Happy Holidays

Having made it through Thanksgiving with an appropriate feast, we're now readying a Christmas/New Year's dinner.  The meal this time is festive, but not quite so overdone as Thanksgiving was.

As you may remember, the Thanksgiving menu included appetizers including asparagus with sesame mayonnaise, a spicy artichoke dip, various olives and marinated mushrooms, and Paprika Guernikas; a roasted pumpkin soup; roasted turkey with chipotle-garlic sweet potatoes, sour cream mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts (with Prosciutto, garlic, Parmesan & cream), and a dressing with homemade (not our home; thanks, Timo) sausage and apples; salad with a creamy lime dressing; and various desserts.

Today is a simplified menu of baked brie and artichoke and sun-dried tomato vols-au-vent; cream of carrot soup (made without any cream); a pork roast accompanied by a medley of roasted winter veggies and glazed carrots with ginger and jalapeño (my sister's find); individual grilled Romaine salads with pear & Gorgonzola dressing; and our friend Victor's take on Key Lime Pie (different and rather wonderful).

With matching libations, of course: jalapeño margaritas with the appetizers, Ironhorse Fairytale Celebration Cuvee, 2007 with the soup, a Mexican red and white (AX tinto based on Cabernet Sauvignon and AX blanco based on a Blanc de Blancs) with the entree course, and Starbucks Christmas blend (or whatever they're selling now) with dessert.

We're trying out the jalapeño margaritas as I write this.  Instead of infusing the tequila with jalapeños (as we have done in the past with Serrano chilis), one blends the lime juice with the jalapeños then strains out any bits that are left before mixing in the tequila and Controy (the Mexican version of Cointreau - the recipe for which - as the story is told - was taken from the Mexico liqueur, so they had to come up with a different name for their orange-flavored liqueur).  Better than Triple Sec, we think.
 
Had to test it out before serving it; 9:30 may be a bit early for a drink, but most of the prep work on the dinner is already finished.  It's rather green and pretty grassy-tasting (reminds us of a bell pepper-tasting chenin blanc we used to enjoy at the Spotted Cow in Glendale, California), but we've decided to serve it anyway.  If folks don't like it, we'll make them our standard margaritas instead (equal parts tequila, Controy, and lime juice).  Either way, it will be a good introduction to dinner!

Our guest list is also smaller for this holiday; only four of the Thanksgiving six will be attending: the muralist has moved on to New York City; the Aeromexico person is on a different schedule now and doesn't make it to San Miguel as often.  Our loss, but we'll make up for it!

And now I must return to fussing over dinner preparations ....

Salad

Tossed Green Salad w/Creamy Lime Dressing

No Longer Bereft

Well, as fate would have it, I'm no longer bereft with the loss of my credit cards et al.

We received a call this evening from a Spanish-speaking woman and I turned the phone over to Michael who speaks more Spanish than I.

As it turns out, one of her children found the cards and IDs yesterday.  Going through the cards, she found our phone number and called this morning, but we already left for the bank.  So she called again this evening and  reached us!

No wallet (someone now has a Fossil wallet) and no cash, of course, but I've got all the cards!

So we headed out, passing Mega (stopping to withdraw a reward from the ATM machine) and were hoofing it down the Ancha when someone honked and pulled over.  It was Alejandro, a friend from Centro, who took us to the address we were seeking and interpreted for us.

So I now have my California driver's license, my Mexican visa (thank you, Jesus; we just saved $3100 pesos to replace it with a new visa - there are no 'replacements' issued, you get a new visa), my INAPAM card (old-folks' discount card - which included our phone number), my Sam's card and Costco card, and my Club 33 card (for which they wanted $25 to replace)!  Replacements for the others have already been ordered and will eventually show up when our mail forwarding company gets around to it.

American Express sends them via UPS Next Day, but they're going to our Laredo address (don't tell a creditor you live full-time in Mexico if you want to have a credit card), so there will be a delay in receiving them.  Others are mailed USPS.  Only one provider charged a replacement fee and it was only $7.50.  Luckily, we avoided paying the Club 33 fee!

