January 25, 2008 - whirlwind socializing

Our weather is fabulous (highs are high 80s to low 90s and at night, the temps are perfect for sleeping, in the high 60s) and we are enjoying being outside all day long and living without AC. It feels as though we hit the ground running since we’ve been back from Illinois, but especially so this past week when we hardly had a moment of down time amidst a crazy busy social life and all the normal tasks of daily life.
Things began to ramp up last Wednesday – first the house tour came through. This benefits our Merida English Library so we don’t mind participating, but there were 35 folks in our house, asking questions, making comments, offering compliments, and taking photos. Whoosh, they were gone. Berta came to give pedicures. Lane came to visit and give Eva a massage and try to help heal her latest knee issue. Telephone calls and visits occurred about Paul and Michael’s house for which Eva has been supervising remodeling. And then a dinner invitation from Grant so we had a late night chatting with friends.
The next night, we were excited to welcome Bern and Aidar back to Merida and had dinner here. Eva had made a wonderful portabella mushroom sauce a day or so earlier which she turned into a soup for us. Every now and then she gets into a fiendish frenzy of cooking (often close on the heels of receiving a copy of Gourmet or Bon Appetit magazines!) and this had been the week. Originally, the mushroom sauce was created to go on some meatloaf we cooked that seemed too dry and we liked it as a sauce, but it was scrumptious later in the week as a soup.
Friday, we headed over to Puerto Morelos for the weekend to visit our friend, Patti, who has a home there. (Patti and I slaved away at CCH together -- and that seems like another lifetime ago now -- however, she was able to retire through one of their packages since she'd been there longer. )This somewhat sleepy town has managed to retain its quirky, relaxed atmosphere despite astounding changes all around it up and down the coast that is known as Riviera Maya. Vast hotel complexes dot the coast that was once just jungle. We tried a Thai and a German restaurant, and of course, had breakfast at Mama's. Mama is a 50ish woman from Boulder who loves to bake bread and many are delighted that she does.
Saturday, we all went south to Tulum to meet up with friends from Merida, Don and Paola, and enjoy an afternoon on the beach with Paola's mother and her boyfriend (known lovingly as the geezers). We have not been in Tulum for 8 or so years and it too has blossomed with hardly any open space left the hotels are packed so tight. However, the beach remains one of the loveliest we know with powdery white sand and gorgeous colored water.

On our way out of the area on Sunday, we were stopped by two policemen who clearly wanted to shake us down. They said I had not obeyed a slowdown sign going past the police headquarters (which might be true) and so were going to fine us 1200 pesos (which was outrageous), so I discussed it with them, talked about going to the police station to pay, analyzed the closest ATM locations and whether or not I had adequate funds to get back to Merida and purchase gasoline along the way if I paid the fine without going to the ATM, and we ended up giving them the 230 pesos I had visible in my wallet to make it and them go away. Martin, the policeman, asked me to forget I'd ever met him and I did so with relish. However, I was proud of myself not only for saving a hundred dollars, but also for negotiating all this in Spanish without help from Eva. She is really tired of being my translator.
Monday night, I heard the final concert of the Merida cultural festival in which our friend Grace played piano. Trained as a concert pianist, she and her husband Ben have been running a hotel -- we stayed in their hotel when we first came to Merida and they were just opening it at the time. She has recently joined a group of musicians who played a concert of contemporary music complete with slide shows and digitized accompaniments. Grace’s solo, however, was the high point of the concert.
Tuesday, George and Janet returned from their bike trip through the Yucatan. (Janet is Rhodri’s aunt and Rhodri is Marilla’s boyfriend.) We met them last year following their bicycle tour and are delighted to have them stay with us this year. We had Deborah and Steven join us for dinner that night and we ended up discussing the continuum of styles of relationships, which kept us all thinking.
Wednesday is cheap movie night, so we headed out to the VIP movie theater at the Galerias to see Rendition and then talked and talked about it over dinner at Trotter’s courtesy of George and Janet. There were VIP theaters in Merida long before we moved here and we had been in the ones in Cancun, but still, we cannot figure out why they are not in the US. The seats are like the LazyBoy recliners you see for in-home theaters with pushbutton controls to recline and cupholders in the wide arms for your snacks that you can order from waiters. I mean you don’t even have to get your own popcorn!! And recently, this mall has added something I would have sworn Merida would never have…. an indoor ice skating rink complete with Zamboni. I would have been and am completely mistaken since not only did the Liverpool mall add an indoor skating rink, but also a new mall being built by the folks that brought Houston its Galleria are building a new mall with, yup, another indoor skating rink!!
Last night was George and Janet’s last night here before they head out to Belize for a week or so, and they had given their guides gifts of massages with Eva. After the massages, we invited Alix and Basil to stay for a dinner of pork mole that Eva whipped up. Before dinner (as Alix, Basil, and George watched the DVD Jackass and Eva and Janet cooked the mole), our pal Joe stopped by for a drink. He and Gil came to Merida a day before we did and we’d all been great friends until they sold their house and moved back to the states in December.
Tonight, we are at the end of this frenzy of socializing! We will have a quiet dinner with Bern and Aidar before they head back to Seattle up on our upper terrace, enjoying the moon rising, the stars twinkling, and the breezes blowing. And then maybe not go out or entertain again for weeks!!