This morning before the crack of dawn, The Hubby drove me down to the Tijuana Airport, just across the border from San Diego, CA. I caught the 6 a.m. plane to Guadalajara, a trip that lasts a little over 2 hours.

From there, it’s a 20 minute ride to our other home in the village of Ajijic on Lake Chapala.

By the time you read this I’ll be unpacking. Reason for trip: a forced vacation. We need to get our FM3 visas renewed for another year. We are legal aliens and have a home in Mexico.

Ajijic is a retired person’s dream: ideal weather year round (temperatures vary from low 70s to high 80s with rain during the summer); lots of activities, sports and charities; plenty of other expatriates and gringos to play with.

Not that I’m retired yet, but I’ve always maintained that life should be like play. Do the work you love, do the life you love, and try your best to do some good along the way.

Ajijic living puts things in perspective for me. Time and urgency take on new meaning. Every breath is more relaxed. Every encounter with another is more meaningful.

I’ll be here until Feb. 17. Hope to blog from here, but will also be reconnecting with dear friends, and living life on Mexican time….I feel a yawn coming on already…

I’ve been studying how some newsletters get read… or not. And I notice the ones that attract me have the right combination of personal stories and valuable information and content on topic.

And some, yikes! Well, let’s just say I’m easily bored and not interested in too much personal info. Well, unless it’s juicy…or funny. For example, I really admire Michael J. Katz from Blue Penguin. Every week he tells a mundane story about something and turns it into a learning point about newsletters.

I’m also overly suspicious of people who brag about themselves too obviously. Don’t hype me or I’ll delete you faster than you can send me another email with a phony subject line designed to hook me into opening it. (You know who you are…)

So while I’m continuing my studying of writing great emails, ezines, and blog posts with that right combination of personal and important info, I decided it would be easier for me to group the personal stuff into its own category.

So people who like knowing more about me can just go to that category and read there. All the rest of you can just ignore postings in this category. I’ll name it Fun Things About Patsi, or some such thing, and it’ll just be my way of sharing stuff going on which is totally off the topic of writing.

Help me out here. I get a little scattered in the afternoons and have a hard time staying focused. At least this will let me channel other stuff into this side category and I won’t have to worry about it being irrelevant and boring. Which it totally is. And there’s nothing wrong with that, is there.