Wretched excess

The nightmare of Jova

It took a while, but today we heard from a friend living in Barra de Navidad in the State of Jalisco, about the impact of Hurricane Jova this week.  We're especially fond of Barra and have sailed there  many times over the past ten years, dropping the hook in the popular anchorage. Just before Jova made landfall, I saw a hurricane map that showed Barra squarely in the storm's path and I had wondered all week about my friends there, and my favorite hangouts, like the Sands Hotel where I swam for free in the pool on hot afternoons. Fred sent links to photos and a couple of videos taken by Salvador Cobian during the height of the storm.

Also heavily damaged was Cihuatlan, a small city inland from Barra, on the road to Manzanillo.

My friend Steve posted first-hand reports from Melaque, across the Bahia de Navidad from Barra. His neighbors suffered severe flooding, but even though he lives very close to the beach, Steve stayed more or less dry.

From what I can see, the damage to Barra was at least as bad as what we experienced here in San Carlos when Jimena roared through two years ago. Fred, a British fellow sailor we've known more than a dozen years, tends toward hyperbole, but in this case when he described Jova as "a nightmare," we had no trouble believing him.

1946 travel advisory

We finally started doing some recording tonight, and here's the tune we've been using to start off our shows at the Fiesta Hotel palapa bar—Bobby Troup's "Route 66."  It's unclear why the photo is so fuzzy (pun intended).

More to follow...

Flying by the seat of our pants

"[Y]ou can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
-- Steve Jobs (1955-2011)  from his Stanford University commencement address, June 2005.

Last night we did a very scary thing, and it went off without a hitch. The Capt and I performed a song we learned only yesterday,  even though neither of us had ever heard it before, and certainly hadn't had time to memorize it. It was Michael Frank's song for Antonio Carlos Jobim, "Antonio's Song." One of the coolest things about this song is that the Capt and I sing together on the chorus, a first! We felt we were...um...given permission to have our sheet music onstage when my mentor Leslie announced that she was relenting on the issue. "After all," she said, "if Barbra Streisand uses a Teleprompter now, who are we to have a problem with it?"

I was seriously stressed before we did the song, and afterward I was asking myself why I made such a big deal of it. We will have a regular gig every Wednesday at the Fiesta Hotel (last night we had a full house!) and plan to do some recording too, so I need to lighten up and get some perspective. I am, after all, one of the world's latest bloomers and it's almost ludicrous that I'd even attempt to begin performing at my age (a number which I'll keep to myself, thank you).

And the icing on the cake: our photographer friend emailed the band photos he had taken of us recently, and though I'm sure they were liberally PhotoShopped, I'm very pleased with the results. He posed each of us with our instruments, and I had my acoustic guitar which I had named Kathleen after my mom. It's a definite keeper. They can use it when they publish my obit.

Hmmm, where did that obit remark come from? Well, the Capt's favorite uncle, who introduced us to sailing when he took us out in his boat in Santa Barbara, and probably was a major influence in our moving to Mexico (a good place for boat people), died a couple of days ago of a brain tumor at 87. His obit arrived today (thanks, Jane). The last time we saw Uncle Dave, he and his wife Annie visited us for a day while they were on a Mexican coastal cruise and since we were docked in Mazatlan we met their ship and took them to the beach. Dave was like a little boy playing in the sand. A wonderful way to remember him. Adios y vaya con Díos, Tio David.

The heart bleeds again

The sensible part of my brain is telling me, "This has to stop." But the compassionate part, what some would call the Bleeding Heart, insists I'm doing the right thing. The Capt concurs. And so I have taken on another dog.

Friday at the library one of my co-volunteers told me about a Cocker puppy with an injured leg that a Mexican had been selling for a hundred pesos (around $8) in Guaymas Norte. Not really wanting a dog (he says there's no room in his life for one), Bruce paid the hundred and stashed the pup at a friend's house temporarily. I told him I'd take it off his hands if he'd first get it to the vet to find out about the injury, get him bathed and de-bugged inside and out, and generally checked to make sure he had nothing contagious that could hurt my dogs. That night, he brought over this little fellow.

The vet, Dr. Martinez, says his leg should be healed in four weeks. An x-ray came along with the dog, and it shows a fractured femur, just a crack that should heal cleanly. He moves around amazingly well considering he's dragging the cast around; I'm not sure I can keep up with him, when it's off.

This is a most anxious-to-please, congenial little guy. Within minutes he had figured out that I was the mommy and began following me everywhere. He does whimper, but doesn't go on and on about it, just enough to register disappointment. Chiquito, the rescue Dachsund with Valley Fever and my own Chica  established their seniority within minutes of his arrival, and the pup has accepted his role as bottom dog in the pack. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the feisty Yorkie I dogsit weekdays arrives Monday morning.

My friends in the dog-fostering community assure me it'll be easy to find a good home for him, once the leg has healed, which will occur about the same time that the snowbirds come back to roost. Meanwhile I'll get him house-trained and leash-trained and try not to get too attached to him. With that in mind, I've put off naming him, but I'm getting tired of referring to him as "the pup." He deserves better than that.

A Dear John letter

We just don't get along. I feel my needs are being ignored and when I need you most, you're consistently not there for me. When you first came into my life,  I had such high hopes, such euphoria, but you have been nothing but a profound disappointment.

I'm ready to give up on iPhones, and look for something more reliable.

A New York Times article today ("You Love Your iPhone...Literally") says people are so enamored of their iPhones that "Friends who have accidentally left home without (them) tell me they feel stressed-out, cut off and somehow un-whole. That sounds a lot like separation anxiety..." Or addiction.

Apparently, test subjects (ages 18-25) responded to the ringing of their iPhones with a "flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion."
Hah! Fat chance of my developing that kind of attachment to you. When you ring,  I can't get any more than four jingles out of you, which means I have to scramble to answer, or call back, and that gets expensive and stressful.

And your ringer button is set right where my thumb touches when I hold you (see photo), so I often accidentally mute your ring. Friends call, and I never know about it until I look at my Recents. After a while, they give up on trying to reach me.
Far too often, when I push the ON button to make a call, your screen stays black. The other day, it turned WHITE. This is after I treated you to a new battery, too.

Then yesterday the voice transmission stopped working when I was making a crucial call, and now I have to turn on the Speaker to hear the person I'm talking to.  This means everyone in the room can hear both sides of our conversation.

Granted, you weren't brand new when you came to me, so maybe some of your issues are due to your previous relationship. But I thought (silly me) that an experienced phone could still be as good as right off the assembly line. After all, I'm no spring chicken myself. I knew from the beginning there was no hope of going online with you, because your wifi access was permanently out of service. I was willing to accept that shortcoming, as long as you lived up to all the other expectations Apple promised. But no....

So it's obvious we're never going to bond. Maybe a Droid or a Blackberry would treat me better.