Back to normality

I must apologise to my avid readers for the lack of updates recently. As mentioned before, it was Memorial Day weekend which consisted of lots of beer and drinking games. My colleague Craig managed to find a keg of beer for the kegerator, but unfortunately the ‘tower’ did not arrive in time. He did a very good compromise and made a temporary tower out of a cardboard box. This meant that we could enjoy cold draft beer all weekend. The beer pong table also didn’t arrive, so he had to make one out of a pasting table. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game of beer pong, you have teams of 2 people. They stand at opposite ends of a table and have to try and throw a ping pong ball into one of the cups of the opposing team. The cups are half full of beer, except for the front cup which is full. If the ball ends up in the opposing teams cup, then one member of the team have to drink the beer. If any of you are still unsure of the rules then I will show you when I get back. Thankfully I managed to survive the weekend in one piece. We also managed a trip to the Beer Hunter where I am now up to 15 of the 75 beers needed to get my name up on the wall of foam. Only another 60 to go!!!

Just for my younger sister I have included a photo of a roadrunner which I finally managed to capture on Tuesday lunchtime. Before you get worried Nicky, it’s the picture I manager to capture and not the roadrunner :-)

I will try and do something other than drinking this weekend so I have more to write about.

Wun beer, pleez

My colleague is trying to find out where to buy a keg of beer from in time for the weekend, so I thought I would try and help. Whist searching on google I found this great website on how to order beer in 47 languages. I think I might try and find a Chinese restaurant to practise. I thought the Chinese was funny until I read some of the others. I am definitely not going to order one in Belaruis!!!

http://esperanto-usa.org/node/82?gclid=COXooJa5o4wCFRDaYgodgCOv6w

I also found a great fancy dress costume:

http://www.buycostumes.com/productdetail.aspx?productid=18974&KNC-yahoocpc

Mum, you know what you can but me for Christmas now :-)

6 down, many more to go!

This weekend my colleague and I decided to embark on the journey to get our names in the ‘Hall of Foam’. 6 different beers in 1 evening should not have been a problem, but we had been drinking until nearly 4am that morning, so the first couple were a real struggle. I am not the most sensible person when it comes to drinking, but I should have known to steer clear of a beer called ‘Flying Dog’! When I ordered it I thought it was a lager, but it turned out to be a dark beer. The problem is that here they call English beer lager, and English lager they call beer. I really struggled with this one, and will definitely avoid it in future. So now I only have another 69 to drink! Next weekend is Memorial day and we have the day off on Monday, so I should be able to get a few more in :-) After that we went on the 2 different Karaoke’s bars. Neither of them were very good though, so we headed home around 2am.

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. I watched the final qualifying for the Indy 500. It doesn’t make up for missing Formula 1, but it does help a bit. Next weekend is the actual race which I am really looking forward to. I also went swimming a couple of times. They have a pool with a spa on the complex, and it is only a few minutes drive from my house. You get the pool, spa and gym for $35 a month. Certainly a lot cheaper than in England or the Netherlands! On the request of my friend Jen, I have included a picture of some ducks. Maybe next time they will join me in the pool!

So I am guessing that the big news of the week is the gorilla escaping from it's cage in Blijdorp zoo. I thought Werner was joking when he told me. Marijn said that it was even on the news in Australia. For those of you who were asleep last week, you can catch up with the story on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6670723.stm. When I lived in Blijdorp, the most excitement we got was the man getting arrested for sucking women's toes whist they were sunbathing in Vroesenpark, although I think the Gorilla escaping may be a less scary prospect!

Not for the faint hearted

Since my Mum’s comment that whatever the frog/toad was eating in my garden was probably a cockroach, I decided to do a bit more investigation. This has unfortunately become the topic of my lunchtime discussions for the last couple of days, which is really gross. We got onto the subject of if they could fly or not, which then let me to this weird website. Even though I am disgusted by the whole subject, I couldn’t help but reading most of the questions and some of the answers. For the curious people amongst you, here is the site I found: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/cockroach_faq.html

Whilst browsing through the page, I came across the ‘ridiculous’ (30 & 41), the ‘I don’t want to even look’ (16 & 17), the ‘who cares’ (43 & 49) and the ‘let’s try it and see’ (29) topics. I think I have provoked enough curiosity that this site is going to get more hits than it has before!!!

