Its a haircut week I think.....

 

Uber-plane-texas-rocket-crap-hair-day!

So last Wednesday I was up at  4am. I got myself a bowl of Weetabix and a hat for the sun and was picked up at 430am in an Uber. 

The airport was easy.. I just had carry on so straight though customs using the MCP pre USA border app and sat waiting for the flight. (No anal probes or getting thrown into jail for being Mexican for me!)

One of our friends Rob who is dad to Hannah's mate Bowie was in the queue for the same flight too, so we had a quick chat as we boarded. Then headed to our seats.

I was supposed to be at the back of the plane near the toilets, but my seat was swapped and I ended up on the window seat on row 11 which was much nicer. 

We arrived at Minneapolis on time and I spent an hour leisurely  wandering the airport and enjoying the freedom of no kids to herd! 

There was an art exhibit from airport staff and families so I took a lingering look at all the photos and paintings here before heading to my gate. I love airports.. There's always so much to see because I love people watching. There are so many interesting people! I saw a guy carrying cymbals, another with a guitar case. An old lady being pushed in a wheelchair wearing pink headphones. A mum attempting to cut a bagel with a plastic knife as sharp as my arse while her kid sits patiently waiting for her to spread cream cheese onto it using the same crap knife. So much to see. 

My second fight takes me from Minneapolis to Harlingen, Texas. Just a short drive from the Rio Grande , which forms the USA/Mexican border. It also runs alongside the road that leads to Mars. At least that's the Elon Musk master plan. 

A 45-minute drive takes me to Boca Chica village and what just 5 or 6 years ago was a peaceful town of a few hundred people and only 35 houses. No schools restaurants, shopping malls. It was a quiet, laid-back nowhere town where people went for peace and quiet and to get away from everyone else. But quiet and peace has been replaced now by noise, heat, flame and steel. Lots of steel. Lots and lots of steel!

This steel makes up the buildings, the trailers used by workers and the cars and trucks. 

Some steel is also rolled flat, made into circular rings 9 metres wide. These rings are then stacked higher and higher on tope of each other into two huge tubes. One 70 metres long and one 50.

What happens next?

Well the people here stick a nose cone at the top of the small tube to make a pointy end and add 6 of the mightiest full flow staged methalox combustion engines at the bottom. These are called Raptors!

Get the taller tube and attach 33 more of the crazy engines. Then guess what - all you do is put the little tube on top of the taller tube. What do you get? A 120-metre-high monster of a rocket. Its called Starship and its Elon Musks idea apparently (He IS a bell end, but he does have a lot of people working for him that know how to build cool shit)  

This what I'm here to see. Starship, boosters, stage 0 (The launch pads) and everything else.  

 I have been watching this place grow for 5 years on a Youtube channel called NSF. To me its the equivalent of Brunel building huge ships, railways and bridges back in the 1800s. I love engineering, and sciencey stuff, I love rockets and robots, and I am so excited to be here. There is nowhere else on the planet you can get so close and personal with a fucking rocket launch pad and the world's most powerful rocket. 

Now I won't see a launch this week, but I do have a few days to take it all in. To see the launch pad , the boosters and the ship itself. Im going to stay on South padre Island and take a few trips back here to Starbase over the next few days to take it all in and generally mellow out.

I headed straight to Starbase after landing in Harlingen, the closest airport in Texas with direct flights to Minneapolis. It was just about an hours drive, but I was surprised that I was 10 minutes and 5 miles away when I got my first glimpse of the buildings, the rockets and the launch pads. 

They are THAT big that they are clearly visible! 

After getting closer I set up a camera on the dashboard and drove past the build site, Starfactory and then another 2 miles to the launch site. It didn't disappoint, as it is spectacular.

Massive, noisy, dusty and dirty but just amazing. 

I wandered around and watched for a while as the workers build pad 2 and the trucks bringing in the propellant and everything else going on. It's unbelievable how much is happening everywhere 

Soon though it was getting late and apart from an apple and a granola bar I hadn't eaten since breakfast. So I bid farewell for the day and took the hour-long drive to go around the port of Brownsville and head to south padre Island and my hotel for the next couple of nights.

