Haven

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Beautiful Saturday

I’m slowly adjusting to having regular weekends and surprised by how long the days seem sometime. Take today, it’s not even 3:00 yet as I start this post and it’s been quite full!

I woke up around 6:00ish and read for about an hour in bed before getting up and making a particularly good cup of coffee, then breakfast. Then, I spent some time online reading fun blogs and catching up on emails. I caught up on some bookkeeping tasks before getting up to go do a deep clean of the kitchen proper in anticipation of leaving next month.

Around 11:00, I headed to C&C’s. I’d asked Charles, our local pest control officer, to prepare some mouse poison for me since I have active ones in the RV and the cabin and Caroline told me last night, over an impromptu glass of wine, to come by today at some point to get tomatoes. I came home just shy of noon and distributed the poison, then went in to turn the very ripe tomatoes into a fresh sauce, glad that I had remembered to buy both a ‘new’ garlic press from the Salvation Army and some dried basil at the grocery store when I was in town Thursday.

It was 1:00 by the time lunch was done and I decided to head to the thrift store in Willow Bunch. It was just too lovely a day not to go for a drive! I checked the oil in the truck before going out, then headed east.

The store was quite busy today, but there wasn’t much new stuff. I did a circuit and was about to leave empty-handed when something told me to check the coats again. There, I finally found a nice raincoat! It’s a tad big on me, but a definite improvement over my now humongous orange raincoat that I’d bought for the Chilkoot. It was only $3!

Coming out, I decided to see if the grocery store was still open as I was told it’s closing at the end of this month. Indeed, but they were having a going out of business sale with everything but meat and milk being 50% off. I was torn between being excited at the deals and sad at the loss of this vital Willow Bunch business.

Mindful that I’m leaving in a month, I still came out of there with $60 worth of groceries for $30, including two tins of coffee. They actually had the bigger containers of the dark roast that are better value than the little ones, but I’d rather pay a little more and not open up a huge amount of coffee at one time to keep it somewhat fresh. I also caved and bought some flour and a giant bag of chocolate chips to use up the rest of my bananas since we are heading out of frozen dessert weather… but I also couldn’t resist a $4 tub of Breyer’s cookies and cream ice cream! My favourite Hawaiian pizzas were available, too, so I got a couple, and I had fun fitting them and the ice cream in the freezer when I got home! I may also have come home with three jars of ‘hot dog relish’ (mustard mixed with relish) to bring down to Mexico with me… 🙂

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the rest of my day. But with it being so sunny and lovely and warm, I think there’s a swing and a good book in my future!

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Making Sense of New Mexican Visa Rules

Where I am right now in my life plan is that I want to go Mexico full-time next winter (although I am prepared to defer that one additional year if need be). So that gives me a year to get everything sorted out, including navigating all the new visa rules. It’s really hard to get advice right now because so many ‘old timers’ are used to the old system and really don’t know anything about the reformed immigration system. Another thing is that Mexico is getting more and more computerized, so a lot of these people just aren’t cognizant of just how strictly you need to follow the rules now compared to the old days.

This is going to be the first in what will likely be a series of posts as I figure out what I need to know to get to myself to Mexico permanently.

Here are a few of the things I need to consider:

Visas

The most pressing thing I need to figure out is how do I get to stay in Mexico for longer than 180 days and begin the path to citizenship? I’ve been getting a lot of conflicting info on that and false hope that I can get citizenship within about five years. Last night, I finally managed to sort it all out.

I read in several places that if I am self-employed with clients outside Mexico and can prove that I make a minimum amount per month, I can apply to be residente permanente (permanent resident), just as a retiree would, and be eligible after four years to apply for citizenship. This is false.

The visa I need to apply for is residente temporal (temporary resident). This isn’t as scary as it sounds. If you get it, you are allowed to stay in Mexico for a full year and then reapply for up to an additional three years. At the end of the three years (four total), you either leave Mexico or convert to a residente permanente visa, and then begin to the path to naturalization.

While the residente temporal path will take me a lot longer to get through, it will actually make it easier for me to get my foot in the door because the income requirements are so much lower and you only need to prove them for the past six months, not a full year. I am now making more than the minimum for both schemes, and, in fact, average at least twice the minimum for the residente temporal requirements. If I can show them a year’s worth of statements, not just the six months they ask for, I’m sure that will give me an edge.

