I Was Just Going to Post...

A few nights ago (Tuesday night) we had rain.  I know I write a lot about the weather, but it didn't just rain, it RAINED!  There were a series of three storm fronts that arrived in the evening, around midnight, and around 3 am.  Each had it's own series of lightning with crack, sizzles, and power outages.  Followed by thunderclaps that reverberated, set off car alarms, and all that sort of thing.

The dogs, of course, were up on the bed, shivering.

Then on Wednesday night we had a repeat, but only twice during the night.  There was no early-morning rain storm.  But all the other events were present and accounted for!  Luckily, the power outages were again brief occurrences.

The last night (Thursday) we had no storms.  Nothing, nada, nil!  Peaceful and quiet, we hardly knew what to do with ourselves.  There was some distant thunder (and the dogs had freaked out already), but there was no rain nor lightning nearby.

We were hoping for a repeat tonight, but at 6:30 pm, another storm rolled in.  The only good part was that, again, the rain cam straight down.  When the wind blows while it's raining, there are usually leaks around the casements on the rooftop so rain drips down onto the second floor from above.  Hopefully the rain was vertical tonight, too.

Other than that it was a good day.  Yesterday we finally got around to having our hairs cut after our last cut before the back-to-back-to-back cruises.  Chemy, as usual, carried on a complete conversation with others in the shop (in Spanish of course) while cutting our hair and it took about the usual amount of time (10 to 15 minutes apiece).  Don't know how he does it, but he does....

Today we had our services folks over in the afternoon to install new light fixtures for the ceilings in our three most popular bathrooms.  Maybe we should have visitors more often?  Things are finally getting done!  We even had them hang the carpet runner on the wall in the stairwell between the rooftop and the second floor....

UPDATE - It seems to have continued to rain throughout the night in one continuous flow!  Still dripping when I awakened at 5:00.

Here's a photo from last night in Centro - and no, that isn't people on the rooftops relieving themselves.  In an old town such as this, roofs are flat (often turned into gathering areas - ours has it's own bathroom) and the water gathers there and escapes via rain spouts.  Makes walking on the sidewalks a bit tricky when folks wash down their rooftops during the day!  You can tell it was pouring down as the water is aimed out into the street.

Photo by Maru Balderas Lopez

Cobblestones

...or cobblerocks, as Ilike to call them.  Forget those snugly fitted pavements you may be thinking of.  Or cobblestones are actual rocks that haven't been dressed in any way.  And depending upon where you live in the city, they are more carefully placed -- or not!

I had planned a photo exposé of the pavements in various parts of town, but some of the 'photos' turned out to be videos.  I'll try again next week. and update this post.

Other than that it's been same-old, same-old.  Things have dried up a bit, but there are still the occasional nighttime rain storm - two of which I've managed to sleep through, even with Michael inviting the dogs up on the bed and their shivers!  Guess I must have been really tired.  Or there was one-too-many margaritas enjoyed earlier.

Rain, again

I don't think we can blame it on global warming, but it's been a real rainy season for us this year.  In particular, this week.  I know it's only Thursday, but it has been raining most days since last week!

And not just a gentle rain, but thunder-and-lighting rain.  (Miyake is spending a lot of time in our bathroom - her 'safe' room.  A couple of nights ago it not only rained hard, but there was wind and it blew the rain against our southern-facing house.  So a combination of heavy rain and blowing wind against the french doors in our bedroom. 

Time to find those spare bath towels and put them under the windows and doors in the house that face south. Luckily not many windows/doors face in that direction but there were enough.  And there was lightning, of course.  On bolt struck very near our house (maybe a block away) and we lost power for a while.  Needless to say, Miyake was shaking in the bathroom for a while - well, most of the night.  Didn't even want to come downstairs for her breakfast!  And yes, we took breakfast up to her.  Spoiled, I know.

The weather report has shown it to be rainy all this week.  The report we see is from bbc.com and it focuses largely on other parts of the world.  It starts of with South America, then moves to Africa and the Middle East, then India, Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.  Then finally gets to Central America and that's when Mexico is shown.  They seldom say anything about Mexico - and only Mexico City is marked on the map - so we sort of guess whether the rain that is shown will encompass San Miguel or not.  It usually does.

At least it is cool here during the summer what with the clouds and occasional rainfall.  Other parts of Mexico are shown with temps up to 40 degrees Centigrade (that's about 104F - yikes!!).  What's a little rain among friends, eh?  At least we not in the Yucatan, poking out in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean where it's both hot and rainy, i.e., humid.  I keep telling Michael that we could move to Puerto Vallarta if he wants ocean, but he protests that the humidity would do me in (and he's right!).

So we keep a supply of bath towels at the ready - easy to do with dogs that require baths and lots of towels - and place them quickly when the rain begins.

The only real drawback is that to reach Mega (our local grocery store that is right behind our garden wall), the local bus stop, and cab rank is that we have to walk down our street and turn right past the gym and Mega's loading dock.  And I do mean 'down' the street.  Which means any loose dirt uphill from us washes down the street, floods over the sidewalk, and deposits mud that we then need to walk through.  Yuck!  Given a day or so, the gym sends their man-of-all-trades out to shovel the dried mud from the sidewalk, but we invariably need to walk through it before that takes place.  So we hop from clear spots on the sidewalk to empty gutters (they seem to be pretty empty - though narrow - for most of the way) to the cobblestones in the street. 

Yes, we could always go in the opposite direction: walking up to the cross-street, across to the Libramiento, and down to Mega/bus stop/cab rank.  But if we're walking into town that puts us on the wrong side of the road (the Ancha), so we don't usually go in that direction.  You should see us streaking across the highway to Celaya, looking for all the world like those warning signs around the nuclear power plant on the way to San Diego!  But it puts us in a position to cross the Libramiento on the correct side of the glorietta (avoiding the elevated walkway that feels like it's about to collapse) to gain better sidewalks for our stroll into town.

Centro is quite nice (except when it rains and the downhill streets turn into gushing rivers), but life is a little more exciting out on the edges of town!