Stuff

We got back last night from our Bay Area Tour, Summer 2006… and it excelled in every way. First off we went round Meg’n’Matt’s and sampled the oenophile delights of their trip to Italy and various vineyard visits while learning the ropes of the home version of Dance, Dance, Revolution. There are videos of us jumping around in the living room to Block Rockin’ Beats and Crazy in Love but I neglected to get the appropriate waivers signed so they’re probably not going to on the blog any time soon. Despite the back button on the floor carpet not being too sensitive we managed to give the downstairs neighbours a close approximation of what the next big seismic disruption in Oakland might very well feel like. Day 2 we went to the Bay Area beauty spot known as Kronkite Point (sp?) where we got hitched, and soaked up the views and listened to the Tunnel Singer who sings. In tunnels. Then for a few swift pints and table football and then to Berkeley for our annual bluegrass dose. Afterwards food, drink and dance, dance continued into the early late hours.

Monday was off to Santa Cruz to catch up with mates and some academic stuff too. We had a few ales in Red with some friends and left for Tanya’s before it turned into something variously described as a frat boy meat market / hell hole. things have gone downhill since we left. Luckily Tanya’s was as welcoming as ever and, aided by Liz, we cleaned her out of cheese and beer and went back to the hotel. For day 2 in SC, we did the traditional walk along Westcliff and gawped at surfers. The breeze was in just the right direction to be able to hear those in the water spouting their Keanu-Reeves-circa-1989isms at each other, but they’re fairly photogenic so I’ll let them off. I picked up some orders from downtown (unchanged, but no Umbrella Man), so Victor I’ve got your books and that’s one more thing off of Jose’s list of things to do. Tanya made an unparallelled veggie bbq with all the trimmings including her Torte ™ made to exacting standards and one of the best desserts. Evah. T’was also grand to see Becky, Scott and their kids and Heather & Gayle. T kindly let us stay in her apartment while she slept on the floor. Over and above the call of justice, THANKS!

Next day: I spent the morning relaxing in T’s garden finishing About a Boy again. Very readable especially fuelled by gourmet coffee and then later we went to Piedmont for continued merriment, dog walking and BBQery (far from veggie this time). The whole gang turned up but I left my camera in the car which was down far too many steps so no photos of Jerrod’s mad meat-cooking skillz nor Chili the cat and his ‘paunch’.

Yesterday we had a long drive from SF to Downey. Full of lorries and dim-witted drivers who refuse to change lanes, while listening to the sounds of the latest fall-out from Heathrow on NPR. I understand the no liquids bit (although some airports clearly don’t) but no books seems a bit excessive. I’ll be flying Virgin Atlantic next time if I have to soley rely on the plane’s entertainment as I’m buggered if I’m sitting through another Jennifer Anniston/ J-Lo film marathon to pass the 11 hours with nothing to read.

Full flickr photo set of the last few days here

Other news: last week saw Taladega Nights or some such, the most willfully stupid film I’ve seen in a while with the worst French accent ever committed to celluloid. Thoroughly recommended. I’m intrigued to know what the Spanish title will be…

So on Thursday we had our 4th anniversary and went out for a smorgasbord Italian meal at the new eatery in Downey Landing, just down the road (though, being L.A., we drove…). If you find yourself there, we recommend saving the coupon from your local paper and getting the free artichoke and cheese bruscetta dip thing followed by shrimp and chicken pasta (spicy). Bring the majority of it home in a doggy bag and you’ll have good eats for days. We also went out to Stox for breakfast with Sally famed for its coffee and hash brown (fried grated potato mass). Here’s a cut-out-and-keep guide to how we’ve celebrated so far.

1st Anniversary: Guadalajara, Italian Meal.
2nd Anniversary: On a plane coming back to CA from Amherst MA
3rd Anniv: Went back to Kronkite point where we got married for a wander and then a meal in the restaurant where we celebrated
and 4th see above…

We’ve been doing the occasional odd job round the house too even though Sally & Martin have done the lion’s share of moving work… Reorganised the garage, dug up the grape vine, painted bits and pieces in the old house, painted the roof with reflective white paint to try to bring down the ambient temperature, reminded Atticus what walks are and other small stuff. Anyroad, today, which is Sally’s birthday, we’re giving her the gift of having her house back for a few days and are heading North to visit several old haunts and see our mates, back Thursdayish.

