Month: June 2005

  • To the land of Stella and Marmite

    Almost packed and ready for the off tomorrow morning. it’s 22:58 and while I’m tempted to set my watch to GMT so i can arrive with my circadian rhythms perfectly in sync, it might cause a problem or two as we wander sleepily around LAX tomorrow. Sally’s taking us to the airport and we’ll be arriving in Bristol on Wednesday morning. REALLY looking forward to it. It’s been a lovely week in L.A., which, despite its many shortcomings, is very homely thanks to the familia gaytan and assorted mates. Wouldn’t want to live here though, oh no. No. It gets a bit hot, see. Atticus even took to the Pacific Ocean this afternoon, he couldn’t take it either. Were I not wearing my last change of clothes I’d’ve followed him too.

    We booked the tix for the 2nd jaunt to the UK, so here you go: in The Borough of Taunton Deane from tomorrow till the 29th of July, back here (LaLaLand) for August, then back to UK for all of September (30th of August till the 29th of Sept, or thereabouts). I’m taking my lappy and camera and shall be nagging me folks to get the broadband plumbed into Kingston so expect some more blogging soonish. Bon pas de voyage, or whatever you wish those who stay put while you travel and don’t forget to comment/ guestmap )

  • Baby Ixchel & toddling Renato’s interweb debut

    Bless’em– A storming mixed grill of stuffed pork, sausages, portabello mushrooms, fish, peppers, shrimps (prawns?) and more was ably served by Roberto & Maca last night. Looking and sounding well the lot of them. They’ve even found a barrio in L.A. that doesn’t look like a mall. Right next to LAX.

  • One buganbilla-covered porch, signed, sealed and delivered

    As you’ll see in these here new photos Sally, Martin and I have rebuilt the porch in grand fashion. It’s surprisingly sturdy considering the last parts took place after a fine lamb dinner with Chianti, Cab Sauv and Zinfandel all round. There’s also pictures from Downey’s fantastically-named “Wilderness Park”. Santa Cruz it ain’t.

    Also, hola Arturo, acabo de ver tu mensaje en mi blog. Bienvenido a mi mundo electronico y te deseo el mejor en el trabajo. Espero que las cosas alli se arreglen pronto y que no te desesperes. Pienso en Uds. alli mucho. Cuidate mucho- un abrazo, gwyn

  • Malls and tar

    The bunnies got their new hutch yesterday, we only had to go to Petsmart but ended up passing through Old Navy, Staples, Trader Joe’s, All American & Starbucks along the way… basically I got malled in LA again, hey ho, we made amends today by going to a genuine (open since 1937- California prehistory) Farmers Market and feasting on Greek fancy food then on to La Brea tar pits where many a dinosaur met its end. I was expecting it to be more like in Sin City so was a little disappointed, but there was lots to see and it was nicely laid out and all.

    After all the cultural fun, we headed for Venice Beach, Santa Monica, various pubs, to see Mr & Mrs Smith (AVOID… 2 lulus, tops) then, at Sita’s request, Hooters for a meal. Photos were taken and will doubtless follow soon. We’re fine tuning our travel plans and budgetary possibilies for this summer, the Massachusetts part is looking a little shaky right now… more on that as we thrash it all out though. Time for bed methinks…

  • What the hell am I doing drinking L.A. at 5:46?

    Thanks to a combination of fantastic friends, in-laws and compliant pets we made it to L.A. in one piece. We spent today reorganising the garage to hold not only Martin & Sally’s heirlooms but 2 bunnies and all our crap too. Looks like more trips to the dump are in our close future. Sally’s been cleaning, cooking and orchestrating good times all round. Martin had me taking pictures of the house to show to one of his ham radio buddies, it’ll take a while to upload them on dial-up… (the first casualty of moving is DSL)… but we’ll get there as long as no one rings us during the process. I’ve been in L.A. 24 hours nearly and we’ve I’ve managed not to go to any malls or chain stores. We’ve got to go shopping for luxury, EZ-Clean rabbit hutches tomorrow. We might have to go to a multiplex too to enjoy air conditioning and Mr.& Mrs. Smith or Batman Begins or maybe Bewitched which is opening soon I think. We watched Finding Neverland t’other day which Sally recommends. Not my cup of tea, really, but it hit the spot.

    We stopped at the giant artichoke in Castroville yesterday and had fine local cuisine for brekky/dinner, the rest of the journey I got by on coke and Snickers mind, then arrived after 7 hours or so in one piece with a tired little doggy and 2 traumatised conejitos in tow.

    Righty that’s it for now. Might have some more photos up soon. Byeee

  • What the hell am I doing drinking in L.A. at 5:36?

