cos it’s a huge waste of time. But it was that or Pacman and we got our taxes done today and had the dog innoculated against every plague going around so I don’t feel too bad… Anyroad, it led me to this page of winning entries for a “Make up a Jack Handey Deep Thought” compo and for that I thank it… almost as good as the old-as-the-hills originals. My faves?
Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.
Once, I wept for I had no shoes. Then I came upon a man who had no feet. So I took his shoes. I mean, it’s not like he really needed them, right?
I cleaned the lens on me camera today before heading off to Tonala, but by the time I got there the lense had steamed up on the inside with the special cleaning fluid. I’ve been googling ways to get rid of it but all the results come up as “DON’T put drops of cleaning fluid directly onto the lens as it can cause condensation inside”, well, I worked that out for myself. How do I get rid of it is the question… I’m hoping that leaving it to bake in the car for a while will sort it out. In the meantime, I’ve got some interesting pix of Tonala with a hazy frame effect… Just hope it won’t be a permanent feature of my photography…
Also, M & D got their wardrobe. Here’s Monica in the back of their car with it:
Thanks to el “Chiva Congelado” for this brilliant explanation of insanely common Mexican gestures that will save you time in restaurants, on the beach and avoiding squeegee merchants at traffic lights… His blog’s also great if you’re interested in Belgian beer reviews from a Mexican perspective, bilingual sports coverage, and, *edit* bizarrely, pan-global teeniebop phenomenon, RDB *edit* other fine topics…
Well, it rained for the first time in a month or so yesterday (the last time was on the way to Phoenix, Arizona from L.A.). Proper rain, mind, none of your namby pamby mizzle- lightning, thunder, the works. I’ve always wanted to take a photo of lightning so I went up on the roof and took several 16 second exposure, low aperture shots, it took about 5 attempts, but i got one. . It’s far from perfect, i was holding the camera as still as possible with no tripod, aiming at the sky. Next time I want a city scape with forks of lightning above it, like this second pic, which has had a few minor photoshop elements added, and features at least one deliberate spelling mistake…
Had a nice chat with Sally t’other night. The bunnies have become tunneling machines, and their run looks like a building site. Lulu’s the main culprit and he wouldn’t even stop digging when Sally stared at him. So Sally, bless her, went to All American to get chicken wire to go under the run and installed it all herself. Nice one, KilcarSally
Today the plan: Update my CV, pick up the laser printer from the repair shop, pass by an English school that’s looking for gringos as part of the part-time non-teaching staff, get agaveweb.com off the ground. Finalise me postcard size ads and get them to the printer, bulk email the lake Chapala non-profits… Work out why we’re getting so many phone calls that either hang up (I think our number is v. similar to the Cuarenta Principales (top 40 radio station…) or are banks/ loan sharks/ lawyers wanting to find the previous occupant… Anyroad, more news as, when or if it happens. Cheers, gwyn
I nudged Josh and Liz in the direction of kittywigs the other day. Josh just alerted me to this, arguably better, site, in an email entitled “To Hell with kittywigs”. You’ll visit for the photos of cats dressed up, but you’ll stay for the brilliant Engrish:
It is spring new work! They are frog transformation goods!
Do you also attach to a cat and do hair? It is the costume play of a masterpiece “Anne of Green Gables”!
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here. This is the hat and shawl for disguising oneself.
You’ll probably have to wash them when they get dirty though in coleslaw.
I still have to get round to stating in no uncertain terms what a grand time I had seeing everyone in blighty. So maybe next time…
I had me interview for the project director position on Wednesday and it went OK considering I hadn’t slept the night before. Anyhow, I’m into the second round versus a bloke with a PhD so I have to enlarge my vocabulary over the weekend and get a few books out of the library on grant writing. If you don’t know where i work, you can visit the PAPAS site in English or Spanish and have a nose around. So the second interview’s next week and I’ll let you know how i got on.
In other news, this site appears to have become popular in Sweden. If you’re reading from there, thanks and who are you? It’s pretty rare that anyone happens on these pages who doesn’t know me unless they’re searching for #1: Banana Slugs, #2 Bunnies or #3 Spanish Teaching Links. Read More “Welcome, Swedes”
…using a combination of knowledge from my PHP classes (I’m about to sign up for the advanced classes for next week) and this page on how to Search and Replace using PHPMyAdmin so now the apostrophe issue is cleared up and there aren’t enough other errors to make it worth my while. My Spanish blog‘s another story though, I ended up going in and editing each entry by hand… Luckily there aren’t that many pages.
So, it’s still raining and starting to get colder just in time for Stu’n’Anne’s visit. Hope they don’t mind too much. Atticus is certainly a bit bothered by it all and is showing early signs of SAD. He’s missing M&D too, mind, who phoned last night to say they’d spent 15 hours on the road and had made it Los Mochis, of all places. They’ve set a new record, they’re probably somewhere near the Canadian border if they’ve kept up the pace.
We watched Pan’s Labyrinth again last night, as Sita hadn’t seen it. I’d forgotten how powerful a film it is. It’s the ultimate fable on rejecting authority and a gruesome depiction of post civil war Spain. I saw the Devil’s Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo) t’other week too which takes place in the same era but doesn’t have as clear a division between fantasy and reality. Still fine viewing though. Had a game of Scrabble too. I got all the good tiles…
In terms of the HTMLery I’m going to be putting together a shopping site for a high-end artesanal jewelry store to complement their flash site soonish which’ll be interesting and a chance to practice my PHP skillz. Also I read the readme file that came with the photoblog theme and it explained how to have thumbnails on the archive page, so I sorted that out. Looks quite nice, oi reckon. Shame i’ve now got two blogs that don’t quite render right on IE6 though, but frankly IE6 users deserve all they get.
And that’s all for today. Next up, dragging Atticus through the rain to pick up El Público with its weekly events listing, Ocio, and then paying the phone/interweb bill, rent, and PHP course… it’s going to be an expensive day this one…