Still have some web work to take care of, and also whether to put in a bid on a 100% Flash catalogue site. It’s a bit intimidating but I could learn some new stuff. I have an hour or so to make up my mind. I’m erring towards not quite ready for it yet but we’ll see if some toast and coffee changes all that…

In other news, Sita just forwarded me this article from the SC Sentinel, Teachers continue to flee Scotts Valley… Good to know I’m actually part of a larger tradition…

And since I might not manage much in the way of posts in the next few days. Here’s a link to a a game (click on geartaker) that I pretended to be playing as I kept an eye on the cable installation bloke yesterday. My high score’s nothing to write home about.

I’ve just ordered another all-singing, all-dancing Pocket PC. The plan is to use it for photography, videos, mp3ery, skypery and general messing about on the web. Blogging even. I’m extremely excited about it all. Should arrive in a few days time, end of the week maybe. After my Palm Zire 72 experiences I’m a little wary but I’ll soon get over that. Behold the glorious dawn of: IPAQ rx3715 Catchy name, no?

Got me tickets back to MX too today, Alaska Airlines no less, chosen primarily for the nice, cool, frozen imagery their name conjours up to this sweaty, overheating, ennervated Expedia user… Righty, off to tea… Don’t forget to comment…

Atticus has learnt a new “trick”. In his haste to get out of the house and go cruising the streets of Downey, he helps Sally carry her handbag. What he lacks in talent, he makes up for in charm…

Still no tickets back to Mejico yet, going to give it another try tomorrow as they’re a tad on the pricey side and ideally I’d like an indirect flight that spares me the usual LAX inmigration antics.

We’re 100 km from the border in Santa Anna and today we’re crossing over. The trip’s been fine so far, but very wet, including one section where I reckon we hit the tail end of tropical storm Eliana. Also, every fitozoological/military stop point has pulled us over for a hand search of our car which doesn’t bode well for crossing the frontera in record time. Maybe it’s time for a hair cut…

My dad’s been soaring about the fields of Somerset in a hot air balloon (globo aerostático- Spanish word of the week!) and has posted some lovely pix on Flickr. Click on the picture to find yerself looking at the slideshow.

I think we’re all pressied up thanks to a quick trip to the craft market. I just had a chance to explore the non-markety bits like the cemetary which is a much less grand affair than Guadalajara’s Panteon before Sita called me on the mobile to say she was done shopping. Now we’re back and preparing for a BBQ this avo with a few mates of our before we leave.

Last night we stayed in and had a lovely meal cooked by Sita then watched Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney’s take on CBS during the McCarthy witch hunt years quickly followed by one of the bleakest documentaries I’ve seen (at that includes the bloody penguins) called Darwin’s Nightmare all about the extreme poverty in Tanzania around Lake Victoria. I’m a bit behind on my reviews right now, but I’ll have a stab if I get the chance on the road. If you find yourself feeling far too positive about life and the world in general, Darwin’s Nightmare will take your serotonin levels down a few pegs…

Fernando’s flood pictures taken from his apartment, cunningly 3 floors above the destruction. He was all ready to go surfing at Plaza del Sol till the hygiene aspects of such a mission were pointed out.

