Stuff

So I woke up on Javier’s sofa, he’d already made it to work and I had a wander round the Seattle area of Zapopan, it’s all huge mansions and pebbled roads. Gorgeous in the early morning light, then I ambled round the centre of Zapopan, I only had my little camera with me, so you’ll be spared more fisheye photos for now. Saw a chameleon car or two and also snapped a photo of a sign saying something like Beer for the same price as a bus ticket and such and such restaurant, established bloody ages ago… did a bit of email checking and shopping and then met up with Javier again for a torta ahogada near CEPE.

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I also made it back to our old house in calle Garibaldi, now completely refurbished/painted and the home of Juanita and her estetica. Me agave plants weren’t there any more and the garden looks a lot more Zen without the schipperke landing pad… I nipped into Waldo’s mart (everything for a dollar or 12ish pesos) and got some of their surprisingly good Polish dark chocolate for old times sake. Juan de Bonafont was even in the neighbourhood and greeted me with “Y dónde está el Atticus?” (so where´s Atticus?” which was brilliant. I said hello in the corner shop too just for good measure. The old barrio looked good.

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I had a quick siesta, went for a few tacos (chorizo was all they had cos it was early) then ambled to the cafe Fenix in front of the expiatorio where I’d announced I’d be to the Flickr folks. Many were already there when I arrived so I had a really warm greeting and passed out a few pressies and other requests to the crowds. It was great to see everyone again, there were also some peeps I didn’t expect to see from Flickr and elsewhere so though there was no official count of the numbers I had the rockstar treatment. Fantastic it was. Muchas gracias to all of you who made it. It was one of the many highlights of the week for me. And if you promised to visit us in Portland, we hope you’ll make it 😀

After the flickreunion I went back to Abuela desde Guanatos’s house with her and Fabian and had wine on the roof looking over the cityscape from the 5th floor, and listened to some esoteric records from the collection. A very nice way to end the day all round.

Here’s the link to Day two’s set on Flickr since putting them all in here ruins Flash‘s day.

It’s Sita’s birthday today and so I shall acquiesce to her request:

Personal Message
could you post this on your site?

They’re all as bad as each other if you ask me, but at least Obama can roll his Rs convincingly.

I nudged Josh and Liz in the direction of kittywigs the other day. Josh just alerted me to this, arguably better, site, in an email entitled “To Hell with kittywigs”. You’ll visit for the photos of cats dressed up, but you’ll stay for the brilliant Engrish:

It is spring new work! They are frog transformation goods!

Do you also attach to a cat and do hair? It is the costume play of a masterpiece “Anne of Green Gables”!

Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here. This is the hat and shawl for disguising oneself.

You’ll probably have to wash them when they get dirty though in coleslaw.

Hover your mouse over the above image to see Elias‘s beautiful watercolour rendering of my butterfly pic. And if you’re feeling brave, click through and leave a comment in Spanish 😉

I wish I could draw.

I’m chuffed when I score over 400 in a scrabble game. In this game the tile fairy came up trumps and I got zincs on a triple with the z on a double letter netting me 110 odd, then a couple of bingos. My tiles are blue… Final score: 504

Dubious words include: goral, maes, skaw and ala, but they’re all valid.

This blog’s been a bit abandoned of late more due to an overload of work and little time to update it but in brief, saw Carrie Fisher’s show Wishful Drinking last Thursday. I hope to get round to a review. Not impressed would be the gist of it, but at least she put on the Danish pastry wig and recited the Help me Obi Wan Kenobi ‘monologue’… Almost finished Life on Mars series II and am looking forward to Ashes to Ashes. We’re off to Portland for a bit and have found a dog/housesitter. Yahoo!’s on and off… And some new sites to show off coming soon. Hasta pronto!

Read More “Your BBC Licence fees at work…”

While you’re waiting for something worth reading in these pages, have a stare at this…

My latest favourite song:

I don’t know if it’s a cover, a single or anything, but it’s catchy and fun. Fair play to ’em.

Other news in brief, Friday was tequila tasting, Saturday wine tasting, today 2nd hand camera lense testing & catching up with a mate from GDL. In between all that I’m upgrading blogs to the fancy new 2.5 wordpress platform and getting my photoblog off the ground again with a different taxonomy and some ajaxy goodness. Shall announce it soon enough. Back to Y! mañana, but I’ve found a few shortcuts to get there and back quicker…

And it has some very fancy Flash gallery options. Think I’ll stick to Flickr and Picasa locally though.

Alameda, CA

Early stages yet though, but it could be very hand if you need to quickly shop something on a friend’s computer.

Quick post before the weekend… a lot of readers of this blog probably already know Scott and Becky. If you’ve found the time to check up on my latest posts over here, you may also wish to spend time over Scott’s site, Wigleaf.com which is rapidly becoming the place to publish your microfiction and chameleon car videos.

