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Every year, the fair city of Brawley has it’s annual Cattle Call week. Most people know it (if they know it at all) for the rodeo that takes place on the final weekend but the festivities start today with the Chili Cook Off which this year includes an entry from the local mortuary called “Dead Man’s Chili”.

Being out of town all week I pretty much miss the pre-rodeo events such as the beef cook-off and the cowboy poetry. Things like the Mariachi festival I am not so sad about.

Next Saturday morning it’s the Parade at which Teri announces and I try to assist. Maybe this year I’ll capture some highlights on the Flip, maybe not. A couple of times I’ve tried to get the SCMM MINI club to enter into the parade and have a line of MINIs (several other car clubs take part) but it clashes with an annual event so there has never been any interest. Plus I think many of the people there think it’s a bit too hicks ville out here for them.

Rodeo starts Saturday afternoon, repeat showing in the evening and, if we go at all, we go to the final performance on Sunday afternoon. For a city slicker like myself, these events really are something you can’t see anywhere else, true Americana, if you like. So if you find yourself in the neighbourhood, come over for a steak and watch some bull riding.

I know the food lovers amongst you will gasp with culinary distaste but I just wanted to give a shout out to the fast food places that are doing days with special prices. I’ve blogged (or maybe tweeted) before about the Popeye’s special – every Tuesday, two pieces of chicken are just $1.29. Today I found out by accident that Burger King has Whopper Wednesdays where a combo is just $2.99.

I need to find some more deals like this – and I know Subway has the $5 foot long but I’d rather eat the cash then that crap (rich, I know, coming from someone who ate at BK).

I am finally done with the crazy travel of the last couple of weeks, and as much as I usually love to travel you won’t find me getting in a plane any time soon (unless it’s me at the controls). In the last 2.5 weeks I have flown on 11 flight legs, landing in Baltimore, New York, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, London, and Amsterdam. My business trip to Europe included just over 24 hours of actual flying time (plus who knows how much time waiting in airport lounges) but I spent only 21 hours in a work office or meeting!

Anyway, we had a really good time in New York and there may be some posts on that later. In the meantime, if you missed them you can check out some photos here and here.

Not much to report from the London and Amsterdam visits, least not much that isn’t prohibited by an NDA, but I did take a few snaps of my hotel and some of Amsterdam city. You can see these here.

So no more travel for a while, I think, though if I had gotten back from Europe a day or two earlier I probably would have been going to Seattle today for 2 days for some more meetings. I am definitely glad I am not.

Made it to New York the city is crazy with the big UN meeting going on. The front desk said our hotel is full of secret service people, will have to watch my mouth.

Then, during dinner at my favourite place, Virgils, Sarah Palin arrived at the hotel opposite surrounded by cops.

The city is as crazy as ever.

Off to the Big Apple tomorrow for a few days R’n’R, will take in the major sights and show Teri my old haunts (fortunately some, like The Village Idiot, no longer exist). So likely no posts or comments approvals during that time, though I do have the WP app on the iPhone. Might twitter a little if the mood strikes, I don’t want you to miss me too much.

Laters, peeps.

Made a little video of the apartment I stay in during the week whilst I slave away at work. I made a bunch of mistakes verbally during the filming – can you spot them all???

Take one bottle of wine
add some Robbie Williams
add some Kylie singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
and you get sadness.

Three years this Saturday: Mum, I miss you.

I used this today and no one had a clue what I was talking about:

“I think the penny has finally dropped: he has started looking for another job”

It means someone has finally understood a situation, long after it was very obvious to everybody else. You can google the etymology of the phrase for yourselves (it has to do with penny slot machines).

Recently db posted a tweet lamenting how few songs he owned that had the word Happy in them and then he challenged us to skitch our own count and put it online. I hadn’t used skitch until now and all I can say is wow, I am well impressed. Great app for the Mac, one more reason not to own a Windows machine. Anway, how much happy do I have?

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

And in the meantime people have counted how much sad they have. Not surprisingly I have more sad than happy. But maybe that’s because I seem to have a much smaller iTunes library than everyone else?

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

It seems like a long time since I received a good phishing or other malware e-mail, these days they are either in Russian, or similarly unreadable, not to mention pointless. But I enjoyed the two I got today…

First, I got one claiming to be from Equifax, saying that in order to continue using the ePort system I need to click on a link and fill in the form. Yeah, right, of course I do. I’ve never heard of ePort but more importantly the email doesn’t show a link in Thunderbird so there isn’t even anything for me to click on. Idiots.

Second, I have an email from “UPS” (though oddly they choose to write to me from a domain other than their own) saying that the package I mailed on September 1st has been delayed and would I please fill in the attached form. Ok…. hmm… the attachment is a zip file… and it contains… ups_invoice.exe. Not a bad try, I suppose.

Anyway, I remain phish and virus-free for another day.