Just found out Kathy and Vance have a Lewis Carroll inspired blog (thanks for the comment, Kathy) http://siximpossiblethingsbeforebreakfast.blogspot.com/ Looks like they’re off to see that rarest of things, Edinburgh on a sunny day… Enjoy : )

Sita’s talk on Pancho Villa, Tequila and Mexican National Identity went down a treat. So we celebrated…

Our good friend, Ana, gave us a molcajete t’other day. It’s a volcanic rock pestle and mortar type thing crucial to Mexican cuisine. We christened it yesterday when Berta came round to make salsa and go over Sita’s talk for today. The next stage is experimenting with different chiles…

Julieta Venegas, an important exception to the general ruling: Play an accordion, go to jail. (or gaol… Sarah)

Make yerself dizzy watching badly filmed footage from Tonala today, if it looks less busy than usual that’s cos it’s near the edge, the only place where filming from your waist doesn’t result in a permashot of people obstructing the way… You don’t realise how loud it all it till you listen to it in the comfort of your middle class barrio and it’s just the fruit, veggies and DVD bit…

Sita bought plenty of artesania & pressies, including 2 huge mirrors for MX$300 the pair of ’em. No idea how we’ll get those back one day. And also the following DVDs found their way into my hands (reviews soon, and Superman too 3.5 Lulus):

Batman Begins : saw it on 4-8-05 “Formidable rendering of Batman’s backstory. Nice understated CGI too. Yay. 4 Lulus”
Cronicas: (Sebastián Cordero) s’posed to be good
Jarhead: to take my mind off the incipient WW III brewing to the East…
Good night and good luck: Was misadvertised at the cinema and we ended up having a coffee instead
City of God: Saw this before I started reviewing films. One of my all time favourites.

Here’s a state-of-the-art, bleeding edge out-of-the-box, envelope-pushing web design agency in a back street, Felipe’s:

We’ve been planning the trip back, and shall probably only slightly vary the stopping points. Any recommendations for places to stay/eat in Hermosillo and Culiacan?

Blimey, me blog’s pagerank’s just gone up a notch to 5/10… search for ‘Gwyn’ on google and I’m result number 4. Take that gwynfisher.com, my namesake in New England… You might have got the domain name before I did, but I outstrip you in the SEO stakes. To celebrate, here’s a photo of the church in me little village in Zummerzet…

I like this…
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

It had just started to pour down so we though we’d head for the bookshops in Chapultepec and then a restaurant, so we jumped in a taxi and checked out the bookshops for some scholarly tomes and investigated the space where Sita’s doing her talk next week. All v. nice though they didn’t have the books we were after. Anyroad, then it really started to piss it down, vertical sea type stuff with hail and all, and within a matter of minutes cars were practically floating past. A bus crossed the central reservation and everyone went searching for higher ground. After an hour or so it stopped but the streets were still rivers and it became an urban jungle type scenario having to edge around walls and find lower waters and all that. Quite fun, but I soaked the only shoes I own (except me flip flops). Anyroad we went to Funicular to eat and then Sita stayed home and watched crap on the telly and me and Jose went round Fernando’s for snacks and ales and met some more really sound friends of theirs. Fernando shot some nice footage of the floods and if he sends it to me as promised I’ll post it… On the way home I had my first tacos de carnaza in Av. Americas, and they were surprisingly good, even though you can eat anything at 3 in the morning and it’ll taste good. “Al buen hambre, no hay pan duro” can be your Spanish phrase of the week… “when you’re really hungry, there’s no such thing as stale bread” is a rough translation.

And for your word: naufrago – Shipwrecked person.

Jose’s been trying to persuade me to put this one in too, but I’m buggered if I can translate it decently: El que es perico donde quiera es verde y el que es pendejo donde quiera pierde. Literally: “He who is a parrot, wherever he goes, is green, he who is an idiot, wherever he goes will lose”…. more loosely, “A parrot will always be green and a loser will never win” and looser still “You are who you are no matter where you go”. It doesn’t quite trip off the tongue for me mind…

Plans for today, you ask? Translate a load of Sita’s talk, and then Superman and bowling/pool. Stu and Anne rang me this morning at 9:30 when I was fast asleep, but it was 3:30am their time in NZ so I couldn’t complain. Nice to reverse the situation a bit there. That’s yer lot for now. Sorry bout the lack of posting lately, I’m all involved in the LAUlens site, trying to get it to do discounts on bulk orders and suchlike, and am back updating one of my first sites from 2 yrs ago, GO joven. Have a grand weekend, cheers : )

Thrill to the 84 frames of, frankly, very similar looking glasses… HERE