Muchacho Polaco

I bought these seeds not realizing they take about 6 months to bloom. Given my history with plants, very unlikely to see that. Still, in the event they make it, I have my first sprout.

Last week was a RV, this week was much better. I am not a huge fan of Chandler, mostly due to the distance. Still, I am glad that I don’t live here.

One more Valentine’s. We had sushi and champagne.

I travel to Phoenix weekly and spend most of my week away from home. I have to find lodging on a weekly basis. I use airbnb and have stayed at a long list of places now. These days it’s hard to find options under $150/night. This week I am staying at someone’s RV in Mesa. Not my favorite. It’s compact but not the worst place I’ve stayed.

Our good friends and old old neighbors from Mexico moved to Arizona last weekend. They are about 30 minutes south from us. We met them for their arrival and to help them unpack. We are happy they live so close now.

Before they arrived, we got into their house (the front door was unlocked) and set up some signs and balloons and such. It was about 30 mins later we realized we were in the wrong house. Fortunately we didn’t have any problems, but Yun was traumatized.

I can’t fill up the pool without first cleaning out the pool filter. I paid a $100 to have someone come out to the house last year to do it. It didn’t look too complicated.

With all of the algae we had I knew it was going to be a disaster.

Yep, pretty horrible. I had to pull each of the filters out and then clean them trying to remember how to put it all back together again.

But in the end it seemed to work out and looks much better.

Is this filter uses diatomicious earth which isn’t the best option in the desert. I am thinking about switching it over to a sand filter in the near future.

When we bought the house, the pool was not in the best condition. We knew at some point we were going to have to have it re surfaced. Matt and Dana have had quotes over $10k to do the job. Since we have a long list of priorities over something like that, I thought I would give painting the pool a try.

About a month prior to doing this job I thought it would be smart to turn off the pool pump rather than pay for the electricity to circulate water I was going to drain in a short time. Pool pumps use quite a bit of electricity.

Anyway, it turns out this was a terrible decision. In part because the algae grew out of control without the pump circulating the water. This made draining the pool and cleaning it significantly more difficult.

We had a swamp in the backyard.

But with 7 gallons of pool paint, we finally have an improvement. This foto is from yesterday.

We are hopeful that this will last a few years. It looks really nice.

This dog is getting old. He is entirely deaf and his vision is going as well. He limps most days. Still he has moments of energy. He’s holding on, but I don’t think he has much time left.

I was not aware leaves of this size existed.

We bought these really nice place mats. So colorful.

Lots of tourists in San Cristobal. Mostly European, Israeli, and American bohemian.

Traveled north and visited some water falls. This one was called Agua Azul.

This one was called Misol Ha. This is where Predator was filmed. Pretty amazing. You could walk under the falls.

Then we traveled on to Palenque. The ruins there are impressive