Dinky Little

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my knees of late. No, it’s not what you think: I’m not expressing thanks for having seen the light or being saved (as far as I know, I’m still going straight to hell), I’m not praying for rain, and I’m not begging forgiveness for my numerous transgressions of a biblical nature - or even those of biblical proportions for that matter.
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It’s the grout don’t you know. For whatever reason, be it settling, earthquake or faulty installation, a lot of the grout in the tile floor of the house has cracked and has to be replaced. So, one area at a time, I’m using a hammer and a dinky little chisel to break up the old grout so I can pry it out with my dinky little screwdriver. Then, I remove the remaining loose debris from the dinky little grout crack with the dirt-sucker, aka vacuum cleaner.
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If you’ve done tile and grouting projects you know the rest of the routine. But not everyone has, so I’ll finish the story. To do it right it's best to use a trowel-like hand tool called a grout float to force the grout into the dinky little cracks, and a grout sponge to do the finishing touches to the grout. After you’ve thoroughly cleaned your crack(s), you mix up a dinky little batch of grout, wait ten minutes for it to slake, and fill the cracks with the grout. Then you can take a dinky little break, say 15 minutes, before using the grout sponge to gently smooth and shape the grout so it doesn’t look too amateurish. The final step, which must wait a day or two for the grout to dry and harden, is cleaning up the grout residue from the tile.
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Actually, no; I misspoke ..... uh make that misswrote: the final step is mixing a dinky little drinky.

Asteroids, Cenotes & Virgins - the rest of the story.

Rainwater seeped into the cracks in the limestone cap after it was cracked by the asteroid, and, over millions of years, the water carved huge underground caverns and hundreds of miles of channels. The world’s largest underground river system was thus created. In many places, the roof collapsed, allowing the underground water to come to the surface, creating crystal clear ponds of fresh water. These ponds are called cenotes and were considered holy places by the Mayans; the word cenote is derived from the original Mayan name for these ponds.
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The Mayans used to toss the occasional virgin into the cenotes for good luck but history does not reveal the efficaciousness of this practice, which to the best of my knowledge, has been discontinued. My long standing position on this practice is that it was a tragic waste of virgins, definitely not their highest and best use. Besides, I’ve found no objective evidence that virgin-spiced cenotes improved the corn crop or ensured a victory in battle - and really, who wants a bunch of half-rotted virgins floating around in their drinking water? Makes the coffee taste funny.
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These days, cenotes are popular tourist attractions, especially for snorkelers and divers who use them as doorways to the vast underground cavern/channel system. The ponds, some of which are hundreds of feet deep, contain many types of fish and other fresh water critters.
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We visited a cenote, a relatively small and shallow one as it turned out. Trish was prepared to jump in and go for a swim but was put off by the fish and floating debris and large, rough, user-unfriendly rocks on the bottom. I forget to pack my swimsuit, ain’t much of a swimmer anyway.

Puerto Morelos, Mexico

We recently returned from a week in Mexico. Puerto Morelos is a small seaside village, population about 3000, some 20 minutes southwest of Cancun. We stayed at a rental condo 4 miles south of PM, in an area known as Playa Secreto.

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It rained off and on the first couple days but that didn’t dampen our spirits much. However, the extremely humid weather did dampen our clothing, bath towels, you name it - and kept them damp pretty much the entire time. Going from the AZ dry to Mexico sauna-esque is quite a transition.
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How many of you have seen a cenote? For you gringos, that’s pronounced sin-OH-tay. Let’s see a show of hands. Really? Nobody? Okay, guess I better broaden your knowledge a bit. Once upon a time there was a sizable asteroid that very much wanted to become one with a planet. It searched for just the right planet for a few million years and finally found one that was just right. And that planet was - you guessed it - the very same one that we live on. Mr Asteroid finally realized his dream and became one with planet Earth in a violent manner, punching into the limestone cap that covered the Yucatan Peninsula.  The high velocity impact shattered the limestone cap like a rock shattering a car’s windshield.
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Golly gee whiz, Mr Science. Did anyone get hurt when the asteroid hit?
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No, Jimmy. You see, this happened 65 million years ago and human beings weren’t around yet. Sorry, but that’s all the time we have for today. Be sure to tune in next week to find out what happened after the asteroid hit Yucatan.

               Chatting up Senorita Anorexia, Playa del Carmen. 

                                          Pool at condo.

                                  New furry friend, Playa del Carmen

                           The condo complex where we stayed.

  Our good friend and neighbor, Lucy Croc, lives in a lagoon across the road.

            Hot chick, cold beer, sandy beach.  Si!  Muy bien!

La Paz County Park, Parker, AZ

We're test driving RV clubs, trying to decide if we want to join one and if so, which one.  Last spring we joined the local Good Sam club chapter on one of their outings and recently we did a similar thing with the Escapee club at a county park that's only 45 minutes south of LHC.  Both groups are okay but the Escapees (SKPs) would be the best fit for us cuz they're more active and less structured.

