“You can always trust the information given to you by people who are crazy; they have an access to truth not available through regular channels.” Sheila Ballantyne, American novelist.
Woody Allen, American writer, actor, screenwriter said: “In Beverly Hills…they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.”
Okay folks an admission here, I know when to say “cripes”, “an so”, “criminy”, and “aynahey”. I’ve purchased a TV from Crazy TV Lenny. One of my crowning achievement is I’m known as a good dancer because I can do a Polka, the Chicken Dance and the Macarena. Yes, I’m from Wisconsin and I’m proud to say I’ve ridden a duck.
What has all of this got to do with Mexico? With rainy season STILL upon us, television during the evening hours has become rather interesting. I know, I’ve been through the 11:00 a.m. appointments that were missed several times when setting up our Telecable hook up. There are several choices for your television viewing here in Ajijic: Shaw Direct which has a Canadian format in English with 3 major network channels and Fox. There is Sky which is a Mexican company. They have some channels in English and most movies in English with Spanish subtitles. Also, MVS Communications/EchoStar Corp and Dish Mexico…to name a few.
I’ve been accused of not having both oars in the water more often then I care to mention, however this is absolutely the first time I’ve found my television set masquerading as a weather vane. Yes folks, you heard me correctly… a weather vane.
An evening goes something like this: dinner is done and it’s time to curl up and read or watch a little TV. Let’s turn on the set and see what’s happening in the states or simply have the opportunity for a good laugh.
We are now hooked on one thing or the other when the TV starts (one of my favorite words lately and with my psych background you’d think I’d figure out why it is one of my favorite words lately but I’d much rather not know is “psychedelic”….again I digress) to perform this psychedelic contortion. The faces begin to disintegrate into what looks like a Rubric’s Cube set-up. Voices aren’t impaired, but people look like those ads where you see someone else’s noise on another face, lips on yet another…well you get my drift.
Suddenly it all turns back to normal. Only to start the same distorted dance a few minutes later. We have learned now that we’ve been through one rainy season here in Ajijic this means….and here’s where the weather vane comes in….its raining in San Antonio….not Texas, Mexico! That is where our cable antenna is located. We’ve also learned, given the fact that San Antonio is approximately ten minutes from our abode, it will be raining here within that time frame. Cool how that works, huh?
Being rather intrepid detectives we have also surmised that the psychedelic machinations going on will escalate during this ten minute time frame until wa-la the television suffers the loss of connectivity. Now mind you, this does not happen to any of the Mexican channels…just the American channels. How cool is that? A TV/weather vane! Talk about your surprise bargains here in Mexico…this qualifies for the top ten.
In that ten minute time span we can pull anything left in the yard in before it rains, set up David’s tripod to catch some splendiferous photos of the approaching storm, or simply grab our rain gear and entertain our Mexican neighbors with our rendition of a carefully choreographed rain dance honed over what has now become many days with rain.
Any who, talk about the fun and adventure in our little ancient town in the Lake Chapala area…can you beat this! We’ve even added a bit of joy to our neighbor’s lives. I’ve heard it said they enjoy those crazy gringos and their form of rainy day entertainment! Go figure!!! Viva Mexico!
[We chose Telecable because of the $26/mo – US cost and the fact that it has been pretty reliable, as both a TV provider and a weather vane.]
The rain...it is approaching.
Cool! I'm oddly transfixed!!
Grab the rain gear. Its time to shake our respective boodies!
And we have touch down!
Clouds heading over the mountains.
The storm approaches.
Clouds obscuring the mountains as we prepare for our rain dance. Sorry, no pictures of the rain dance as it requires both of our full concentration!
We have wonderful new photographs of hummingbirds in flight.
Visit the BoomerstoMexico Photo Store at http://boomerstomexico.com/mexico-photos/ , to see more of the beauty of Ajijic Mexico in photographs.
