Wild, wild weekend!

Heather has just finished watching the Oscars 'round Kristi's house in Alabama. I've been left in charge of the family estate here in Washington and have really let my hair down.

On Friday night I watched two episodes of Dr Who back to back over a glass of whisky... and not modern Dr Who neither - good old Tom Baker on PBS. Nobody tutted at the dated special effects and I didn't hear a single bitchy comment about the Doctor's glamorous assistant Leela. Her outfit is made of shammy leathers and she has some great lines.

On Saturday I went to work for a few hours and played Team Fortress 2. Then I tried to go see a film at the IMAX and failed. Normally, I wouldn't even try so that's adventurous right there. Instead I went home, ate pizza and watched Dog Day Afternoon. It's a very funny movie.

Today, I just went into total off-the-leash overdrive. I watched all sorts of lads TV including an episode of Star Trek from 1967. I vacuumed and washed up. I took out the recycling and the rubbish and wired up the DVD player. Then I went grocery shopping and bought the ingredients for my first ever curry. Unfortunately, I got bored while it was cooking and started eating red chilli peppers to remind myself which bits have the hot stuff. I'll leave out the gory details. Lets just say I needed a bath to fully recover.

And still I managed to post some baby photos. This is from our wanderings around Ballard last weekend and just happen to have some obnoxiously adorable pictures.

Sports

I managed to get in a match or two of the World Cup last weekend in Prescott, thanks to Jim and Setanta Sports.

Setanta is an international network I'd never heard of before with channels in Great Britain and Ireland as well as America and Oz. The US operation is presented by a team of mostly Irishmen. I wouldn't say they had a bias or anything but they knew more about the Namibian side than they did about the Welsh. (Ireland beat Namibia by an unimpressive margin on Sunday BTW.)

Elsewhere in France, the not-much-hyped game between the US and England went well, i.e. America only lost by ten points to twenty eight. The locals here seem disappointed when I tell them the score despite only just learning that they have a team at all (or, for that matter, that England are the World Champions). When asked for his comments on the result, President Bush said, "we're kicking ass".

The Tri Nations teams all beat their opponents by a factor of between five and thirty as widely predicted. Wales won by a fair gap to Canada after a poor start in the first half and a steady stream of replacements in the second. Even Scotland had an easy go of things against Portugal.

The surprise match of weekend turned out to be the first, in which the hosts fell to Argentina. The upsets always seem to make the best viewing. I expect that's because no matter how far below par the favourites are, the underdogs always have to put on a hell of a show to come out on top. That's why Wales vs Australia is going to be such a joy to watch at 5:30am on Saturday. We're going to kick their asses all right.

While I was in Prescott, I also acquired Jim's old bike. It's been in storage for about twenty years now but I am assured that it was a fine vehicle in it's day. See for yourself.

I've replaced all the rubber parts which were perished and have given it a can or two of lube. It still needs a lot of work but for now it gets me to the post box and back. Nifty eh?

Thunderbolts and Lightening

It's monsoon season! It got here late this year but now that rain's pissing down for all it's worth.

The lightening's pretty frequent and Joe got all scared earlier and wouldn't let us put him down. He even wet himself, proving the idiom that it never rains.

After my success on July 4th, I thought I'd use my new tripod to see if I could catch some lightening on camera. Obviously that's not as easy to do but I figured that if I just kept clicking, I'd catch something. And look at the marvellous results!

Pah! And I missed The Colbert Report because the storm killed the satellite signal. :(

In other news, I'm having my biometrics captured! The letter arrived today and the appointment is early next month. The only things that might cause them to reschedule are 'open wounds or bandages/casts'. Guess I'll be showing up rough shaven.

Carry on Screening!

We spent last weekend in Strawberry celebrating our friend, Aly's birthday. Mary Ellen has a holiday house up there which Mac has done up nice and proper. It's got a barbecue, two fridges, a swamp cooler and a TV with composite video input at the front for easy games console installation. Nice.

This week, I've been concentrating on finding work including phone screenings. I'm pretty used to these. They're quickie interviews to weed out the people who sound like Mr Bean. The only difference here is that people actually like Mr Bean so I've been practising all week. I can't do the voice yet but I can change my underpants without taking off my trousers which is almost worth adding to my CV.

Luckily, it's all paid off because my first batch of interviews is lined up! More on this later. First, there's an action-packed week to be had in Prescott. Not only is it the birthday of my new brother-in-law, Daniel, but Prescott has the state's biggest Independence Day celebration on July 4th. For those of you whose attention span is extra specially short, this is another classic example of an American, triumphalist rewrite of history. In this case the aliens loose.

But wait, I've saved the best news for last... my residency application is in! As long as there aren't too many glaring errors in all the forms, I should be allowed to stay after my tourist stamp runs out - at least while the application is processed.

Here's a picture of me going into the post office with more tree in my hands than grows in this valley in a typical year:

Nestled in there second from the right is an application to work here while the other stuff goes through. This is pretty handy. It can take years for the green card to be issued but I'm allowed to work while it's in the pipeline. All the same, even that permit will probably take a matter of months. (And would you believe about half the paper in the photo is evidence that I can survive here without a job!)

Before I steal all the credit, I ought to point out that Heather McFarlane, Esq. did most of the work. She made sense of all the different forms to be filled out and plenty of them were completed by her, mostly to confirm that I'm not a scrounger. Ha! Other tasks involve writing the processing fee cheques, marrying me and taking the photo (above).

Heather's Heroes

Heather is officially (and predictably) hooked on the TV serial, Heroes. It basically takes the premise of X-Men (minus the spandex) and sets it to a deliberately baffling narrative in much the same way as Lost.

Once again, excellent production misdirects the viewer from how ridiculous the interwoven story-lines are. Right now, I could paint the bedroom black and throw all of H's shoes out and she wouldn't notice. It took all my super-powers to drag myself away from the screen before I got sucked in.

I distracted myself by re-hashing my old 'give me a job' website including a new gallery of trippy computer-generated images. (I'm working on a similar thing with my Python project at the moment. Watch this space...)

Tonight, we celebrate Heather's Dad's birthday. I'd wish him a happy one here but the chances of Mac jacking into teh Interweb are pretty-much nil.

I can't blog today

I have the Wii. Normal life will probably resume once I've finished the new Zelda game. Oh, and I'm off to the zoo in a few minutes. The weather is fine. Life is good. Groundhog Day is on Comedy Central.