I was planning to do some kind of E-advent calendar- I only just realised it’s december, that means there’s already 2 chocolates waiting to be devoured- anyroad, it may still happen. In the meantime, I never got round to posting any Mexico photos from last year. I had planned to write a novel of some sort, but instead I took about a thousand photos and learnt how to use photoshop. I was a bit too enamoured with the photo border plug-ins, but have a look at a sample of pix from the trip here

I got another “Was this helpful vote?” for one of my reviews and it bumped me up to 69 + votes for 13 reviews… My day is made.

It’s been right nippy round santa cruz way. We had to take the bunnies in from the garage as I haven’t yet installed the hypocaust system which will keep their little paws all toasty.

Been muy busy the last few days catching up on emails, phone calls, interoffice mail. Fascinating stuff so I won’t bore you here. Am glad to have lots to do though, can’t help thinking of me mum being stuck at home and feeling poorly so I’m not complaining. Mixed news on the health front, there. Some things improving, some things not going so well and some pretty obtrusive tests in the near future. bless. She does a grand job of sounding perky on the phone, mind, but she’s obviously not having the best of times. bless.

eeh well, my day is ending. things are either taken care of, or can’t be taken care of and it’s time to go. Cheers fer now- and don’t be afraid to use the guest map thing… i know for a fact that the last 100 page views were from:
Santa Cruz California United States United States
Amherst Massachusetts United States United States
San Francisco California United States United States
Great Barrington Massachusetts United States United States
Copenhagen Kobenhavn Denmark Denmark
Boston Massachusetts United States United States
Springfield Massachusetts United States United States
Hopkinton Massachusetts United States United States
Camberley England United Kingdom United Kingdom
Ashburn Virginia United States United States
Chappaqua New York United States United States
Limerick Limerick Ireland Ireland
Edinburgh Scotland United Kingdom United Kingdom

still no sign of the swedes…

Have a click on the above button thing to show ‘the world’ where you are.

Me dad drew this lovely goat in the moon… and I had to include it. Gracias, papá 🙂

Tanya passed on this poem to me, as requested, bless her. I’ve had quite a few worse things round my way of late, but it tends to be nearer 4 a.m…

Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily around the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Fleur Adcock

And here’s a photo of Sita, her sister and her Dad from the Downey photo collection, click for bigger version.

Made record time coming back from LA, we left at 6:20am to beat the traffic and it all went according to plan. Going down there took 9 hours though. Anyroad, had a lovely time again. Can’t be doing with writing much now so here are some photos instead. There’s our house, chateau lapin, local sunsets, dolphins, oil fields and a moon. Enjoy 🙂

Only $20 a month to rent a fiddle- it turns out. I took one of me guitars to the shop today to be repaired and on a whim rented a violin. My guitar skills are OK, quantity of songs, rather than quality as I’ve said before. However, my violin playing is execrable. I thought it’d be fun to post a song now to look back on in a month’s time to see if I’ve improved… So with me on guitar and me on “fiddle”, in glorious stereo, here’s a painful rendition of Dirty Old Town, by the Pogues. Maybe i’ll improve in 30 days time…

What herb are you?
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Sita almost collected on my life insurance today, I was lifting a washing machine down some stairs with the “help” of some septaugenarian who was more concerned about his cacti than my imminent demise. On the plus side, the washer only cost 20 bucks and he gave us 5 persimmons. Which will probably be used ornamentally for a few days then chucked. Just a tumble drier to aquire and we’re ready to set up our antique laundromat service…
The bunnies are getting used to their new palace in the garage. Pictures soon…

I can’t believe how good the house looks after less than a week. We’ve got cable plumbed in, the phone should be connected any minute now, and I’m expecting a package from SBC Global filled with DSL goodies to get back on the interweb… Still to do this weekend: Build the bunny-containment-facility in the garage, hang up me clothes, decorate my little corner of the office, investigate 5.1 surround sound possibilities for the living room, fix the truck’s indicator light, clean/sterilise 629 Koshland way and move the plants, mow the lawn, plant some “erbs”, reestablish contact with family and friends… I’ll be busy alright. The joyous news is that next week I’m on holiday and will relish the chance to relax and get things done at a slower pace. I’m planning on sorting out my electric guitars and amp and introducing the neighbours and anyone else within earshot to solo renditions of Levellers songs. Should even fit in a trip to Downey to feast on turkey, ham, pecan pie and mashed preta (which is Irish for spuds, though the spelling may be off a tad…) . Sita, meanwhile, has 800 pages of papers to mark (grade in American) from the Hip Hop Culture (nothing to do with rabbits) class she TAs for. Eeh well, more “news” soon once the information superhighway gets funnelled into the house.

I’ll have to put me computer back together again though… and my desk, and Sita’s, and… you get the idea. While you’re waiting, try this test. You say which logos you recognise and it diagnoses your myriad disorders. It rightly worked out I was from the UK and had a BBC Micro obsession. And that I had gothic tendencies?… see how it works for you 🙂

I wasn’t expecting to be moving house today, but we’re about half way there. I took a few poor quality photos of the garden, living room, kitchen and garage. Once we’re moved in i’ll try and do it better justice. Really is a nice house you know…

And I managed to install Mandrakelinux too… not too shabby for a saturday.

We get the keys to our new place today and if the weather holds we’ll be moving in over the next week. I’ll post the address on here with a password, ‘cos i’m not so sure putting our address up for all to see was such a good idea with Koshland Av., although i’m fairly sure no one’s stolen my identity yet. People can’t do the accent for starters. Then there’s the teeth… but I digress.

