Every Little Kiss: 660

Our first full day in Mexico. It was obviously busy, or the three of us wouldn’t be crashed out in our room (Cat and I in our jammies) by 10 p.m.

Last night we met up with Cat in Calexico (the last town before the border) and grabbed dinner at Denny’s (poor service, and the usual mediocre food, but we were hungry and she was already sitting there when we arrived). Then we crossed over into Mexicali, about 5 miles further south. Ken and I were pulled over at the border, but the patrol guy just asked us where we were going and shone his flashlight into two of the bike trunks. (Dude, if I were bringing in something illegal, I’d hide it way deeper.) We found the hotel without much problem (kind of had to backtrack, but nothing major), and enlisted the help of two bellhops (one of them rather cute) to help unpack the piles of equipment and supplies in Cat’s car.

As the cuter bellhop was bringing things into the room, we were chatting, and I offered up that this was my first time in Mexico. “What do you think of it?” he asked. “I don’t know; it’s dark,” I said after a moment’s thought. Because my first reaction was, well, it’s kind of skanky. It’s a border town, so I’m not surprised, and to be honest, the area that the hotel is in seems nicer than other parts we drove through.

Cat was up and out early this morning, but Ken and I slept a little later. We had a reasonable breakfast buffet at the hotel restaurant. Eventually we hauled the CDs and table out to the tennis court where the stage was set up for the bands playing at the hotel, and we settled in to sell CDs during Forever Twelve’s set.

They sounded great, and we sold close to 30 CDs overall, I think. We grabbed soft tacos and beer from the booth set up near us: $4 for two tacos and a beer. (The beer was $1 earlier, we think.) I’m still not used to how cheap things are here.

Ken and I sat in the hotel hot tub for a while, but it wasn’t very hot, and the air was just a tad too cool to sit out in after we were wet. So we came back to the room and lounged for a bit until it was time to head out to dinner with the band. We had pretty good Chinese food and a lot of silly conversation.

Then we all headed out to the theatre where the evening bands were playing. We saw Cast, the band that organises the BajaProg festival. They were really good, but I always have a bit of trouble paying attention at concerts where I don’t know the music ahead of time. Add to that the haze of smoke in the air and the crush of people in the dealer room, and I was ready to leave after Cast’s set. Cat was driving, so she drove us back, and decided to stay as well (she was also having contact lens issues from the smoke). I did buy an event t-shirt (and got a free Mexicali Beer t-shirt to go with it) and a program.

The hotel as a Reading Room where you can sit comfortably and read—a scary proposition when I have this Guy Gavriel Kay book! I’m trying not to get lost in it, and enjoy my surroundings, but dammit, it’s hard!

Actually, I’m going to work on a short story for a little bit, and then curl up and read before I crash. Although Ken’s passed out lengthwise on the bed, so this could be interesting to sort out.

Oh, I also figured out where I went wrong in one scene in AETW, so that will help things. Overall, I’m realising that a lot of the book has to be rearranged, so I’ll just plow ahead and get everything written, then step back and figure out what scene should actually go where. I’ve been stuck for awhile, and hearing Kris’s voice in my head saying, “There’s something wrong with your novel” just as she did when I described my reaction to another novel, saying that I kept getting distracted by short stories. Yup. Now that I know how to proceed, it’s going to go a lot better.