5C's Que Pasa

Once again we are in crisis management with a few personal issues happening as well.  Colin’s job for tomorrow has changed for the 6th time.  No worries, all the others still have to be done but not tomorrow…..but when 😯   Sunday’s helicopter aerial photography is pending as clouds may be there early AM.  Really hard to plan as Colin leaves here at 3AM to drive to Vancouver to do the photo shoot and only gets back late Sunday PM.

Today we had 40% chance of showers and it rained pretty much most of the day.

That means that the exteriors of the home he photographed will have to be done next sunny day as long as he isn’t already working which he is 😐   People who are here in the winter complain about the low clouds.  Actually l really enjoyed watching them today.

But that is not the ‘cute thing’.  A few months ago we saw the cutest pet commercial on TV and what caught our attention were the two weiner dogs going round and round.  I don’t have time to make it an embedded video so please just click here to see it.  It is only the first 5 seconds that you have to watch.  However the rest of the video ( total 30 seconds ) is also cute but not as cute as the doxies….well in my opinion.  Funny thing is, this is the brand of dog food we feed the girls.

Mom…we need some action!

I am not complaining, just reporting.  After all, us working here allows us our winter in Mexico.  The weather and finicky clients keeps changing the schedule.  Yesterday I changed the jobs for Saturday 4 times and Sunday 5 times.  At the moment Colin is driving to Vancouver at 3AM on Sunday to do a ton of aerial photography from a helicopter then driving back here to arrive by midnight.  Of course he has a 9AM start time for a 12 hour photo shoot starting Monday AM which he was supposed to do on Saturday.  Needless to say the weather can change things in an instant.  You all know how much helicopters rent for per hour……$850.00!!!

Last post had me heading off to prepare dinner, which we only ate at 10:30PM.  Last night we ate at 9:30PM.  Tonight, who knows.  He is off at 7AM and I am packing breakfast, lunch and dinner to go.  Such is the life of one of Canada’s top three photographers.  We are fortunate on the one hand but we do lack balance in our lives.  No wonder we are hermits on the Isla by choice and Colin plays his guitar 6 – 8 hours per day.

Locally it was announced today that this is the first time that BC has had such an early grape harvest and all is going well.  Good news for me, I won’t run out of wine anytime soon.

Isn’t that just what I’m doing?

The geese have gathered two days in a row at 5PM for happy hour.

They have been more active this week and certainly more vocal. I think they are getting ready to fly south.

The cold temps we are having might be their motivator.  When we wake up it is very cold inside and we turn on our lovely fireplace as well as the furnace.  Today was the second morning we had frost out there.  Because it is clear outside, when the sun comes up over the hill our home is almost instantly over heated due to our wall of windows.  Within an hour we are opening windows to cool things off.  As fall progresses we will have to start closing our blinds at night to keep the heat inside.  We hate to do that, as we do love watching our view 24/7.   Quite funny to see frost in the early morning and then see a water skier out on the lake at 5PM.

I had to go into town yesterday on a few errands as well as grocery shop.  I took an extra 10 minutes to shoe shop.  We are attending a function mid October that requires non beach style clothes and proper shoes.  I have the clothes and not the shoes but I still won’t wear closed toe shoes.  I had a vision of what I wanted and found the perfect pair.  I also found a great deal on Adams Natural Peanut Butter, 2 for $7.00.  I bought enough for the next 6 months.

I refuse to wear pantyhose but these slightly elevated wedge sandals should get me through the evening.  Regular price $45.00 and I got them for $15.00.  Lucky me.  I used to wear all types of fancy shoes and heels.  No longer.  Between having 2 hips replaced and wearing flat shoes for almost 6 years there is no way I could walk in heels.  Still, I do have a huge bin of them under our house!!

I left the house yesterday morning before Colin in order to get my errands done with the hope that the girls would be alone for only an hour.  I miss judged my time ( or was just tempted to take the time for me to shop…..why am I only buying things in black 🙄  )  Anyway Colin was long gone and I only arrived home just over 3 hours after he had left.  With the current weather he had closed the blinds in case it became too warm inside but left the lower windows open lakeside in case of a breeze.

I came home to find Caeli ( no, she did not come to the door to greet me ) laying in front of the open window but I think trying to sit in the heat of the sun.

She was not warm to touch but rather cool so I surmise that she wanted to be warmer.

Yes we spoil our girls but why not?  Jim and Sandie on a recent post showed how their doxies love to find warmth anyway they can.  That’s just what our hounds do.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your evening and tomorrow.  Until next time…..

…and that brought the sun back.  But what a storm it was last evening.  The winds gusted up to 69km/h at its peak.  I was frightened enough to call Colin on his job site.