Happy reading :-)

Wildlife watch

Well today on wildlife watch I saw a roadrunner on the drive home from work. It lived up to it's name as it ran across the road in front of me. Don't worry, I'll get him next time!!! Sorry, no photos on this one.

This evening I was sitting in the garden and I heard these very strange noises. On closer inspection I saw that it was a frog. I rushed into the house to get the camera and managed to get a few photos. You can imagine my shock when I looked back at the pictures and saw a huge beetle in front of it. Anyone who knows me will know that they are my biggest hate (apart from Michael Schumacher!). Luckily on the 2nd photo the beetle had disappeared, so I am guessing that my friend Kermit ate it. If you double click on the picture you will see what I mean. I did try and look on Google to see what type of beetle it was, but after looking at a couple of pictures I wanted to be sick, so didn't investigate any further.

P.S It may also have been a toad, but I am not sure. Either way, he is more than welcome in my garden if he keeps eating the beetles. All I need to do now is to teach it to climb walls in order to get the ones that congregate around my outside light.

More sunsets and palm trees

I am really enjoying it here in California. On Wednesday it was my colleagues' birthday so we started off in the Beer Hunter again. They have a menu of over 200 bottles of beer. For those of you that are interested, if you enlarge the picture you will be able to see all of them. Apparently if you drink 75 different types then you get your name on the 'Wall of Foam'. I was thinking of trying this, but you can only get a maximum of 6 per visit, so I would have to go there quite a lot to be able to achieve this before I leave.



After the Beer Hunter we headed off to a different Karaoke bar. You have to be over 25, and I was so proud when they asked me for ID! It was so funny and I have not laughed so much in such a long time. They take it really seriously. When a person is up singing, you often get people who just get up on the dance for and dance round them. My colleague got up and sang, and then all of a sudden a man got up and joined in. Very bizarre! The funniest part was when about 10 Mexican women got up and sang the Pussy Cat Dolls. I just couldn't hold my laughter in at all the grinding!!!

So along with the ducks, I have now seen rabbits, bats, and also have hummingbirds in my garden. Unfortunately the bat proved to be a bit camera shy, so you only have a picture of the hummingbird.

As I have found that some of you don't bother with the text and just look at the pictures, there are also a few more of the sunsets and palm trees.

If you want to see some more stunning pictures, then you must go to Marijn's blog. He has just been to the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef. For those of you who don't read Dutch, then you might want to scroll straight down to the photos. He has also asked me to mention him as he made me realise that hummingbird is one word. You are very clever Marijn :-)

Finally an update :-)

Sorry I haven’t updated this page recently, but I don’t have internet access at home yet.

This last week has been so busy. Last Monday I met up with my colleague Diana and her friend in New York. We had dinner, went up to the observation tower at the Rockefeller Centre, and then managed a few beers afterwards. The view from the observation tower was amazing as we got there just in time for sunset. In case you haven’t seen enough pictures of the New York skyline, I have added a few more at the bottom.

Tuesday morning I left the East coast and headed for La Quinta. After stopping briefly in Phoenix, I landed in Palm Springs around 2.30pm. Whilst waiting for my luggage I went outside, and the heat was amazing. It was 38C!!! I then picked up a car and drove about 30 minutes to La Quinta. My first couple of nights were in the hotel at a country club, and then thanks to a colleague, I managed to find a small house to rent for 3 months. It is now the off season as soon it will get really hot, so I managed to get the house very cheaply. The house is also on the country club, but don’t be shocked, as La Quinta doesn’t consist of much else. The house I found has a patio at the back which is right on the fairway for the 2nd hole of the Royal golf course. There are 2 ducks which always seem to be waddling around, and come up to the gate to see me :-) There are three 9 hole courses on the complex, and it is so beautiful and green. La Quinta is also stunning as it is in the valley and is surrounded by mountains. Here is the link to the country club, and I have also added a few pictures above www.indianpalms.com

My colleagues seem very nice, and I have been out drinking a couple of times with them. There is great bar called the Beer Hunter which has about 50 TV screens which just have sport on all the time. On Saturday we went there for the Mayweather v De La Hoya fight. The place was packed, but as soon as the fight was over, everyone disappeared. After that we went to a Karaoke bar. It was so nice to finally go out drinking without having to drive home.

That’s it for now, and I will try and update the blog soon.