Nuts, diets, wine and olive oil.

Chuck has his nuts...and he should. Seems that here you have two options when getting your dog fixed and one of them is to simply give him a vasectomy. As my local informant put it, "He's a young dog, let him have a little fun.?." There is a Catalan gesture and tone I am trying to duplicate with the punctuation but finding it tricky. Is this where machismo hits the road? Though I really think the machismo thing is not very Catalan from what I see, or is it European easiness around sex? Could be that...although there are an awful lot of truly ENORMOUS dogs around here, so they may want the stud value, or more likely the aggression value in a dog whose purpose is to sit on your property and bark at folks.

The dog is hilarious. We take him out for a final walk at around 10pm, or later. To say that he wants to go would be the grossest sort of overstatement. Our theory though is that an empty bladder before bed is a very good thing, and a tired dog is a good dog....But when called for the walk he goes the other way, and tries to hide, and then is gently assisted out the door, although he perks up once he is underway. Last night though, I went to bed late, and he was dossed down in the living room with me with his head on my briefcase. When I get up to go to bed, he thought I was taking him for a walk....boy did he not want to go. I had to pull him by the collar to the hall, and then once the bedroom door was open, he realised what was up and willingly went into his bed. Silly dog.

Here are two things I noticed while looking through a local magazine. There is a group offering the possibility of getting a silicone filled balloon installed in your stomach to give you that full feeling and help you diet. I cannot puzzle out the Catalan well enough to determine how exactly this is done, but as it is non-surgical, there seems only one access route. After you have lost 15 to 30 kilos, they remove it. Now I am not exactly up to speed on this aspect of human creativity, but does that not strike you and completely BIZARRE?

The second was an announcement of an excursion this weekend being organised in the neighbouring town, bikes and boutifarra, which are Catalan sausages, and are heavenly good. The idea is that you go for a 20K mountain bike ride through the hills and mountains behind us, ending at either a restaurant, this is Spain, you can climb nearly any peak and get a coffee nearby, or at a barbeque and you cook up the boutifarra accompanied I am sure by wine and beans, and bread and and and...usually they are riding home afterwards, but maybe someone comes and picks some of them up. The roads in the hills here are loose dirt and gravel over hard pack dirt and so are very slidey slippery, and very very steep in spots. I cannot picture riding a mountain bike, in that crouched over position after a big feed, and a little tight on wine....these people amaze me. I think I would barf shortly before I crashed.

On a final note, the guys came around today with the wine...so we're all stocked up for Nomad's visit, though having lived in Bordeaux(sp?) for two years, I am not sure how the local plonk will stack up. My folks, who are not excessive connoseuirs, but have a palate, said that we should not be ashamed to serve it, so here it comes. This is the cool thing though. They also sell olive oil! I think from their own place, or at least the same place. Bought a couple of liters...well actually I didn't, I have a couple of liters, and when I asked them if I had a couple of minutes to run to the bank, they gave it to me and said, "Tranquilla" can you guess the meaning on that one? I can pay them next week. Well how good is that? They looked a little horrified when I said I would just run to the bank...maybe I should have said walk.

We're going to taste test it against the local grocery store oil. You know your near the Med when there is door to door wine and olive oil delivery.