I am also planning to do my interview in Spanish since I can answer the questions easily even without having researched certain terms ahead of time. Some of the questions I need to answer could be why do I want to move to Mexico and how will I support myself?

These visas can only be applied from at your home consulate, which, in my case, is in Calgary. So I need to plan to go there next fall. All this visit gives you is permission to apply for temporary residence when you get to the border. You can still get turned away.

Financial and Tax Matters

I really need to find myself a tax accountant who deals with people in my situation. Google is being surprisingly non-helpful in this regard. If anyone reading this has a tax account who deals with Canadians who move to Mexico, please send me their info!

It’s really unclear at this point what my tax obligation will be when I move to Mexico permanently beyond the fact that I won’t have to pay Mexican taxes. I may be able to be deemed a non-resident for tax purposes in Canada if I cut all my ties here, but I plan to keep my property, so I may not be able to. Needless to say, my next step really is to find an accountant.

I have some debts here that I need to pay off. It’s not realistic to think that I can pay them all off within the next year, but I can make a big enough dent to make a difference. So that’s going to be a priority for me as soon as I get to the lower Mexican cost of living in November.

Vehicle

I need to see if I can keep a legal vehicle here and my SK driver’s license while on residente temporal status or if I should get my Mexican driver’s license and have it be good here.

It is really difficult to bring a non-Mexican plated vehicle into Mexico and nearly impossible right now to have it converted into a Mexican vehicle. I wanted to buy myself a ‘new’ car next spring, but am revising that plan. You can’t have a non-Mexican vehicle on a residente permanente visa anyway, so I think I’m better off not even bothering bringing a vehicle into Mexico and buying one when I get there.

Housing

I’m planning to fly to MĂ©rida this winter to check it out as my possible initial home base for my new life in Mexico, if only to have a comparison point to MazatlĂĄn. I really like the idea of being down in the YucatĂĄn with all the history, MĂ©rida is a colonial city like Maz, it is easier to get to from Montreal, it is one of the lower cost ex-pat destinations (compared to, say, San Miguel de Allende or Lake Chapala), and it has enough of an ex-pat population that immigration services are nearby (no having to drive two hours to get a visa stamped).

Part of the trip will be to look at the rental market and possibly pick out my landing place for the next winter so I have a Mexican address for my visa application. This would involve a much more formal arrangement than what I have in Maz, with a 12-month rental contract and deposit. It will be a gamble to take if I don’t get my temporary resident status approved, but, worst case, I’d still get to use most of the 180 days I’d have as a visitor, so it wouldn’t be a total loss. If I go ahead and sign a contract, I’d probably aim to have it start January 1st of 2017. If I manage to get to MĂ©rida sooner, I could take a short-term rental.

Household Goods

I’m allowed to import so much ‘stuff’ when I move to Mexico permanently, but that amount will be seriously limited if I decide to fly rather than drive in. The truth is that at this point, I can pretty much carry with me everything that I need to start over in life and the rest is just stuff that can easily be purchased anywhere. Yes, some things are more expensive in Mexico, but it’s really not worth the effort to me to pack up a U-Haul with my dishwasher, tools, and washing machine, especially when I would still need them while here. I’m convinced that I can get it all on a plane by paying for excess luggage, a much cheaper option than having anything shipped.

Healthcare

Under a temporary resident visa, I would be eligible for Mexican government healthcare, just like I am eligible in SK. This is basic emergency care and I would also have the option of paying out of pocket for access to private clinics. I will have better access to both regular and emergency care in Mexico than I have ever had in Canada, so I’m not too worried about this part of the moving to Mexico plan.

Name

I’ve been thinking of changing my first name name legally to Rae for several years now and the more I dig into the Mexican bureaucracy and see how much paperwork I’d have to fill out, the more I’m convinced that changing my name before I apply for anything would be really helpful since my legal name on my passport and birth certificate is about a billion miles long and I don’t want to have to keep needing to spell it. Its accent and hyphen also keep causing me grief. This would, of course, delay applying for the visa.

I’m absolutely serious about going to Bulgaria next summer and think that I could start the name change process upon coming back and then apply for my new birth certificate and passport, which I’d need anyway since my current one expires in early spring 2017. This would mean delaying my visa request into the winter, so moving to a short-term rental in Calgary while I sort out everything could be the neatest solution to covering this gap.

