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As previously mentioned, last weekend was the annual Brawley Cattle Call weekend of which one part is a parade down Main Street. I took some video of it on the Flip and split it into two parts. First up is a montage of the school marching bands that took part:

Part two is a collection of some of the other participants:

See you here in 2009!

Guapacha.com was registered in March 1999 and I used it solely as an email host at that time. It wasn’t until later that I turned it into a web site as well, and them much later when it became the mega-force of web publishing that it is now lol

Whilst looking at some web traffic stats for this little ol’ site I came across the Internet Wayback Machine which states that it has 85 billion webpages archived all the way back from 1996… including this site from it’s beginning in 2001. Click on an image for full size.

		2001
		2002
		2004

Look how far we’ve come………. awww!

I heard somewhere there’s an election on today! Well, thanks to my recent citizenship, I received a mail-in ballot so I am pretty sure the rumours are correct. Odd that I haven’t seen anything on TV 🙂

I filled my card in a couple of weeks ago but Teri will take it to the polling station with her today. Not that I think my vote will count for much – don’t need to count the votes to know that my Presidential candidate certainly didn’t win. I did vote yes on a couple of state Propositions, be interesting to see if they pass. Locally, a friend of the family is standing for a position against an incompetent incumbent who has run a pretty negative campaign; hopefully he will win.

Not sure what channel to watch the events unfold on. Usually Keith Olberman is my choice for these things but I can’t take his over-the-top pro-Obama stance so will look elsewhere, maybe CNN is the best of a bad bunch? BBC America is covering it but I don’t have that here in the apartment.

Or you can watch it all unfold in this widget, handily supplied by Google.

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.