    Thanks to a combination of fantastic friends, in-laws and compliant pets we made it to L.A. in one piece. We spent today reorganising the garage to hold not only Martin & Sally’s heirlooms but 2 bunnies and all our crap too. Looks like more trips to the dump are in our close future. Sally’s been cleaning, cooking and orchestrating good times all round. Martin had me taking pictures of the house to show to one of his ham radio buddies, it’ll take a while to upload them on dial-up… (the first casualty of moving is DSL)… but we’ll get there as long as no one rings us during the process. I’ve been in L.A. 24 hours nearly and we’ve I’ve managed not to go to any malls or chain stores. We’ve got to go shopping for luxury, EZ-Clean rabbit hutches tomorrow. We might have to go to a multiplex too to enjoy air conditioning and Mr.& Mrs. Smith or Batman Begins or maybe Bewitched which is opening soon I think. We watched Finding Neverland t’other day which Sally recommends. Not my cup of tea, really, but it hit the spot.

    We stopped at the giant artichoke in Castroville yesterday and had fine local cuisine for brekky/dinner, the rest of the journey I got by on coke and Snickers mind, then arrived after 7 hours or so in one piece with a tired little doggy and 2 traumatised conejitos in tow.

    Righty that’s it for now. Might have some more photos up soon. Byeee

  • Spacedog’s back

    DSCF8079Atticus’s wound was going down nicely… too nicely. It healed up, stopped oozing and started swelling again and a trip to the vets was in order this morning. $150 bucks later and the drain’s back in, the 15 inch collar’s on and, oh, he has tapeworm (don’t worry, Liz, it’s a one-off pill treatment, wil clear up in no time, promise, and we’re thinking of getting him Doggy health insurance for the next year…) (please don’t change you mind…). He needs constant care and attention and I’ve got a million things to do… Honest.

    I’ve been backing up DVDs before our trip… I was testing the copy of Spaced and happened upon the episode where Daisy gets a dog while Mike and Tim are out paintballing. The episode ends with Tim saying something along the lines of “I’ve never been this happy, I literally have no responsibilities at all, and everything has been sorted out”, then the camera zooms back to the scottie dog that’s just been adopted… with the attendant horror film effects.

  • Moving countries isn’t as easy as it’s cracked up to be…

    I think I mentioned what a grand job we did of getting rid of our belongings, but there’s still lots to do. Coupled with waiting/working on stuff for GoJoven and Triangle Speakers we’ve been a tad busy of late. Luckily I have my trusty new laptop to slice through webwork with. It’s got this lovely xbrite technology screen so I’ve been browsing through old photos and they look like they’re on a lightbox. It rocks.

    In other news I found out this morning (thanks Suw and Liz) that there was a general tsunami warning active for an hour last night after a 7.2 earthquake off of Northern California. We were barbecuing shrimp and steak, drinking sierra nevada and working our way through Joss Whedon’s (superlative deleted) Firefly series. I think the first thing I’d grab would have been… I’ll have a think about that one… My instincts want to say the beautifully barbecued shrimp, but let’s not be hasty here…

    Via Amy’s blog I found Pat Duffy’s campaign page. I shall link to it repeatedly to try and boost her pageranking. A nicer politician, you’ll not find. And she came to Taunton after coming up with the plan at 1am in The Spoke… PAT DUFFY 2005! or 2006 or, you get the idea. Have a picture of Pat with a painted cow in Atlanta at the American Sociomological Association Conference…

  • Bought a new laptop :)

    And it’s great. It’s 10 to 1 in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I’m too busy installing programs, migrating files etc on me gorgeous new laptop. That’s the easy part, the tricky bit’s filling in the mail-in rebates… I was trying to export my Bookmarks from Firefox and found that Firefox, God bless its cotton code, will create a webpage of them: here you go: This is how I spend my days…
    See you soon- gwyn

  • Yard SOLD

    Des Res $1500/ month. Would suit Space Dog
    Last night I had my first clam & garlic pizza from Pizza My Heart. It’s disturbingly like chicken pizza that washed up on shore and sat in the sun. And speaking of sun, I’m all pink from sitting out in my front garden yardsaling all day haggling with strangers over 25 cent crap. It was fun all round…
    We sold a ton of stuff;
    operated a special bargains-for-monolingual-Spanish-speakers policy;
    Atticus is kennel-less (10 bucks- ker ching);
    we can’t seat more than 4 people in the house at a time;
    can wash, but not dry, clothes;
    can’t cut the lawn;
    have a smaller library;
    have fewer plants to water;
    and we’re about $750 better off than last week. That will change once I get to Fry’s electronics though. Mwa ha ha ha, as they say…

    & Tanya, if you’re reading, your plants have been soaking up the H2O nicely. Happy LAX