Log #65, February

18 February

What's Shakin'?

The state of Oaxaca just experienced a magnitude 6.6 earthquake, strong enough to be felt in the capital city, where a decidedly large jolt was felt. Uncovering Mexico reporter Jeremy Schwartz slept through it, but many didn't. He reported from Mexico City,

Every once in awhile we feel a little jolt in our Colima hood, and it also gets us thinking about disasterous temblors. As SoCal has-beens, Stan and I are a little antsy about earthquakes, having experienced quite a few big-uns. For years we kept tabs of earthquake activity on the USGS website. It was kinda nice to know if that shaking in our heads was real, or just an illusion, so we checked the web to see if what we felt registered on the Richter Scale.

USGS - US Geological Survey showing earthquakes in Mexico over
magnitude 4.0 on 16 Feb. (the larger the square, the larger the magnitude)

However, here in Colima, the US site doesn't always help ... it only shows earthquakes over magnitude 4.0 outside the US. We get a much better feel for Mexican earth movers from the Mexican SSN site. It shows that the southern Mexico states are rocking as much as the Aluetian Islands.

SSN - Servicio Sismologico Nacional
showing three weeks of measurable earthquakes in Mexico, 93
of 'em piled on top of each other (from the SISMISIDAD RECIENTE menu)

16 February

Not Exactly Sloths

Master bath sink

Guest bathroom sink

During our construction hiatus we haven't been lounging around reading movie magazines and eating bon-bons. Nope, we've been lounging around reading home improvement magazines, as well as planning, designing and window shopping. Our next big project is to finish the bathrooms, which means installing doors, cabinets, tiles, mirrors and medicine cabinets. Tracking down sources is a cultural experience in itself, and as always, we're having a blast, learning.

We're happy with our kitchen cabinets, so we're considering having the same company make our bathroom cabinets - leaning toward bright Mexican colors to compliment fun Talavera tile designs to go with our ceramic sinks.

I've been drawing all different combos of designs. It would be really easy to go overboard and end up with a jumble of tiles, so many to choose from. I'm thinking solid cobalt blue for the master bath countertop and mustard for the guest countertop. Each room will have a coordinating accent stripe at backsplash level.

  Tile samples for bathroom accents

The only design item we're sure of, at this point, is that each bathroom will be totally tiled, floor to ceiling. We're enamored with the whole Mexican tile look. The walls will probably be solid top to bottom with an accent stripe circling each room ... or maybe we'll have two-toned walls. The floors will be anti-skid white.

As you would expect in a country famous for its tiles, tile outlets abound, as do color and pattern choices. Too many choices. Doors, however, are a different story, cuz I want bi-folds to fit into small spaces; bi-fold choices are limited. Medicine cabinets, nearly nonexistent in our search, so far.

Around the corner from SolCasa RanaQuemada is an upscale interior design shop called Open House. Just for grins, we asked their price of doors for the guest bath and laundry room. Bi-folds aren't stocked, so their solution was to cut existing doors in half and hinge them.

Our eclectic neighborhood with an
interior design store sandwiched between a tire shop
and the solar power store, where our neighbor, Lucy, works

  Sorta-kinda the door we're looking for  

An estimator came out and measured, then we tracked him down a week later ... he shuffled and shuffled through his stack of papers (they must be really busy) and finally produced his figures: MX$5,500, which would include cutting existing stock doors in half and hinging, facing the openings and hanging the doors. The material estimated was bugproof MDF. We're chewing on that price, and checking around for more options.

Medicine cabinets, like bi-fold doors, aren't stocked in local stores; lots of flat mirrors in cool designs to install on concrete walls, but no cabinets, cuz one can't do a clean flush-mount. But I want one in the master bath. It'll have to be wall mounted and may look tacky sticking out over the sink, but ... oh, well.

9 February

Crews They Come and Crews They Go

Pizza and darts with ...

... Cheerios, Slacker, Ceilidh and Nakia

Airborne, V'ger, Slacker, Cheerios, Carpe Vita, Southern Belle, Raptor Dance, Sweet Lorraine, Wildflower, and our special buddies, Ceilidh and Nakia - 'tis the season to cruise southern waters. On their way through Santiago Bay, all these crews have graced the SolCasa RanaQuemada with welcome, raucous activity. And the RanaQuemada crew has been having a blast, entertaining. Believe it or don't.

All guests were self-winding - they didn't require a lot of luxury in order to enjoy themselves. Here at home, a fully-functional kitchen and a dart board was all it took, along with cushy beach chairs and patio plastic. At the soccer field and palapa restaurants, beer and tacos fit the bill. My idea of entertaining.

Linda and her BIMBO shirt

Stan, Linda and John at half time

We were able to squeeze a three-week visit out of John and Linda, who headed off to Ecuador, today (just a little behind schedule). Before they sailed, almost all of the twenty crews anchored in the bay gathered at a beach palapa to wish Linda happy birthday. It was a perfect, although tearful, send off ... gag gifts and cake. Stan and I made her a custom soccer T-shirt and a lufa from the neighbor's vine. Now that they're out to sea, we're consoling ourselves with the SSB, where we can hear their daily check-ins as they make their way south, and by reading their blog updates. We were able to contact them this evening, one more time, over the VHF just as they slipped out of range ... 20 miles down the road.

But who knows, we might just pop up in Ecuador, sometime, for a little visit!

5 February

Bucky's new toy

Forget the expensive PetCo kitty toys like Catatonic, the plug-in, moving mouse. All a cat really needs is a fresh supply of plastic straws. Linda brought part of Ziggy's stash from the boat as a gift to our little feline family. Bucky is going through them like a dog with rawhide chewies. She can flatten and perforate a straw in less than a day.

Tarantula hawk
(thnx whatsthatbug.com)

And speaking of Ziggy, the devilish Nakia cat ... he learned a very important boat lesson this week. He jumped a tarantula hawk, and he paid. Tarantula hawks are huge wasps found in Southern California and farther south. Whatsthatbug.com says, "The female wasp picks a fight with a tarantula, and if she wins, she stings it, paralyzes it, lays an egg on it and buries it. When the egg hatches, the young larval wasp has a nice supply of fresh meat because it eats the paralyzed tarantula alive. She will sting you painfully if you don't respect her."

We're thinking that Ziggy will be respectin'.... Check John and Linda's Nakia Blog in a couple of days, they'll probably post a picture of a mumpified Ziggy, real soon.

Family portrait: Bucky (2 yrs/8 lbs),
Chivo (6 mos/6.5 lbs) and Gale (5 yrs/13 lbs)

Ziggy's quite a chunky boy at seven months. Our little Chivo, at 6 months, is catching up ... he hasn't quit growing since he purged all those parasites at seven weeks.

I defy anyone to catch three animals on the hoof, all looking at the camera.

Speaking of catching great cat poses, I posted a bunch of pictures on the Santuario website this week. I didn't do the camera work, Gwen and Barbara did. Check the cat adoption page, they're running a special - need to adopt out 150 of 'em!

SolMate Santiago contact: mj(at)solmatesantiago(dot)com