After checking in, I headed over to padre Island brewing company and enjoyed a good dinner with a couple of local beers before heading to bed for the night.

And yes - I know my hair is carnage!

Ill leave it there for now and update in a couple of days - with a hat on! 

Its bathtime!

 I left you in this position (For all the non squaddies out there, you will wonder what I am on about. To explain, when learning drill movements, (Marching and weapoen drill) in the army, you would learn parts of eth movement and then when that was perfected you would learn teh next part. For example, to learn the halt from a march, you would hear 'halt' on a left step and the next movement would be a check pace (one more step with the right foot and then a 1 -  2 as you raise your left knee and stamp the foot followed by the right leg doing the same. The drill sergeant would pause with his knee in the air or just after the stamp and you would be expected to carry out the movement. When you were good enough you would then continue with the Drill Sergeant standing in the same position and saying 'I left you in this position'. before learning the next part of the movement. This carries on until you get the whole thing! 

Take a look at this video and when he does the  'Numbered parts' and stand still, thats the positions he would leave you in.

Anyway, its just a squaddie saying and pretty irelevent to anyone except a squaddie. I think its funny to me because in my last post  - 'I left you in this position'.....

Yep, that was the state of our bathroom when we got back from Holiday. 

It was supposed to be nearly finished, but as I will explain, it wasnt.

We had a chat with the plumbers doing the reno's and they assured us that it would be another week or maybe 2 weeks tops to get the bathroom completely done. Obviously a bathroom with no sink, a dangerous floor and no real way to have a shower is pretty fucking useless and annoying, so we werent too happy. That weekend we went around to Buffs mum and dads to bathe the kids and expected to do the same for the next week. But as it turned out we didnt need to go there again. 

Just a few days later the bathroom looked like this...

Not much change except for a cleaner floor and an actual tap in the bath, which meant we could use the bathroom! The kids actually enjoyed brushing their teeth in the bath instead of a sink, but it still wasn't the bathroom we wanted. The plumbers had actually not turned up for a couple of days as people had 'emergencies' with water heaters and they 'had to go work on them. I understand that they get emergency calls and  I understhnd that when its -40 outside people need heat and hot water, but when they did this for 3 out of 4 days and we had no work done, it started to get annoying. 

We spoke again  to eth plumber and he assured we would be done in eth next week, or two. The same thing he had told us the week before, although he now denied this! 

Another week went by and a couple of jobs got done  - slowly, The floor was levelled and the drywall was started, but we still had a bathroom that looked like this 2 weeks after getting back from holiday...and this was supposed to take only 2 weeks in total - They had already had 3!!

Over the weekend we had the drywall specialist in a couple of times, because the mudding and taping had to dry between coats, and it takes...a...g....e....s. But finally Monday it was mostly done and when the plumber and his mate turned up we were quite happy to be near the end. They then told us that they wouldn't be back tomorrow because they were busy. Immediately, we stopped them and told them No! You will be back here tomorrow and this job will be done by the end of the week. He wasn't too happy but after checking his phone he said he could probably make that work. Amazing what happens if you put your foot down eh!  Especially when someone has been taking the piss.

The plumbers mate was there early next morning and worked his arse off for the next 3 days. Even when he had put the flooring down and we told him he had done it wrong (the joints were not staggered) he pulled it up again and fixed it. He worked hard that week and they actually finished just before Friday lunchtime! Amazing! This was the progress that week...

We have now had a complete new bathroom for the last 2 weeks, In all it took a month to get done - twice their estimate - which is ridiculous. Especially since when we were away and the first week we were back they were only on site for 4 out of 10 possible days.  It is lovely to have a bath you can really soak in. It isnt chipped and falling apart like the old bath and we have enough room to move around the new vanity and the huge new wall mounted cabinet. This also has inbuilt dimmable lights which we love! You can lower the light and then have a really warm relaxing hot soak. Its wonderful and worth all the effort and stress!

