Mexico Stories - Happy 2006

No pics this week (sorry to my fan!); I spent the past week collecting my "best of 2005" pics for a coffee table book. I had so much fun getting those together, that I didn't give a thought to taking any new pics.

So, dispatches from Mexico, instead.

I arrived in Guanajuato/Leon/Irapuato to continue work on a project with some work folks who are just...well...not like me. How so? It's like this...

When I arrived at the airport, my super-religious, gun-toting, bible-whacking, (yet basically good-hearted, if slightly misguided) compatriot asked did I have a good Christmas and stated that his was "awesome. I took a single sheet of stainless steel and made this awesome 12" Bowie knife for my 1840's survivalist trips."

For Christmas. A Bowie knife.

In my best dry, David Sedaris voice, I replied, "I made gingerbread houses for cancer patients at the children's hospital."

Cost of the gingerbread houses? About $5. Cost of the conflicted, confused look on the Jesus "enthusiast's" face? Priceless.

(Each morning, businesses have someone sweeping the street in front of the store, then watering it to keep down the dust. Karen Carpenter is alive and well and playing as background music at "Hacienda de Torres"- she did a cover of Shawn Cassidy's "De-doo-run-run". It costs 420 pesos to fill the gas tank on a jeep; all gas stations are government-owned. Dogs often hang out on the flat roofs of houses,looking at passers-by in the street below. Christmas continues into January, to match the 12 days it took - after the birth of Jesus - for the 3 Wise Men to 'show up'...that is often when "Santa" arrives for the kids. Pop Tarts come in foil packs of 1, not 2. Chimichurra sauce is good on everything. Sunrises are beautiful everywhere.There are 25-foot, manned watch towers in the parking lot of the mall- if a business is big enough to have a parking lot, but not watchtowers, then there is a little man "guarding" the lot that you tip when you leave.)