Stuff

News and pix soon from a very smooth transition from Santa Cruz to Downey via the Artichoke Centre of the World. Thanks to everyone involved.

Lovely, lovely night round Sudarat’s house. Photos for your delight and delectation here.

Last few bargains

Atticus’s wound was going down nicely… too nicely. It healed up, stopped oozing and started swelling again and a trip to the vets was in order this morning. $150 bucks later and the drain’s back in, the 15 inch collar’s on and, oh, he has tapeworm (don’t worry, Liz, it’s a one-off pill treatment, wil clear up in no time, promise, and we’re thinking of getting him Doggy health insurance for the next year…) (please don’t change you mind…). He needs constant care and attention and I’ve got a million things to do… Honest.

I’ve been backing up DVDs before our trip… I was testing the copy of Spaced and happened upon the episode where Daisy gets a dog while Mike and Tim are out paintballing. The episode ends with Tim saying something along the lines of “I’ve never been this happy, I literally have no responsibilities at all, and everything has been sorted out”, then the camera zooms back to the scottie dog that’s just been adopted… with the attendant horror film effects.

I think I mentioned what a grand job we did of getting rid of our belongings, but there’s still lots to do. Coupled with waiting/working on stuff for GoJoven and Triangle Speakers we’ve been a tad busy of late. Luckily I have my trusty new laptop to slice through webwork with. It’s got this lovely xbrite technology screen so I’ve been browsing through old photos and they look like they’re on a lightbox. It rocks.

In other news I found out this morning (thanks Suw and Liz) that there was a general tsunami warning active for an hour last night after a 7.2 earthquake off of Northern California. We were barbecuing shrimp and steak, drinking sierra nevada and working our way through Joss Whedon’s (superlative deleted) Firefly series. I think the first thing I’d grab would have been… I’ll have a think about that one… My instincts want to say the beautifully barbecued shrimp, but let’s not be hasty here…

Via Amy’s blog I found Pat Duffy’s campaign page. I shall link to it repeatedly to try and boost her pageranking. A nicer politician, you’ll not find. And she came to Taunton after coming up with the plan at 1am in The Spoke… PAT DUFFY 2005! or 2006 or, you get the idea. Have a picture of Pat with a painted cow in Atlanta at the American Sociomological Association Conference…

And it’s great. It’s 10 to 1 in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I’m too busy installing programs, migrating files etc on me gorgeous new laptop. That’s the easy part, the tricky bit’s filling in the mail-in rebates… I was trying to export my Bookmarks from Firefox and found that Firefox, God bless its cotton code, will create a webpage of them: here you go: This is how I spend my days…
See you soon- gwyn

Last night I had my first clam & garlic pizza from Pizza My Heart. It’s disturbingly like chicken pizza that washed up on shore and sat in the sun. And speaking of sun, I’m all pink from sitting out in my front garden yardsaling all day haggling with strangers over 25 cent crap. It was fun all round…
We sold a ton of stuff;
operated a special bargains-for-monolingual-Spanish-speakers policy;
Atticus is kennel-less (10 bucks- ker ching);
we can’t seat more than 4 people in the house at a time;
can wash, but not dry, clothes;
can’t cut the lawn;
have a smaller library;
have fewer plants to water;
and we’re about $750 better off than last week. That will change once I get to Fry’s electronics though. Mwa ha ha ha, as they say…

& Tanya, if you’re reading, your plants have been soaking up the H2O nicely. Happy LAX

We bought it yesterday from CostCo and after one cursory listen can make the shocking revelation that if you like Coldplay, you’ll like this album. It’s more varied than previous efforts and has more electronica bubbling in the background. There’s more prominent guitars, more confident delivery and they don’t have Gwyneth singing back-up vocals, so they’re doing something right.
I was none too pleased when Radiohead stopped doing campfire sing-alongs about plastic watering cans and self-loathing and hit the ‘noodle’ button on their synthesisers instead for 3 albums. So fair play to Chris and his mates for keeping to what works (and people obviously like) with minimal changes.
Jayziz, I’m getting old…