    

We just put up some towel hooks and a nice rattan shelf for a bit of decoration, so its very nearly done! For now, we are not planning on doing any more work like this for a long time. After the garage door, the fooring and the bathroom we are pooped out of having workmen in the house, and we also need to get our rainy day fund back up so when something else goes wrong in the house we can afford to pay for it! 

In other news, it is still winter... Just. .....The forecast is for warmer weather this week and a few days above zero... Someone shared this video with me a week or two and honestly, its hilarious because it is completely true. I have done this everyday for a month....

It is such a good feeling to know that winter is nearby over. You cannot imagine. Here are two sets of photos taken 10 days apart - the newer ones just this morning. It's wonderful!

With the forecast for the next week or two all the snow will be gone by the end of March! Yay!!

Its not tropical, but it aint minus 40. 

The paths are treacherous though at the moment - Just horrible lumpy slippy ice. And that was proved this morning when I fell over dropping Ollie at school and smashed my head on the edge of the concrete block under the school fence. I was pretty lucky not to do too much damage to myself. The block was ok too and although Ollie got a bit of a bang too we was ok. Its fucking dangerous though.

Anyway, thats it for now. Time for a bath in the new bathroom I think!!

Crocodiles, sunshine and lots of bathrooms

 Its that time agan - the middle on winter and our escape from the depths of freezing hell! And a chance to get some updates done on the house while we are away. 

Last year we went to Florida and had a great time (once I actually made it out there a day late) and we returned to the interior of our house having had a lovely paint job. This year we had decided to get the bathroom updated. Our old one was quite literally crap. A massive double sink unit that we don't need was shoved alongside the old shitty bathtub that was falling apart - with big gouges and bits of porcelain pulling off at every bath and shower time.   The vanity under the sinks was also cheap and one of teh sliding doors was warped so it never closed properly. Te bathroom looked like this...

So while we are away it will get completely renovated and we will definitely come back home to a brand new completely finished bathroom (that will never happen with Manitoba based workmen but we can dream)

Anyway, we got the kids up at 3am on Friday Feb 7th and headed out to the airport for our 6am flight to Mazatlán, Mexico. It was our first attempt at a proper all-inclusive resort with kids club where our kids would definitely leave us alone to relax while they played with all their new friends - and it started really well as we met another family with two kids same age as us in the queue for security at Winnipeg airport. Their 6-year-old daughter was also called Hannah and they were staying in the same hotel as us! Bonus. 

This was our hotel.....

rui emerald bay

Anyway, the flight left on time the kids were great, and we arrived at the Hotel just around 11am. Plenty of time to get our room and then relax by the pool for the afternoon. 

Unfortunately, our room wasn't ready yet - and wouldn't be for 3 hours! So we had to dig out the kids swim stuff and get them changed by the pool so they could at least start their holiday. We had the wristbands for the free food and drinks, so we did have lunch and a beer while we waited. But 3 hours is a long time, so I decided to wander up to room 425  - our room number  - to see if it was ready. It was! I wandered straight in as the door was unlocked, took a drink from the mini bar and went down to reception to get the key. But reception was adamant ot was NOT ready and I could NOT have a key until 3pm - even though other people, including our friends from the airport, had their rooms and were settled in. It was a bit annoying. An hour later, Buffy went to try and was given a key for a completely different room as ours still wasn't ready (WTF!) so we were now in room 419 instead. Which was exactly the same set-up as 425.  I do not understand why they couldn't either give us this room earlier or give us our own room  - anyway, we were now all settled in and happy with tome to relax. 

The first couple of days rolled by - playing on the beach, free drinks (we didn't have many) swimming in one of the 7 pools, kids playing with us and then going to the kids club or the ball pit or playing together with each other or other kids. Plus we didn't have to buy or shop for food - the kids ate pancakes, hot dogs, pizza and sprinkles! It was lovely!

In the evenings there were kids entertainment (kids games on stage) that the kids really enjoyed watching although they didn't actually want to take part. It was a really nice first few days. 

