Stuff

Greetings from our latest ZIP code!

Where to start? I neglected to take any photos over the last week so it’ll be a texty entry here. The moving van arrived on Monday, we packed it to the brim, 10′ x 18′ x 10′ in about 100 trips back and forth. Tuesday we cleaned the house and polyfilla’d all the holes ready for the inspection on Wednesday morning. We also fitted in a walk round lake Merritt with T and I got hands-free things for the mobiles so we could chat legally in the cars on the convoy ‘cos of the new California legislation. I also got a polarizing filter for me camera ready for the invariably overcast skies in Oregon. I’ve not tried it out yet.

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Wednesday’s inspection went great, we got our full deposit back and the LL was impressed with the level of cleanliness and the number of applications we’d got for our replacements. Then it was the I-5 all the way to Portland where I burned through a week’s worth of podcasts in 11 hours or so. A highlight amongst them was Mario’s Circulo Vicioso, Mario and his mates are going through their record collections once a month and releasing their favourite tracks with a bit of description. Bodes well for Spanish-speaking, retro music lovers of a certain age… We got into Portland by around 8pm and went straight to a friends house to collapse in a heap and have some wine…

Thursday was exploring our new ‘hood and buying provisions. There’s a wealth of little local owned shops, restaurants, galleries, pubs. We’ve not established a ‘local’ yet but it’s on the cards, found a brilliant breakfast place though about 5 blocks from the house, also found the local pricey organicky supermarket and, more importantly, Albertsons…

Friday… the moving van arrived at 10ish it took about 3 hours to empty it. There were a few casualties but most furniture survived. One IKEA shelf unit reverted to its flatpack form however, but I’ve repurposed it in me office and shall post a pic one of these days. The rest of Friday was unpacking the boxes and moving around furniture/ buying furniture, as was Saturday and a lot of Sunday.

Sunday was our 6 year wedding anniversary. Drsita pulled out our Big Book of Fun Things to do in Portland that T gave us and found a couple of places that were reasonably priced and delicious.

Yesterday it felt like we were moved in. We moved the futon into the basement and replaced it with a second hand sofa, shoved the curtains up around the place, cooked prawn curry, bought a spade to start the gardening and generally chilled. We’ve a heatwave on this week so we’re well glad of the ceiling fans in the various rooms. Today the forecast is the mid 90s. Drsita carried through with her threat to cut my hair too. Maybe in a week or two I’ll be able to tie it back again…

This avo I noticed that some peeps from the Portland Flickr group are having a meet up in a nearby park so that’ll be a chance to unpack me camera and meet some new folks. On Thursday we might well be helping some friends of friends move in too. So it’s all onwards and upwards on the social front. Now I just have to find a job…

In summary, all is very well.

For home improvement and very imminent baby news, Monica’s blogging again.

Sally just rang to say they’re fine though it sounded like an explosion. Things shook but nothing’s broken. More news as and when, our internet’ll probably be out sometime today.

The moving van comes tomorrow, everything’s pretty much packed. As long as it doesn’t rain I reckon it’ll be fairly straightforward. Took a break from the boxing to see what the annual Berkeley Marina Kitefest is all about. Kites mainly. Took a few pix, but it wasn’t the best weather for pix. Good weather for kites in fact.

Everyone else is doing it, so I thought I’d join in, here’s wordle.net’s word cloud of the last 10 posts or so… Atticus figures largely…

In other news, Somerset police have started sharing their best 999 calls with youtube. I’m torn for favourites, but it’s either “I’m not bein’ funny but… There’s a squirrel with no hazelnut trees” or “My wife’s left me two salmon sandwiches”. If this kind of minor internet celebrity doesn’t get them more prank calls I don’t know what will.

Gives the Welsh bloke inquiring about the bright white thing in the sky a run for his money mind.

is both a blessing and a monumental waste of time.

On the plus side I now know what a bunch of people are up to who I thought I’d never see again and I can stay more or less au courant on which of my mates are where, and every now and again another blast from the past issues from my inbox. All that and the internet opium that is Scrabulous (Challenge me. Please.)

On the other hand I can’t keep up with the requests for any number of fun looking applications. Some are dismissable out of hand, 3x Bumper Sticker requests but I’m sorely tempted to let applications like “Narco gifts” access my info if only because instead of “Accept” is says “Orale, compa” on the button. Anyroad, before I clear through the pile, here’s a look into my facebook world…

Sold the sofa this morning 😀

Leather sofa and dining room table anyone?

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/fur/763943226.html

25% discount if you arrive with a print-out of this post…

The telly’s up for grabs too, what’s a fair price for a 32 inch GE CRT?

