June 29, 2008
“Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer.”
- Charles Tobias
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Ah, yes. Nat King Cole sure taught us well… There is something most wondrous about having daylight at 9 o’clock in the evening. Sure, it’s not quite the White Nights of Saint Petersburg or Oslo, but still… Too bad it can’t last all summer long.
We finally got our first electrical thunderstorms, so beautiful. The very first one –on the first official day of summer- didn’t last that long, but the one three nights later was much more impressive. My puppy dog, the one we rescued at the beginning of the year, couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t let her up on the bed. Those were very loud thunder claps, and she was really scared. I guess she’ll just have to get used to them.
Did you notice the new lighting on the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe? Well, it’s not really new, considering that they made the change at the end of May, but to whomever did it: Congratulations! It looks wonderful.
Not so with the Hooters sign next to Los Arcos amphitheater. When, oh when, will they paint it over? The place has been shut down for months. Let them live long and prosper in the Peninsula mall, but get rid of that horror in Puerto Vallarta’s main square!
And what on earth is going on with our airlines? I just found out that US Airways is going to charge $2 for soda, coffee, juice, and even water.
The article in question states “Presumably tap water, which may or may not be contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria, will still be free.
The move is the latest way airlines are attempting to fight rapidly rising fuel prices in a disastrous economic climate. In recent months, the extra fees have come fast and furious. First came extra charges for your second piece of luggage, then came a charge for your first bag. That's not to mention extra fees for choosing your own seat, curbside check-in, booking using frequent flier miles, and the cost of the Santa Fe chicken sandwich.
The beverage fee is even more annoying than most, since you can no longer bring liquids through security at airports. You are really at the mercy of buying them on the plane, or at least buying them once you're in the terminal (which is doubtlessly no cheaper than on the plane). Alcoholic drinks will also go from $5 to $7. That's a lot for a can of Budweiser.
The fee goes into effect August 18, leaving plenty of time for the airlines to come up with other fees to nickel and dime their way to profitability. Can pay toilets be far behind?”
That is very depressing stuff, folks.
And then, as if all that were not enough, they’re messing around with the frequent flyer point programs too, increasing the number of points you need to fly from point A to point B (and back) while reducing the amount of time we have to use them. Not that it affects me much… I’m still fighting to get that credit card from Santander, the one that would enable me to get frequent flyer points. It’s only been two and a half years, so I shouldn’t complain, right?
I’ve also given up on trying to understand why the Tribune’s web site cannot be maintained up to date for longer than two weeks at a time.
A friend sent me an email with a .wmv suffix (a video clip) which she said I would enjoy. I tried to open it, only to receive a message that read “Windows Media Player encountered an unknown error.” So I clicked on “Help”. That one came up with “Windows Media Player Error Message Help - You've encountered an error message while using Windows Media Player. Additional information is not currently available for this error.” Hmmm…
About emails, a few years ago, I remember when our good friend T.J. submitted the following to one of the local bulletin boards online: “Pete, one of the Saturday Bird Watching gang down on the pier, a U.S. Postal employee, said he didn't understand our complaints about the postal service. He asked if anyone remembered when you could put a two-cent stamp on a letter and mail it, and it would arrive at its destination in two days. He claimed, "Nothin's changed, now you put a thirty-seven-cent stamp on a letter and it can take four to five weeks to arrive. But it's still only about a penny a day!" It was true then, and it still applies today. The more some things change, the more they remain the same! Many years ago, they had a race up in Canada where they put a letter in a mailbox in Nova Scotia or somewhere near there, out east, and gave a copy of the same to a “pony express”, both addressed to someone in Vancouver, B.C. You guessed it: the pony express beat the Canadian Postal system.
Here in our little not-quite-perfect paradise, there’s only a dozen or so postmen, the same amount they had a decade ago, despite the fact that the population has tripled in that period of time. We who live here just tell everyone not to bother sending mail… It seldom reaches us anyways. Heaven only knows where it ends up.
I never cease to be amazed at the double standards –actually, I should say multiple standards- applied by the local authorities involved in construction sites around this town. Now it seems that they’ve been building a “temple” in the Versalles neighborhood, without permit. Although it was shut down by the Urban Planning Department, the developers simply took off the seals and just continued working… The residents, who are very much opposed to the concept, accused the Mayor and his henchmen of giving in to the “degree of influence and power” of the developers. (This was published in the Meridiano.) These are the same “henchmen” who have done everything in their power to delay the permit of my neighbor with the unpleasant lady next door who had his work site shut down a few weeks ago. Unlike the “power-full”, my neighbor is reluctant to simply rip off the seals. After all, he’s a gringo. So he’s just losing more and more of his hard-earned money with every day that goes by, as he has to keep on paying his workers.
Ah, yes, money! Did you hear that one of Claude Monet's paintings, "Le Bassin aux Nymphes", recently sold for 40.9 Million British Pounds (that’s $80.5 Million U.S. Dollars) at an auction in London? The previous record for a Monet sold at auction was $41.4 Million dollars for "Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil", established last month at a sale in New York. Sheesh! You could feed a small nation for heavens knows how long with that kind of money.
I have a good quote to leave you with this week: “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”
Take good care of yourselves and of each other, dear readers. I wish a most Happy Canada Day and Happy 4th of July to all our North American readers. Hasta luego. pvmom04@yahoo.com
posted by Anna Reisman @ 7:03 PM
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