Update on several fronts

I have a new place to live and will be moving to the unfurnished 2 bedroom house in mid June. I am very excited and nervous all at the same time! It will be good to finally have a larger space and the dogs will be in paradise with the huge yard. I even have a lime tree in the back yard along with some other trees and flowers. Unfortunately, I have anything BUT a green thumb so I may have to enlist some help on the gardening front! I am ashamed to admit this but once I was given a cactus and I could not even keep that alive. I guess gardening is just not in my skill set.

I also have already started to furnish the place. My friend Shelley let me know about a fellow Canadian who was moving and selling many things in his condo. Unfortunately, he had sold most things when I got there but he had two bedroom sets left complete with frames, headboards, matching night stands and VERY good quality mattresses (which are hard to find here). They are beautiful and very good quality and only a few months old. So, I purchased them at a bargain and then started to organize how to move them. The only catch was I had to move them out of his condo by this past Monday as the new owner of the condo was taking possession on Tuesday. Fortunately, the current renter in the house I am moving to was gracious enough to allow me to move the furniture into the spare bedroom.

One of my friends offered to help me move everything in his truck. I also enlisted the help of another friend since I was unable to be much help with the heavy lifting part due to my foot injury. Well, before the big moving day, he started asking all these questions - how big is the truck, how many truck loads will it take, is there enough clearance in the elevator or stairwells, etc. With some shame and embarrassment, I quickly realized I did not know the answer to many of his questions. As a result, he enlisted the help of another friend (now we have 3 guys for the heavy lifting), and I arranged another truck (just in case it did not fit in the one). Let's just say if it was not for him, there is no way we could have moved everything. We needed BOTH trucks and they were overflowing. The worst part of it was that most things would not fit in the small elevators and had to be carried down 6 flights of stairs!

3 hours later, along with a few trips by me to go get tools and other items from friends Stan and MJ, we had everything moved in to the new house. Well, almost everything. The one bed frame was too large to fit through the door. Yes, I had measured the rooms to make sure everything would fit but I had failed to measure the doors that they would go through! Oops! At any rate, the bed frame is in the car port until we can get back there with my friend's tools to take it apart so that it can fit through the door. It was a long night for my friends and we did not finish until midnight. After a few beers and some tacos, everyone was smiling again. A big thanks to everyone for all their help that night - I could not have done it without you!

I went to the monthly women's luncheon a few days ago and we had a local doctor as a guest speaker. One of the doctor's main topics was the current situation on the swine flu (or whatever I am supposed to be calling it now). She indicated that there have been 9 confirmed cases of swine flu here in Manzanillo to date with no fatalities. She also indicated that the face masks are not effective. As far as a timeline is concerned, she estimated another month or so before things calm down.

Yesterday, I finally met fellow blogger same life -- new location and his brother. He needed some help finding some specific/specialty items that he cannot get in Melaque and so I showed him where to find a few of those places here in Manzanillo.

It was great to finally meet him as I have been a regular reader of his blog for some time now. We spent several hours scoping out what the Manzanillo stores had to offer (or "reconnoiter" as Steve put it)! Clearly, if you have read his blog, it is clear who the good writer is - I use words like "scoping out" whereas he is much more articulate with words like reconnoiter. Strangely enough, I have heard the word reconnoiter used by two different people in the span of this week. It is not only my Spanish vocabulary that is expanding....

It was great to finally meet Steve along with his brother. We had a few harrowing experiences on the road but what would an adventure be in Mexico without a little excitement? We plan on getting together again in the near future with dogs in tow. He has an adorable golden retriever that I am looking foward to meeting.