So I can again purchase online for the States and I have my local bank's card for the peso account. Yahoo!!!

Restores your faith in folks, ya know?  [And the person who stole my wallet has risked their eternal soul for $25 in pesos and a nice wallet.  Maybe they needed it.]

Bereft

Now I know how it feels!  Bereft, i.e., deprived or robbed of the possession or use of something; lacking something needed, wanted, or expected.

And that's how I felt as we got off the bus yesterday afternoon at Mega (the grocery store stop near our home).  For at that time I felt the back pocket in the jeans - it's a habitual thing - but noticed that my wallet wasn't there!

Now, I had had no use for my wallet on our trip into Centro (Michael picked up our coffees at Starbucks and the new glassware at Europea) and the new wallets are sort of awkward getting free of the pockets in my jeans, so  there had been no reason for pulling it out.  Plus I wasn't completely sure I had brought it with me; it had been on the desk near my computer earlier in the day.

So we hurried home and searched - to no avail.  Then Michael thought of calling the friend with whom we had shared our coffee time at Starbucks.  He was no longer there, but went back to check the area in which we had been seated and to ask the manager about turned-in belongings. No dice.  Then he went to the local radio station to see if anyone had turned it in to them (it's a San Miguel thing).  Again no dice, but he was encouraged to return, say Friday, to go through the IDs that are turned in (wallets tend not to be surrendered).

So we set about trying to remember which credit cards had been in the wallet and notifying the companies to freeze those cards and send new ones.  This turned out to be simpler than expected, as most companies have a procedure that can be followed for that purpose online.  And I have a three-page document of websites and their IDs/passwords for my accounts and memberships.

So with that list to jog my memory - and Michael's suggestions - we notified almost everyone.  It did remind us that I really should change my California driver's license address from the post office box in the sub-station that closed.  So having done that, we now just have to wait a bit of time before asking DMV to send me a replacement license. Can't change your address and ask for a new license at the same time - identity fraud, you know.

I was clever enough to not write any passwords or codes on any of the cards, so we felt fairly safe that accounts would not be accessed or charges made.  American Express was great - new cards should be delivered by UPS today at our Texas address, of course, which means I'll eventually see them. One must not, as a general rule, disclose that one lives outside the United States if one wants to continue to have a credit card.  One can arrange for speedy delivery with our mail delivery provider, but there's a $50 charge!  I'll wait a bit.

We decided to visit our local bank to deal with replacing my peso debit card this morning.  The process was a bit drawn out (took about an hour), but it involved canceling my old card (this is done by phone - even from the bank branch) and they don't open until 9 am.  And our executive for preferred customers (that's a nice way of saying 'expats') was also handling a new customer, setting up an account for her, et cetera.  Then there was the fact that we hadn't advised them of our move from our first house (a year and a half ago and a house ago), so when talking to the person on the phone to cancel the old card we had to dredge up the address and other information from our memory banks to identify the account and ourselves).  So this was the time to make that change.  And our bank uses a credit-card sized gizmo to create new access codes each time we go online to check our account and that had to be reset to include my new debit card number.

But I did walk out the bank's door with a new debit card that worked.  And they ran our most recent activity report for us and there were no unknown debits.

Although one can't be sure where the wallet went missing, I have grave suspicions about a male/female couple that bounced against me as we were hanging on for dear life to the bars for standing passengers in the bus as it hurtled down the road on the way home.

Whew!  So I'll eventually have the replacement cards in hand, in a new wallet (thank you, amazon.com), and life will be back to normal.  In time for us to zip off to Cabo late in January for a brief vacation with my brother and sister-in-law (and my sister will also be there part of the time)!  

