Phasing Out: Lying Low

One and all,

Another quiet weekend in PV. Polley came down with some sort of stomach bug and we have avoided a good deal of eating and drinking this weekend. Saturday we pretty much stayed in all day, finally taking a stroll down to the Malécon on Saturday night. Even then, she was not up for the walk back so we grabbed a taxi up the hill/

We did get a good deal of reading done, that I will admit. Polley tore through a couple of books: Wally Lamb's "She's Come Undone," and Catherine Hyde's "When I Found You" ; I managed to complete "The War Brides," which I quite enjoyed until a kind of hokie ending and am now into something called "The Ghosts of Belfast," which, so far, has really grabbed me. Polley is now starting on "The Luminaries," the book that just won the Booker Award and is, apparently, an 800 page sage of New Zealand. Reports later.

I did manage a couple of rather humorous photos as I wandered about on my walks over the weekend. Some of you may not know that my brother, Dave, and his wife, Katie, have a paint striping business in Portland. Saturday morning I came across the Mexican equivalent:

A hand-painted masterpiece, no doubt.

Also, just down the hill from us a home has sold and the workman are doing some major repairs for the new owners. We often joke about whether these projects include a cement mixer. This is a Mexican cement mixer

They just throw down some bags of cement in the middle of the street, add water and stir! Then, they just leave the residue and allow it to serve as a kind of mortar between the cobblestones! As you walk along the the streets, you see places in the cobblestone that are smooth, obviously the leftovers of previous housing projects.

As I have mentioned, the weather is now beginning to change. There is more air moving and, for most of the day, it seems less humid. You see more and more people willing to dine outside. We did get another thunderstorm on Friday evening, but it was relatively brief. It did make for a very fresh Saturday morning. Most people suggest that by November 1st, we will be into more comfortable times

Lastly, just as filler, I will leave you with another photo of the bridge that I included in a previous blog.

It really is a very nice design. And it is so convenient! When you get to the top of the bridge (125 baby steps), it is just 66 more steps to our front door!

As I mentioned, this bridge leads right into a lovely park, just filled with cats. Polley and I did manage to capture a couple of them -- on camera that is.