Home

It's Tuesday and we are settled in. The sun just came out today after three days of gray. We will have to get used to clouds again.  Our trip back was the easiest we have had in a long time. No late flights. In fact, most were early. Easy reentry into the US, and nothing to make you think "I hate travel", except the long hours of sitting.

The house was great when we got home. Fatima had kept things in order and there were no problems encountered to speak of. We had a ton of mail, that turned into a few items we needed to deal with and a huge bag of recyclable paper that went out to the garage. Our new credit cards were here so we had to deal with that. All in all, not much for being away three months.

We haven't watched TV since we left so we took the leap and called Direct TV and disconnected our satellite antenna. Our bill for this service was $102.02 per month, that's $1224.24 a year that we will save. To replace this I spent $200 on two items, an antenna to pick up local HD signal and then a blue-ray player that hooks to the internet for Netflix. This should satisfy the TV need until we can get completely off the tube. This project saved us $1000 a year so I am going to buy a new fishing rod. Just kidding!

I uncovered the camper and we have it ready to travel down to pick up Kobi. While we were gone, one of the electric camper lift jacks came apart and so I had to call for a repair part for it. Take away $180 from the TV savings to repair the camper.  The part is not essential until we take the camper off the truck, so I have some time to work on the repair.

When you get home, the one thing you notice right away is how much money you spend compared to the cost of living in Mexico. It is phenomenal! Vegetables at the market are a prime example.  I bought a small bunch of green onions yesterday for $1.29. In Mexico, that bunch would have cost me 2 pesos. The exchange is about 17 or 18 pesos to the dollar so you can figure that out.

Also, you can't use your credit card in Melaque, (we only use our debit to get cash) so you never just pull the card out and spend. Everything is cash and so you think about how much you have and what you are buying all the time. You never spend on unnecessary items!

OK, a few unnecessary items.  While down in Melaque we bought some T-shirts, a couple dresses, and finally, we had a rug made for our house. The rug is beautiful and we have hung it in our front room.

Linda has been in contact with many of our friends at the bungalow where we stayed. They had some great stories about the guy that moved in after us. It makes us feel good to be missed, and we really miss everyone from Casa Grande, Las Palmas, and Casa Pink!

The painting is almost finished!