Back from Sin City

There’s the collage, here’s the link to see the pix as individual photos.

Went to the SF MOMA for the 1st time and sneaked a few crafty pix in with the zire palm thing. Generally not too impressed with that museum. anyroad, maybe tomorrow i’ll post them with a few thoughts about the contents of the museum. meanwhile, gotta take the canine round the block… constantine’s been universally slated, and so to plan b, Anchorman.

… a freelance gardener showed up in the nick of time and made our 3m x 10m stretch of prime agricultural land look more than half decent. He even managed not to mangle our agaves when he strimmed the lawn, which is something of a first for hired help. Maybe it’s because they’re starting to look a bit fiercer, we’re a mere 6 years from harvesting it to roast, pulp, ferment and distill into the finest tequila Calle Garibaldi’s ever produced. He also knew what he was doing when he took on our nispero tree (if that’s what it is…) which now cuts a fine figure and decorates rather than ominously looms over the yard. Atticus, needless to say, is loving it. Back in Downey California, he was all about running round and round and creating canine crop circles. Now he’s adapted to a straight line which he runs down, executes a perfect leap into the wall and launches himself back along the line Olympic swimmer style, hence the new trench all along the wall. Maybe he’s trying to communicate with aliens in binary…

Sally and Martin arrived Thursday afternoon with no problems at all and a suitcase stuffed with gourmet goods such as Irish Mature Cheddar and California Zinfandel along with half a metric ton of doggy treats. The reunion was as joyful as you like and we dined that night at the Santo Coyote, which has recently hiked its prices up, the average meal now costing about 195 pesos. Still excellent food mind. Yesterday we went to San Juan de Dios to shop for watches, craft, fruit and DVDs. Had a coffee in the centre of town. I asked for a mug of café americano and an espresso to put in it to boost it a bit. In a Lost in Translation moment I duly received my espresso and an empty mug to put it in. I’ve no idea what they thought I was planning to do. Maybe they thought I had a special shaped mouth which couldn’t drink from small espresso cups. Anyroad, no worries. Then I had a business meeting of sorts about a website, luxury jewelry for the European market… anyway, part two of the Guadalajara Holy Trinity of restaurants in the evening, El Sacromonte, where the robalo (sea-bass) is highly recommended… Possibly La Matera tonight to complete the trio.

The plan today is to go back to Tequila and not interview anyone for a change. I’m looking forward to it even though we only went three days ago. And then in the afternoon, apparently Michael Moore’s latest film, Sicko, has “leaked” onto the web…

This post needs some photos but I haven’t downloaded the latest yet… but have I mentioned I’ve got A NEW PHOTO BLOG =P

I just went to get some photocopying done and they asked if I wanted it “Engargolado”. This is a Mexicanismo according to the RAE (Spanish version of the Oxford dictionary) meaning “bound with a plastic spiral ring thing” (see photo). I asked what the origin was and she said she didn’t know but it probably comes from “gargola”, a gargoyle. Now maybe it’s because of my life-long fascination with Ghostbusters, but I think that’s a great image, a gargoyle’s claws holding together your document for you. I’m presuming that’s the origin, but I’m about to start work and I can’t be trolling around the internet for hunky-punk related info… Photos from another successful trip to Tequila coming soon : )

And for phrase of the week (these are going to be almost all from José): Ay, el equipo de México, jugaron como nunca y perdieron como siempre… Which doesn’t really survive translation well as: Ay, the Mexico team, they played like never and lost as ever. If you can do better than that, feel free to comment a translation : ) Hasta pronto…

Un par de jours sans bloguer- toujours rien a declarer. Still having nowt to write never stopped me before. Sita told me off for writing ‘me and jose went’ instead of ‘jose and I’ a couple of posts ago, so here we go with some of my writing tics. I got an A in my GCSE English Language and I was a TEFL teacher for long enough to know which rules I’m breaking on a daily basis. For what it’s worth, it helps to read this blog with a slight somerset burr. Top 10 Grammatical Rules I give short shrift to:

• 10. Subject/ Object pronoun difference. Bert’n’me couldn’t be arsed.
• 9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses. If I was you I’d use more sugar.
• 8. Ending sentences with prepositions. Hot, sticky climes are summink I’ll not put up with.
• 7. Capitalisation. some days not. Other days yes.
• 6. Spelling. Some words I can’t spell first time with and not having a spell checker to hand, I’ll just shove in more letters until it looks right. N.B. doesn’t necccasserilly always work.
• 5. Overcompensation for Americanisms. It’s been an ongoing battle against MS Word for it to recognise English spelling as default. Not just things like colour, centre and Yours Sincerely (instead of Sincerely), but the subtler ones like travellers (with 2 Ls) and realise (with an S). For me, no words end in -ize.
• 4. Sentence fragments. Quote from the Simpsons. Lisa has made a grammar robot:
  

  Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still.
  Linguo: Lie still.
  Lisa: I knew that. Just testing.
  Linguo: Sentence fragment.
  Lisa: ‘Sentence fragment’ is also a sentence fragment.
  Linguo: Must conserve battery power.

• 3. Overuse of ‘…’ … Not antigrammatical, but surely bad grammar… Just how my brain works I’m afraid… In conversation I’ll do the same… trail off each sentence into mumbling. So that’s what they’re there for…
• 2. The Jean Teasdale school of parenthetical asides (and consequently where to put the punctuation.). ?
• 1. Starting every other sentence with I. Well, it is a personal blog called self-absorbtion central, and I know not everyone wants there actions engraved forever in hypertext on teh internets.

So there you go. If you notice any others, feel free to comment them if you find yourself with nowt better to do today.
Happy birthday Ms Butler and Valentine’s to the rest of you. Happy B-day Guadalajara too, 464 today!

Click here if you have a fastish PC, decent graphics card and connection too… to watch this blog get bombed, lasered and ravaged by dinosaurs. Back soon…

and y and z are back to front… Lovelz couple of dazs in geneva, tanzaàs quite the hostess… beth and aliàs wedding rocked in everz waz… off to the south of france todaz, la ciutat and another place. might update soonish… photos etc shall probablz be up bz the end of next week. cheersz,
gwzn