A name change request for someone born anywhere in Canada but Quebec is easy. For a Quebecer, it is very difficult and just about impossible if you’re a resident of the province. I’ve spent a lot of time researching this and believe I may have found the path of least resistance in the red tape, so this might not be the impossible plan it seemed a few years ago.

Conclusion

My ‘I want to move to Mexico!’ plan is firming up as I collect more information. It’s no longer something I’m just talking about and researching, but rather actually making concrete steps in implementing. The idea of taking nine or ten years to become a citizen is a bit daunting, but I have to live somewhere, so why not there? It’s not like I’d be a prisoner of Mexico and unable to leave for holidays elsewhere (I’d just need to pay attention to the rules of how much I can be out of Mexico in a certain period of time to not lose my residency status). I’d also have a whole big country to explore and could plan to move to a different city every couple of years!

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Installation and Review of the SureCall Fusion5s Signal Booster

I had to do something about my internet situation since SaskTel is obviously getting kickbacks from the satellite company and only investing that way in my area. Getting a new, stronger, booster seemed like the logical step to take. I’d already upgraded from a cheap booster to a more expensive one and gotten an improvement in my signal strength, so it only made sense that an even more expensive (read stronger) one would do the same. The thing was, I was now in the 600USD+ range for spending, a huge gamble to take.

After doing some research and sending out emails, I was taken under the wing of Shawn from the Repeater Store. I can’t tally up how much time Shawn spent with me explaining why one booster was better for my situation than another, explaining technical things without patronizing me, and assuring me that I could get a refund if my purchase didn’t work out. But he was certain that I would see a ‘night or day’ difference going from my Wilson DT4G to the model of booster he was recommending.

Thanks to the generosity of my online community and even strangers, I was able to afford the nearly 1,200CAD price tag for the booster (700USD, plus a lightning protector, plus taxes, plus gas to go pick up in Montana to save big bucks on shipping) and placed my order. I was very disappointed that it did not ship as quickly as promised, until Shawn got back to me to confess that the model he’d sold me on had just been discontinued and that they were upgrading me at no cost to the brand new Fusion5S, a much more expensive (and powerful) booster, retailing for 850USD! There was a delay in shipping it out to me because they were waiting for stock to come in. Of course, they were immediately forgiven!

The first thing that impressed me about the Fusion5S was just how beefy and heavy the components are, a far cry from the cheap-feeling Wilson products I’ve been using. Even the coaxial cable is a smaller gauge for less loss.

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I unpacked all the components to make sure I had everything. I didn’t (more on that below), but I had what I needed to at least test out the booster and see if it would work.

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Installation of my Fusion5s booster was a bit challenging because I had to ensure enough separation between the vertical and horizontal antennas and my property is quite small. I kept being told by the booster that there was oscillation (feedback) between the two antennas, no matter how far apart I put them. I eventually figured out, with the help of tech support, that as long as those lights disappear in a few minutes, the booster is working correctly. Augh! 🙂

I started my new booster life with the exterior antenna mounted at the peak of my cabin and the interior antenna on the driver’s side wall of my office. This gave me a signal strength comparable to what I had before, but my connection was much more stable. In that sense, I got the ‘night or day’ difference I’d been promised, but it still felt like a very precarious situation even though I got through a whole week of work with no drops in service or need to go up the hill.

So despite all the time and effort of getting the antenna up on the peak, I decided to go back to how I’ve had my antennas for several summers now, quite low to the ground at the northwest corner of my lot, where I almost have a line of sight down the valley. I mounted the antenna pole temporarily and then played with the height until I got the best signal I could. It was still no better than what I was getting at the peak. Therefore, I made the decision to just leave the antenna low to the ground so it would be easier to take down and pack up for the winter.

A day or two later, my “adopted dad” Charles and another neighbour got together and cut down a bunch of giant tree limbs blocking my line of sight down the valley (!!!). That gave me a couple of extra points of signal strength, for which I was glad because the guys did a lot of work on that project! So that was it for playing with the external antenna and I decided to mount it permanently where it was.