Not the ocean but our usually placid lake.

This is our Frankenstein tree that was almost blown over double. This morning I noticed that one of the support straps had torn away.

I also saw that one of our heron statues had fallen over as well as a patio chair.  Because of the wind off the lake we had purchased very heavy chairs that are not meant to topple.  It really was quite the wind storm.  Our windows were rattling to the point that my nerves were on edge hence the call to my husband..  Colin was about to do an exterior shot of a home when the wind blew down so many leaves that the picture perfect lawn in the foreground was suddenly a mess.

The sun was shining today.  I just loved looking at the lake and the billions of diamonds glittering off it’s surface.  I so missed September last year.  It is a wonderful time of the year with all the seasonal changes.  Tonight we are to go down to 2C/35F with a good possibility of frost because it is so clear out.  That will certainly bring a large change of color to the foliage.  Colin is working as fast as he can to get more jobs done it the perfect conditions.  Meanwhile the jobs keep coming in.

A busy day for me today.  A good deal of time was spent rearranging Colin’s jobs due to various new urgencies and the weather but I did manage to find time to book our vehicle insurance to Mexico.  Same price as last year.  Well to them it might be but to us, it cost us an extra $223.45 dollars because of the exchange rate to the USD.  I now have purchased all my USD and MXN pesos, thankfully.  Always a task to try and buy at the right time.  Next on the list is to purchase our medical insurance for 2 weeks heading south and another two weeks when we leave the Isla for home.  Last year it was only $240.00 total but Colin just turned 65 so we shall see what or if there is an increase.  Fortunately as we belong to Family Motor Coach Association we get, at no extra charge to us, Emergency Evacuation/Repatriation to our city here in Kelowna, including return of Dependents ( the one of us who isn’t in need of medical attention ), Vehicle Return ( RV and toad ) and Pet Return.  That is why we only purchase travel insurance  from our home here to our site on the Isla and the return in April.  Should we need immediate medical assistance we will pay it ourselves which our BC medical will reimburse up to the same amount that they would pay here.  If it is a serious medical situation we will be flown home at no charge.  Great deal.

The girls certainly enjoyed their off leash part of the walk today. That’s Carmeh on the right moving fast while Caeli sedately follows.

Carmeh is feeling very frisky these days.   She suddenly turned and headed back to me.  I barely got the shot.  Hard to believe that 10 minutes earlier she was happy to sit in a stroller as I pushed her along.

While going through my spam earlier a name caught my eye.  Janessa!  I really like that name.  Now if only I had a daughter 😳

Okay it is now 8:10PM and time for my dinner.  No idea when Colin is getting home tonight.  I know he is gone again about 7:30AM…..yup we lead a great life on the Isla but here we work.

I haven’t been editing my photos and found this in my camera today.  Taken while Jannose and Colin were here last weekend.  I can’t believe it has only been a week since they left.

We enjoyed the geese that afternoon.

While the girls absorbed the heat of the patio.

A few days later we had a business appointment in town. I may have posted this piece of art before but I really like it.

The leaves have started to turn but the flowers throughout the park are spectacular.  Most of the flowers in the park are maintained by volunteers.

The gazebo in behind has a chess board floor. You can check out a hand carved 3 -4 foot chess set and play a game right there.  The chess pieces were carved by volunteers who love to do wood carving.

We were gifted this huge ( my sunglasses for size) what we thought was a zucchinni. Well it still might be and I had planned to ask you what to do with it. But last night we cut into it and it seemed more like a squash and we put it on the BBQ. Yum! Could it be a large overgrown zucchini that tastes like squash??

Remember a few post back when I was concerned about El Nino and how it would affect our coming winter?  A reader who is actually coming to the Isla for a bit sent me this.  He did a ton of research and I for one am happy that he did.  Gracias, Michael.

I also saw this online and it may be of help with mosquitoes.  Have any of you used this formula before?

Who doesn’t like a diamond? 🙂

I took this shot last week, it reminds me of a serpent about to feed.

What does it look like to you?

…and not just that the leaves are turning color and starting to drop on the ground. Today was the day to turn the water off to my plant pots.  Time to let them dry out for the clean up.  I also received a surprise today and won a badge.

This was from FitBit. It just showed up in my inbox.

So I’m guessing this is an acknowledgment of how far I have walked to date.  Quite cute as I have a thing for penguins so I’m happy.