On the Sunday we took a trip into town and visited the old Observatory, This has a small funicular travelling up the side of a cliff to some really nice gardens and buildings on top of the hill overlooking the ocean. There's also birds and animals to look at - a really cool whale museum and lots 
of cool little raised paths to explore. We had a really nice afternoon there before heading down to the ocean to watch the cliff divers which are supposedly a lot of fun to watch - But we think they were having a day off when we go there as we waited till prime diving time - 6pm apparently and anyone who looked like a cliff diver packed up and went home! No worries, we grabbed a cool golf cart style taxi and headed back for dinner and the night's entertainment!

Oh, I nearly forgot - we also wandered past 'Liverpool' street which as a recreation of the Beatles famous zebra crossing photo and a 'cavern club; for some reason. Hannah asked who The Beatles were and if they were still alive. She then took the piss out of John Lennon for being dead, which was actually quite funny. 

No cliffdivers today!

Another couple of really nice days at the hotel followed the normal routine of Breakfast, pools and play, lunch, pools and play, dinner then entertainment and then bed. It was really nice, and we even had time for Hannah to get her hair Braided and for Ollie to get a Hanna tattoo to match my Bee tattoo.

We also met a couple who were leaving for home and gifted us a 6-foot-long pool floaty in the shape of a crocodile! This was a huge hit with the kids.

On the Wednesday we took a trip out to the Mazatlán aquarium, the biggest in Mexico -we saw eth sea lion show as we arrived and then headed inside the huge cool modern aquarium building and then stopped - the map was useless, and we didn't know where to go until someone pointed us upstairs They must get a lot of people asking the same question, because it seems that no one knew how to get to see the exhibits. Once we got upstairs, the map made more sense and it was stunning. Starting with normal sized tanks and building up through larger and larger exhibits, Past tanks you could feel starfish and stuff in, and past a huge wave that flows over your head into a pool. Until you get to the huge round 30 foot high tank teeming with life. Great we said and then ventured into the next room to be met with a stunning 50-foot-high and 80 foot wide taking with sharks and divers inside. It was amazing and you would walk into different rooms and see it from all angles. There was also a really cool jellyfish room, with jellyfish lit up by lights and swimming inside huge glass globes. It was like something from a sci-fi move and really great

.

 

We also saw a cool bord show just before left to go get dinner in Mcdonalds - a treat we had promised the kids. We did make them walk there though!

After Mcds it was time to go back home to the hotel another good day! It was also made better by seeing the workmen take out our old bathroom on the security cameras at home!

On 5am Thursday morning things didn't feel right - more specifically my belly didn't feel right - I needed the bathroom badly and didn't enjoy my tome in there. A couple of hours later Buffy woke and had similar issues  - albeit she was puking where I was pooping. Somehow we had eaten dodgy food and it must have been the blooming McDonald's! FFS. 

The kids were ok thankfully but they did great to leave us alone for a couple of hours while they watched videos and we rested. Early afternoon we needed to get out of the room so we went down to the pool and played a little with them, but luckily they were enjoying the pool and the kids club so we did get some more rest. 

The last night's dinner was the kids eating and we sat there feeling sick and nauseous. Everyone had an early night once we got packed for home. We had decided that the transport bus to the airport at  7am was just too early, so we planned an extra 90 minutes in bed and an Uber to pick us up at 845 instead! It turned out to be a great plan as we also had time for a very light breakfast after a good lie in. The Uber was great and we had time to play in the airport before a delayed flight home.

We arrived back in Winnipeg just after 5pm and said a quick goodbye to our fellow passengers as we queued in eth passport check queue, Ollie had been chatting with some girls in eth airport in Mexico and waved them off as we left. He is such a good little flirter! Back at home, we were delighted to see an almost completely finished bathroom....

NOT. 

It was a lot more NOT DONE than we had hoped. However, we have now been in touch with the plumber, and it will be done in another week (so I guess he means 2 or 3 weeks) Luckily the bath is useable, just. But There is still a lot of work to be done. 

No matter - We had a great holiday and loved the all-inclusive with the kids. Unfortunately, Buffy and I are still suffering a little from our food poisoning and as I type this Buffy is holed up in bed for the afternoon.  All is good though, and we will be better soon.  Now it's time to start planning our next getaway......