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I still don’t want to commit to cementing the pole into the ground, so my fire pit full of rocks is an acceptable substitute and has the added bonus of providing a buffer in case a vehicle strikes it (I have a neighbour who frequently comes here on his ATV, and I sometimes drive out the back of the property).

My first attempt at bringing in the exterior cable was through the roof hatch, like I did with the old booster, which I never installed permanently, but I didn’t want to deal with this extra cable in my way. I already had larger-gauge coaxial coming in through my shore power cable box, so it made sense to use the same route and principle.

This is the before:

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On the outside, you can screw a cable connection to the the RV. Inside, a small piece of coax goes to another plate with a similar connector and then you screw your TV to that.

Now, I didn’t have the interior connector, but I did have the exterior one in the form of my lightning protector.

I’ll add a parenthesis here that the lightning protector is where the Repeater Store nearly dropped the ball. They forgot to include an extra 2′ of cable needed for the installation. You need the long cable from the exterior antenna to the protector, and then you need a shorter bit to go from the protector to the booster. It took several emails to find out how the store was going to handle that. I finally got a call from Shawn letting me know it was being shipped to Plentywood for me. A bit of a pain to go back across the border twice and Plentywood isn’t right next door, but I have free time now, can afford the fuel, and am always happy to have an excuse to go for a drive, so this was an acceptable resolution! 🙂

I’ve never had a lightning protector for my booster systems and probably don’t need one because my antenna is so low to the ground, but I paid $1,200 for this system so I’m not taking a chance!

To be able to mount the protector, I had to enlarge an existing hole in my sidewall. That wasn’t as scary as I expected it to be. Then, I took the short bit of cable and poked it through the larger hole, connected it to the protector, pushed everything back into the wall, attached a new faceplate (that I had drilled an appropriate-sized hole into), and then a nut that comes with the protector to secure it to the faceplate, like so:

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I’d say that looks pretty professional and polished, no? I’m quite pleased with myself. 🙂 When I leave next month, I can just unscrew the exterior cable, roll it up, and tuck it away for the winter along with the exterior antenna.

Something you don’t see too well in that picture is a thin green grounding wire. Croft has examined my grounding set up and deemed it adequate, but since it’s not as per code, I’d rather not show it off lest I give people lacking in common sense bad ideas. 😉

I then poked my little bit of cable through the interior faceplate I originally had there, only with a much bigger hole in it. I wound up not having much cable left, so the booster, which I had mounted over my converter, needed to be moved. I didn’t mind this because the way I tried it originally meant that the converter cover was difficult to open.

So here’s the mounted booster:

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It’s against my driver’s side wall, between my filing cabinet and my converter.

So that takes us to the interior antenna. It took a bit of experimentation, but I discovered that if I put it under my window on the passenger side of the office, right next to my desk, it is essentially back to back with the outside one and I get my best signal…

Getting the interior cable there was super easy. You can see it in the above photo, heading to the left of the booster facing it. It’s going behind my filing cabinet, under the mattress on the spare bed, under the desktop, behind the desk drawers, up through two existing holes in the desk, and to the antenna, which is wedged between my supply cubbies and desk shelf:

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I can’t imagine a more perfect place for it since it’s absolutely out of the way and I don’t have to deal with much cable.

So now, that takes us to my best signal strength.

Before I get into that, I have to state that the booster claims that, depending on the original signal strength and how far apart the two antennas are, you can get enough coverage for a property my size. But my original signal strength is zero, so I have just a bit of coverage in my back yard, enough to get a signal, but not really enough to use. The original signal is so bad, in fact, that I only get my best signal if I’ve got the phone right against the interior antenna.

So what is my best signal? It’s urban area-quality, ranging from -55 to -70. There are not enough exclamation points in the world to illustrate how I feel about this.

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I get -50s early weekday mornings. It’s usually -70s around the supper hour and on weekends and I’m in the -65ish range the rest of the time. These numbers are incredible. I am in absolute and utter disbelief. I don’t even get that good of a signal in Moose Jaw or in Assiniboia! Compare this to when -86 was a good day for me, -95 was average, and -100 (or worse) was common at peak hours.