Saw Batman last night with Drsita, Liz and Josh and it did not disappoint on any level at all. I didn’t know what the running time was going to be so I kept expecting it to end, but instead it just kept getting better and better. Thoroughly recommended. Best superhero film since Batman Begins.

(image from Alberto Mont, found via Othaner’s blog)

On Saturday we tried to go to SF on the Alameda ferry, but it was running late and the ferry terminal is just next to Rosenblum’s free wine-tasting warehouse, so that proved a more enticing option. I blame drsita saying she didn’t reckon the ferry was coming. And when you say you don’t believe in ferries… Yesterday though I queued up in the morning and spent a couple of hours wandering round the north end of frisco (which nobody calls it) and though it looks like I’ve got dust on the camera’s sensor again there’s a few passable pix.

Full set here.

Today, webbery, & packing. A bientot.

One year late I finally got round to watching the last three (brilliant) episodes of Doctor Who series 3, with Sam Tyler and all that. Now “Here come the drums” has displaced Fleet Foxes in me head. Which means I’ll probably get more done given its frantic pacing.

Spoilers contained in this here youtube…

Righty, I’m off to walk the dog then we’re taking the ferry from Alameda to SF for a wander. tara

if these red sweetcorn things don’t poison us first… I’ve seen them used decoratively, but Drsita just picked up 6 from Lucky’s and 4 of them were red.

Wish us luck.

(Post-prandial EDIT)

They’re not as tasty as the yellow ones, but apparently according to several wise Mexican friends on flickr, they make great tortillas…

Abuela desde Guanatos sent me a whole myth about them, I’ve been translating all afternoon so while I’m in the mood…

It all happened before the Spanish arrived, when the earth belonged to those who worked on it, when nobody fought to live, because living was easy, and men were happy just to sleep, eat, love and grow.

In this particular year there was much happiness. The rains had fallen in abundance; the moon had illuminated the crops.

The Indians sowed the grains of sweetcorn, as white as a girl’s teeth on the well-ploughed earth

A few days later, the ground was covered with little green shoots which grew and grew as they drank up the water.

The goddess Sucuxi, so beautiful, so pure, so good, pondered the work of the Indians from the hill and wanted to reward their efforts by giving them the biggest harvest.

Susuxi came down from the hills to the sweetcorn fields, whose leaves blew in the wind. Thorns pierced the brown soles of Susuxi’s feet and from them fell red droplets of blood.

The goddess fled back to her house, dripping blood onto the kernels of a sweetcorn cob.

The kernels drank up the blood and turned red, as red as the blood they had drank.

Days passed… and the Indians harvested…

The strangest thing: They found a sweetcorn with red kernels.

Spanish source

The story lacks closure. Like then the next day the conquistadors arrived or something… and also maybe kernel’s not the right word, but I’ve been installing ubuntu all afternoon on my laptop…

Anyroad, there’s a blog post for you. They’ll be scarce again this week, no internets yet in Downey we’re told.

…and it looks like it’s going to be just the right weather for it, 97 degrees and scattered thunderstorms.

Normally I’d warn you that I’ll not be blogging much, but given recent posting rates you’ll probably not notice anything amiss.

Took the car for a checkup today. Should be ready any minute along with the bill for 360 bucks. Deciding whether to drive there or fly involved some complex maths with factors such as mileage, price per gallon, car rental, flights and schipperke boarding costs. We’re driving, staying with Sudarat and ‘Cus is coming with us, for the record. Email’ll be checked occasionally. See you in another ZIP code…

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Yesterday we had an open house to try and find renters to take over our Alameda digs. About 15 couples passed through here and 10 of them left application forms so I’ve passed them on to the landlord and hopefully he won’t take long to choose one of them to take over the place come August.

Doctorcita took Atticus on a 3 hour walk in 95 degree heat (35ish celsius) while I was showing people around so that he wouldn’t try to strike up lasting friendships with any of the applicants. Atticus has also now been through a drive through car wash. I wanted to be there for that, but didn’t get to see it. You park in the middle of the machine while all kinds of jets and foam and detergents get blasted at you, everything goes dark… then after 8-10 minutes of craziness industrial dryers blast you with hot air and you’re good to go. Apparently as the first jet started Atticus jumped onto Sita’s lap and stayed there for the duration… Anyroad, all in all a very successful day.

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The sunset was spectacular yesterday, it gave a gorgeous golden light and I took advantage and headed out with me camera. Here’re some of them on Flickr. I like the ones with the seagulls… If there’d been a few more clouds to the west it’d’ve been even better. Maybe this evening.

This week I’ve a few projects on still and there’s another visit to Santa Cruz, then some time next week we’re going to go house hunting in Portland. Anyone want to look after an American Eskimo/ Schipperke mutt for a few days?