I really don’t understand all things FitBit.  My purpose is to walk 10,000 steps per day for health and to earn an extra glass of wine on my Weight Watcher points.  By the way I am still stuck at the same weight so for the last few days I am just eating within reason and seeing what transpires.  No change.  Back to FitBit….this device is quite accurate.  I used to get up to 10,000 steps and more each day with my Weight Watcher pedometer.  For the first 10 days of using my FitBIt Zip, I wore both and found that I easily got 2500 – 3500 more steps on the WW pedometer.  It seems to measure movement whereas the FitBit measures actual steps, it is programmed very specifically.  I have a hard time getting 8000 steps per day right now.  Wait till I hit the beach in Mexico 😎

Went to the chiropractor a few days ago.  Bottom line, I am spending way too much time at my desk which causes my back to be stressed.  Yes, well of course I would prefer to be out and about getting more steps on my FitBit but I do have to work.  So I am setting the stove timer for 20 minutes and then I have to get up to shut it off and I walk about for a very few minutes and wish I was outside 😥  Reset the timer and back to my desk and repeat the process.

This is the kind of weather we have been dealing with this week. Not perfect but enough to get some jobs done. Still waiting for those blue sky and sunshine days to get the big jobs done.

Today was the day to buy your US dollars.  Yesterday the rate was down a tad to 1.3424 and today it dropped down to a whopping low rate of 1.3249.  Guess who bought their USD yesterday 😐   Well you can’t win them all.  The good news is that I got my Mexican Pesos at a good rate, much better than last year.  A real guessing game and it was taking too much time so I just went for it.  Last year at this time we thought 1.13 was a high exchange rate for the USD.  If only we had known.

Colin just keeps working and I keep dreaming about leaving.  No matter what, we are heading out on October 31st.  That is now cast in stone or so I hope.  I have always been able to collect payment for all outstanding invoices before we leave but I have a strong feeling that that will not happen this year with so many jobs being done at the last minute.  The bigger the company the longer it takes to pay.  We have to be very careful re cheques still being alright to cash in April and not being stale dated.  No one opens our mail while we are away so the money just sits there.

Our friends Jannose & Colin came to visit last weekend. They are the ones whose driveway we stayed in last May while in Edmonton.

My Colin worked from 6AM till 10PM on the Saturday so I went out to dinner with our friends, well we did have appies on the patio first.  What a treat to get out of the house.  However the four of us were able to get together for happy hour and dinner here at our home on the Sunday.  Loved the visit folks, sorry it was so quick.

Got an email today from blog readers Penny and Doug asking the following question.

We are thinking of going to Mexico on the Baja side for a two month period of time to stay in a RV park, taking our Class A Motor Home and tow, and were wondering about RV Insurance. Do you do or recommend a ‘day in & day out insurance’ or insuring your rig for the whole time down and parked?

Appreciate your thoughts,

Rather than just give them my answer I thought I would put it out to you and see what you have to add to the discussion.  The more thoughts and ideas, the better.  Even if you don’t RV to Mexico what would you do?  Colin and I have known people who just insure their RV until they get to the RV Park they will stay at for the winter.  Of course they should insure the vehicle that they will be driving around in while there.  One year when first RVing we did that when we went to the Baja for six weeks.  However now we insure both the RV and the car for the entire time.  All Mexican Insurers will do a six month policy which is the amount of time one is allowed to be in Mexico.  We use San Xavier Mexico Insurance out of Nogales. You just have to call them on their toll free line and in less than 10 minutes you are insured.  One year while heading North to Acapulco ( yes we were far South ) the car broke away from the RV and caused a lot of damage to our toad.  With little hassle the claim paid for full repairs and the cost of our insurance the next year did not go up.

Last year we valued our car at $7,500.00USD and that cost us  $263.90USD.  Our RV was valued at $70,000.00USD and that cost us $595.66USD for 6 months of insurance.  Of that we got an $815.00CAD refund on our Canadian vehicle insurance based on the amount of time we were in Mexico so it only cost us a total of $156.00CAD ( based on the exchange rate of 1.13 ) to be fully insured.  Several years ago when our vehicles were valued at a higher rate we actually made a profit with our refund which usually covered all of our tolls.  Personally we would not travel without a policy on both vehicles.  What if someone backed into your RV while it is parked?  Also be sure to check with your homeowners policy to see how much they cover of what is in your RV.  So folks, please help Penny and Doug out by giving them some input.  Likely we all will learn something in the process.

By the way we do only do health insurance from home until we are parked on the Isla in Mexico.  We also insure for our travel days from Mexico back home.  We feel that it is cheaper to pay as you go in Mexico for any medical care we might need.  Of course if it is really serious we would fly or drive home ASAP.

Yikes, it’s 7:20PM and I need to feed my man.  Looking forward to your ideas and suggestions.