Cannon Beach Photos

Matando Cabos (2004). Hilarious, one of the best comedies I’ve seen in ages. Sort of like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” but infinitely funnier and with better acting all round. Some nice lucha libre moments too… 4.5 Lulus…

Erm, what else? I’ve been busy translating corporate documents for a chain of car dealerships and putting the finishing touches to this here lycra sports clothing shop. I’ve got to do a fair amount of work on Intangible’s site before tomorrow evening, and there’s rumours of a party being held here on Friday with Javier and a load of his students from England… I’m also off to buy tix for Julieta Venegas which is on the 4th, so keeping busy as ever.

Sita asked me what to dress up Atticus as for Hallowe’en. This page has a few ideas: http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2006/10/lets_just_get_t.html though he’s more Princess Leia than Darth Vader… Being a schipperke, or Belgian boat dog, he’s be a good Hercules Poirot…

I’m liking FireFox 2.0, by the way definitely worth installing. Mind you, if IE had extensions IE7 would be up there with it. There’s a new TotalPodCastrophe out, Desmond 22 so I’ll be giving that a play on my next round of errands…

Erm that’s it. Have a photo of some taco ingredients that i’ll almost certainly not be trying anytime soon. Tacos de Trompa (snout)

The Tacos al Pastor come highly recommended though. Mexico City style…

Just an update on stuff… Friday: Drinks and mates round our house… Saturday: A successful Flickr Photo tour round the Parque agua azul and tianguis cultural, followed by La Fuente, a dodgy torta ahogada, then a fine meal round V & J’s, Sunday: The morally dubious world of Toros!, well baby toros not weighing more than 500kg, which involved seeing a kid almost get killed, another one knocked unconscious with a broken nose, and 6 feisty animals ritually slaughtered, fun for all the family and a great photojournalistic opportunity… Monday: Photojournalism Seminario and translation and web designery, Tuesday, ditto with La Fuente tacked on to the end and today the State Archives to dig up information on Lucha Reyes who is going to figure largely in Sita’s next chapter. It’s an interesting building, the library place, what with murals and stuff and everything… Nice to use a microfiche thing again, it’s been years…

Here’s a money saving tip to make this post vaguely worth reading… Bring your own latex gloves if you plan to handle ancient newspapers and you’ll save yourself 5 pesos. Probably.

Basically between chamba and sightseeing not much time for posting in this blog. Generally no news in these pages is good news, worry if I’m posting 3 times a day…

After a successful BBQ on Saturday night with José, Ana, Jorge, Victor, Jana, El Rufles, Fernando, Ana, Javier, Monica, Daniel, Sita, Mum & Dad and a fair bit of partying around Gwod afterwards, Mum, Dad and me drove to Zacatecas on Sunday, which is one of me favourite towns in Mexico. We stayed at the Hotel Condesa (40 US bucks a night, clean, quiet, central, with views of La Bufa and around, Av. Juárez # 102, Tel. (492) 922 1160). Thoroughly recommended if you fancy a trip… It takes around 4 hours to get there from Gwod on the toll road via Aguascalientes. Anyroad, lots to see and do there. I signed mum and dad up for the city tour the next day and made my way around on foot listening to the usual podcasts (This American Life and Total Podcastrophe (check out Paul and Judy’s new WordPress site) taking photos of all around me. I even went up to the Bufa on foot and met me folks at the top. It’s a steep old climb, but the toothless bloke who was walking up at the same time felt compelled to tell me he was 84 (you know) so I can’t feel too proud of meself…

We had lunch in the old bullring, the Quinta Real hotel, where there was a 1-1 waiter/diner ratio and our food was revealed to us from under silver domes in unison at the table. Lovely, t’was, then a bit more shopping/wandering, a siesta, and then a nice little Italian place that has the only decent wine in Zacatecas- “Locando la tana” (C. Genaro Codina # 714) for lasaa and apple pie.

The next day we got up early and visited the La Quemada ruins which was stunning. I was expecting a pile of stones but it was a huge landscaped hilltop with steps and columns, you name it… After moseying to the top and back we found out it also harbours a wealth of rattlesnakes, which I’m sort of glad I didn’t know. I assumed the scurrying in the grassland and cacti were desert squirrels (if such things exist)… Mum wasn’t too keen on that aspect but enjoyed the rest.

