Marching Band wouldn’t have me (see previous entry)

Stocked up on some videos this morning… Los Infiltrados (forget the name in English, the Scorsese oscar one), Borat (because I feel I ought to have an opinion), The Last King of Scotland, and Apocalypto (apocalypso?). I made a dog’s dinner of the oscar nominations this year because I hadn’t seen most of them. In February’s film reviews there’s hardly anything too, so I hope to make up for that a bit this month. The only film I did see in Feb was The Color of Paradise and I was on the verge of tears for the next 5 days after that one so didn’t manage to review it. I may correct that later…

Anyroad, then we went to Home Depot for floor tiles for the bathroom and I’ll be barbying arrachera later. Looks like life’s returned to normal again.

Here’s an addictive little Flash game that’s taking over from Scrabble in my affections for the next day or two. Change the colour of the bottom left tile to join it up with other tiles of that colour until the whole board’s monochrome. Tewbewks: I thrown down the gauntlet: get to the level “do it in less than 26″…

Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, etc…. Lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it. Then with your right hand draw a figure 6 in the air. Like it or not, your foot will change direction.

Had an early start today getting the materials together to extend the visa a bit. They only gave us 30 days, not the usual 180 so we have to apply for more. Shouldn’t be a problem and I’m fairly used to forms after all last week’s fun and games. When we tried to start the car afterwards, though, it wouldn’t do anything at all. The lights worked, the radio worked, and we’d only been gone 30 mins. We got a push start from the peeps who’d just washed our car (maybe water got into the battery???) and we took it home. When I turned the engine off something (possibly the fan) kept going for 40 secs or so. Anyone any good with car problems? and while we’re at it, the water’s on the blink again. Occasionally the street’s water pressure is too low to get it to the tank in the roof, and the pump has never worked. We had a couple of water free days, this weekend I might replace the pump and see where that gets us.

I’ve been configuring zencart today to work in Spanish. I’m not linking to it cos it’s just for testing, but agaveweb.com/zencart is where it’s at. Also on the geekery front, the google pagerank for this page just hit 4/10 which is where I was before switching blogs. This makes me happy… Thanks to all of you who’ve linked here/ blogrolled me, much obliged.

So I can play my “favourite” game of trying to find a decent program to watch before I finish my sandwich…

Having a grand old time of it with Monica and Sunny D. Events so far have included house-hunting, a couple of parties, Colomnos park, markets, dinner parties, computer repairs, and DVDs aplenty (see Film Reviews).

I’m trying to fall back into some kind of routine which should include more regular blogging, but what with 3am cockroach scares and stuff things are still settling down.

Mexican Spanish word of the week: Tope – A road bump/ sleeping policeman thing. Ubiquitous in this particular part of North America. In Spain they’re Guardias tumbados I think, or sleeping (Civil) Guards

Went to a conference today about an hour away, near the bridge thing on the way to San Francisco. Pretty informative, PAPAS appears to be doing it right on helping get dads involved in their families and got a few ideas about how to recruit more families… “Door hangers” is one strategy used which i’m presuming is adverts you put on door knobs on people’s houses, like in that episode of The Simpsons where Bart delivers flyers in a Matrix stylee, and also asking for help from rotary clubs, who’ve been generous enough to Musgrove Hospital Children’s Ward in the past.

One speaker was a little scarey, going on about Wedlock and Marriage and God whispering into the baby’s ear in the womb. He was, rightly, heckled afterwards, but we’d had to hand in our evaluation forms before he graced the stage which was a tad annoying. His grand finale was a little too close for comfort to David Brent’s “Simply the Best” exit. I saw him skulk away from the building afterwards… Granted, we share the same ideas about helping dads who want to be more involved get more involved… but the door should definitely be open for parenting help for father figures in general, non-biological fathers, same-sex couples and all kinds of non-conventional family structures. Hmmm. Well, you can pick and choose what you take away from these things even if you have to put up with a lot of conservative crap along the way. Nice dessert, mind.

Anyroad, just got back and Sita’s nowhere to be seen and her folks are arriving in a few hours so I shall busy myself for a bit around the homestead. Ooh, and while I remember if anyone can recommend me some episodes of This American Life to download I’ve got a long car journey coming up soon and would be glad of advice, cos you get the occasional crap one… comments welcome.

See you later, or “Vi ses s?nare” as they say in Sweden,

Cheers,
“Gywn” (according to my pre-printed conference name sticker)