Today started unexpectedly with a knock on the trailer door at 1:00 AM.
Since we were the only trailer in the park last night, this was a little
bit scary.  I got up, turned on the outside lights and asked, "Who's
there?"  There was no answer, but I heard a couple of voices in the
distance laughing.  Apparently some kids were wandering through the park
either to annoy the residents, or checking to see if the trailer was
occupied.

Nothing else came of the incident and I didn't see anything amiss around
the trailer in the morning.

We spent most of the morning messing with internet and cell phones. The
Verison phones once again failed to function.  Happily, the little prepaid
local phone worked well enough for me to complete the conference call to a
new client before running out of minutes.  Bryan and Nidia showed up and
offered to go have more minutes added to the phone.  I emailed Verizon
again who more or less blew me off.  I'll deal with that when I get back
in the US. |grrrr|

With the additional minutes, I picked up the 27 client voicemails waiting
for me and dealt with those for the rest of the morning.  At Noon, Mama
Vasquez arrived to ride with us to Valle de Allende.  I hd to explain that
we were not in a position to leave for Valle today.  There was too much
left to do before we could pack the trailer for another trip.  She was
disappointed and left with one of her sons.  It's not clear whether she'll
ride with us tomorrow.  We'll find out in the morning.

I spent most of the afternoon finishing up the organization of the garage,
got us packed for tomorrow, and got the truck stowed.  Nidia suggested
that we go into downtown Chihuahua for dinner.  The holiday decorations
were bright and varied, some tasteful, but many very garish.  The traffic
was bad to worse.

We ended up in a Taco Grill and Bar somewhere near the main government
building downtown.

The food was wonderful.  Bryan, Kathy and myself each ordered plates of
premixed taco ingredients which were served with flour tortillas and
various salsas.  Nidia ordered roasted flanken-style ribs with jalapeno
peppers, vegetables and fresh avocados.  There was enough food on each
plate to stuff each of us.  Final tab including soft drinks and tips was
250 pesos, about $27.

By this time it was getting dark, so we went back to the RV park to hang
out for a while and call around to find out what the general family plans
were for going to Valle for Christmas.  I spent an hour or so working on a
project with another new client.

Everybody went to bed about an hour ago, but I stayed up to write this
note and look up Skype VoIP software.  It looks interesting, but I'm a bit
concerned by the latency inherent in voice communications over a
satellite-based internet system.  Of course, that's still better than the
presently useless Verizon cell-phone system.

Tomorrow we head for Valle de Allende and a traditional Mexican family
Christmas.  This will also be a test of the repaired axle.  We'll pretty
much be dry-camping while we're there, so we'll be leaving here with fresh
water and propane tanks full and black/grey tanks empty.

Anyway, that's it for tonight.

Regards and goo night,John kinney