…this afternoon. From this point on in the blog, and the real world, she’s Dr. Sita.

Sally & Martin are down at the minute and we’re off for breakfast in a moment. Lots of pictures coming this way in 24-48 hours.

Hasta pronto!

EDIT:

THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR THE CONGRATS. We’re still celebratin’ more soon, including this photo…

Friday’s trip to SCruz went great, lovely to see our sociologist/non-sociologist friends again in what might be one of our last visits (except in we’re going again in half an hour and there for graduation on Friday…). I didn’t sleep so wonderfully due to a heady mixture of garlic bread and a sweltering hotel room, so I got up at 5am and managed to catch the sunrise and greet the sealions dozing by the pier.

Here’s the set of all the pix and if you hover your mouse over the picture above, you’ll see the picture Elias’s watercolour is based on (painted in less than 90 minutes if my calculations are correct). He’s the artist behind the butterfly a while ago. One of these days I’m going to have a go at this watercolour thing and if I’m only a fraction as good as Elias I’ll be very happy.

We’re off to SCruz for the night and I just left Atticus at the boarding kennel place. They reckoned he might have American Eskimo in him, and they might just be on to something. Here’re a couple of American Eskimos:

CC photos by Mendrakis and Rocker’s Generation

Atticus would, for obvious reasons, be rubbish at hiding in the Alaskan permafrost.

I’ve just downloaded 200 megs + from gwynunlimited.com (my old corner of the internet) with a view to shutting it all down. It’s got so much stuff there though. Downloading it was like finding a box of badly sorted photos and letters from several years ago.

I give it another month before it disappears completely.

For now, here are some highlights from memory lane circa 2004:

How we used to look…

Dawn of the ‘Cus… Day before , Day he arrived, December 24th 2004 (black Thursday) , Our first small fortune at the vets …

Stu and Anne come to California

Look it! I used to read books.

Crunchy nut cornflakes disappeared off the market in the States, and all I have left of them is this scan of a limited edition packet from 2004… No photoshop. That’s the uberpatriotic packaging. This was in the days before Steven Colbert.

And finally for today, I discovered the wonderful world of javascript rollover effects.

If I find more stuff I might salvage it and put it here.

Daniel can’t get enough of the Mexican handicrafts…

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Breakfast in El Colibrí, once again molletes… They’re bread rolls cut in half with cheese and frijoles on ’em with the option of salsa mexicana and chorizo. José went for some kind of egg based thing as you can see. Then he went to work and I went to complete the orders received for artesania from Tlaquepaque.

You’ve two options if you’re after Mexican arts and crafts, one is go to Tonalá right on the outskirts of town where everything’s made and there’s lots of cheap shops selling less than perfect stuff, or Tlaquepaque which had its centre recently renovated and is awash with pricey boutiques. I went to t-paque because there’s a bit more to photograph, involves less walking, is slightly closer to the centre and also has a tequila shop where I knew I could get Sita’s 7 Leguas Blanco. I got some jewellery, and something that conformed to Monica’s request for “something metal you can put on the wall”.

I stopped by at la Mata Tinta, a cybercafe/restaurant run by a Scottish bloke (and his wife) who I met last year. He seemed to be thriving, getting the place ready for the forthcoming rainy season. I also took a taxi to the DIF (social security place) to catch up with a mate of mine from my photojournalism course. Nice to see him too and discover a different part of T-Paque, I couldn’t wander much because now it was getting to be the hottest part of the day and I was carrying me camera and lenses and awkwardly shaped wall hangings.

The taxi from Tonala to the centre took forever due to the construction of the Macrobus (or was it macrocamion) that’s causing delays all along the Calzada de Independencia built ready for the Panamerican Games in a few years time. Luckily the taxista had given me a price rather than have the metre running. I still got out of the taxi half a mile before my destination partly because of the heat, partly the traffic, but mainly because he’d started telling me jokes to pass the time… (¿Cuántos chinos hay en China? Ninguno, ¡puros lacios! Don’t even ask for a translation…)

So I checked to see if Anel and Claus were about at Amour Fou, sure enough they were. AF has now closed business but it’s still as hospitable as ever. We went for a swift pint in La Cava and then the plan was to head out to the middle of nowhere to see Aldo’s band plays some covers at the offices of Hewlett Packard, instead everyone’s plans changed and we met up with Jose, Javier, Hugo and co at Los Famosos Equipales and after that to a nearby fiesta on a roof.

And thus was last Friday. Good times. I’m having issues with uploading to Flickr with tags and suchlike, but here’s some of the set of Dia 3.

Sita’s birthday dinner last night was great btw. Shall put a few photos up soon. Thanks for the wellwishing