We have a new member of the family.

Burt is a 1998 Subaru Forester L. We adopted him from Scott who I work with for the grand price of $4500 - that’s about four blackjacks in the old money if you still count Imperialwise.

Cars in America don’t age like cars in the UK. When you buy a second had car in the UK you have to worry about rot around the doorsils and if it’s been kept in a garage to stop the sophits getting damp. In California there is no weather so cars just carry on until they suddenly fall apart on the freeway from terminal old-age.

Burt has driven 150,000 and still looks new. 150,000 miles is a visitfrom Jane’s parents to my mum’s house every month for 50 years. I think Burt looks quite goo on it.

Of course, the question everyone asks is “Why Burt?”

Halloween was a bit of a wash out this year - the city banned the usual celebration in the Castro. We turned up anyway, but the streets were empty apart from a small number of revelers asking a large number of policemen where they bought such good costumes.

(Luckily we had been invited to a spiffing party the Saturday before - there are a few pictures of it on the link below.)

But we’re lucky enough to live in a Hispanic area of town, and were introduced to a new celebration - the Day of the Dead. Apparently this is a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and the Mexican community living in the United States and Canada. San Francisco’s celebrations have been happening for the past 27 years - a procession starts at 24th and Bryant (just a few blocks from us) and makes its way to Garfield Park, where altars have been built and lanterns hung in the trees.

We had a good look, and then went to Mis Antojitos for the best guacamole on the planet. (They put quesa fresca on it. Yum.)

Photos here.

A friend took us to Club Sportiva drool over a $300,000 Ferrari.

Sadly we didn’t like the colour so we’re considering the Lotus which matches Madame’s eyes.

One day walking down Andrevski, we caught sight of an old guy selling oil paintings stolen from Soviet institutions.

$50 later we were up one rolled canvas on Lenin. We smuggled him past the border guards rolled in a map of the world and then had him mounted at Edgewise Arts [1] which cost significantly more than $50.

He came back at the weekend and yesterday I hung him. I was particularly impressed with the way the crappy iPhone camera and the halogen picture light gave Vova a halo.

[1] Dan at Edgewise arts took one look at the picture and said “Oh yeah, this guy looks familiar” looking pointedly at me. “Yes, the father of modern comunism” I replied. “Oh, so you didn’t just shave the beard off then…”.

My borther and his family have been visiting us. We failed to take them to Alcatraz but we did manage a trip to the Marin headlands and a trip to the farmers market at the Ferry Terminal Building.

This time of year is apparently the right time for monster morels.

We didn’t buy any but the same stall did manage to sell us a very reasonable black truffle

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Farmers Market day.

In America, they still use the Imperial system of units. Stuff is measured in “loads” they carefully measured it as it came out of the container and officially we have a “shit load” of stuff.

Far too much to fit in our new house. We’re sending most of it back to Europe. Let us know if you need a bed, a pool lounger or a wheelbarrow. Going free but you must collect.

I really didn’t want this blog to turn into one of those “Ohh, aren’t americans weird” blogs but, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

Without further ado, what is the fat content of this?

Doris* just mailed me:

just a quick note to let you know that the vessel arrived this morning, and all documents have been submitted to U.S. Customs. At this point, it’ll probably take a couple of days to unload the vessel before the container is even available for p/u**. Let’s hope customs clears pretty quickly so we can get the shipment delivered in good time.

* You do know Doris don’t you?
** Sadly I have no idea what p/u is

Mid-life crisis? Me?