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…
THANK YOU!, T. for sending us all those photos. Hard copies and CD no less. I noticed that some of them were panoramas and took it as a chance to stitch them together and turn into a virtual tour of Provence. Here’s the panorama page it might take a minute or two on dial up and I’m not sure how many platforms it’ll work on but it’s the first of a few I’m putting together. It’s from when we stopped at a picturesque little village with views of the whole region spanning out and around… Gorgeous. There’s a lot to be said for getting your photos back 7 months later not having seen them during downloading, editing, uploading, blogging etc. They really jog your memory. Other highlights of the trip were Provencale markets, wine tasting, wandering and the Med. coast:
A bit transportationally challenged this morning, so i sorted out Martin’s computer, tried some space saving techniques in the packing in the garage, showered Atticus with attention and filled in some forms ready to send to the American government. Also tried to watch Planet Earth during breakfast but had to turn it off. Watching cave worms spew silk threads to hunt cockroaches doesn’t go well with sourdough toast and butter…
So we planned to spend the afternoon chez the immigration help desk, but it’s closed on monday. However Sita dig some googling and we reckon I’m as legal as they come and just have to file some expensive paperwork and the US will no longer have to feel threatened by my presence… I might even be allowed to leave the states next monday as planned. Here’s hoping… Other fun this afternoon involves filing my taxes round H&R’s offices. Something that never fails to calm me down and cheer me up. Ay, Mexico… tan lejos de dios pero tan cerca de mi corazon…
The I cleaned up 6 months of the bunnies Augean mess this morning. Hammered the bits of the run together that had fallen off during the Los Angelean winter. We have a laugh…. lulu, klem and me…
Can’t believe how computer prices have fallen in the last 6 months… I’m going to splash out on an external 100 gb min. hard drive, blank DVDs and some other bits and pieces once I get the chance. That’s after I’ve paid my bloody taxes again. Anyone in Mexico need anything? Para ti, precio especial, amigo, bien barato… Cheers!
Well, we’re here but there’s going to be some form filling/ cheque writing/ queueing fun before the week’s out. They were not happy at LAX last night. and 1:30 am is not the time to be dealing with petty-minded bureaucrats who want to take your green card off you. Luckily Sally and Martin were waiting for us at the airport with their calming influence and Atticus was extremely excited to see us again after his bath earlier that day… Guadalajara airport is a modern affair, a bit like Bristol airport, with friendly staff, expensive but nice locales, ample parking. The taxi driver was great, he recognised us from a previous trip and we talked about politics, universities and sci-fi films. Even though I’d dressed up smart and smiled tons at the check in, no upgrade to 1st class for us. Looks like Sita has to travel alone for that kind of treatment… anyway Mexicana was a nice airline, good food, free full bar, minimal voiceovers about safety etc. and I listened to a goodly few podcasts on the way. Anyway then we arrive in LAX and you can actually feel the karma levels dropping to sub-zero levels around you as you head for the control checks… Whereupon Sita nearly went postal extremely pissed off as they wouldn’t let her talk to the git in control who was examining my case. Eeh well, shall chill out a bit today and take the week as it comes. M & S have done a fine job on the house, I’m not sure there’s much more left to do to be honest. Very impressive all round. Shall have to go and check on the bunnies and see if they’re as happy as Atticus was. Cheers
John Hurt, once Winston in 1984, does a formidable job as the Big Brother figure in V for Vendetta. It’s set in either an alternative reality or in 3 years time, hard to tell which, where Britain is governed by a totalitarian regime bent on power and rampant with corruption. The populace is kept at bay with scares about avian flu terrorists and immigrants and V, the masked protagonist, is out to shake them out of their ovine slumber with some bonfire night pyrotechnics all over London…
I’ve always been fond of Natalie Portman despite her Star Wars travesties but in this film her English accent is a stretch to believe. She sounds like a South African who had a Canadian au-pair. Luckily for her, her lines good enough for you think about what she’s saying rather than how she says it. And in the second half of the film there’s the constant expectation she’s about to launch into Nothing Compares 2U.
There’s constant meditation about the power of ideas and not-so veiled references to US, and to a lesser extent British, politics too. The Bill O’Reilly figure is pleasingly hideous. It’s all too plausible if you ask me. Jose watched it too and reckoned it was more like the PRI than New Labour, but that’s cultural differences for you. He’s right that New Labour hasn’t had any political opponents assassinated (yet), whereas the PRI does have that reputation…
I reckon this film could stand a few repeat viewings. There is a lot of stuff going on and in that sense is a worthy successor to the Matrix (shame about Matrix II & III) for the Wachowski brothers. As for why Alan Moore took his name of it, I’m guessing because it doesn’t go far enough. Although it is daring for a film to have a terrorist as its hero, he’s nowhere near as anarchistic as he could have been. I’m not criticising it for that though, he’s placed as far left as he can be and forces you to consider the whole freedom-figher/ terrorist thing. And there ought to be more films advocating political awakening and revolution.
