Last night Sita came home knackered from her Tequila class, it was at a world class restaurant and they were watching various tequila infused dishes being prepared and then sampling them. She got a chef’s hat and everthing. Picture coming soon… So we didn’t do the whole music club thing, instead we settled down to Steven Colbert’s unique take on recent news courtesy of bitttorrrent and an early night. If I’ve understood it correctly right now (sat. midday) she’s off tasting cocktails with her class. That can’t be right surely? We’ll see soon enough. She took the camera so I couldn’t go on my photography mission so maybe this afternoon.

So what have I been up to? Well, driving sita to her class, but also watching Steven Fry researching his family’s history in a v. interesting BBC documentary, cooking a gourmet turkey bacon and cheese omelette and archiving my blog for 2004. Who knows? Maybe in the distant future people will wonder what expat Zummerzet folk in the Americas filled their time with in the beginning of the 21st Century and my since blog isn’t cached by google (deliberately) there’ll need to be a printed record. I’ve been reading all about the dread building up to Atticus’s arrival, my old job *shudder*, our doggy’s problematic behaviour at Xmas around Sally and Martin and all kinds of other things. I can’t wait to find out what happened next. To be honest it’s pretty sub-Adrian Mole (he mentions the outside world and other people occasionally) but it’s been a laugh. I’m glad I’m doing this. Anyway, if you’d like a 1.6 meg PDF of 2004’s entries to print out, email or comment me and I’ll send the link. That’s it for now, happy weekend and all that, byee, gwyn

Last night’s (patriotic) shepherd’s-pieathon spawned all kinds of ideas:

Tonight: Friday night music club round Jose’s psuedo uncle’s.
Sunday morning: Brunch round Victor and Jayna’s
Tuesday: Lucha Libre (wrestling). Definitely. No excuses this time…
Sat/Sun: Arandas, Jalisco’s Tequila II
Sun: Superbowl party chez nous (not my idea), I’ll be on pizza production again.

So that’s plenty to be getting on with for a few days. I feel like the photography’s taken a back seat the last few weeks, so maybe I’ll head off tomorrow morning with me 1 gig SD card and get some more Gwod cityscapes in. I’ve still got the Parque site to finish off too. So I’ll not be bored. Don’t you worry now.

Also in an idle moment I set up all my email notifications for spam at gwynunlimited to forward directly to contact @ phentermine-support.com, how d’ya like them apples eh?

EDIT: 2/Nov/08: The isc.ro site’s been down for me (and everyone else according to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)  for a week or so. I can still log in and play though… Doesn’t bode well.

Internet Scrabble Club

EDIT: 1/June/08 : Just noticed a spike in traffic for hardcore scrabble addicts wondering what’s up with the ISC server. On their site it’s saying:

The main server is currently experiencing an outage. We do not have an estimated time to repair at present. ISC backup server is running, to connect select from the ‘Open Connection’ window ‘ISC backup server’
We apologize for the inconvenience.

I can’t connect to the backup server though… Hey ho. Looks like it’s back to Scrabulous on Facebook

Just testing a new button I’ve got on me browser that I can press when I want to blog a page I like… My scrabble rating’s presently at 915, highest ever. This year I intend to get past 1000. Sita’s moving over to the dark side though, with her Su Doku, so fat chance of any real world practice…

Just ask Mrs. Lisk

Did he even study for this exam? (c) Gwyn’s History School Report, 1988

The sad thing is I did. Anyroad, I’ve been all over the interweb and in and out of books researching the history of the Royal Inland Road and also listening to the Top of the Pods podcast (I even got me name read out on it the other day. And it has upwards of 1600 listeners…). So here is the natural conjunction of those two pasttimes: my
Top 10 historical things I’ve learnt about El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro:

10. The whole thing about Moctezuma thinking (Conquistador) Cortes was Quetzalcoatl- their lightning god- returning was probably a convenient myth made up by the priests to showcase once again that God was a Spaniard.

9 Guadalajara was founded in 4 separate places. Injuns was the usual excuse for upping camp and starting again down the road.

8 Guadalajara is named after renowned sadist/explorer Nuño de Guzmán’s home town in Spain.

7 Nomadic Indians were a lot harder to fight than the settled ones, hence the 40+ year Chichimeca War from 1550 to 1590ish. ‘Chichimeca’ is what the Aztecs (not the most peace-loving of nations) named them. It means, depending on which source you use, ‘of dog lineage’, ‘language of dogs’, ‘dog people’. Basically sons of bitches…

6 The camino was originally used for sucking all the mineral wealth out of Zacatecas and surrounding area and supplying them with vittles from Guadalajara. Cos the land round them parts weren’t none too fertile.

5 The Chichimecas found it very easy to attack these convoys and used their impressive bow and arrow skills to take out the muleteers and who they reckoned were atrespassin’ on their land. Hence the swift change of route to go via San Miguel de Allende to Mexico City and stay well away from Gwod.

4 The Chichmecas only started playing nicely when the Spanish/Mestizos stopped attacking and enslaving them and started trading trinkets and baubles instead. Half Chichimeca/ half Spanish Miguel Caldera spearheaded the operation of ‘Paz por compra’ (peace by purchase) which replaced the previous tactics of ‘Guerra a sangre y fuego’ (War of blood and fire, or more roughly, shock and awe…)

3 Juan de Oñate extended the route from Zacatecas up to Santa Fe, New Mexico once the Chichimecas had calmed down a bit. But he still had troubles when he had to finance the whole thing and there wasn’t much in the way of gold/ silver/ docile natives to find. His brutal reprisals in Acoma at his mutinous men and indignant indigenous peeps by cutting off feet and suchlike made him few friends, even the Spanish Virreyes stripped him of all kinds of titles and fined him.

2 The Camino Real was later important for all kinds of historic events. Which I’m still getting to… Independence, Revolution, Cristero War. And ting.

1 Wikipedia is more useful than any other site on the interweb for historical research. If I earned a living wage, I’d donate… I read the founder’s personal appeal, and he says it’s there for ‘the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him.” And I’m sure if he’d pondered it further, he’d have continued ‘and impoverished Brits trying to research background material for a documentary of trinational importance in Mexico”.

And also, thanks, Amy, the latest Guestmappee who’s no longer in manateeville but NYC with a predilectation for audience participation in Comedy Central satirical news shows.