After that we took the non-toll road all the way back to Gwod stopping for lunch at a mariscos place in Apozol, Zac for delicious, cheap fish. The scenery all the way was stunning- vast, desert plains, rustic villages and omnipresent mountains, finishing with a drive into Guadalajara’s barranca (enormous gorge/ valley thing) and back up it, which I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Gorgeous all round… A great couple of days.

Today I’m meeting up with Ian for a bit of a Leo Sayer starting in La Fuente and ending up who knows where?…

It all started with Mario and Angelica kindly inviting us round their´s on Saturday night. A few bottles of wine and plenty of botanas after arriving, the first tentative steps were made toward “Family Games Night”. Aranza brought Parcheesi, which is like Ludo with strategic elements. It´s popular in Spain though I´ve never played it before. After a few teething troubles (you roll one die, not two) we were completely absorbed in getting our tiddlywinks (fichitas) to circle the board and get home, and taking great malicious pleasure in blocking and eating other players´ fichas along the way. We lost.

Next up was one of my favourites, a Jenga type game, but with a twist that enabled the makers to dodge the patent issues and call it Stacko. Each jenga block was either red, yellow, green or blue and had a number from 1 to 4 on it like Uno, so if the last person removed a red #3, you had to go for a red block or one with #3 on it which makes it a lot harder. Luckily they´re all made from polished plastic so it´s not quite as hard as the artesanal wooden jenga thing we have.

Anyroad, all this nonsense went on until 3am and then some as it turned out we’ve all got quite the competitive streak. Many thanks, M & A 😀

Sunday we got up late, unsurprisingly. I went to the baratillo (huge Tapatian street market on the other side of town) and took a fair few photos. I stumbled into this church too, which is an architectural oddity, I’ve no idea what it’s called.

Afterwards I nipped by Amour Fou to pick up some stuff and got persuaded to play Mexican Scrabble. It was going great guns, practically every letter is worth 4 points and there were about 8 blanks (each worth 1 pt). However it started to get tricky as the board filled up and there seemed to be an endless supply of letters. I counted and there were 200 tiles to put on a 15×15 board (225). Madness I tells you. I don’t think the manufacturers of this game had every tried to play it. Cos unless you start placing your tiles vertically, upwords style, there’s no chance of finishing. And how they dared put in 4 Ws beggars belief. It’s not a letter that features much in the Spanish dictionary, it’s almost always just foreign words like Whiskey, Walkie-Talkie, Windsurfing and gWyn…

After that, Uno, which was a lot more fast moving than Scrabble with a 90% board coverage.

At my photo journalism seminar yesterday one of the attendees was complaining about having bought the Mexico edition of Monopoly and one of the squares having less-than-popular ex-president Vicente Fox on it. What were they thinking? I’d love a Tapatian (Guadalajaran) version of it, mind. I reckon the market’s ready… Collect the utilities, SIAPA, CFE, TELMEX and MEGACABLE…

When I’m not manufacturing press passes, I’m going to the dentist’s with alarming regularity making the most of the cheap and cheerful Mexican service before having to hightail it out of here in December… There’ve been some horror stories lately of British folks and their Do It Yourself dentistry, which makes me squirm just to think about it. The BBC has replied with a report on the pitfalls.… I’ve been there with the chewing gum missing crown solution before…

Anything to avoid making it into the Big Book of British Smiles…

Had a bit of concerning news about my gran’s health yesterday, but she’s doing much better today. Email me if you’d like to know more.

So last night I didn’t get around to V for Vendetta but stayed in and watched Brokeback Mountain with young Sita. She’s too far ahead of me with the whole Lost malarkey so we have to find times when we can fit it in solo style. I didn’t think Brokeback would be my kind of thing. And I was right. All a bit too slow moving for my liking, I preferred the Brokeback mountain in 30 seconds. With rabbits.version. And I wasn’t too keen on that neither… Anyroad, a review to the right soonish, if I get a chance… Today I’ve been starting on Jose’s mum’s school web site, there’s a few pages up here but most of the links are broken for now. I was fairly happy to have the CSS menu doing what it should and the resizable page width. I’m trying for a cleaner white-spacey look and I’m happy with how the pictures are coming along. I think I’ll need to go by the school to take pics of the kiddies in action.

I met up with Fernando and Ana again this evening to give him back the memory card he lent me and there’s a chance that tomorrow evening will be spent at a football match or the lucha libre & Fernando’s doing the organising. Que buena onda… Either’s fine by me… It’s a good little city this one…