Happy Easter in a day or two, and have a picture of the blossom from the cherry tree outside in the interim…

Flash recently alerted her readers to the existence of cow magnets. Which I think is delightful. I’m pondering ordering the Bessie Bovine explains all educational package (ages 6 and up)… Nothing worse than Hardware Disease… particularly relevant for Michael Eavis and his surfeit of tent pegs apparently.

So yesterday we wandered over to Berkeley Marina, a place I’d been before back in the dark old days as a NGO program manager for various conferences. It was nice to reclaim it as a site for walking and photography rather than learning about sustainability and human resources. We wandered along the lengthy pier and then had a Flip This House marathon evening with the remains of Meg’s surplus wine from the night before.

This morning we helped shift a few boxes for T’s move-in over in Oakland and discovered the delights of Zachary’s pizza and I had my first ever go on a Nintendo Wii. This afternoon, we’ll probably get out to enjoy the sunshine somewhere local and stockpile vitamin D for the deskbound coming week.

In Taunton’s local rag, The Gazette, there’s a first for local small-town journalism. At the time of writing, they managed to publish a headline for an Easter Extravaganza without resorting to spelling it Eggstravaganza. Which I think is laudable and without precedent. Maybe they’re moving upmarket or have just hired a new staff writer…

Sita bumped her foot in the middle of the night somehow and wasn´t up for driving to SCruz, so I chauffeured. Here´s a 3 shot panostitch of the redwoods. Click the pic for different sizes. I´m considering printing this poster-sized.

Yeah, this is an advert for Microsoft, but it’s funny and stars Amy Sedaris…

Office 2007 is a pretty good product too…

This photo still looks a little odd to me, having learnt to drive on the right side of the car… Also, please note the cleanliness of his fur after a visit to his usual L.A. stylist.

Made it back in from LA a couple of hours ago. Lovely to see the in-laws as always. Also on the way down all the thousands of acres of fruit trees (cherries? apricots? peaches? ) were in blossom and it was stunning. 2 days later and there was less of it, but Sita was driving so I could wave my camera at them. The less blurred ones are over at Flickr.

Also I liked the art display on our traditional visit to the 99 cents store,

Gursky’s photo there sold for $3.3 million a few years ago.

Yesterday I went to Home Despot to pick up turf, but since it’s got a very limited shelf life they only have it in the mornings. So I had a wander round the area and took an a bunch of photos that I’m preliminarily calling “If life gives you girders, make irn-bru“. Here’s the link to the pix. And here’s my fav:

This morning I went to get the turf and practiced pronouncing the Americanese for it in the car, sod, pronounced sard. Here’s the b4 and after:

You may also see notice new bushy fern things which were advertised on craigslist.org for free, heather or lavender, the beginnings of a honeysuckle and solar lights which may stop working once the walnut tree gets its leaves on and casts the entire endeavour into shadow…

I feel like I should be writing more about the Australian songstress from a few posts ago because I’m now getting about 50 hits a day with people looking for her or the lyrics to that there song, but I’m going to hold steady with more what-I-had-for-breakfast posts despite this new found popularity amongst Summery Aussie-Pop seekers.

The above picture is one of the dozens I took at the Filoli Centre on Sunday and features W. , my second cousin (I think) we finally got a chance to visit I & Y on Sunday and had a lovely time seeing Spring in full effect in the well-tended Californian version of Hestercombe.

Still exceedingly busy making an infinite number of revisions for an exciting new website, details soon… and have finally finished many pages of translation for GOJoven.

We started the 2nd series of Life on Mars last night with L & Josh and I made a cottage pie to accompany it. 70s British Cuisine at its best. If the first 2 episodes are anything to go by it’s going to be even better than the first. When ever I see DCI Hunt, I think of Mario’s description that “no tiene madre“… Storming stuff.

Atticus had an upbraiding this morning. I went to the garden centre to see how much turf cost and took him with me, on the lead obviously. I was standing in the entrance of the garden place, trying to get someone’s attention to ask whether or not they sold the stuff, when a trainee postman and his supervisor went in there. Atticus started barking at the postie, as per usual, but ‘Cus couldn’t move from next to me. And the supervisor goes “Sir, control your dog” to me. And I just looked at him trying to work out if he was joking or not. I couldn’t decide and said “You’re joking, right?” and he goes on about harassing the postal worker. And I just told him “The dog’s on a lead, I’m in a public area, and you’re having a laugh. I’m moving on, but only because life’s too short to deal with this kind of crap.” There. I’ve vented. If you can’t deal with a 25-pound dog barking at you, from 5 yards away, on a short lead, in plain daylight, I reckon you’ve chosen the wrong career path. Here endeth the lesson.

Shall probably go to Home Despot instead… because there’re less feckless posties in that one’s car park.