Stuff

So last night after a lovely meal at Maggie’s pub-restaurant (Fish & Chips x 4 & surf’n’turf for the record) frequented by all the local ex-pat Catholic pedagogic population, Martin innocently commented that he didn’t think the headlights were on. Next minute, neither was the dashboard or radio or the engine. This sounded grimly familiar as the same scenario happened to me on the way to a conference in Berkeley before all kinds of alternator-related fun. Everyone jumped out and I started pushing the car along Imperial Highway in me flipflops. Not ideal footware for motorway maintenance, and true to form they broke and fell off along the way. Sally & Sita are lifelong AAA (the America AA) members so they were soon on the blower to get towed. After 2 hours, multiple phonecalls, one police incident (ask Sally- on her new email address, kilcarsally (at) hotmail.com) and one member of the party going AWOL on the buses later and we got back to Downey, where I got hiccups again. Hiccups resurfaced at regular intervals in my sleep. Sita had to decamp in the middle of the night as the bed was shaking too much from them. Anyroad, today is the day of packing before the big off.

I went to check on our dear little rodents in the back garden and was delighted to discover that they’re back in touch with their lapine instincts of burrowing. Klem was nowhere to be seen, Lulu (gordito that he is) was halfway through the hole and the dog was running around enjoying the mayhem. I sent Atticus indoors, yelled ‘Jailbreak’ to Sarita and we put the emergency plan into action. Klem was hiding under the cage, Lulu was still digging, I scooped Lulu up and threw him back into the cage. Sarita cuddled Klem (klem’s not big on cuddles) to scold him and then he got locked up too. I’ll have to work out how to implement the new security features in their run. Maybe an ID card scheme. Or face recognition technology at the back yard gate… anyroad, wandering back to the kitchen, Atticus is gallivanting about Dalen St. but luckily comes when he’s called… So for now, bunnies are are locked up tightly, we’re not really packed, Atticus is contained, Martin’s off alternator & battery shopping and all’s quiet again for a minute or two. Give or take some yard sales on the road. Glad the minor disasters are happening before we set off rather than after, that’s fer sure.

Phone calls to blighty’s next on the list. As I keep mentioning, get yerselves on skype. Octagenatian and Nonagenarian relatives are excepted…

So we makes our fun how we can…

Today we learnt: Clutches aren’t cheap for a 1998 Nissan Altima and El Gallo Giro is L.A.’s finest purveyor of Tacos al Pastor. Sally narrowly avoided ordering Tacos de Trompa, translated euphemisticallly as ‘pork’. The best case scenario is probl’y ’snout’. Shall never look at “Trumper’s Corner” in the Somerset County Gazette in quite the same way.

4 days to the road trip. Got meself insured today through an antipodean site. They’ll spend 12,000 Australian Dollars on repatriating my remains if need be. Until mid April, anyway. And I might win an Ipod…

The Skype me button on the right… Very soon we’ll be in Mexico and at TelMex’s mercy once again, so download Skype by pressing that ‘call me’ button and give us a ring on the computer… Tanya…

Also, I’m working on some interwebbery for a local nutritionist- have a gander at the design, the brief for which was “lush and green”. Am quite chuffed with the look, but it’s preliminary draft.

Just found a few pictures hiding on me camera’s internal memory. Here’s something of a reunion for the ‘Williams’ side of the clan from round Beth’n’Ali’s wedding time… click pic for bigger and Flickry goodness.
After 24 hours of suspecting a box of kitchenware (including good knives, ceramic bowls, and ‘erbs) had either fallen off the truck unnoticed on the trip South, been nicked, or donated to the poor boys and girls by accident, it turned up at the bottom of our plastic tower of crap in the garage. Not before a thorough examination of everything else in the 95 degree heat of the garage was performed this morning, mind. But it looks like we’re more or less packed for Mexico now. I’ve got all manner of clothes left in the garage, but if I haven’t missed an item of clothing in the last 4 months of living out of a suitcase, i reckon I won’t be needing it…

Anyroad, to celebrate we went to see ‘A History of Violence’ in the cinemamovie theater. I knew it wasn’t going to be a film Sita’d be mad for, but then again, she’s a big Sopranos, Medium and Millenium fan which can be pretty unflinching at times. I should have gone with my first impression mind, as she wasn’t impressed. “Full of clichés” apparently. Anyway, it wasn’t as good as the critics are making out, but nowhere near as bad as Sita’ll tell you neither. Nuanced performances, occasional Cronenberg gore and suspense aplenty. If you could sit there with your critic friends and discuss violence, society and the voyeuristic, almost participant-observer, nature of the filmgoing experience, maybe it would be better. Not for me though. I don’t really recommend it, for the record. Wallace and Gromit’s out tomorrow…

But we won’t be going to see that just yet ‘cos we’re off to the Sunset Strip to see Devandra Banhart sing and play his little hippy socks off tomorrow evening, so hopefully that’ll be lovely. A bientot.

Just testing to see if you can embed flash objects in blogs… If there’s a corporate advert for Serenity below, then mission accomplished:

The latest on the move:
Not sure whether we can do the trip up North- funds and other stuff are making things tricky. We had planned to head up on Thursday. May not happen after all…
Atticus is staying with his grandparents who are reluctant to let him go. Which frankly beggars belief. Sally & I installed a “Doggy Door” in the garage so he now has free range with Martin’s tools and HAM radio.