Now I just have to deal with getting a new visa to replace the one that went missing in the wallet: an appointment to explain what happened to my last visa before it expired; paying the fee for a new visa (Mexico changed the visa format and rules about a month ago); paperwork, new photos, a new visa fee ($3100 pesos or thereabouts); and, of course, today was the last day before the end-of-the-year holiday for Immigration, so we can't do anything until next year.  Luckily we're not leaving Mexico until next May!

Another Milestone

Earlier this week we went to nearby Celeya to visit Costco.  There's another, larger Costco in Queretaro, but QTO is further and larger, so traffic is crazier.  We don't much like driving in QTO, unless we can stay on the outskirts.  There is a wonderful grocery store on the outskirts, but Costco, Home Depot, and Sams Club are all further inside the city.

Now, going to Costco is not a big deal (we used to go quite often when our friends were running a restaurant and didn't have a car), but we hadn't been in over two months.  First there was the Hawai'ian cruise, then once back in SMA we were being cheap thrifty to make up for the money we spent on the cruise.  No big shopping trips.

So there we were, driving along towards Celeya, commenting on the view.  The Presa is finally filling back up - not completely normal (you can still make out the church steeple) but much better than it was; luckily San Miguel doesn't depend upon the Presa for our water supply.  The pedestrian walkway over the highway had finally been completed: the concrete superstructure had been finished for some time, but the railings had taken a bit longer. The interchange had been finished and there was no longer a detour.

The interchange had been finished!!!

You should understand that when we moved to San Miguel about two-and-a-half years ago, the highway was under construction - or re-construction.  Although part of the road was left mostly intact, most of it was receiving a widening job and the section through the mountains just south of San Miguel was being rerouted to improve the grade, which necessitated a great deal of work cutting new pathways through the hills.

So our introduction to the highway was one of washboard dirt.  Slow, bumpy, and dusty all at once.  The highway was being reworked in honor of the country's Bicentennial - and, by golly, it was to be finished before 2010.  Well, it was finished almost during 2010.  It was a really big job and although there were mechanical aids, a lot of work here is still done by hand.

We were so glad when it was finished and we could drive to/from Celeya easily.

Then, one day, it was torn up again.  This time at the intersection of a highway that enters only from the west.  It would seem that in their hurry to finish during the Bicentennial year, they took a shortcut and didn't build the overpass with connecting ramps to the other road.  So we spent many more months of driving down 'temporary' ramps, making U-turns, and driving up another 'temporary' ramp to get back on the highway.  More slow, washboard, and dusty roads -- this time with the added thrill of an ever-changing (and not well-marked) traffic pattern.  I think once we took a shortcut that we weren't supposed to take!

Things were still torn up when we last drove to Celeya, but they managed to finish the work in our absence.  It was a glorious drive both ways!  And I must assume anyone entering or leaving the highway at that intersection was enjoying the new routing, too.

Oh, yeah, Costco was great, too.  Especially their pizza, which is a pretty faithful copy of NOB Costco pizza.  We just don't slather it with mayonnaise or ketchup as the locals do!  Jalapeños are another story, however.

Technology Strikes

In this case, technology has stuck in the Jardin, or garden in front of the Parrocchia, or parish church instead of a basilica.  Although we have a lot of largish churches in Centro plus a goodly number scattered through the neighborhoods, the Parrocchia is our main church.  Luckily, our neighborhood is a subdivision, so no church; the nearest is San Antonio, some ways away so there's not too many early morning cuetes going off on saints' days, birthdays, holidays, et cetera-days.

The Parrocchia is the church of San Miguel (St Michael) for whom the town is named.  An older church (1600s), the more well-known frontispiece is a later addition (1880s), built without plans other than those drawn in the dirt with a stick by the brick mason and self-taught architect who designed it based upon photo postcards of European cathedrals.  [At least that's the story.] It is his interpretation of the neo-Gothic style rather than a imitation of any particular cathedral.  It's quite striking, even if the actual church is more traditional than the stonework in front.  It provides a great backdrop to the Jardin and was quite spectacular during the recent Bicentennial when images were projected upon it to accompanying music.

