I took this picture from the top of the hill I walked up almost every day (until the beginning of this week) because I couldn't go for a jog yet, because I was still recouping from my head injury. I was really dying to go for a jog. Now that I can jog of course, I'm being amazingly slack about it. Funny how that works. Don't want what you've got, hell, no. Only want what you don't have.... (Although I am working on changing this attitude.)

Some things, like the quirks of my apartment, I have no problem embracing fully in the present time. With other things, I have to wait until they're gone before I can appreciate them. And worse, as in the case of jogging, when I get them back again, I don't want them again. Although my reluctance re jogging might also have something to do with the fact that I'm more out of shape now and therefore it's tough going. So I would just rather get more and more out of shape, so it gets tougher and tougher.... Ugh. Bite that bullet first thing tomorrow is what I'm going to do, I swear.

Anyway, back to my hill. This cute but strange I think tower/balcony thingy produced in me what is commonly described by gringos here as a "Mexico moment." This is when you're walking along for instance, and you see something that strikes you as unusual, such as a pickup truck piled three miles high with furniture, without any bindings, proceeding up a hill, with a seven year old behind the wheel.

You stop, you look. You say:

Huh.

Huh? (Cocking head like inquisitive puppy.)

Huh....

And then you keep walking.


Or, a friend of mine, who recently had a a piece of mail arrive in his letterbox (read: tossed at the bottom of his gravel driveway): a telephone bill from 2007. It's possible it went to Colima first, a few times. There seems to be an epidemic of mail bound for Puerto Vallarta (from anywhere), that accidentally goes to Colima first.

Mexico moments also abound at the post office. Usually it's the sacks of mail spilling out all over the floor, forming a kind of mail carpet that you have to crunch over to get to the counter, but the other day I went to the post office and found that it had been moved, to next door - and outfitted with brand new spanking everything. And with none of the usual, overflowing sacks of mail, in evidence at least. After the woman behind the counter sold me stamps and affixed them to my postcards she told me to put them in the box. I went over to the box. The box was a cardboard box (saying "box"), with an open back, turned on one side, perched on a ledge and painted pink (pink and green are the PO colours). The "slot" that had been carved out of the front/bottom seemed slightly unnecessary, or like it had been constructed by someone with too much time on his/her hands, and definitely paid by the hour. Instead of putting my cards through this slot, I reached my hand around to the open back and placed them on the floor of the box. The woman looked over disapprovingly and waggled her finger. I broke some subsection of a rule's subsection, I'm sure. But if I'd put it through the slot, the cards would certainly have flown straight out the back of the box and onto the floor behind the counter, so. I shrugged and said sorry anyway.

This sign: "Our children deserve to live in a better world with culture." Totally, right? Although why this sign, in an empty lot in the town of La Penita ....
.

I've switched from the classic view on my yahoo mail. I did this because my email kept loading and reloading, and I'd type an email, hit send, and then it would load and load, and lose the mail. Switching to the "new view" seems to have solved this problem. However, while the classic view has a pudgy, non-threatening presence, this "new view" is streamlined, and a little dystopian looking, to my mind. I switched back to the classic view, because I felt alienated, but immediately re-encountered the loading and reloading problem. So I'm back on the "new view". In an attempt to make the thing look friendlier, I switched the colour to pink. It worked, a bit.

Speaking of new views, as some people already know, I am/ have to head back to Australia for a bit, at the end of the month. I've been in Mexico one month shy of two years, and am expecting some major culture shock. Honestly, I don't like the place (Australia). It and I are not that compatible. (So long as I'm leaving, then, with a good attitude....) I'll be coming back to Mexico, is my best guess and strong suspicion, but maybe not Puerto Vallarta. There's a bunch of great places I could come back to here. Then again it's a big world and there's a lot of it I haven't seen and anything could happen, always.... So things are up in the air. That's all right.


Looks like a big storm is starting right now, so I'm going to post this and get off the internets. This is the first storm where the water sprays have reached as far as my bed - yikes. Something in the alleyway involving glass and metal was just dragged for a bit and then smashed against something.