Living With Spotty Communications

We spent an inordinate amount of time to learn Verizon knows their tower is faulty and have no intention of doing anything about it.  T Mobile was upfront and said our address was listed as no internet service and ATT swore we would be good.  So we bought a prepaid hotspot from Walmart, loaded 15 gigs on it.  It was ok, not a lot to write home about though.  And in 5 days we were out of gigs!  I tried the website they gave us to load more time, and the ATT.com/prepaid did not work.  So off we went again.  To make a long story short, they swore we could not have used that much bandwidth unless we were streaming.  All we did was check our emails.  They finally wrote a note to Walmart to take back the hotspot because it did not work!  So we spent $100 and retrieved $50 of it.  And we are back to Verizon and most of the time I can’t get on the internet.  Messages is the most reliable communication so I have no idea what is going out and what isn’t without paying very close attention.  However, Jay called me when I was in Mexico and it worked fine on Mexican T Cell and Rafi our neighbor butt dialed me from Israel at 5 am and it came through.  But I can’t call Sue down the street!  

Tuesday we bought tickets for a tour of Space X in Boca Chica at South Padre Island, it is the launching area for Leon Musk’s Space launches.  I think it will be interesting.  I played mahjong and won a game.  Wednesday we met up with the Newmar owners group for lunch and stopped at Macy’s to shop a bit.  Sue and I joined Kathy (new widow with dementia) for a game of Yahtzee.  It is a game we can assist her with and she did ok.  Thursday we got a bite to eat before I got a haircut and we played Card Bingo next door at Bentsen Palms.  We didn’t win, didn’t even get close.  Friday was shooting and mahjong.  In the meantime we made arrangements with Steve next door to use his Wi-Fi in a pinch and also gave his phone numbers to our kids to use in an emergency if it becomes evident we are not getting the message and not responding, 

Everything is going fine not withstanding the dead body found in the river at the foot of our street.  We have not heard any particulars.  We were totally unaware until the people at the Newmar lunch asked what was going on at our end of the road.  We had to ask around to find out.

Here is a sunset as we came home one early evening.  We have been here two weeks and most nights our sunsets are spectacular.  

All my days are running together, broken up only by our quest for good communications.  We went to church/dinner/Neil Diamond legend show on Saturday.  We ran into Boomer friends from home at church and went for burgers with them plus Jay and Stella on Sunday.  The Expo was this week and we went one afternoon.  Boy can you see the recession in play there.  Even H‑E‑B known for their generous coupon books were not passing any out.  That evening we went with those same folks to Margarita Wednesday and stayed pretty late.  

Thursday was busy!  Breakfast with the ladies in the morning, a drive to Edinburgh for a funeral visitation for Rafi’s (our next door neighbor at home) house sitter’s mother.  Marina is a dear and we pick up the slack when she travels which is frequently.  She is going to stay in this area to take her father to Texas Oncology for treatment so Rafi asked us to have Nancy get the house key, the mailbox key and the current collected mail together for another friend who is stepping in!  Whew!  A quick stop at McDonald’s and on to card bingo.  I got down to one card twice but Bingo was called on the next card both times.

Friday was back to mahjong and I won a closed hand!  The highlight of the day!

We learned something Saturday.  Progresso, MX is crowded!  The lines looked as if the Americans were invading the Mexican border!  We had to stand in line to get in and out!  We bought Ted’s eye drops, back analgesic cream, some antibiotics, vanilla, etc.  We had a cinnamon roll at Renee’s while the mariachis entertained.

We went to church with Bill and Ornell, ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then saw a yodeling cowgirl show.  She has some voice!  

Sunday was mahjong and I won 3 games … first time ever.  I had stuff out for dinner but Sue called after dropping me off and said Niles wanted to go for pizza so we agreed. Bonnie joined us and we got caught up some since she just returned from vacation.