Tulum- here we come

l-r: Victor, Fernando, Ana, Jose, Sarah, Sarita

Fair play. Jose can cook and his bragging was entirely justified. He made an astonishingly good shrimp based dish involving chiles, tortillas, calabaza sauce and stuff. And it was enough for 7 of us with some left over… Have a look around Flickr if you fancy seeing some of the steps in the creation of this dish. Sometimes, lent is a good thing.

I’ve got Monday off from work so tonight the festivities continue at the “Fiesta de Musica” (terrible name if you ask me, the party of music) where there’s going to be 6 stages and young people ‘aving it large, all a mere 10 blocks from our lovely little house. Expect more photos…

and therefore shouldn’t vote in the upcoming US elections. “C, You should consider not voting until you update your knowledge on contemporary issues.” Well, that and my green card status…

This is what happens when you get all your US news via the internets, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and whatever scraps of the Daily Show and Colbert Report they’ve left up on YouTube… I wouldn’t touch US politics with a 10 foot bargepole, mind, it’s gone to hell in a fundamentalist handbasket. Not that recently watching a seasonsworth of BBC 2’s Mock the Week and the latest Radio 4’s News Quiz inspires confidence in how my home country’s being handled neither. And then there’s Oaxaca, jaysis… At least there’ll always be scrabble…

Or will there? After a fairly hefty walk to where it was advertised I found an old abandoned café and nothing going on, so I rang the bloke’s number in the paper and he said ah, now it’s in Café Azteca where I went originally weeks ago. So I started walking then thought “bugger it” and got a taxi there or i’d get there too late. So I arrive and no one’s there and I phone my scrabble contact again and he says he’ll see where Virginia’s got to, who’s the other half of the organisers. She says due to, quote, Force Majeure, unquote, there’s no scrabbling this week but they’d love me to come next Tuesday. So anyway to cut (make, US) a long story short, no scrabble today. If you don’t count the 5 online games and half dozen on my pocket PC…

Sita’s got her tickets for MX today so I’ll be seeing her v. soon. Which is fantastic news. She’s got a nasty cold at the minute so send her an email and wish her well if you have a minute. Although I’m told Atticus is being the perfect nurse and sporting his hallowe’en devil horns. No photos though, I’m afraid…

For reasons I may go into another time in more depth, today I had to go, in person, to some government offices downtown to prove that the bloke who owes 3 years of road taxes or somesuch doesn’t live here anymore. There was threats from bailiffs involved and this was the third warning apparently… Anyroad, Long story short, I sorted it out and went to McDonalds as I felt I’d earned it. And I’m glad I did because I took this here photo. I’m fairly near certain you don’t get a molcajete full of green chiles coming as standard in other McParts of the world…

This is Herman Dune, they were the support band at last night’s Jolie Holland gig. Right now I’m going through the pics from the concert and editing some from our jaunt out to Peter Kerr island this afternoon. Brilliant place, it is. Plenty of colour, the (unrealised) possibility of bald eagle spotting and Atticus even got a wander around off his lead.

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…