The latest on consumption of media:
First off- Serenity is the best Sci-Fi film evah. I’m fixin’ to do a fully-fledged review. But in the meantime, see it.
Am nearing the end of Pratchett’s latest paperback- Going Postal, and is something of a return to form for him. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The latest on boring tech stuff (seriously, skip this):
I was more than happy to get my PDA working again and even had a 1GB SD card full of episodes of QI on it which I’d started to watch. I was starting to remember my American dictionary two-letter Scrabble word s better too. Anyroad, the screen suddenly went blank, the controls sluggish, next thing I knew it was powering off and refusing to come back to life. It’s going back to Texas today hopefully for a replacement and not another sub-par repair. If it happens again I’m going to angle for a new Treo.

Sally’s laptop- the saga continues. First off, it wasn’t connecting to the interweb and wouldn’t let me reinstall ME to fix it. Its internal floppy and CD-ROM don’t work, but i have an external CD-ROM so I managed to install XP on it. Then I partitioned off another section to install ME back on it, planning to remove the XP part later.., it rebooted with the (blank) ME partition in DOS, and now i can’t do nowt ‘cos it can’t use the USB CDROM nor the internal, nor the floppy. It’s now in pieces on the table and I’m going to take it to Downey Computer Repairs to see if they can fish the (impossible to find) hard drive out of it then give me a 44-40 pin adapter to install ME on it with my desktop. It’s frustrating stuff.

Sorry ’bout all that. Still aiming to get round to emails but there’s tons to do (and more webdesignery in the offing- I’m learning about Online Shopping Carts…) and until our plans coalesce there’s nowt much to say. Hang on in there, and in the absence of postings on this blog, have a gander’s at James Shaw’s blog which is extremely well written when it’s not about sport, which is, however you dress it, sport.

Also, coming soon to these pages: Anecdotes. I don’t have nearly enough anecdotes and need to work on some. It’s not enough to travel the world and come back with pretty photos and a blanket description of yer travels. So I’m going to work on some tales. This is partially inspired by Adam and Joe’s XFM radio show and the incredible oral history tradition that runs through the Cambell family.

We’re back! Sleep deprived by Continental but well cared for by Sally & Martin. Shall slowly get around to answering emails- thanks everyone. Atticus is grand, he’s off the fried eggs and back onto dog biscuits, but still has his Kirkland Premium Ham late suppers. The “buns” seem to be thriving. The garden looks grand and my Zire 72’s back from the repair shop and I’ve just reinstalled Scrabble. Life is good.

Sad to learn, however, that Stu and Anne’s hamster, Paulie (2003-2005) from Poole, passed away. He was the one that started the whole pet-owning thing round our way, opening Sita’s eyes to the joys of having non-humans around the house. Adieu, then Mr. Paulie, you had a lot of personality for one tiny rodent.

Off to Kilcar tomorrow- Exeter -> Belfast and on to County Donegal. Back Sundayish. Flippin’ marvelous to see Bert, Anne, Stu and friends at the weekend in London. Met media types, danced to DJ Bert, had pasties, kebabs and sunday roasts and finally got something back from the Salvation Army. Cheers everyone. For Kilcar photos from 3 yrs ago, or was it 2… click here Blogging may resume properly in MEJICO…

here you go, a lot of photos from b & a off to london manana

So many photos of lovely weddings, geneva, provence, and other stuff and so little time to shove them up on the interweb. luckily the first in that list has been covered by the ever able Flash so have a look at here beautifully crafted page of (little sis) Beth and Ali’s wedding.

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

Just hope the taxi is too

We’re busy packing up stuff for tomorrow’s epic journey but not too busy to scan in this leaflet from Prague’s Museum of Communism. They’re a little down on it to be honest… Anyroad, if you look at the location of the place at the bottom, it’s ‘upstairs from McDonalds, Next to the Casino’. We made it to the casino, but we weren’t up for the McGhoulash Happy Meal.

Also, it’s yer last chance to order fancy American exports before we leave- nylons, chocolate and chewing gum anyone? A militarily enforced democracy? Creationist high school biology textbooks? Comment away your order below

While I’m obviously thinking of the people affected by this latest full contact natural confrontation, especially the 10,000 poor and immobile who are holed up in an American football stadium with no A/C, I can’t help worrying about the possibility of flight cancellations. We’re leaving on Wednesday morning from LAX then on to Newark and eventually Bristol, UK on Thursday. Friday’s the day of me little sister and Ali’s wedding/commitment/knees-up and I will be gutted if we don’t make it.

Continental Airlines were bad enough last time in perfect travelling conditions (miserable flight staff, inept announcers, no free booze, same movies shown in both directions, National Express-quality food, crappy overhead TVs, cretinous security folk…) so Jebus knows what it’ll be like this time around. At least they don’t use the verb ‘to deplane’ like some airlines, but you do hear about there being a lot of ‘weather’. Ah well, as long as they get us to the church stately home in the Quantock Hills of Somerset on time I’ll be happy.

Can’t compare it to yesterday’s screening of Serenity in London (great review from Londonist here). but the 40 year old virgin and Rilo Kiley & John Cale gig were not bad at all. Sita reckoned that 40-yr-old was the best film of the Summer yet, she might be right, i laughed a lot for a (sober) matinee… still, roll on Serenity.
It hit 96 degrees in Downey yesterday hence all these trips to the air-conditioned cinema, shall be v. glad to see clouds come Thursday.
A few photos from yesterday here…

or google talked or yahoo messengered… I’m loving this internet telephony malarky. Victims so far include:
Mum & Dad, Meg & Matt, Jesse, Roberta, Flash and Atticus
Download Skype now and give us a bell: www.skype.com
Me user name’s gwynfisher, natch…

Lessons learnt today:
Unless you’re a huge Terry Gilliam fan, give Brothers Grimm a wide, wide berth.
Fish and chips is one of the best menu items in Maggie’s Pub, L.A.
We’re off to see a Rilo Kiley gig tomorrow. Yay.
Wall Mart’s saving grace is its air conditioning.