We went shopping for basics for the house and got to put our trolley on a special trolley escalator thing. Which (almost) made up for spending an hour or so in Target. Life´s what you make it.

Trolleylator? Cartelevator?

Here’s a few photos from our new abode. So far we’ve bought 3 shelves, two computer desks, a sofa, an armchair, a dining table and are in the process of connecting the house to the interwebs. Once they’re up and running we’ll be moving in. We also met the neighbours who seem a very nice bunch and seem amenable to energetic little black dogs.

Anyroad, we’re off yard saling. A bientot mes amis.

and signed the rental contract today.

It’s in Alameda. Details and pix to follow 🙂

View Larger Map

Monica’s gatos, doin’ what they do. Yesterday during a sunny interval.

… lost a couple of games of boggle and then embarked on a news round up.

Inspired get-out-of-school antics in Mexico .
If we don’t find a place soon, here’s plan B
Watch your screws in Germany.
Complete your American Dream Kit with a Taser/mp3 player

It’s raining. Santa Cruz tomorrow, possibly.

As you were.

Clarkson

Here it is, on the second or 1st floor (depending on your cultural background) of the grey house.

It´s not very schipperke friendly and has a less than perfect parking situation but it´s a possibility. Breakfast with T was grand though (Hi T!).

Still no news on the job front, mind. It´ll come together soonish. And today it´s not raining so I might get to go out and find things to photograph. I just shoved some up on Flickr that are the result of me moping in the car while Sita sprang into action and there’re a couple of shots in the tunnel to Alameda with the camera set to “Fireworks”…

So we’ve seen about 5 apartments/houses since me last post, none of which have met our exacting standards. We’ve more to investigate tomorrow. Er, I’m losing a lot at scrabble. Real life scrabble that is, and am seeking refuge right now in extended Sunday evening DVD viewing (Big Love), which in turn reminded me of this clip from The IT Crowd…

I resolved to blog more for the new year. Not deliver quality posts…

…at least in the UK the sky had the common courtesy not to rain so much. On the plus side I inherited a lovely woolly jumper from me dad and once the central heating kicks in, it’s fair balmy round here. Everyone else couldn’t sleep what with the wind picking up trees and cars and slamming them into each other and new and vibrant waterways opening up in the garden, but a happy side effect of the jetlag is that I was blissfully unaware of it all.

So I updated this blog to the latest version of wordpress and somehow lost all the categories in the process. Arse. And I can’t create new ones because the database is buggered, on top of that I didn’t make a backup since I had tested the process with some of my other installations first with no problems at all. Hey ho. No one every used the categories anyway, but the ‘blogroll’ (stupid name) used to be split into peeps, podcasts and sites I’d made and isn’t anymore.

Plans for today? Translate agaveweb.com into English and set it up as a bilingual site, a conference call at 12.30ish, take Big Love Season 2 back to the video emporium, finishing touches to me CV and finally, maybe seek shelter in the cinema and watch “I Am Legend” with Mr. W. Smith. That’s if I can charter a boat to take me down the road to the Grand Lake Theater (sic).

We had a look at a few apartments in the Alameda area this morning after a hearty breakfast with Liz. The Oakland ones are pretty depressing to be honest. We put in an application for a nice house there, good area, one bedroom and a dark room for developing photos but decided against it because of the lack of “hook-ups” which is Americanese for places to put a washing machine and tumble drier. Also the Schipperke would not be welcome… All important factors. Still, this is the time of year when places suddenly become vacant apparently so there’s no rush and there’s also the other buy-a-house possibility that fills me with existential dread but might be a better idea in the long run.

I’m going pseudo-vegetarian to try to offset my pork/beef/lamb footprint from the last two years. My favourite meat dishes are more expensive here and there certainly aren’t plentiful cheap tacos nor donner kebabs just around the corner, but anyway the plan is to not eat animal flesh more than once a week so that I won’t be a burden if we go round someone’s house and they’re cooking for us. Otherwise, it’ll be cheese sandwiches, potatoes, and Branston pickle all the way. Also, all bets are off if I cross any international borders.

I’m applying for web design gigs off of craigslist.org and generally kicking my CV into shape. I’ve a few on the boil, but open to offers, anyone fancy a website?