The bunnies have been lolloping around the kitchen this morning because they’d been cooped up in their cage while the UCSC Stasi came round to inspect the state of the apartment. They’re looking forward to their new pasture. I’m going to miss the broadband we have here and am busily downloading everything I could possibly need. Like 5 gigabytes of Linux… Thanks for the tips, Jesse, I’ve partitioned the hard drive and am trying to follow the inscrutable instructions to install it all…

We went to the cinema to see “What the BLEEP do we know?” which has to be one of the worst films i’ve ever paid good money to see. I would have walked out before I fell asleep, but Sita wasn’t having it, by the time I woke up she agreed and we both left the cinema. I’m looking forward to reviewing it, watch the film review page in the next few days.

Never. Ever. Check your work email on a bank holiday. Just enjoy the day. You can’t do anything about it, and you’ll just worry about something you have no control over for 24 hours. No. Sit back, relax. Rent a DVD if it’s raining, have a beer or five, go outside, take photos of clouds, cook a new recipe, do a bit of gardening, or just hang out with rabbits. Just don’t, for any reason whatsover, ruin a potentially nice long, stress-free day by clicking “send and receive” on Outlook.

This public service announcement has been brought to your by the letter G and the number 12. November resolution is a production of the Children’s Television Workshop….

Oh and while i’m at it. Does anyone want to help me install Linux. XP has been nagging about activation since i installed a DVD burner. I had to phone a nice Indian man and tell him a 32 digit code to get things going again…

On the blessings counting side… me mum’s doing ok, just bored out of her mind, probl’y for the best she’s not stuck here with American TV. Stu and Anne are back unscathed with anecdotes aplenty. Sita’s cooking something with yams. And we’ve signed the contract to move house down the road, nearer safeway and blockbuster, and with a real fireplace. The landlords (landpeople) are a lovely couple from the Azores. We get the keys on saturday and once it looks homely enough there’ll be a virtual tour for all me mates, family and enterprising burglars…

That’s it from self-absorbtion central for today. love to my peeps, cheers, gwyn

I was gutted to find out me mum’s not coming out after all. She was going to come on Thursday for a few weeks to see us and chill with the Gaytans on Thanksgiving and all that. But it turns out the bout of ill health she’s having isn’t just a virus and so she’ll have to take it easy for a bit so she can get fully better. Mum’s her usual positive/stoical self about it all and the whole familiy’s sure she’s going to be grand once they make some changes in her assorted medicines. I’m still taking TGiving week off though as i’m pretty mentally exhausted and could really do with a break… so i’ll be able to manage a few long distance phone call back to blighty. Me mates Stu and Anne are back from travels round the Orient so it’ll be grand to hear their stories. and i’m wondering how bert‘s getting on with his ladyfriend. It’s all a bit much this week, Bush, new job, mum not coming… Eeh well, things’ll be back to normal soon.

In about 9 minutes, I’m being interviewed on a local radio station about PAPAS. My nerves are starting to go… I’ll blog whether I survived the experience later. Let the record show that 5-6 pm on a Friday afternoon is not my optimum mental functioning time. Hope the coffee kicks in…

Update: Saturday 10:30am
The coffee indeed kicked in and I found myself able to answer questions pretty completely on all kinds on father involvement topics. No one was around in the office, so I could pace around with the cordless phone as is my wont. All in all it took about 15 minutes and I remembered to give out the phone number and website. That said, the website hasn’t registered any more hits and I tried to find 1040am on my radio all the way home and couldn’t get anything on the car radio, which is a little odd. I’m fairly sure it’s not some elaborate practical joke and KNRY– Your Town has listeners somewhere… But still, you live and learn and the tangible sense of relief as I hung up lasted most of the rest of the evening…

Just checked the KNRY website- I had the wrong frequency by 200Khz. D’oh. Ah well…

Scott and Tanya came round after and we cooked several veggie dishes of varying quality and then played one of my worst games of Scrabble in living memory. My average score, 8, my average rack of letters, IIIIOOU.

Phoned me grandmothers this morning and they’re doing OK. Neither is enjoying the dark evenings and grotty weather, but Nanny was relieved that no one had come round trick or treating or penny for the guying. There are too many leaves falling though, apparently. Bless’em. Beth’n’ali weren’t about, and me mum’s in cardiff living it up with her friends from her Swansea school days.

Am quite tired indeed, hence the lack of imagination going into this month’s poll. Let’s see if we can have a record turn out and break the previous total 5 (five) voters… well, 4 if you don’t count me…

Vote or Die, as P.Diddy recently entreated us.

I wasn’t up to blogging yesterday. I can’t believe that that right-wing religious twunt has got himself another 4 years. I went to bed with a glimmer of hope, but checking in on the results at 6am the next day was like a punch to the gut. It stems from having lived in the most liberal towns in the most liberal states in the union, I suppose. It’s easy to forget that there’s a huge amount of fundamentalist zealotry between the two points, all too eager to get out and put in their intolerant tuppence on gay marriage, womens rights, and “god” knows what else. Such bigotry is hard to fathom. Exit polls showed the #1 concern of voters in the red states was “Moral Values”, and the Iraq war was #4. How is that possible? It makes Bush’s “crusade” all the more aptly named. Back to 16th-century family values for all.

I’ll put a new poll up on the front page soonish and link to it regarding the best place to flee to… Middle Earth for Kathy and Vance, Canada for Jesse…

To end on an up note, prop 63 passed in California. Where despite Arnie’s best efforts, millionaires get a new 1% tax to go toward mental health initiatives, and stem cell research gets a few billion federal dollars. It’s something to hang on to i s’pose.

More thoughts soon as the rage subsides. Gros bisoux, gwyn

and yet I fear to turn away… COME ON OHIO!

The BBC website’s all but ground to a halt… I think it’s because I keep hitting F5…