A couple of photos taken the other evening on iPad. No editing other than resizing.
Rose clouds
Author: doug
Cartoon car
This silly little car has caught my attention several times. I don’t know what brand it is. I don’t know if it’s ICE or electric, and I don’t care because my mind is overwhelmed by one question: if I wanted to design a car that looks like a cartoon, could I outdo this?
Fires
On New Year’s Day 2009 a huge fire deforested much of the area in which we walk dogs.
Almost 12 years later, in October 2020, another fire raged through.
Fortunately, many of the trees survived this time.
14 months after the last fire, last week, another big fire.
And yesterday on the dog walk we see this:
Wind from east northeast. The others came from the southwest. No sign of any activity. Around an hour later, Syd heard a helicopter (we leave from his house to walk), and this morning it appears to be out.
Almost 12 years between fires, then 14 months, then just over a week. Following that progression, we could have expected the next fire in 3-½ hours. Glad it didn’t happen.
The 50s of Uruguay
In 2017, Uruguay issued polyester 50-peso notes.
Unlike the previous notes, which were red, these 50th anniversary notes were blue.
And ugly in a brutal sort of way. Then in 2020, the polyester notes became red again.
There must be something about the 50-peso denomination that causes impishness. In 2011, they created a ridiculous and misleading 50-peso coin that nobody wants (an earlier blog post of mine).
Cleaning our unoccupied casita is an annual event I do every five years or so, whether it needs it or not. Among stuff that’s been floating around in there since my son left seven years ago is a Mexican 1,000-peso note.
I was reminded of preparing to move to Mexico from Spokane, Washington, in a pickup truck. I had fun giving things away: on Craigslist advertised a pile of post cards from my grandmother, few of which actually said anything, sent to us kids from around the world in the 1960s. Some stamp enthusiast eagerly took them. I has a small box of coins as well. Some I gathered while working a job in West Germany that took me to 14 countries, despite my goal of leaving each with no coins, and many more, also from my grandmother, including some WWII era aluminum ones from Italy. I took those to the closest elementary school late one afternoon, introduced myself to the principal, explained how these might be interesting for geography, history, math and more, and asked if he had a 5th grade teacher who might be interested. He did indeed.
Which got me thinking. The date on this bank note is in March of 1982. What was it worth then?
Well. It turns out that the Mexican peso had been devalued 30% a month before this note was issued, and it only got worse from there.
It was a very not-good year for holders of Mexican local currency units.
Crowd on the beach
Hard to do it justice with a photo: the farthest part of the beach was absolutely jammed. Today (at 6 PM) is the busiest I have ever seen the beach. The number of cars was amazing.
After the fire
A huge swath of our dog walk area became scorched earth during the fire. It will be interesting to watch what grows next.
Meanwhile, while there were still spot fires burning, someone rode through on a bicycle. Go figure.
Burning stump
A scene from yesterday: dried stump from last year’s fire springs into flame.
Bye bye boo tree
The “Boo!” tree, 30 November 2017 and 20 October 2020
31 December 2021
Fire, again
This afternoon. Again. Last time was just over a year ago. This looks to be a lot worse.
[lost video from Daniel Machado – driving through stretch where fire jumped the highway, El Fortin]