Unfortunately all you see of the Parrocchia from the webcam is its shadow across the plaza space before it!  When it's not a celebratory weekend (which isn't often), the area is a little drab, showing the church's shadow, the gray stone plaza, the first row of the stylized trimmed trees growing in the Jardin proper, the Allende house (wondered where the 'de Allende' came from? The family home - now a museum - of one of the leaders of the revolution, Ignacio Allende, whose statue is mounted on the corner of the museum), and a street leading downhill away from the Jardin.  Did I mention that we're in the mountains?  It seems that every street either goes up or down.  Homes that are advertised as 'a level walk to the Jardin' are not to be taken at their word.  Everything is relative!

Even the walk from our home in La Lejona into downtown might be considered level, but there's a very gradual up-and-down tilt to it -- until you actually reach Centro, when the change in geography becomes much more serious.  Most other 'level' streets are the same.  And streets leading off the Jardin either go up or down at a more noticeable rate.

It you're trying to orient yourself from the shadow of the Parrocchia, it might help to know that the altar end of the church faces 'liturgical east' -- in other words, not east at all, but south in this case.  So during the winter the sun is behind the church and the shadow of the facade is thrown across the plaza towards the trees in the Jardin.

The street you see disappearing downhill has our favorite place for drinks and munchies: La Azotea (the Rooftop).  Friendly staff, wonderful views (particularly at sunset), tasty treats, and about a half-block away from the Jardin, so if there's something going on, one can easily hear it.  Sometimes too easily!

Oh, and the link to the webcam (courtesy of a local real estate company) is http://www.sanmiguelrealestate.com/live-webcam-san-miguel-de-allende.php

It's probably located atop the restaurant in front of the church property just east of the Parrocchia - or on the north-south street just beyond.  We'll scout around the next time we're downtown and see if we can spot it!

Changes

Change is always interesting, no?  This is an election year for us, too, and there are changes afoot.  Our new mayor has been in place about a month or so.  Detractors were saying that since he owned restaurants and hotels in Centro, Centro would get all the funding, but he has proved them wrong.

The base of the statue in the center of our local roundabout (glorieta) is being reworked, involving a more substantial base, surround, and plantings.  The dividers in the streets leading up to the glorieta have been given a new landscape scheme that is much grander and lusher than the few trees and gravel of the previous administration.  They even resurrected the old statues for the glorieta on the east side of town and put them back in place, removing the (some would say) ugly replacements of the previous administration.

They're now working on the sidewalks between our glorieta and downtown.  The sidewalks had been in disrepair ever since we arrived in town.  Now old, broken sections are being removed and new, level and smooth sections poured. - a major improvement as far as we're concerned as we walk nearly everywhere.

It's nice to see good things happening again.  And I understand that they've found a way to tap UNESCO World Heritage site funding for at least part of this work - funding that went unused by the previous administration.

The change in president has gone less well.  The PRI party ruled Mexico for 70 years until they were turned out by a different party 12 years ago (our president sits for a single term of 6 years).  Well, PRI is back and some people are not happy about it.  There were demonstrations last night (the oath of office is given at midnight) from opposition parties.  Sr. Pietro Niento faced problems even getting into the Congress building to take the oath.  Banners were hung by the opposition on the building, taunting the new administration.  Political analysts said that there is no new PRI party; just new faces.  The old regime was known for ruling with handouts, underhanded deals, and rigged elections.  Although the new president is promising an open, transparent government, the new Secretary of the Interior (who is responsible for security in the country) is an old hand from the past regime known for wheeling and dealing.  Does nothing ever change?  We hope it does this time!

With the change in administration, the expats in town are awaiting possible changes to the new immigration laws.  The federal government just changed them last year and finally got the regulations for interpreting the new laws published a few weeks ago.  Now we have to see what the change in administration may bring.  We're just getting the new laws/regulations sorted out; hope any changes from above are minor - and in our favor.... 

[This is not a political post and the writer takes no position on the history or current occurrences in this, our fair, adopted country.]