Trish and I enjoy socializing, especially playing cards and games, and interesting conversation.  Being newcomers to the area, we're using the RV and golf activities as vehicles to seek out compatible couples here in LHC.  The RV clubs offer good opportunities for socializing while on the road in the summer.  Hopefully, the golf activities will help with finding local friends.

Pix are of the county park, on the Colorado River south of LHC.  There's another RV park across the river on the CA side.

Frost, Kindle, Satellite

Yup, frost in LHC, a fairly rare occurence and the first we've seen in our 3 winters here.  In fact we hit a record low for Dec 30 according to the weather websites: 28 degrees.  The all time record lows here for both Jan and Dec is 25 degrees.  Historical average hi/lo temps are 65/43 for both months.  Played golf on Sunday, Jan 2nd, 42 degrees when we teed off, wind picked up a bit later, froze our butts off, can't keep our trousers up now, have to buy suspenders.

Santa brought some really nice stuff including a satellite radio receiver for the pickup.  Radio reception in LHC is marginal and the selection of stations is nothing to write home about either.  The real advantage of sat-radio though, is when you're traveling.  Instead of having to search for local stations every hour or so, you have the same stations all the time, plenty of 'em and great reception.  Another big advantage of sat-radio is no freakin commercials.

Trish and I got Kindles from the Santee Delaneys for Christmas.  Trish has been using hers but I've not got into mine yet, have to finish off my backlog of books from the library first.  In case you're not up on Kindles, they are electronic devices for storing and reading books, can store several hundred books in the memory, downloaded via wifi signal.  It only takes a minute to download a book, then you can read it at your leisure.  Like the sat radio, it will be great to have on the road, replacing a 'banker box' of pulp fiction with a device measuring roughly 7"x4"x3/8".  Great Kindle features include the ability to select whatever font and type size you wish - a real boon to those with older eyes in less than ideal reading conditions.

White Meat & Scramble

SNOWBIRDS: THE OTHER WHITE MEAT!
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That statement was on a sticker on the back window of a PT Cruiser in the parking lot at the grocery store. Don’t ask me what message the sticker is supposed to convey: I have no idea. I like it, though, made me laugh out loud. I’m extremely dubious about the quality of said meat, suspect it’s dry, tough and stringy, doubt that I’ll try it.
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SCRAMBLE
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One of the LHC golf courses has a Sunday AM scramble for couples during the winter months and we participate when we’re in town. For you non-golfers, a scramble involves 2-4 players (4 most often) with each player taking his/her next stroke from the same location - the ‘best ball’ location of the prior shot. Does the way I explained that make sense? If not, ask any golfer for clarification, google it, whatever. Oh yeah, one other thing: there’s a rule that a foursome must use a minimum of 2 drives per player, regardless of how great or how lousy those drives may be. That rule helps level the playing field considerably.
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The Sunday scramble group has a Christmas day tradition: The Fruitcake Scramble. We’re signed up for it. The morning will be spent playing 9 holes of golf, followed by a gift swap-lunch at a local restaurant. They no longer exchange fruitcakes but they actually did back in the day. I’ll not miss the fruitcake, already have all the patio paver bricks I need. As you may have guessed, these scramblers are retired folks and mostly the other white meat - from all over the northern US and Canada. I don’t know if the lunch is a buffet or we order off the menu; in either case, white meat will probably be a popular option - bunch of doggone cannibals!
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Merry Christmas y’all!

Rain in the desert.

It's supposed to rain 1/2" during the day today, another 1/2" tonight and possibly another inch tomorrow.  If that forecast is accurate, historical record averages for Dec/Jan (0.59" and 1.05" respectively) will be inundated.  That means we'll have sunny weather from day after tomorrow through Jan 31st, right?  Works for me. 

This is only our second real rainfall since returning to LHC in late September.  Rain doesn't soak in or puddle much here.  Mostly, it runs down the washes and the streets and ultimately, into the lake.  The residential area of LHC is akin to one side of a football stadium, sloping down to the lake and causing the rain runoff to move along right smartly

The runoff picks up tons of sand, gravel and rocks from the washes and deposits them on the streets - job security for the city road crews who spend the next several days scraping and sweeping the deposits back into the washes.  A good rain is also a overtime windfall for city police cuz they need to be out and about, monitoring and shutting down as needed, those streets that are crossed by major washes.  There are numerous wash-crossed streets and the flows on some are several feet deep and quite swift; drive into one of those and your trip to Walmart turns into a ride to the lake, baby!  You won't actually get to the lake either, will get hung up at some culvert or whatever - but you'll have one hell of a ride while it lasts.

Jan is our wettest month historically, Feb & Mar are next, respectively at 0.9" and 0.86"; August comes in at number 4, with 0.67".  I'd guess that there are about 6 heavy, shut-down-the-streets type rainfalls per year.   Our elderly neighbor ladies are joining us for dinner tonight so we can all watch the deluge together.