We're just three days away from St. Patrick's Day and Deborah's birthday so I'll have to consider this an early birthday present.   We just sealed our deal in Merida - we're now property owners and apparently I can now be called DON Roberto.  It's been a little stressful dealing with the somewhat strange laws and real estate differences, but with amazing help from my now good friend Bob Phippard and his family, I believe we've made it through. First thing this morning was a meeting with our new bank manager Christina (great English will help this go soooo smooth) to set up our chequing and currency trading accounts so that we can start to pay for this when the time comes.  Bob, again I can't tell you just how much Deborah and I appreciate your guidance and support through this entire process.  Your contacts and knowledge about setting up shop in Merida has been fantastic.  <b>THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH.  </b> From there it was off to our lawyer, Luis Loria who I perceived to be very competent and professional - (yet again great English as well) and yet again, another recommendation from Bob.  All is in the works and he has committed to me that he's sure he'll be able to get through all the red tape, governmental requirements together with some of the fedeicommisso b.s. to have the two lots joined into one.  Seems difficult but we'll get it done.  Our lawyer has said that he expects all this to be completed swiftly, possibly in maybe three or four months, wow.   So after a legal review, we've signed it all up and we're done on property 404B, now we just have to duplicate it for the next door lot - 404.  Wow - we're property owners in the Yucatan.  We've targeted about 8 - 10 months for the actual destruction and construction of the new property so we've got our first meeting with a very well respected, local architect, Mr. Jan Zak at 11:00 tomorrow to make our first run through.  Thankfully we've got another two weeks here in the White City to get this all accomplished before we head back to Canada.  Our intent was to come for a relaxing adventure in Merida, one filled with historic side-trips to some of the ancient Mayan sites, trips to Progreso to play in the ocean and what have we done but try to cross or "t's" and dot our "i's" for the last two weeks and focus our efforts on nothing buy real estate.    As I said earlier, we're planning a St. Paddy's Day BD for Deb at Henessey's on Paseo Montjeo Friday so it should be good, maybe she'll even drink some green beer. Well, it's an early day again tomorrow so I better close.  Thanks to all of you who continue to follow us here in Merida, it's appreciated.   Keep an eye for any new developments, it just might get real interesting.