is this fall...?

As I sit here focusing my thoughts and feelings in preparation to launch into my weekly discourse, I am pondering how cool and grey it is here this morning and how familiar that feels. My perch is the second floor breakfast area at the hotel which is an open area (literally open- one wall is merely vegetation)overlooking the street. I am quickly reminded that I am not, in fact, in Oregon as a rusty '70 something truck drives by with the bed filled to the rim with bananas.
This is the coolest day we've seen so far. There was a storm in the night with high winds and rain that washed away the heat. As I walked to the breakfast area, it felt like an early September day where it's still warm enough for shorts and sandals but you can feel a change coming and you know summer is over. That always brought a tinge of sadness and a grim preparation for nine months of grey, cold and damp. As that feeling started to encroach on me this morning, I shook it of by reminding myself " I'm in Mexico!". I don't know what fall looks like here but the desk clerk last night was wearing a jacket! Obviously it's already chilly to him. I wonder if he was having the same feeling of hunkering down for winter. We've been here before in December around Christmas and New Years and while we were languishing in the ability to wear shorts and thongs, the locals had on jackets and gloves.
Last night we arrived at the library about fifteen minutes before the meeting and after selecting a couple of books to read it dawned on me it should be time for the meeting. I looked up to see John approaching from the meeting area with his palms opening upward in an "I don't know" motion. "There's no one here" he told me. How odd. Was it a holiday of some sort? Had they moved locations? we asked the woman behind the desk and she informed us "it's still really early" which led us into the revelation that a time change had apparently taken place. Yes, we are in fact WAY out of the loop......So this morning as I sat down to a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit and toast, I decided maybe we should get on line with MSN and take a glance at what is going on in the rest of the world. The usual horrors...murders in Mexico, people already stricken with poverty hit with some horrific natural disaster, a conservative getting elected somewhere and...wait...what's this....cheese being recalled...Costco cheese??? Didn't I just "report" on this? I ask you again-what is going on with cheese??!!! What do all these portents signal? Why am I unable to decipher the message being sent? In all of my 53 years I've never had so much involvement with cheese and now I can't seem to escape it's innundation. E coli tainted cheese at costco.....the home of Mennonite cheese.......
Speaking of food products, in an attempt to ward of the ever marauding mosquito, we have taken to eating large quantities of raw garlic. Three or four times a day, John chops up several cloves and we ingest them with various other liguids and edibles to make the intake easier. John learned the hard way that taking in too much at once can make you sick to your stomache and can burn your throat (he had to buy some Halls lozenges). The payoff is a definate decrease in bites. After the night with no windows-last Monday night- I had at least fifty bites, and that is a conservative estimate. After starting the garlic regimen, I have only been bitten two or three times. Apparently some mosquitos are really desperate. Serious addicts who will do anything for their next hit......
So, we're packin' it up and headed back to the house..the one with windows and a hot water heater and lovely tile and lots of concrete dust covering every possible surface. I'll be wearing a long sleeved shirt, John will be wearing long linen pants and we won't be stopping to buy cheese, only more garlic. Hopefully we won't hear of any recalls on that......