Stylish, well-scripted and excellently paced I’ve no trouble at all recommending this one.
Alas, we’ve come to the end of out initial lump rent payment of 5 months + deposit, so I had to go to the bank and pay April’s installment. First off, my (may very bad things happen to them) Wells Farrago card wouldn’t cough up enough money to cover it so I was forced to use my offshore Barclay’s card, but even that wouldn’t give me enough. I hightailed it over to another bank with my WF card and it gave me just enough that I could pay the rest with my remaining 40 dollars in my wallet. All this is happening on a very hot afternoon and involves crossing an 8 lane carriageway to move between banks… Anyway, I take a number and wait my turn (40 minutes) to change my remaining dollars, hand over the cash and pay the rent. When it’s my turn at 3:50 I go up to counter number 3 please, and say “well first I need to change these dollars”. And she tells me they don’t do that after half past three. I have this reaction in banks where the red mist comes down and I can barely suppress my anger. I managed not to swear too much and just pointed out how displaying this piece of information could save people a lot of time in the future and she agreed. It’s not her fault, I suppose… but you can choose where you work, same with traffic wardens, immigration officials and Nazi stormtroopers…
There, I’ve vented. And now on to the V for Vendetta review…
Hello to anyone surfing by thanks to the link in Mumpsimus Forum. Thought you might like the phone number for the Columpio place, if so click on the picture for a larger version: Also feel free to comment away or shove yourself on the guestmap… The entry on our weekend to Tequila is either at the bottom of the page or following this link. Enjoy 🙂
Last night Jose and me went to see the late showing of V for Vendetta (V de Venganza) and it was brilliant. Eyes right for a review sometime today. That’s all for now, off to chambear (work) to see if the internet’s back there or not… It’s something of an inconvenience for web design and historical research when you can’t connect to teh intarwebs.
While I was slaving away on Nueva Era Kindergarten and much, much more’s website Sita was off listening to a talk by legendary Mexican Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos. My camera is notoriously fickle in indoors situations especially on full zoom, but she snapped a few nice shots. Who knew that Marquitos was a chain pipe smoker? Anyway all this on Benito Juarez’s bicentennial, which is a holiday for the country, except I had yesterday off instead. If I’d realised that I could have listened to a lecture on neoconservatism from the revolutionary lyricist himself I might have changed it. Hey ho. So we’re off this evening with plan C: watch the footy in a pub. Fernando should be round any second, and possibly Sr. Valdez too…
Had a bit of concerning news about my gran’s health yesterday, but she’s doing much better today. Email me if you’d like to know more.
So last night I didn’t get around to V for Vendetta but stayed in and watched Brokeback Mountain with young Sita. She’s too far ahead of me with the whole Lost malarkey so we have to find times when we can fit it in solo style. I didn’t think Brokeback would be my kind of thing. And I was right. All a bit too slow moving for my liking, I preferred the Brokeback mountain in 30 seconds. With rabbits.version. And I wasn’t too keen on that neither… Anyroad, a review to the right soonish, if I get a chance… Today I’ve been starting on Jose’s mum’s school web site, there’s a few pages up here but most of the links are broken for now. I was fairly happy to have the CSS menu doing what it should and the resizable page width. I’m trying for a cleaner white-spacey look and I’m happy with how the pictures are coming along. I think I’ll need to go by the school to take pics of the kiddies in action.
I met up with Fernando and Ana again this evening to give him back the memory card he lent me and there’s a chance that tomorrow evening will be spent at a football match or the lucha libre & Fernando’s doing the organising. Que buena onda… Either’s fine by me… It’s a good little city this one…
After seeing far too many Che Guevara T-Shirts at last night’s Fiesta de Musica in Av. Chapultepec, i was inspired to follow this tutorial: www.family-portrait-artists.com/ and give Victor Jara a makeover. Shame he looks a bit simian, but it’s my first attempt…
Definitely a fun night, the only band anyone had heard of was Los Amigos Invisibles, who cancelled, so Fernando, Jose and me walked the length of the street a couple of times and decided to adjourn to El Muro, then La Barba Negra. Sleep caught up with me around 2am, so I wandered home, gutted to find my favourite taco stand had packed up and gone home already. I got an episode of Lost in (Sita’s new record: 8 episodes in one sitting) , about 4 pints of water and half a loaf of bread, and crashed out. Today I’m up to web designery and hopefully going to see ‘V for Vendetta’ later this evening. It got rave reviews over here, it had a mixed reception in Blighty, though.
