RSS Feeds

your one-stop-shop for schipperke animated gifs and other delights…

Click the lovingly rendered graphic below to go there:

don’t forget to sign their guestbook and web design like it’s 1999…
in other news, Atticus met his “cousin” today and is now knackered. 7 days to “Schipperkes on a Plane!” insaniddy.

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…

After seeing no cheap BBQs at yard sales, charity shops and Fred Meyer’s we went to Lowes for a new one, then spent the best part of 2 hours assembling it in the garden. Things went faster once I found a hidden bag of screws under the dog.

Leif and Sudarat came round later and we had a well pleasant evening of Sita’s cooking, local veg and tales of squirrel hunting up north.

We ended with an ’80s music trivia DVD game, which I got for $4.99 from Goodwill (seemed more fun than Bibleopoly)

Hope our neighbours were okay with screams of Kajagoogoo at around midnight…

Just got back from the cinema (I’m thinking of buying a frequent flier discount card for Cinepolis). Have a quick review of Mi Super Ex-Novia:

The high concept for this one is “Imagine your borderline psychotic ex had superpowers…” A sobering thought indeed. Anyroad, I was prepared to give it a chance as the director, Ivan Reitman, is responsible for one of the best films of all time, Ghostbusters. Turns out he’s also responsible for Kindergarten Cop and Ghostbusters II, but, generally, history will be kind to him, I feel.

Luke Wilson (the one with the normal nose) and Uma Thurman are the titular my and ex respectively. There’s no discernable chemistry between them and that’s fine because, as you’ll have worked out from the title, they’re destined to split up. Eddie Izzard puts in a passable turn as the baddie and the creepy bloke out of The (American) Office plays a creepy bloke who works in an office. Everyone, except Wanda Sykes, does a fine job and the results are an unspectacular but sporadically amusing romantic comedy. I reckon this’ll work fine on yer 19-inch telly in a few months time; it’s harmless fun for when you’re really not up for watching that Flight 93 DVD from Netflix that’s been sitting there for 3 months, and just fancy switching your brain off for a couple of hours while young Uma gallavants around in skimpy costumes.

(Out of a possible 5 Lulus…)

So matey rings our doorbell yesterday, strimmer in hand, promising to work wonders on our front garden, lawn and trees, ‘Bien profesional, bien bonito’. I feel quite chuffed that I manage to haggle him down from 300 to 150 pesos (15 of your earth dollars). I close the deal with a handshake and leave him to it, wandering back to my design stuff. I hear the strimmer (weedwhacker in US parlance, I believe) whirring away. The doorbell rings again, he needs to go and get seed and fertilizer for the lawn and can I give him the money in advance. If this was the UK/ US I wouldn’t have done it, but after my dealings with the gasfitter bloke who sorted out the boiler, this is the level of service I was expecting. If you cut lawns for a living, you won’t have much in the way of pesos to buy extra stuff. So I gave him 130 pesos and he saunters off. This was yesterday. No sign of him today neither.

Then my hopes were raised when some gardeners pulled up outside the house today, but they were there for Senora Teresa next door. I asked if they knew about this landscaper from yesterday and they patiently explained, ‘parece que te chingó ese jardinero’ (Oi reckon you got screwed over by that there gardener bloke in Wurzel) which I’d sort of worked out for myself. Ah well.

It hasn’t put me off gardens, though. Oh no. In fact I went for a meeting with the director of Guadalajara’s Metropolitan Park to offer my services. I’m going to make them a website to attract corporate sponsors and more volunteers to the, frankly, near-insolvent parque. I had a wander round and it’s a big old space, but there weren’t many people there today. They come in the mornings- 6am, evenings, 5pm and weekends apparently. So the photos I took to put on the website are a little unappetizing for now. Bless them though, it’s had a rocky old history. In 1992 a local politician tried to sell it off as a golf course and pocket the change but got caught last minute during a close analysis of accounts after the streets exploded (long story), and since then they’ve got by with volunteers, military and community service people. They can’t afford to buy trees so all the new plants are grown from cuttings from local forests and they’re looking for sponsors for the BBQ areas. The plan is to be a world-class, self-sustaining tourist attraction by 2010. I reckon they’ll do it too, and let’s see if I can’t help with a bit of HTML.

are here courtesy of Aunt Minnie, Gary & Martin…