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My Dad is coming to visit. I want him to have a really good time and he wants to go to Las Vegas. He's here for ten days, so I'll show him around San Diego, take him to all the beautiful spots and then head through the desert to the big Neon Nightmare. Not a problem. But I really want to show him a good time. He works hard. he deserves a holiday that will live long in the memory. So I've tried using the reviews on Trip Advisor and Yahoo Travel to check out a few potential hotels.

Bad idea.

Every hotel I've checked out reads like heaven one minute and then hell the next. This goes for everything from the Bellagio down to the cheapest motel:  

We go to fill up the car at the Arco station on El Cajon Blvd. It's in a bit of a run down ghetto neighborhood  but it's the cheapest place around. Today it was $4.52 a gallon. It's gone up about $2 in a year. The Shell station nearby has peaked at $4.99. It wants to go over five but for the time being it dare not. It might cause a riot. They might have lost the big numbers for the sign.

Still, nothing on the UK price eh.

Bush is supposed to be giving everyone $600 as part of his economic stimulus plan. I've not gotten mine yet. Although I did get a letter saying it should be hitting my bank account any day now. That was a month ago. Perhaps he's figured out I'm not an American even though I'm a legal resident who pays taxes and social security. It would be a very Bush thing to do. It would play well in Texas. Ah Texas, where McCain's war record is an actual handicap on top of his handicap, 'you're not supposed to get captured John...' I actually heard someone say this.

Funny dreams lately.

Last night I was with my wife and Bob Dylan and we had decided to go and watch the Cubs play the Padres.

Being poor we went to book our usual centre field tickets on the hill behind the kids sand pit but Bob started looking at the whole ground layout and wanted us to get a prime box in front of first base. The seats were very expensive.

'I'll just put it on my credit card,' said Bob in his nasal twang. The voice was dead right. I heard it in my head perfectly as if he'd really spoken the words out loud.

Beggar’s Banquet

“Can I have seventy five cents?” asked the beggar. He’d edged up to us as we waited to get served at our local taco stand.

I never pony up but this guy caught me unawares. He was Mexican and egg shaped with loose jelly like eyes. About forty. There was something strangely soulful about him. Like a street after a carnival, a lone flower in an overgrown  cemetery,  a page of a telephone book lying in the gutter. His music was low Spanish guitar.

“The old seventy-five cent trick eh?” I said.

The C-word

Walking to the Casbah the other night we passed outside The Pogues in concert.

“Do you want tickets?” asked a tout with eyes so far apart he resembled a Hammerhead Shark.

Joy is Incongruous

            I was recently mistaken by several strangers for a religious nutter and I would like to set the record straight.

There's an orange glow to the north and south where the trees are on fire.
Out towards the ocean, there is smoke on the water. It smells like bonfire night.

We hired more than we need, to provide us with slack, knowing that some will just not show up some days and that they are cheap and we need not subject ourselves to unnecessary stress.
It's a nice little library, really, how hard should it be?
The job itself is a series of small simple jobs. Put all together they can seem quite overwhelming so I don't put them together I talk them through the actions, routines and rules one at a time, as they occur.
I try to explain what is necessary in the most easy and understandable way. Sometimes I think I am explaining things too fully, with too much detail and I start to bore myself. I had this feeling with Nic a few times but he is a difficult character to judge. When I told him the way to the restroom he looked at me as if I was outlining some new ideas I'd had about the workings of the second law of thermodynamics.

Strange dreams are afoot.

It involved a large clam like creature drawn in a strange style. I am trying to get Daily to recreate it, he won't-he is afraid of it. Harrison has had a go but decided to have a quiet lie down and a choc'e dig due to stress.

So it has been left up to me and I watched a horror movie in the afternoon and thats not including the one for breakfast. I will keep you posted.

Thats if I can find Mrs Maroosh's paint and brush shop again.

September Snapshots

A seagull swooped down and snatched the chocolate-coated granola bar from my hand as I lay exhausted on the beach after tackling the waves at high tide.

The news crews would not tell me what had happened in the house the corner of Franklin and Edgemont. ‘It’s too complicated,’ they said, ‘watch us at ten’.

I got a flat tire and had to push my bike up and down canyons in the hot noonday sun in search of a bike shop that was closed when I got there.