Now, no one should think that I have acceptable internet now. It is an incredible victory to have a signal I can rely on, that I haven’t had to run up the hill to send an email in weeks, and that I can stream short videos. But I’m still throttled after 10GB, so I have a very, very, very slow connection. I still can’t do more than one thing at one time or fully load all the pictures on a particularly graphic-heavy webpage. But I haven’t had to go up the hill once in weeks. I am able to receive and respond to work emails in a timely manner. I am sleeping much better because I’m no longer worried I am going to lose my job. I am so much less stressed at work and performing better. This booster has been an absolute game changer for me and I am so grateful to every single person who made this possible for me.

Since my signal drops so much when I pick up the phone to make or receive a call, I’ve had to find a workaround to make clear calls. As it turned out, I got a good deal on a bundle of apps recently, including HandsFree, which connects my iPhone to my Mac and allows me to make and receive calls through the computer. I’ve been test running it and it works very well!

So to recap, the SureCall Fusion5s Signal Booster has changed my life. That is not hyperbole. Internet here at Haven is still terrible and unacceptable, but the Fusion5s is making it possible to do my job and has greatly reduced my stress level. I think it would be overkill for most situations, but when you live in a ‘bowl’, get only refracted signals, and need to connect to a tower more than 50KM away, it could be the solution. Neighbours down the road who have a clear view down the valley and get one bar in their living room without a booster are using my old DT4G and it is performing perfectly for them. They were going to get something a little more powerful and they really didn’t need it. So don’t go spending this kind of money unless you’re sure you need to. But if you need to, be glad that the Fusion5s exists!

My experience with the Repeater Store was generally positive. Technical support was fantastic even if they need to work on their communication skills a bit better when it comes to the ordering side of things. But considering just how much they did for me in terms of education, upgrading me to the Fusion5s, and how they dealt with the missing piece for the lightning connector, I’m nitpicking. I don’t mind if people don’t communicate super well as long as things are done and the Repeater Store didn’t just get things done, it surpassed my expectations.

I’m still planning to spend most of next summer away from Haven, but knowing that I’ll be able to work while I am here will make me that much happier to get home for a few weeks. Thank you so much again to my generous sponsors as well as Croft and Shawn for all their technical handholding!

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A Mattress Topper at Last

Since I had to go back to Plentywood today to pick up a piece for the booster, I decided to make the trip worthwhile and finally ordered myself for delivery there a mattress topper, something I badly need for my bed in Mexico. As I was shopping in earnest the other night and doing research, something hit me: those things are absolutely not portable!

They are vacuum packed and meant to expand on the bed. It would be impractical to think that I could fold it up and easily take it with me to Mexico. I’m already planning to spend money on an easy chair that I will leave behind after six months and didn’t want to spend over $100 on yet another thing that was going to have to stay. So I started searching for a travel or portable mattress topper and actually found one! It is amusingly called a Bag of Comfort by Sleep Innovations.

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Now, this is meant to be portable, so it’s just a 1″ piece of memory foam, a far cry from the luxuriously thick cloud on John’s RV bed in Santa Fe, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

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Reviews say that it’s easy to get back in the bag, so I should even be able to take it into a hotel for one night if that’s true. If I can have a more comfy bed at Totonaka in San Carlos, I would be happy to go back there because it’s so convenient.

The kit also includes a memory foam pillow! I needed a new pillow, too, and have been wanting to try a memory foam one, so this Bag of Comfort was quite a deal for me.

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The topper is marked as being sized for a long XL twin (standard dorm bed, apparently). I have a full size bed and the topper is plenty big enough for me since I only sleep on one half of the bed anyway (it’s only a few inches narrower than the mattress). I think a couple could fit on it if they really wanted to as it’s a lot wider than I expected.

It was a good drive to go get both the topper and the piece of cable. My “Danger! Danger! Danger!” alert did go off at the U.S. border when they started to ask me questions about Mexico and what I do for a living. The question I have never flat out been asked, but was dreading, came, “Do you work in Mexico?”

I don’t lie at the border and I think people who do are idiots looking for trouble. So I replied in the affirmative. A very, very, very long beat passed and I wondered if they were making notes in my file that would cause me issues next month. Finally, the other officer came back to my window. “Sorry. We’re both confused. Do you work in Spanish or?”

He was curious, not suspicious. Classic U.S. customs scenario for me and I started to relax. “No, no, no. I work for my existing clients from the computer. I don’t have a visa to take a Mexican job.”

