Viva the Safeway CoinMaster

normal blogging will be resumed shortly…
quick stream of consciousness from last Wed to today… meetings… reports… fielding phone calls… reporters cancelling… final preps for social… dog… sita in miami… sita back… dog… social event… tables… bert and dad arrive… barby in the back garden… party round gerwin’s… breakfast on the wharf… rehearsal for queer youth awards… played guitar… asparagus… atticus… anarchist… ciao bella… “‘china” the cat… car hire… workworkwork… pope… dentist… budgets… next week planning… dr. bert’s friend… Red? Tomorrow… berkeley… first 5… scrabble… thurs… INS/Dept of homeland nonsense… passport photos… announcements at work… ian’n’yuri’n’william… on sunday he rested or had a stab at it… monday… training… tues -> berkeley… trianing… training… training. dentist again. 3 x fillings, 1 x crown replacement.

Just want to tell the world that I got “ululate” and “anointed’ in a game of online scrabble. And still lost.

As you were.

Looks like I forgot to mention Sunday´s Flickr Photography tour. There were 20 of us and it all started wonderfully then from blue skies the clouds appeared and drenched us. Even the squirrels and turtles made themselves scarce. Other parts of the city got hail mind so we got off lightly. We were all in the same boat though so afterwards it made for good story telling in Tortas Toño, Providencia´s fresa torta ahogada emporium, and finally los Famosos Equipales.

More pix here.

I didn´t end up making it to the concert last night, it was cold and I´d been standing for hours already listening to a presentation on the Sony Alpha camera, which looks good for an entry level camera. Instead I bought cakes and we opened a fine, fine bottle of wine from Meg and Matt (Thanks M&M!) that we´d be saving to celebrate Sita putting another chapter of her dissertation to bed. Also played a bit of scrabble cos that´s what you do when the nights draw in…

I picked up the car this morning and it´s running like a charm, all ready to deal with the thousands of speed bumps that lie between Guadalajara and San Francisco…

Ah well, Thanksgiving tomorrow courtesy of Victor and Jana. I´m on spuds. Expect a photo or two. All the best y hasta pronto!

While I’m obviously thinking of the people affected by this latest full contact natural confrontation, especially the 10,000 poor and immobile who are holed up in an American football stadium with no A/C, I can’t help worrying about the possibility of flight cancellations. We’re leaving on Wednesday morning from LAX then on to Newark and eventually Bristol, UK on Thursday. Friday’s the day of me little sister and Ali’s wedding/commitment/knees-up and I will be gutted if we don’t make it.

Continental Airlines were bad enough last time in perfect travelling conditions (miserable flight staff, inept announcers, no free booze, same movies shown in both directions, National Express-quality food, crappy overhead TVs, cretinous security folk…) so Jebus knows what it’ll be like this time around. At least they don’t use the verb ‘to deplane’ like some airlines, but you do hear about there being a lot of ‘weather’. Ah well, as long as they get us to the church stately home in the Quantock Hills of Somerset on time I’ll be happy.

Yesterday was Mother’s day in Mexico. It’s a huge thing. First off, everyone made their excuses and left work at middayish to head off to crowded restaurants all over town. No one was without roses they’d either received or were about to give. In Gigante the usual musak was replaced by someone urging everyone to buy mother-related goods (tortillas, white wine, cleaning products…) and businesses closed up early. I didn’t even have to stand on the bus home for once. One of these days I’ll post about Mexican phrases involving the word “madre”, but first I want to dig out El Laberinto de la Soledad, cos Octavio Paz has some pertinent things to say if I recall correctly.

Last night I barbecued again cos Sarah was coming round for some webdesignery advice. For some reason it didn’t turn out that well. I should pay more attention in the meat isle to what I’m buying. In fact they should have pictures of what your meat should look like when you’ve cooked it on the labels, to help men choose whether they want arrachera or milanesa… Never mind. Sarah brought us a bottle of diamante negro tequila, which is potent but fragrant with the agave. As a digestif it did a good job of cutting through the culinary dubiousness we’d eaten.

My Aguascalientes photos got linked to by an Aguascalientesian (made that word up, hidrotermico?) and he let me know. Which is nice, so in the spirit of reciprocity, here’s a link to his blog.

And finally, just for Sarah who can’t make embedded video play on her laptop, here’s a “mamada” I saw on the internets about Star Wars’ emperor on the phone… You come for the self-absorption, but you’ll stay for the lo-res comedy…

Cherry coke, indeed.

Not Los Angeles…

Look it! I’ve rejigged the blog a bit. Film reviews are back along with sporadic book reviews. Some horizontal navegation stuff. Erm.. archives… You name it. Just have to actually write stuff now. And fine tune the Book Review page which is playing up a bit. And change the stars to Lulus… And move over all GwynUnlimited’s content to agaveweb… Another change is I’ve deactivated the human detection type-these-letters comment thing, to see if I get any spam. Cos I’m imagining that was a pain to do each time you comment and if you get it wrong, your comment got deleted. Akismet seems to be handling the spammery quite well, so I’ll see how that goes.

What’s going on here in L.A.? Well, the usual rampant capitalism, christmas decorations aplenty, car repairs, dining out/in, and LOTS of time on the internets… erm… and yesterday I found out that fig tree sap is a powerful irritant. Otherwise all’s pretty quiet really.

Can you do better than 13/20 on this here “What films do these stationery related pictures represent?” quiz? Let me know if you work out what the yellow post-it one is. It’s not “The Wall” nor “The Wizard of Oz” and now it’s bothering me no end…