Poor Mexico... except for Carlos, that is...

Today Forbes Magazine named Mexico telcom owner, Carlos Slim, the "World's Richest Man," edging out Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for the honor. Poor Carlos has only 53.3 billion dollars to rub together.

Carlos Slim, 70, world's richest man. At 64, I am not.

But I've got 6 whole years to catch up to him.

And since we're on the subject of Mexico and money, I was enjoying an imaginary scene in my head where, Mexico and Germany are having a conversation. Mexico says to Germany, "No thanks for the work ethic, but we like the polkas!"

In other Non-News:
I've been sewing up a storm down in Barra, putting in long days to recondition the dodger that we had made for us in San Carlos. The threads are breaking from the sun and abrasion by the boom as it swings across the top, sometimes dragging an unhoisted mainsail with it. Also there was a place where I put my elbow through the sunbrella. It didn't bother me so much at the time since it kept me from falling overboard, but the unsightly hole has been repaired with some white naugahyde I had onboard. I did both sides with the nauga so it looks better. The entire aft portion had to be rebuilt because of abrasion, accumulated crud, and a switch from snaps to zippers for the sunbrella awning I built as part of the cockpit enclosure. Also I'm building a screen windshield that will zip into/onto the front to knock down the wind. It's a dark green and is a lot easier to see through than the tan colored stuff I used for the enclosure... and the enclosure itself will need some restitching and webbing replacement (nylon webbing turns into dust in Mexico's glaring sun), but the enclosure has done a fine job of keeping the sun off my lily-white (not really) skin. There's really nothing to photograph now, just piles of green fabric laying around a sewing machine. Whereas Carlos has piles of green money just laying around. Wanna' trade?

Use it, or Carry it Around

My horoscope today:
Even if there are lots of things for you to have to take care of today, you probably won't mind all that much. You should have the energy you need to handle everything right now.

*     *     *

I'm getting ready to take a trip south, maybe 400-500 nautical miles, to somewhere near the Guatemalan border with Mexico.


And I have a lot of stuff that I wanted to work on this year, like getting the dodger patched up and work on some of the screened enclosure I built a few years ago. When I built the enclosure, I used a lot of nylon webbing and the sun has pretty much turned that stuff into powder. Also the polyester thread I used has been pulverized by UV and turns to dust when you clean it.


 So I brought replacement materials with me when I drove down, as well as the (very) heavy duty walking foot sewing machine and 20 yards of sunbrella fabric, snaps, buttons, scissors, 10 yards of new screening, needles, all that stuff.

It takes up a lot of room and it's heavy, so I thought I would do the large sewing jobs before I left so I could leave a lot of the materials behind in the car instead of dragging it around Mexico with me.


I'll still have stuff with me (I need to sand and varnish all the wood, and finish up some formica installations), but with most of the fabric work done I'll have a lot more room to lay around and watch cheap movies.


Yes, today I went to tianguis and bought five  dvd movies for 100 pesos. So, between those and my "Burn Notice" downloads from the iTunes™ store, I can kick back and check out the films on my new in-dash dvd player while I stand watch on my overnight legs down the coast. Vampires, and Sci Fi, and Action flicks.

By the way, I wanted to show off my new Alfa wifi amplifier- here's a photo of the wifi connections I can see with just the laptop:

and here's the connections I can see with the Alfa amplifier... notice the elevator bar indicates there's still more on this list. I love this thing. Since I bought it, I can count on one hand the places I've been that I couldn't get on the internet. I could probably sell 50 of these every season on the local cruiser's nets.