Tuesday

We ate a nice dinner tonight at Genoma, where I had rigatoni and also ate all of Sunshine's onion rings. Lately, dinner conversation has revolved around all the things we have to do. There was a time when I'd have typed "upcoming things," but that is no longer the case. Sunshine has something less than twenty workdays before we move back home (and in any event it is only slightly over a month till the minute we actually start the car and drive north). There is a terrifying number of things to accomplish between now and then. Thus, this topic has invaded every recent dinnertime conversation much the same way it's beginning to invade this blog: I don't spend the time talking the specifics of all the things we have to do, just repeating, with dread, that sheer amounts of requirements loom. I'm not going into every little thing here, now; suffice to say that, if I wanted to, and the calendar notations prove accurate, I could probably go ahead and write these daily updates through Christmas right this minute. It's that tightly planned. So, on to the unpredictable news: I guess I should mention that several grenades were detonated in an apartment building in Ixtapa yesterday, and that no one was hurt.* In my update yesterday I forgot to mention that the best-three-out-of-five bombs that exploded in México City Monday also produced no injuries. I hear a rumor that there was a daylight shootout in the greater Monterrey metro area yesterday, too, although I will be damned if the English-speaking papers I cite are carrying stories about our narco war anymore. All I can find are news stories about the Oaxaca protest***** and other news stories about how Oaxaca stories are not being picked-up by US media.* [Cavin]