Fair play. Jose can cook and his bragging was entirely justified. He made an astonishingly good shrimp based dish involving chiles, tortillas, calabaza sauce and stuff. And it was enough for 7 of us with some left over… Have a look around Flickr if you fancy seeing some of the steps in the creation of this dish. Sometimes, lent is a good thing.
I’ve got Monday off from work so tonight the festivities continue at the “Fiesta de Musica” (terrible name if you ask me, the party of music) where there’s going to be 6 stages and young people ‘aving it large, all a mere 10 blocks from our lovely little house. Expect more photos…
Any excuse to repost this image from two years ago of our patriotic bunnies enjoying a quiet pint. I like to think my photoshop skills have come on a bit since then, but hey ho… Other news… Mum’s commented to say she’s had a grand time in Salamanca this last week, which I already suspected. See you on the skype maana, mamá. Jose’s coming round this evening to cook a speciality shrimp dish. He’s worried though, with his usual modesty, that if we taste it we’ll end up sleeping outside his house under newspapers begging him to cook it again. Time will tell, but I’m looking forward to it… Maybe some more bloggin’ later. Cheers like.
It’s made a huge difference having a decent hosepipe. My tip for the day is ‘You’ll always remember the quality but soon forget the price’. I reckon the front garden is as good a place as any to meet people. Folks park in front and ask if it’s okay, I’ve been asked for directions a goodly few times, and I’ve chatted with Seora Tere from next door about horticultural issues. No philosophical debates just yet. Maybe if I start weeding though… Maybe I’m tired, or maybe I really am posting an entry about watering the front lawn… anyroad, there’s also a Mexican tradition I’m glad to be keeping up that involves filling plastic bottles with water and distributing them round the garden to stop cats coming and crapping there. It doesn’t work. But they’re a cheap and tasteful alternative to gnomes and now the garden fits in beautifully with the other houses in the neighbourhood. Other garden news? Well, Sita decided that cilantro/coriander and basil is a faster growing alternative to grass for those pesky bare patches in the lawn and it’s coming along a treat. We’re going to have the best tasting lawn in all of Guanatos.
All the design projects I hinted at earlier are out of my hands for a day or two so I’ve been chillin’ listening to Top of the Pods and playing guitar along to VH1. And now, dear weblog, I’m writing again. Hang on, just been called to light the oven. Sita’s still ovenphobic after her near death experience 2 months ago… wish me luck… back again with just minor burns. Sita cringed in the garden while I lit it… Maybe this is why she wants a microwave. Laters…
I’ve got a fair few projects on at the minute, so the blog’s on the back burner for a bit as it were… In the meantime, consider this a chance to explore the site, there’s the gallery, our rabbits, our dog, and the immediate family. Oh and book and film reviews. Some of those pages were even updated within the last year. Off you go now, Ah, go on, go on, go on…
First off, the web designery is picking up nicely. You wait for 6 months then 3 come along at once, just as you’re about to leave the country for a bit… Not complaining though.
Last night, thanks to the magic of bittorrentary, we watched the first episode of the BBC’s latest flagship documentary Planet Earth. Now that’s what nature documentaries should look like. None of this half-arsed french/dubbed penguin rubbish. They’ve got their hands on some new fangled military technology that probably wasn’t originally designed for sneaking up on packs of coyotes and following them chasing their lunch. Great photography, understated but informative narration, and packing in the locations like nobody’s business… even Space… what’s not to like. I’m can’t decide which was the best bit, either the chase scene or the baby teddy polar bear cubs learning to walk. Or was it the killer whale leaping from the sea with a seal in its mouth in 40x slow motion. All interspersed with beautifully-rendered time-lapse photography over 3 years. Quite a start. I’m guessing there was a fair bit of hype surrounding it in the UK, but it came as a wonderful surprise here in Mejico. Looking forward to catching the rest of the series and am extremely glad to have something to watch between Lostathons.
Friday was a latish night, Jose, Sarah and Fernando were round to see what it was like living in a house with 4 bathrooms and no water. I’d spent the best part of the evening trying various raindances and even having a go at getting the hose pipe to reach the water tank on the roof and then the kitchen sink. With zero success. Anyroad, apart from the drought t’was a nice evening that ended a little late (02h30) given that we had to get ourselves to the meeting point near Plaza Galerias for 09h00. We were second to arrive there after Sarah and could easily have had another hour in bed as we waited for everyone to arrive. sometimes I forget we’re in Mexico. We got the directions and organised the purchase of essential supplies (beer, tequila, quesadilla/taco ingredients) and headed on down the road to Tequila.