It should in fact have been called the Mystery of the Trullian in UC Davis. I was on the ever-marvellous flickr.com and saw he’d posted a photo of a chair just like the one I was selling so I pounced on the chance to comment. He wrote back, his name’s Chris Lewis. He’s from Trull, he went to Richard Huish 6th form college (as did I), he’s at Bristol Uni but is on his year abroad thing and has an American girlfriend. He chose UC Davis over UC Santa Cruz because Davis had a better website (D’oh!) and the Taunton photos he posted originally were part of a web design assignment at Uni. He rates Taunton over Sacramento for entertainment (Agreed). He also owned the same (OfficeMax) chair as me, but only got $20 when he sold his as opposed to my $25, but the cost of living is different in SC… he now owes me 1 x Milk Chocolate McVities HobNob and our paths may cross in the Wetherspoons pub in East Reach… It’s a funny old interweb

Sita’s (and thus technically ‘our’) little doggy’s been poorly for the last few days. Sita noticed a golfball-sized lump on the side of his neck. He’s such a furry little bugger it was hard to see it. So we took him to the vets and they immediately shaved the lump and put him under to sort it all out. He did alright in the operation, but they’re not sure what it was so we’re waiting on the results of the biopsy. Hopefully it’s some kind of cyst that will go away with meds. The hollow lump’s still there but they put a tube in so the last of the fluids can drain out. It looks revolting, like a bone’s sticking out or something and the fluid’s none too pleasant neither. They’ll be taking the tube out on tomorrow afternoon and in the meantime he has to have lots of hot compresses and antibiotics (wrapped in gourmet ham). He’s also got to wear one of those nirvana video style lamp shade things which he carries off with a certain quiet dignity. Bless him. Pains me to say it but I might end up missing little Asparagus when we leave…

Tanya had us round last night and cooked fancy vegetarian fare plucked straight from the organic farmers market. T’was lovely. We played a bit of Scategories until it got too heated (it may be worth paying someone to independantly referree these games) and then moved on to Scrabble (where the rules are more easy to arbitrate). I had a bit of dizziness (I’m coming off some meds myself and the booze probably didn’t help) and we abandoned that and went home.

Today’s been productive too. Walked the space dog. Did more translation/web work on the Triangle Speakers website. Went to Brasil for breakfast (the restaurant, natch) and for this evening, maybe a film. I’d like to start reviewing stuff again for the site, the last one I did was Mala Educacion back in Feb and I’m slacking off. Now I have acres of free time ahead it’s going to be fun all the way. I’m probably going to buy a fancy laptop any day now and start work on a website for my freelancing in Mexico stuff too.

Eeh well, back to the warm compresses and bumpy doggy. More soon, as per usual…

All our furniture now has price tags on it and things are flying of the shelves like shelves. While I was packing things up I came across this Spanish children’s book “Yo, el perezoso”. I bought it in the Skyview flea market a few years back. It translates roughly as “I, Sloth” and I’ve scanned it in for posterity. Have a read of it here.

Mornin’ all. I’ve been reliably informed that it’s miserable weather in the south west of England and much of Wales right now, so for those of you who don’t check in on my flickr page that often, I’ve done another of those Picasa-made pages with photos from yesterday. Please note the cloudless skies, warm sand and icy water. And feckless doggie.

This one’s from when the horizon suddenly filled up with seagulls and pelicans in some kind of feeding frenzy. NPR’s also been on the blink all day, skipping like a scratched CD. These are both evidence of ‘glitches in the Matrix’, I believe.

