Stuff

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.

This article comes along…

I get Martin Luther King Day and Sita gets Memorial Day. Bar-b round ours again. Weather depending… looks like Sat’ll be a hot day and cool off nicely for the evening. I’m trying not to get used to this…

Click for Santa Cruz, California Forecast”

How cool would it have been to have a Nigerian con artist on my guestmap? I have vivid memories of studying Nigeria in Geography and colouring along the coastline in a 3D blue pen. Something about Bilharzia snails too. Or was that the Aswan High Dam? anyroad, here’s my email from Africa. Click on “More” below for the full correspondance between me and Maru from Lagos:

Good Day,
I develop an interest on your items been displayed. my mode of payment is through western union money order,please send me your full information if you are ok with this mode of payment, and i want you to know that it will be pickup the item via fedex immediately you recieve approval confirmation from Western Union Money Order that payment has been approved because my customer are really in need of two of this items, please send me your full name and address and phone number so that i can proceed with payment IF you agree with this terms.

Thanks.

Gwyn F to Mary May 23 (1 day ago)

Hello Mary,
My full name is Gwyn F and you can reach me by phone on 831 XXX XXXX. I’m a little confused on whether you want to buy all the books or just the two you mention. If you just want two books then that’s fine because they don’t weigh much. Sending all the books (internationally?) would be too much trouble and cost for me to package them and fedex them,

Call me or send an explanatory email as to your intentions,

Many thanks,
Gwyn

Mary Claudys to Gwyn (16 hours ago)

the two will be ok,so kindly add the shiping fee to the total amount. thanks.pls reply soon because i nee those books urgently.

Gwyn to Mary Claudys (14 hours ago)
Hi Mary,
All the books are still for sale. Please tell me: Your full name, address & country,
Which two books you are interested in.

My full name is Gwyn F, I’ve never used Western Union before so, tell me what you need to know and how to do this. Thanks,
Gwyn

Mary Claudys to me : 12:24 pm (6 hours ago)

My full name is Maru Claudys i reside in lagos nigeria,i will love to buy all the books.I was fortunate to
make a lot of sales today in my store and i really give glory to God for this. In this case i’m trying to get out tomorrow to refill the store and i fill if you could sell out the whole books with a discount this might just be a favour to my side.Abouit the shiping,dont worry,i have a fedex account i will do the pickup scheduling,you are just to package it.Let me know the total fee for all and know when to make the payment.As soon as i make the payment to western union,they will send you a notification mail through the email given t them by the buyer to let you know that sum amount were paid in your name by a (buyer by name …) and they will send the money order to the address given as soon as they receive the tracking number of the shipment puting the two party in a safe transaction. As soon as they receive the tracking number they will send you an unconditional approval mail which will let you know that the money order has been sent to your address and you will receive it in 3-7 days upon receipt of the shipment iformation. Thanks.

If you are still interested, kindly let me have your full name and address wuth your phone number so tht they can contact you with a call should there is any error.Thanks Mary.

Gwyn F to Mary, (bcc:sita) (5 hours ago)

Dear Maru,
Sorry, no deal. It sounds far too complicated. Next time you’re in the Santa Cruz area, feel free to drop by. Thanks for your enquiries.
love gwyn

BARGAIN BOOK SALE Get’em while they’re hot…

Also win “A Primer of Jungian Psychology” if you can guess 5 or more of the 10 books on the sale list I haven’t read (i.e. Sita’s books). Comment your entries below

I charge 32 bucks an hour for web design and easily spent that putting that page together and entering ISBNs. Really have to think about that in the future. Right now, i’m off to priceline.com to look at flights.

We had a nice old evening round Joop’s last night. Barbecue, guitar, office gossip, fine wines and house prices. Anyroad, went to town this morning to pick up tickets for star wars and sell some books and the streets were deserted ‘cos there was to be some parade or other. I wished I had my real camera with me, but I took a few snaps with me PDA. Sudarat and friends are coming round any second and I’m in charge of rice. Oh, the responsibility. Might manage some proper blogging tomorrow. Feels like it’s been a while and I think we have some dates for the next few months’ plans… The Gaytán-Fisher World Tour 2005-2006 should be passing through: L.A., Zummerzet, London, Brissle, Bournemouth, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Zummerzet again, L.A., Nevada, Guadalajara… anyroad, as i said last time, still have to buy the tickets. The selling everything we own has so far netted: $15 for a guitar, and $27.50 for some books. Hoping to get a fair bit more and buy a superlight notepad/lappy for freelance webdesigning and suchlike. Blogging from the beach…

In exactly one month we’ll be leaving our house and heading off on the road again. L.A. first, for a week, then back to blighty, then CA, then UK, then MX… and we haven’t even bought our tickets yet. Maybe this will be the weekend when everything starts to happen. There’s going to be bargains aplenty on craigslist.org. Books, electronics, CDs, everything must go… Would anyone like to bunnysit for an indefinite period of time? Bunnycam optional. Buyer collects.

10 working days left till I’m outta here. They’re getting their money’s worth in the meantime, mind. I thought I was busy before… anyroad, I’m putting the comments back on to see if they get spammed again after 2 weeks absence, we’ll see.

…Medibot

Not pictured: how I feel this morning…

Party chez nous tomorrow evening at 8. Tell your friends…

Sita and I took Atticus’s on his daily constitutional yesterday up by Davenport. I’d been there before a few months ago and took some pictures, anyroad, thought it’d be a nice place to show Sita. Also Tanya mentioned that her friend had seen dozens of whales in Santa Cruz last week and so I thought it’d be a good place to look for them. It was fairly overgrown but we pushed our way through the grass and got to the edge of the cliff and watched two whales who were chillin’ in the water. It was not easy to photo them, as evidenced above, but they were impressive and huge. Surfacing every few minutes and blowing water around. And we didn’t have to get on a boat or nowt. So that was grand. My first whales. My leg started itching after 10 minutes or so, and I removed an engorged tick from me. If blogging stops in a few days, that’ll be the Lyme’s disease. But that was nothing to poor little Atticus who had tons of the buggers in his fur. We spend 15 minutes picking them off him, took him to the dog park by way of a reward. Went home barbied steak and asparagus, got through fair amount of wine, downloaded some 80s choons in time for next Friday’s shindig, watched some Firefly episodes with Mya and Liz, removed more ticks and crashed at 1ish.
I still have some PDA photos from the week to upload, those’ll be the dental ones and a few of Thursday’s walk round Seacliff.

Sita and I just read through together (a beautiful experience) Jesse’s 100 things list. It’s fantastic. Amongst many other things, I learnt that he doesn’t stink. So all that time, it was me…
Inspiring.

I liked this but not the airline itself.