opening my e-cards…

So much to post about last week, so I’ll probably end up not writing anything so just in case, highlights included: putting the world to rights with Roberto, fine eats and DIY with Martin & Sally, painless tax filing with Sally’s accountant, catching up with lots of friends and family, Guelaguetza (sp?) oaxacan restaurant in central LA, Frolf with Matt (FRisbee goLF, although I’m told only newbies call it that as it sounds far too precious), red zinfandel comparative tasting with Meg, boozing with Liz, and hassle-free immigration and dog repatriation. and more I probably forgot. So that’s that for now, on to what inspired me to blog today.

Toilet repairs.

So the downstairs toilet wasn’t filling/flushing right, so I had to repeat the DIY shop experience I had in Santa Cruz a few years back when I went to buy a replacement part. I spent a few minutes explaining what I needed with hand gestures and everything, a flapper thing basically, and the bloke got what I was after. It’s called a flapper. Today I went to Santa Tere to a Tlapaleria (DIY shop, more common than the Spanish Spanish, Ferreteria) and had the same conversation in Spanish. Turns outs it’s called un Flapper. Things they never teach you at school…

Atticus is settling in. He’s going to be sleeping in my office to keep him from barking at the various sounds that occur during the night here (road sweepers, door-to-door salesmen, Ralphy Gutierrez, peripatetic mariachi bands, etc.) He met Juan, the water bloke today and barked away at him. (Bonafont’s just hiked the price up to 23 pesos a garafon and I think Atticus sensed that…) but I’ll forgive him anything after his exemplary behaviour on the plane and in the airports yesterday. As I wrote that he started barking up a storm again… ah well.

For proper blogging, there’s always M & D’s travelogue over at ChiliCatInLa.blogspot.com they’re in Oaxaca… And that’s all for today, glad to be back home again and looking forward to catching up with the Guanatos crowd and seeing all the semana santa shenanigans. Hasta pronto!

I’ve been working since 8:30 this morning, and things keep piling up. It’s 5.45 i’m still at work and have tons to do. Hope the dog’s not being too loud in the back garden, he gets well narky if he hasn’t dragged us on a walk. I’m going to have to finish this at home… Just had to vent somewhere.

I’ve just realised all my entries are looking very much the same as the ones exactly a year ago. This time last year I rang me nanny to wish her a happy St David’s Day. Can’t do that this year cos of the prohibitively expensive international calling rate. So mum, dad or bethan, could you pass on my nationalistic wishes, thanks. I spoke to nanny (and grandma) on Skype on Sunday though, so that’s a start. With the whole webcam/ video conferencing thing no less. The average age of a skype user definitely peaked that day…

The picture is me in me (old) manu chau t-shirt and goes in tandem with my cars that resemble where they’re parked Flickr set. Brits whose clothes resemble where they’re slouched…

Sita’s off to Tequila this avo and Arandas on Friday. I thought I’d be able to meet up somewhere with the tour but apparently not. She’s strangely apprehensive about the whole thing. Personally I’d love to do a 4 day tequila tasting but i suppose we’re just different in that regard… what else? erm…

Oh yeah, Pat’s become a new slave owner of a beautiful dog, Devlin. There’s some photos round K’s website. He looks like a character. Get him on Dogster and we’ll corral him with Atticus… or at least give him a bone. 🙂

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…

On the same day sita gets name checked in Amy’s blog I discover Jesse’s a nascent blogger too. Which means I have another bookmark in my Firefox ‘Peeps with stuff to say’ folder to check on about 8 times a day. At least one the sites has usually been updated by then. Others in the ‘check-every-2-or-3-hours’ folder include…

A daily dose of imagery Arty Photo blog from Toronto
Boing Boing Interesting links aplenty
My boyfriend is a twat Sarky rants from Brit in Belgium.
Med Rib Blog Annelise lives in Rugby and takes care of kiddies. What’s not to like?
Sighclub 2nd degree of separation from Amy, Kathy + others…
Flash’s journal I’ve known this woman on and off for nigh on 15 years and learn more every day…
This Is Chris Great film reviews, essays and enthusiastic posting.
AdRants.com The world of advertising actually has its moments.

There’s another folder for checking on less often, but that’s quite enough for one day…

Sita came home with an 6gig IPod mini yesterday, which she let me take for a test run today. She’s been mp3ifying all manner of CDs I never knew we had. The ‘mug me’ white headphones are really comfortable and sound great. I might have to invest in something similar to plug into me zire. I’m listening to Jon Ronson’s series from radio 4, which is a Anglo version of This American Life. You can download MP3s from his site. Jon’s been on TAL a couple of time reading extracts from Them. So no coincidence there. Anyroad, that’s plenty to be getting on with for today.

Sorry to keep posting about BASTARD national organisations, but I really have to vent somewhere. Feel free to skip to the happy-go-lucky post below about our holiday snaps from France last year rather than this lengthy diatribe…

So we got a decent tax refund this year two days ago. Unfortunately today we received a bill from the auditors for more than that amount for the year before. We went to H & R block- a national tax preparation franchise where we go and pay over the odds for tax stuff specifically to avoid all this crap. Last year I’d done a few web design projects so it wasn’t a straightforward joint filing for both our jobs but a fully-fledged small business affair. We spent over an hour itemising purchases like cameras, motherboards, software, scanners, even petrol and travel expenses to file. At the end of it we still had to pay a grand or so to keep the US in missiles and border patrols. Anyway. Today’s letter says we didn’t declare our earnings for the business. So after unearthing our documents from last year from the bowels of the garage we went over the forms we sent in through H&R and there is no record whatsoever of all this stuff we did. Even the W2s aren’t there. So we might end up having to pay $1300 dollars extra (which we can ill afford) unless Watsonville office can find all our stuff that they lost.

I’m extremely pissed off with all this. They’d better ring us up with news that they’re sorry, they’ve found all the forms they never sent, they’ll pay whatever they need to because of their gross incompetence. I’m a bit doubtful though, because we have no evidence whatsoever that we went through all this last March. It seems like the woman who prepared our forms doesn’t even work there anymore, and we don’t have her name because she put Richard someone or other on the forms. Arrgghhh. Repito, Arrgghhh.

Thanks for bearing with me… have a link to CuteOverload for fluffy animals as an antidote to the venom contained herein…