All Work And (Mostly) No Play

Today was another day of all work and no play. Well, very little play anyway.

Much of the day was spent working on a book trailer for a friend’s first novel, Weeping Water. If you’re curious about the book you can check out his site at jtruby.com – the trailer should be there soon. At least, I hope it is!

After that it was back to writing. If you thought my updates were behind on my blog, my posts for CAA are REALLY far behind. Then again, I’m not writing daily updates for them daily – just segment summaries. That said, I really need to get another one written for them too. For what it’s worth, the most recent update can be found on CAA’s Daily Boost website.

While most of my day was spent editing and writing, there was also a bit of TV watching going on too. Actually, it was more like TV listening than watching. When I was in San Diego, Sue mentioned that half of the TV channels there are in Spanish. It seemed somewhat fitting that in Ensenada half of the TV channels are in English. Including ample NFL coverage. I didn’t watch any but another guest had it on so I heard some it. I have to say, the more time I spend on the road, the less interest I have in such things.

As the late afternoon started to move into early evening I decided that I had worked enough. Yes, I had planned for this to be a working getaway, but I am in Mexico and figured I should get outside. At least for a bit.

I packed up my computer and headed down to the beach, almost in time for sunset. When I left the hostal, the sun was just nearing the horizon. Good timing. Then I realized I forgot my camera and needed to go back. Bad timing. It was only a delay of a few minutes but the sunset waits for no one. That said, there was still a lot to be seen down at the beach.

I mentioned in a previous post that the hostel is a few kilometres from downtown and the “Zona Turística” (ie. Tourist Zone). But it was only a few hundred metres from the beach. And the beach on this night was busy. Very busy. As this was my first evening visiting the beach I can’t say whether this was a typical evening, a typical weekend evening, or a typical Sunday evening. Either way, there was a bit of a party (or should I say fiesta) going on.

The beach was full of people of all ages. There were street vendors hawking their wares from food to various glowing toys. And there was music. A lot of music. I would describe the scene as organized chaos. Within the radius of about 100 metres, there were six or seven bands consisting of 6-10 people playing drums, trumpets, and tubas. And, for the most part, four or five of those bands would be playing at the same time. It made for a very lively and entertaining atmosphere.

Of course, while all this was going on I was keeping my eye on the moon. I had missed the sunset but the moonrise was in progress. And it was the night of the big blood moon eclipse. This was one instance where being on the west coast wasn’t ideal as the eclipse occurred as the moon cleared the horizon. With mountains to the east of me blocking the view, I had to wait a bit longer. That said, it was interesting to watch as the moon eventually appeared over the mountains. I tried to take a few good photos but just ended up with a few not-so-good photos.

The rest of the evening was pretty much spent people watching before I leisurely made my way back to the hostel. It was a good way to end the day. Sure, I had spent most of it working, but ending it with that kind of atmosphere kind of made me forget that I had been sitting in front of a computer for most of the day.