On the way, as I mentioned earlier, I was well chuffed to see my designs on billboards and the like, although they seemed to be outnumbered by other candidates with slogans like ‘Together we can do it’, ‘Trust in my decision’ and ‘Zero kidnapping’. Reminds me of the recurrent Monkey Dust sketch with Tony Blair intoning ‘A bicycle for every baby. multiple cures for cancer. an end to all suffering… etc’ over it. Anyroad, we couldn’t find Dr. Jaime’s farm so we parked and called for help/directions. 45 minutes of poring over Sarah’s celebrity gossip magazines later, the reinforcements arrived and we convoyed (our recently washed car) down a dirt track to the El Columpio tequila factory that’s jumped straight out of the 18th century. A bloke was outside cutting wood with an axe to fuel the ovens and inside they were unloaded the roasted piñas into the tahona. Hang on, here’s a quick Tequila Production 101:
Agave plants take a good few years to grow. Some tell you 7, some 10 it all depends on who you ask. When they’re ripe the jimador comes along and cuts off the leaves (pencas) with his coa (sharp knife thing on a stick) leaving you with the agave pineapple (piña). A load of piñas (that start of white then get honey coloured) are cut into halves or smaller and slow-roasted for 24 hours in the aforementioned ovens. After that they’re usually shredded in a machine and squashed and the resultant mixture is fermented, then distilled, then barrelled.
In the past, rather than putting the roasted agave through an industrial shredder, they were shoved into a circular mill called a tahona which has a huge stone grindstone dragged round in circles by a horse or donkey. Well this Columpio place (I looked up columpio and it means swing, not trampoline as we first thought. which is a shame.) uses the olde worlde tahona and horse set-up and looked fantastic in the medieval glow of the ovens. Dr. Jaime and the owner of the place gave us a guided tour of the room and then we tried the 100% (not-yet) tequila straight out of the still. It tastes of alcohol more than anything and needs to be mixed with a bit of water to let the agave taste come out. Still, it’s a great mouthwash and takes the edge off your hunger.
Next up over to Dr. Jaime’s agave plantation where they’ve been building a house, folly and dining patio. El buen doctor explained what the various varieties of agave were that he had growing there and took us on a tour round the fields pointing out the hijuelos (little clone plants that the agaves put out after 3 years of so, Sita took one home, ready to plant), telling us the local legends (ghosts of hanged men who didn’t want to fight for Santa Anna protect certain parts of the plantation), and identifying the colourfully-named weeds (tumbavaqueros, a local bindweed). All during this little tour we were sipping on the good stuff with the occasional beer for quenching thirst.
The next stage involved hopping in the back of el Dr’s 4×4 and heading off round the incredible little local villages to see the ruins of old tequila factories. A highlight for me there was seeing the women washing their clothes in the stream. The photos probably tell this part of the day best. We headed onwards through the fields and had another tequila stop under the shade of a huge tree and took a few photos, then on to more factory ruins. In the ruins there were tons of chile plants, apparently started from seeds in the salsa people eating tacos there.
Back to the dining place and we feasted on quesadillas and carne asada. Plus a bit of tequila for good measure. As the sun set, Dr. Jaime produced a rifle and everyone got a go at shooting targets in the field. What could possibly go wrong, as young sita said before waving the gun around. Sarah took a few photos, hopefully I’ll shove ’em up here soon. We went into the town center (knackered by now) found the hotel where sita’n’sarah’s friend works and got a couple of rooms. I tended to my sunburn and had a cold shower and then went out for double espressos. To celebrate El Dia de la Mujer (last Tuesday or so) the main square (zocalo) was full of little stores especially for the ladies offering such feminine delights as depilatory treatments, shopping bags, earrings and breakfast bars. Viva la igualdad. anyroad, we met up with agustin a kid from the tequila course and he took us round the bars of Tequila ending up eventually in El Cielo, a v. cool place with a view of the entire town center. I was knackered by then but it was a fun evening and a fantastic day. Tequila, photography, steak and guns.
Sunday, in brief: fruit for brekky, drive home, fall asleep watching Pedro Paramo (1965), gigante, soup & spuds, Jose, 9 Canciones (reviewed right)… luckily next weekend might be a puente.
See the post below for links to the photos sets… or buy the calendar come october 🙂
Ah, Tequila. Such a great place, I’ve always liked the town itself and had been wanting to go exploring around the outskirts. I had a fantastic time yesterday and I’ll blog about it properly once I recover from the experience. In the meantime, I’ve put the 260 photos I took up on Flickr but if you’d rather see a selection, well then here are my favourite 50. A million times better than the Tequila Express and no mistake.
I was highly chuffed to see my political propaganda hanging in the streets too…
