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Blog a little…

In the meantime, a photo can tell a thousand words and Dad´s pix are worth a look too.

I`m told it takes one day per hour of time difference to get used to the jet lag, which gives me 3 more days of excuses for naps and waking up in the middle of the night and eating twiglets and cheese sandwiches.

A couple of pix from this morning’s excitement in our street:

I used to be vegetarian, but those days are long gone. The BBQ’s back in action in our back garden, we brought it out of hibernation when bert and his dad, David, arrived last saturday. Tasty. I’m going to use Flickr to host my pictures for a while and talking of which, I have one more Pro account to give away. I signed up before they got taken over by Yahoo and slashed their prices and increased their services, so they’re giving me 2 free accounts. I’ve offered one to me Dad, still waiting for him to accept. The other’s for the next guest mappee to add themself. Don’t forget to include your email address. If you’re already on there, just email me asking nicely. First come, first served.

Fruitful, sleepy day today. Am now 95% officially a US permanent resident, just have to wait for me green card to arrive. They stamped me passport in the meantime. It’s a much more efficient system now, instead of queuing up at 5am and hoping to get in, they’ve got an automated online appt system. I was in and out within 15 minutes. It would have been less but I had to go back to the car to leave my PDA there cos it can take photos which could be disastrous for homeland security apparently.

anyroad, below is a 9.5 second file of Monday evening in Ciao bella with Bert, his Dad, Sita and me. In the clip it’s just bert looking suspicious then the camera panning up to see the ring of redwoods which the outside dining area’s in. It’s a bit dark and as ever, dial up users may feel a little dissappointed. Bert and co headed south yesterday, you may see them keeping well within the speed limit in one of the following places in the next few days: Monterey, Big Sur, Hearst Castle, Santa Barbara, L.A., Palm Springs, Las Vegas. It was grand to see them, I just wish I could have taken some time of work to spend relaxing with them. But that will come soon. He blogged cryptically…

CiaoBellawithBertandRedwoods.asf (585k file) I think ASF is fairly universally recognised. Comment me if not. Cheers- gwyn

The Skype me button on the right… Very soon we’ll be in Mexico and at TelMex’s mercy once again, so download Skype by pressing that ‘call me’ button and give us a ring on the computer… Tanya…

Also, I’m working on some interwebbery for a local nutritionist- have a gander at the design, the brief for which was “lush and green”. Am quite chuffed with the look, but it’s preliminary draft.

More cantinas last night, El Rincon de la Doa (specialising in sangrita to go with your tequila) and then bar calavera with young Jose, his sister and Helena. We hung around at the house for a bit afterwards and then after they left I watched The Daily Show with Rob Cordry standing in for Jon Stewart (10/10 for effort, but it’s not the real thing) and Episode 5 of The IT Crowd, which was fantastic. I’ll be putting that DVD on my Amazon wish list, but only if the stuff I ordered in Jan gets here OK… Another noteworthy thing happened last night, i got my scrabble rating to 1006. Now I’m afraid to play another game cos I know i’ll lose. I’ll try to shut up about the whole subject until I get to 1100…

This morning was a little sketchy but I managed to pick up my beautiful business cards and go on a wander with me camera. I was just starting to get into taking photos of the rolling stock on the railway off of Avenida Inglaterra, when a security bloke came up and asked me what I was doing and told me to leave. I’m increasingly realising, though, that if you don’t get told to stop taking pictures you’re doing something wrong. Same with driving, if you don’t get honked at or use your horn round here it’s a wasted journey. Anyroad, I got the cards and made my way home listening to the latest Top of the Pods and Total Pod Catastrophe (see spanking new PodCasts sidebar to the right). I stopped for a torta ahogada and ambled home and sita arrived too. She had to have an ahogada too so we went to the little torta shop 20 yards from our house. There Sita befriended a dulux dog puppy (pastor ingles), who was pretty cute, but no Atticus. Then a quick skype with me mum and dad who are back from sunny spain with all kinds of tales.

This afternoon? you ask, well we’re going to get supplies from CostCo then off round Victor and Jana’s again for more sophistimicated dinner party type stuff. It’s looking like the Pink Panther’s on for tomorrow. God help us. In my defence I’ve got a Buuel DVD waiting to be seen too. Isn’t it time for another police academy?

So last night after a lovely meal at Maggie’s pub-restaurant (Fish & Chips x 4 & surf’n’turf for the record) frequented by all the local ex-pat Catholic pedagogic population, Martin innocently commented that he didn’t think the headlights were on. Next minute, neither was the dashboard or radio or the engine. This sounded grimly familiar as the same scenario happened to me on the way to a conference in Berkeley before all kinds of alternator-related fun. Everyone jumped out and I started pushing the car along Imperial Highway in me flipflops. Not ideal footware for motorway maintenance, and true to form they broke and fell off along the way. Sally & Sita are lifelong AAA (the America AA) members so they were soon on the blower to get towed. After 2 hours, multiple phonecalls, one police incident (ask Sally- on her new email address, kilcarsally (at) hotmail.com) and one member of the party going AWOL on the buses later and we got back to Downey, where I got hiccups again. Hiccups resurfaced at regular intervals in my sleep. Sita had to decamp in the middle of the night as the bed was shaking too much from them. Anyroad, today is the day of packing before the big off.

I went to check on our dear little rodents in the back garden and was delighted to discover that they’re back in touch with their lapine instincts of burrowing. Klem was nowhere to be seen, Lulu (gordito that he is) was halfway through the hole and the dog was running around enjoying the mayhem. I sent Atticus indoors, yelled ‘Jailbreak’ to Sarita and we put the emergency plan into action. Klem was hiding under the cage, Lulu was still digging, I scooped Lulu up and threw him back into the cage. Sarita cuddled Klem (klem’s not big on cuddles) to scold him and then he got locked up too. I’ll have to work out how to implement the new security features in their run. Maybe an ID card scheme. Or face recognition technology at the back yard gate… anyroad, wandering back to the kitchen, Atticus is gallivanting about Dalen St. but luckily comes when he’s called… So for now, bunnies are are locked up tightly, we’re not really packed, Atticus is contained, Martin’s off alternator & battery shopping and all’s quiet again for a minute or two. Give or take some yard sales on the road. Glad the minor disasters are happening before we set off rather than after, that’s fer sure.

Phone calls to blighty’s next on the list. As I keep mentioning, get yerselves on skype. Octagenatian and Nonagenarian relatives are excepted…