“Oh, that makes more sense! Mexico wouldn’t care since you’re not taking one of their jobs and you’re spending money. Good for you! Have a good afternoon in Montana!”

And that was that. American border officials are generally so lovely. It’s almost always, “Welcome to America! We’re glad to have you and your money, but, please, don’t overstay your welcome,” a sharp comparison to consistently being treated like a criminal by my country’s border officials.

I got to Plentywood around 11:30 and immediately went for lunch. Then, I got my packages, which cost me $10 ($5 each). I think the amount would add up really fast if I was frequently having stuff sent to them, but for these occasional situations, it’s a bargain since you get the confirmation that your packages are on site (something I don’t get in Opheim for the same price) and the package room is more secure.

After, I went across the street to a hardware store to get a faceplate for my booster project as well as some copper wire. The gal who served me was really helpful, but the surly man working there was rather unpleasant. Anyway, I got what I needed, so I was happy.

Then, I headed to a museum just east of town that I believed was open at 1:00 p.m. after Labour Day, but it wasn’t. Oh, well. I pointed the truck towards home and found a Dairy Queen tucked away off the main drag, so I popped in for a Blizzard. A ‘mini’ was still way more Blizzard than anyone should eat, but I highly recommend brownie cookie dough. 🙂

The border was quickly upon me after my snack and I sat at the window for what felt like ages but was probably only five minutes until someone acknowledged me. It was a very quick interview: where do I live, how long was I in the States, how much did I have to declare, and did I have any drugs or ATF? And that was it! I didn’t even have to go in to pay my $8.50 or so in taxes and no one emptied my truck (which was absolutely empty except for myself, my purse, and my purchases. This was my first easy crossing back into Canada since crossing at the Sault in 2012. I hate CBSA.

And then, it was just rolling hills and I think maybe passing one car all the way home. This picture didn’t turn out that well (my iPhone camera sucks compared to my Pentax), but I was struck by the golden trees contrasting with the olive hills. Fall is here!

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When I got home, I spent about three hours finishing up my booster installation. I can’t believe it was that long, but time flew by since everything was coming together fairly easily and, so, I was having fun! That post will be next!

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Spur of the Moment Decisions

It hit me this morning that I was running low enough on coffee that I really needed to count how many scoops I had left. I debated asking Caroline to pick some up in town for me since I wouldn’t be able to go this because I’m going back to Montana on Friday.

At 1:57 this afternoon, something else hit me: I finish at 2:00. That’s plenty of time to get to town, have a late lunch, and run a bunch of errands before everything closes at 5:00 Four minutes later, I was on my way! It’s really nice to have enough room in the budget to not care that the trip is going to cost me almost $13 in fuel!

After lunch, I had the 20lber of propane filled so I have a backup. I’m heating a lot already because it is getting cold at night. I’m up around 5:00 three days a week and so far, it’s been about 50F in the rig at that hour. I don’t let it get that cold in the winter time! I am going to concede defeat and pull out an electric heater very soon.

Then, I decided to see if the Village Food Store still had ice cream. They order so much for the summer and when they’re out, they’re out. Last year, they were out early. This year, probably because the weather hasn’t been great, they still had tons. I had a ‘small’ of Rolo (chocolate caramel) and would hate to see what a ‘large’ looks like!

Groceries were next and I managed to spend over $90. *boggled* I actually added up my receipt twice because I was convinced that the total was a mistake considering what I got. The Indian-style sauces I’ve been enjoying were on for clearance-level prices, so I grabbed both a tikka masala and a mango chicken to go with a giant ‘club pack’ of chicken breasts, all of which should do me till I leave next month (44 days to go!). If I need more meat, it’ll be pork as that is way cheaper.

I got hit with a wave of exhaustion as I was putting the bags into the truck and was puzzled until I remembered that, hey, I was up around 5:00 this morning. Of course 3:45 is going to feel like early evening for me! I really don’t mind the early mornings (love finishing so early!) and don’t lose any sleep because of them (smart enough to go to bed early), but I definitely have no steam left by late afternoon.

One more day of work left for me this week and then it looks like I’ll probably have another long weekend. I am really enjoying those. 😀 I’ll leave later for Plentywood on Friday than I did last time and have a poke around. There’s a museum just east of the city that opens at 1:00 that sounds like a lot of fun!