It Doesn't FEEL Like a, Monday

Deb woke me up at the crack of dawn today. 11:30 this morning. What happened to, "Island Time, Mon"?

Her: "You have to get up, I'm hungry. You seem to live on rum and cigars when we're down here and it doesn't bother you!"

Me: "You say that like it's a BAD thing?"

Hey, it's not my fault she won't smoke the cigars or drink the rum. I keep picking up the bar tab, don't I? I'm trying.

Surprisingly enough, that mass quantity of alcohol consumed yesterday doesn't seem to have done much damage. But the sunburn is worse than estimated. I guess you could blame that on the alcohol, at least indirectly. Just a few minutes in the tropical sun, walking around the town, and it's pretty evident that I need my hat, and I am not doing well carrying a bag full of rum, soda, water, cookies and pastry she wanted from the grocery store, and the shirts we bought for the kids. After we get some lunch,we head back to the condo to take in the air conditioning and drink a couple of bottles of water.

The restaurant where we ate called this dish a, "Local Taco". But if you put ham, cream cheese and vegetables in a tightly wrapped, wheat tortilla, it's a wrap. And we've had them in the States for years. In Paris, they call it, Jambon au Fromage. It's a ham sandwich no matter where you are. It was good, but don't get above your raisin' with the name, OK?

Spent the afternoon reading the Tribune on line. Literally, the whole afternoon! The computer connection down here is not good, so the places loaded real slow. But what I got from what I could read was kind of scary.

Don't piss off your plumber, he probably has a gun. The SLCPD has shot it's second or third guy in a car this year. The Utes might start the football season ranked as high as 22. And it's going to be damn near impossible to get a good fish head in West Valley City if you have to rely on Food Stamps. Ouch! Who would want to live in such a place?

I'm glad Im down here in Mexico. Fish heads are NOT a problem on THIS island. No sir. I had baked Red Snapper tonight and it was awesome. Came without the head, though.

After dinner I picked up my third, "Free" Cuban cigar. We shall see how, "FREE" it was when I get the bill for the jewelry Deb bought from the guy who gave it to me, while I smoked it outside his shop.

Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out the fake Habano's, but the sellers have gotten better at ripping you off, too. First time we were here, I left two brothers in a raging fight about who was responsible for bringing in the fake Cubans to their shop after I pointed out to them, that if they were going to sell me, "Cohiba's" the labels should at least be yellow and black. Not ORANGE and black. Even a rookie could see that mistake. Murray High is NOT in the cigar business. I don't speak Spanish, but I'm pretty sure they were both blaming the other one for not doing his homework.

Deb bought some jewelry form this same guy LAST night. That was the second, "Free" Cuban. And she told me later that she asked him where he got the Cubans. after all, the distribution of these things is pretty locked up world wide. if you don't deal with the Cubans, you deal with, I believe, it's Davidoff, the Swiss company that sells all things high end with their name on it. But he told her that he has friends in Cuba that will send them to him.

This makes sense since we've been there. I bought mine on the black market in a bar. Doug Fabrizio of KUER took off with some guys who offered to sell him cigars one day to get the story. They told him that they worked for the people who distribute the cigars for the state run agency, and they steal them and sell them to feed their family's. So, there is more than one way to get cigars from Cuba, and it doesn't always benefit the communist government.

Since I could get on a plane in Cancun tomorrow, and fly to Havana, and no one would ask any questions, it's not out of the realm of imagination that there is a shipping company all too willing to take boxes from Havana to Mexico while not asking a hell of a lot of questions.

And now, even if it's not a REAL Cuban, at least it's a good cigar. Ten years ago, you might get the right color cigar band, you could still get a crummy cigar. Now, even the forgers are trying harder.

When we were first here in 1999, we found this little fish restaurant called, La Lomita. No, I have no idea what that translates too. When we were here in 2006 with the kids, we tried to go there. We got up to the doors and it was closed, but looked fine from the outside. When I looked inside, the entire roof had collapsed into the middle of the place in the hurricane of the year before.

I asked the lady running the place if it was their place, and if they had rebuilt. She said they had, that the food would be the same. The snapper was awesome, but, Deb said the shrimp was a little over cooked. We will try someplace different tomorrow. I'd like to have some conch again. I haven't eaten that in a long time.

It's so beautiful here. Green trees, blue sky, white sand. I really think that at some point, I'm going to have a place in the tropics to spend at least the time between the end of the Bowl Season, and the first of May in. Could be here. Could be Belize. Hell, could even be Florida. I can get American satellite TV, and read the paper on the internet, so I could stay in touch. Earlier tonight I did, "face time" with my son so he told me all about their soccer game (first loss this year) and I could see him pealing off his soaking wet soccer jersey while we were talking. As, The Prophet Buffett says, "I've got a Caribbean Soul I can barely control..."

But after this weekend, I might have a new favorite song about this part of the world. Last weekend, at the Greek Easter celebration in Phil and Jami's back yard, we were talking to our friends, Shannon and Paul who spend part of their winter in Mexico every year. They knew all these guys we came down here to see! I had no idea anyone in SLC had heard of them. I guess they know Mark Mulligan real well. They didn't tell us that down here, he's known as, "Mexico Mark" (and his young wife, Elsa is in the Selma Hyack range of pretty, and they have three perfect sons).

Last night, Mark did a song called, "I came down for the weekend. Twenty five years ago". That might no be a bad thing.

I'll apologize again for any misspellings. The blog home page comes up in Spanish here. And when I run the spell check every word but, "TACO" is wrong, so I just quit trying.

Two more days in paradise. Deb has some jewelry. I got my cigars smoked and my rum drank, and the music was awesome. Meagan wanted a t-shirt with a Gecko on it, found it this morning. Danny want's soccer jerseys and now he has them. Even though one had, "BIMBO" printed across the front, which will not make my neighbor, Ryan happy since he works for Mission Foods, and Bimbo is their biggest competitor in Mexico. The Mexican's seem to take Bimbo to heart, even though, Mission is a Mexican company, the same way they drink Modelo because they think of, Corona as an, "American beer". Go figure.

So that's tonight dispatch from the Truthstick media empire's Mexican office. Deb now has pastry for breakfast in the morning. She might let me sleep in bast the ungodly hour of 11:30. NO ONE gets up early on the Islands!