seven, so $13 each, almost half the cost of getting a beer at a restaurant!) and then it was time to get home because I was ready to drop. It’s been a busy work week! I plan to get a bit of a later start tomorrow, which will probably mean 7:00 instead of 6:00. 😀

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My First Torta

This week is the way life is supposed to be when you’re not retired, I think, with enough work to fill the coffers but not completely crush your soul with tedium, and plenty of time to stop and enjoy your ‘island’ paradise.

Amazingly, every single one of my clients has me on deck this week, even a couple of one-offs that I never expected to hear from again. It’s long days, but since I’m not doing the same thing hour after hour and a lot of work can be done from my armchair, it’s not hard the way my old transcription marathons were.

After finishing my eight-hour proofing shift, I went for a long beach walk, enjoying how quiet it is before the tourists come. Then, I came home to start on some graphic design-type work when an email came in asking if anyone from proofing could do a job right that minute. I knew that this writer’s copy is very clean and it wouldn’t be super tedious, so I claimed it… and may have had a beer while working on it. That done, I did a bit of work on the other project, but since I have to work on the PC and I’d already put in nearly 10 hours, I didn’t have enough patience to do much more than lay out the work to do. But at least I got started on it and have an idea of how long the job will take.

It was then time to put my feet up for a bit and read. I’ve been reading a lot since I got back to Isla and I know that chair has something to do with it! I really missed having a cozy chair and living room to retire to last winter since the sofa was so useless. I really didn’t use the house to its full potential. I’m much happier in it this year. My landlady also put something in my bedroom that she told me might be useful in my office, and she was right:

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What an amazing unit for my office! I love having a drawer for my office supplies and the printer higher up than when it was on the night table I was using last year! Some may say that she should have put a desk in here for me, too, but I don’t need one. The plastic table I was using last year is exactly the right height and size.

But I digress. By now, I’m sure you’re curious about the dang torta I mentioned in my post title… I vaguely remember reading about tortas last year, but didn’t think much of them. Maybe it’s because I’ve mastered the taco, but I seem to be seeing tortas everywhere this month and so I started to get curious. They really don’t sound like anything special, just a sandwich with a lot of stuff in it, but they’re quintessential Mexican food, so I decided to try one.

My riding friend Joan told me about a Miguel-ish restaurant at the other end of Isla, near the village embarcadero, called Estanquillo Osuna (not to be confused with the Osuna restaurant on the beach), that is open most evenings. I decided to check it out tonight.

Joan likes their papas locas (crazy potatoes), but that doesn’t appeal much to me since I’m not much of a potato fan unless they are fried Quebec style. The first thing on Osuna’s menu is tortas so I decided that I would try one. My choices were ham, carne asada (steak), pierna (similar to pulled pork, I’m told), and especial. I asked the server what the latter entailed and she slowly recited that it meant ham, steak, cheese, veggies, crema, and chiles. Sign me up!

I don’t know why, but I was expecting a cold sandwich. What arrived had been pressed on a grill, like a panino. The bread was delicate and buttery and one side had a slice of yellow (American/processed cheese). The meat had also seen the grill, with the ham reminding me of the fried baloney my dad used to serve when I was a kid (and that’s not a criticism!). On top of that were bite-sized pieces of steak, some of which were bonded with browned Chihuahua cheese (mmmmmmm), but most of which were loose and reminded me of one of Roseanne Connor’s loose meat sandwiches. There was also lettuce, onions, tomatoes, crema, and chiles, and I may have added a few extra of the chiles (and I had serranos in my lunch; I really am developing a Mexican palate!).

The whole thing was ridiculously messy, way too calorific, and incredibly delicious. Tortas are apparently a lunch food, meant to satisfy the appetite of a hard worker, not be dinner for someone who sits on her butt all day. So they’re a treat I will reserve for days when I’ve done a lot of walking. I’m told there’s a restaurant at the Mercado that does amazing pierna tortas, so I’ll plan to do that one day after a long Malecón walk!

Mexican food tends to combine a lot of different things together, and some combinations seem really odd, but I’m learning to have faith that they’ll work. I just have to avoid the mayo if at all possible. Asking for no mayo never works, even at Miguel’s, so I was really glad that the torta came with crema instead. Next thing I want to try is tostilocos!

I enjoyed eating at Osuna. It was a lot quieter than at Miguel’s (but there were still several customers), and I liked watching the lights of Maz. The price for dinner was $55 with water. A bottle of water at a restaurant is normally an outrageous $12 to $15, so I’d say the torta was probably about $40. So the prices are in line with Miguel’s, too, and it’ll be good to have that other option for a sit down restaurant now that Patty is gone (No, I’m not over it. Patty was wonderful!).

Yikes, look at the time! 7:30 is shutdown time for me since I like to be up by 4:30, 5:00 so I can hit the beach before work. You all feel sorry for me, don’t you. 😉 😉 😉

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Rebooting

My trip to Maz yesterday succeeded in depleting my batteries, so I was in bed super early and slept through the night for the first time in weeks. I’m not quite back to 100%, but getting close!

Working outside today wasn’t too bad. I could handle the distractions (including painters working on the house) and the bugs, but I was really stressed about running down my truck battery while using the booster. I found a USB cable that fits it that can be plugged into a wall outlet, so I won’t have that stress tomorrow! I also had the problem of the iPhone running too hot, which shouldn’t be an issue tomorrow since I won’t have to leave it in the truck all day. Most maddening, though, is something I experience frequently at Haven and wish Apple would fix already — I can have my phone plugged in all day and it will still drain if I am using it heavily. The hot spot feature isn’t mean to be used all day. And yes, I use the higher amperage iPad charger rather than the useless phone charger, but the phone still consumes more than the charger puts in.

The painters would have been content to just ignore me all day, and I them, but I just can’t do that. What I was doing all day must have looked really bizarre, especially when the phone started shutting down and I had to turn off the hotspot feature and just check mail from the phone while sitting in the truck. I thankfully had the vocabulary needed to explain what I was doing and why and that I’d clear out by 2:00. They were happy to hear this last bit because they were scraping and painting the porch overhang and I was very much in their way. By the time work was done, they were at my section, so the timing was perfect.

After work, I set off in search of a beach bar besides Carmelita’s with wifi and failed. No one else had wifi. Even though I don’t think their food is that great, I love how I’m treated at El Velero and so I went there. As it turned out, their wifi was down, but they gave me the password for next time. It’s a bit of a hike if I lose internet here and am rushed, but hopefully the wifi will be up if I need it next time… I had a beer and their chicken tacos. They’re very simple and need some pico de gallo, but now that I can handle the hot sauce, they have the zing I’m missing and are decent value. Even though I’m sure it’s not proper taco etiquette, I always fill them with refried beans and rice. Four of their tacos and a beer is a good lunch, without being over indulgent, as long as I remember to order them ‘suave’ (soft) rather than ‘dorado’ (fried). I eat the lettuce on the side because lettuce does not belong in tacos and have discovered that iceberg sprinkled with lime juice and salt is dang good!

When I was done, I thought to take the long way home along the water front, but it was way too hot! When I got to the last turn off before committing to the long schlep, I gave up and made a beeline for home. I read the rest of the afternoon under the ceiling fan while the workers finished up, and then read some more. I got a couple of packages full of books from my best friend recently and am working through them. I love my reading chair!

Off to make supper. It should be a veggie stir fry, but will likely be a quesadilla. 😀