Thank you, from all us dogs!

The day after Hurricane Rina, we were making the rounds with Punta and stopped to see Alison Sawyer Current, aka The Dog Lady of Mexico. She was Punta's savior and guardian until she got a forever home with me. And I believe her when she says she loves each rescue dog forever. Look here!
Alison, who is working yet another spay and neuter clinic starting today, was talking about the continuous need for funding. She is planning a program for ongoing friends, something whereby you would pledge to give $10 or whatever a month and courage your friends to do so as we. Right then and there, I pledged $20.
It's such good work she does for the poor dogs here and over time I have seen a change in attitude in the kind of people who needed one.
So when this clinic is done, look for word from Alison about the sustaining program. Details will show up on IslaAnimals.org.
Oops, I'm slow. Here's a link to Alison's explanation and donation page!

Look at slow Mexican construction!

I'm gone a week, we have a hurricane when I get back, and what pops out at me while making the rounds today? The progress made on the new superstore!

Paved paradise?

This will be a shocker to those who've been away from the island since last high season. Watching it develop over the last weeks has me wishing I'd taken photos daily, because it has moved along so quickly that a slide show would be like watching a movie. Workers 24/7.
Chedraui is building what zoning commissions in the US call a big box store. This one boxy and a couple stories plus under roof parking.
It will make most of the trips to shop in Cancun unnecessary. It also threatens to force many of the mom and pop tiendas into closure with its lower pricing to Mexican liking and variety and imported food labels from the US.
It will inevitably bring amazing traffic jams to the middle of the island, right across from the baseball and soccer fields, so busy on weekends as it is. A traffic light or a 24 hour transit cop is inevitable.
Chedraui will open its superstore on Isla Mujeres in December. Conventional wisdom has it happening in time to buy Christmas and New Years turkeys and hams and yams and sparkling cider.
In addition to the neighborhood mini supers, it is questionable that the island would be willing to support two SuperXpresses owned by the San Francisco supermarket chain. And the one nearest to me, that doesn't have an ATM and a good assortment of vegetables, can just go away. No one will mind after the Chedraui opens. I am sure.

Fixed!

Sometimes in Mexico, things just slide and never get fixed. I was feeling that way when I picked up the phone and called my former electrician and plumber, Mundo. What's wrong, he asked.
"I hurt because I am sleeping on a child's bed in the office because my own AC is broken, a new one," I said. "Ricardo is still recovering from his accident, so..."
Oh you poor thing, I'll be over 8am tomorrow, he said.
Kathryn just looked a me and said, yeh, right. Well, he was 4 minutes late!
So he checked it out and one great thing about Mundo is knowing when a job is beyond him. He left and came back with two helpers. One of them, Julio, is an electonics wizard and a factory authorized technician for many brands.
Julio quickly determined that bad bundling of wires in the motor on the roof had worn a hole in the freon tube. Mundo went to get freon and the third guy soldered while I ask Julio to take a look at the oven because since I have owned it would not heat up to more than a warm 200 degrees. A couple men friends suspected it didn't have insulation and so did Julio at first, inspecting the door but finding it filled.
So the problem was electronic, the equivalent of a thermostat that he fixed while the third assistant was filling the freon tube that he had soldered and that Mundo had bought freon for.
"Your oven now heats to at least 400 degress Fahrenheit," Mundo said on their way out while the AC was pumping 21 degrees Celsius. Heaven.
The price of calling in Mundo and the fix-it squad was 500 pesos when I was all done. About $40US. Priceless!