Unless I sell Sita’s bike this morning I’m going to go for a ride up the coast, sans chien, which’ll be a novelty. I also have to get back to Stu, Anne & Bert about a ‘Duke of Edinburgh Award for Grown-ups’ weekend sometime in July. I don’t know which weekends we’re available yet nor if sita’s up for kendal mint cake and trig point related fun. It’ll be a laugh however it plays out. Maybe Snowdonia?

http://www.craigslist.org/sby/fur/77009393.html
But in the meantime, make me an offer I can’t refuse…

V. fun night out with Sita, Sudurat and Tanya last night. Mobo sushi, bookshop Santa Cruz, Red, all culminating in trying to stay awake and watch The Aviator. The first 25 minutes? 2.5 Lulus, then I passed out. Sita gives the whole thing 4 Klems- “Solid entertainment”

Thanks Mr. Jesse Barba for the phone call this afternoon, tidy to catch up like, mush.

Temporary Retirement ROCKS! as they say round here… It’s, like, ARE-SUM! BRING IT ARN! YAY!!!

Don’t tell anyone. Till 5 pm Pacific Standard Time anyway…
Jayziz what a long strange trip it’s been… Break out the champagne, or the Rosenblum’s 2002 Zinfandel at the very least. It’s going to take a while to get used to this…

The holidays begin tomorrow! This is my last day @ work, I’ll be handing over keys, budgets, petty cash, supervision notes, sustainability plans, minutes, agendas, business cards, proposals, memos, emails and a LOT of stress to people who should have it much easier since my job is going to be made into two full time positions… I can start putting weight back on and smiling naturally! YAY!
I cannot wait till the end of the day. We’re planning on Sushi at Mobo’s and wine, wine and more wine. There’s also a farewell luncheon planned at 11:30-1 at El Alteños in Watsonville. Pass by if you’re in the area.
Went to Monica’s (’surprise’ in that we didn’t know she knew) birthday in Oakland last night and saw lots of lovely peeps again. Talking of which, thanks to last week’s marathon DVD session with M & D, Peep Show is gaining notoriety among the Piedmont cognescenti; looks like it’s time for a US release.
Anyroad, shall be blogging more often from now on, reviewing stuff, thinking about novel ideas. Next week I’m back at the web site thing. Working with GoJoven on a brochure & translation, 5-a-Day on their website and the Triangle Speakers on making a Spanish version of their website. Oh. and selling everything we own and making various pets’ transition to their new families as trauma free as possible (for them and young sita) and planning a the move to Mexico. This is all stuff I really enjoy though so, it’s all good.
Am v. excited all round. Check back here for regular updates.
Here’re some photos from Wednesday evening’s Lionel Cantu Memorial Event at UCSC too, if you fancy. I should have brought my camera to Oakland last night, mais non. Blogs, pictures and reviews all the way from now on. Cheers

Blimey. Quite a weekend. Sita & Tanya’s b-day party on Saturday was extremely well attended by with tons of lovely people dropping by. No dancin’ till 3 am this time round, just campfire songs in the garden. I recently let the neighbours know we’re moving so they’re probably counting the days, just like us. There’s photos to come. Anyroad, Breakfast on the wharf the next day; we got there at 11:31 and just missed the breakfast menu, almost prompting a Falling Down type reaction from Matt if not everyone. We had clam chowder, prawn cocktail salad and suchlike, then watched sea lions and starfish for a bit. Starfish aren’t fish, so what are they? Sits reckons they’re stars. A quick google for ’starfish’ and ‘phylum’ yields: Echinodermata… Not something we’d’ve worked out on our own on Sunday morning…
Then off home for a DVD marathon of the first series of Peep Show and further barbecuing with Monica and Daniel, a whistlestop tour of Santa Cruz by night with cocktails in Red. Kill Bill 1 & 2, and bed before you knew it.
Today was sedate, and now I’m at work unable to work. Definitely need a good night’s sleep- there’s going to be quite a lot going on as I try and pass on the tricks of the trade to various people in the next 4 (FOUR! FOUR! FOUR! FOUR! FOUR!) days. Alrighty, cannot think right now, time to head home. ‘Tis Tanya’s birthday today and we’re off out for a quiet drink later on maybe that’ll clear things up a bit. or not.