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
Yesterday was busyish with translations, webdesignery and the nascent stirrings of an Oklahoma property listings service website that may be in the offing using Open Realty open source software. Also There’s a fancy new element to the site here you may or may not have noticed courtesy of snap.com. If you hover the mouse over links on the page you’ll get a preview popping up that shows you a thumbnail of where the links go. If it says check back later, try again in 15 seconds or so so snap has a chance to screengrab that page. Muy fancy as we say round here…
I’m thinking of organising a Flickr meet up for Tapatian photographers this weekend, it’d be nice to meet some of the folks who share their photos round this way and swap favourite places around Gwod. More news as developments become more solid…
Also, Atticus might well be coming to live in Gwod for a few months, as carry-on luggage in March. Sally and Martin deserve a break from him after 18 months or so…
Spanish phrase of the week: “Ganar la rifa del tigre” to win the tiger raffle. Whereupon it seems like you were very lucky to win the raffle, but the prize is a tiger. Which eats you. So ganar la rifa del tigre means seemingly good luck which turns out to be very bad.
On the photo tour, Eliazar told me a new (to me) Spanish phrase: “Dependiendo del sapo, así es la pedrada“. The stone you throw depends on the size of toad. I’m not confident enough to use this phrase yet, but I think it means something like you have scale what you’re using to the problem you’re facing. There’s no point in throwing a small stone at a large toad, nor a huge stone at a tiny toad… Maybe…?
If anyone reading can give an example, I’d be glad to see it commented. Even the usually excellent WordReference.com draws a blank on this one… A search for sapo gets you:
sapo m Zool toad ♦ LOC: fam (despotricar) echar sapos y culebras, to curse and swear:
Which is another one I’d not heard, “To throw toads and snakes”, to curse and swear… or better still, “effing and blinding”.
Yesterday after Tonalá, dining, decorating and skyping the world we were going to have our subjunctive class, however we ended up watching about a dozen+ back-to-back episodes of Bones on DVD. Strangely apt after driving past the new (¿?) Jaliscan Forensic Science Building on Lazaro Cardenas. CSI Guanatos indeed… Now there’s a series I’d like to watch…
Some of yesterday’s purchases… a metal agave thing, DVD shelf, and shining star things.
We’re 100 km from the border in Santa Anna and today we’re crossing over. The trip’s been fine so far, but very wet, including one section where I reckon we hit the tail end of tropical storm Eliana. Also, every fitozoological/military stop point has pulled us over for a hand search of our car which doesn’t bode well for crossing the frontera in record time. Maybe it’s time for a hair cut…
Sita was navigating, so the route taken may vary from the map… Overnight stopping points, Nogales, Arizona and Culiacan, Sinaloa
Fastest yet. We’ve now done the GDL-LA trip 3 times. And this time managed it in 3 days, driving around 10-11 hours a day. My favourite bit is definitely the Culiacan-Mazatlan bit as you cross the Tropic of Cancer and the desert turns into lush forests and mountains. Next favourite, Tepic to Guadalajara- all agave fields and volcanoes. Gorgeous. We also had a quick wander round Tepic. And a pizza. Can’t wait to get back into the Mexican swing of things. M & D should be arriving any day too. Good times. Any new year’s parties happening?
