Architect number 4

I think I am coming down with a cold.  Feeling kind of cranky about that, along with kind of tired.  I woke up fine. Then I started sneezing, then my eyes were itchy, I thought allergy.  Now my throat is sore and my nose is plugging up....I'm thinking a cold.  D*mn.

Blech.

Met the new architect this morning, I like him!!!

He asked when we want to start....already?

I said that yes, we want to start already.

He listened, he's going to show us a couple of houses where they have done similar things like I have mentioned, I could understand his Catalan, he didn't scorn ideas.  He said the roof may not be too bad, for which I could love him, and he didn't seem too concerned about the crack in the wall.  We are getting together again on Saturday at 9am.  I like 9am, feels like the guy wants to get stuff done.

Now he has to pass the man's evaluation, but I think we have our guy.

I asked a friend at work about him, it is a village, and she had never heard anything negative either. They were friends when they were young, she said he is a good sort and honest.  YiPEEEEE

He also knew the house from before.....good good good all around.

A room with a view! and with paint and an easel and a comfy chair I don't care if it gets messy and a stereo.......

Been painting, and feeling excited about it, I probably won't have a second for it after this week, as my teaching schedule goes nuts after Monday....

But!

But but butbutbut,

I just figured out where I can put a small space for me to paint in the new house. Quiet, with a view, and I can lay it out and leave it out! MINE!

I'll let the man in there too. Two arm chairs, a little boom box...somehow I like music when I am painting, especially happy music, a table and some drawers...and the easel I am planning on making, we've got the wood, we've just never had anywhere to put it!

I am SO excited.

Now to convince the man (probably easy), the architect (should be easy) and the ajuntamin (fingers crossed)!

OOooooooHHH!!!!

Cross your fingers and legs and toes and knuckles and armpits if you can for me, m'kay?

Meeting with another architect tomorrow morning....some finger etcetcetcetc crossing for that would be most welcome too. I so want to get this thing started.


Oh, and here's what I've been up too:

This first one was kind of an accident...or at least it was running with what I was handed.  Underneath is a painting I didn't like....at all, and when I went to do something over it, I discovered that my favorite giant tub of blue had turned to jello over the summer....

OK, let's see what we can do with that, and here's what I've ended up with.

Not quite done though.

This one below, I started last spring, and I think it is finish...cheery and funny.....

Feeling all Georgia O'Keeffe today it would seem.  Actually I took a bunch of photos of poppies quite a while ago and they have been stewing around on my phone for ages and today was the day. 

Not done. Blogging while I wait for paint to dry.....

Brmmmmmbrmmmmm, woof woof.

You know when your car starts making a weird and kind of expensive little sound.

You know how you try to ignore it for a while, ostrich like, cause you just don't want to go into the mechanics and drop a thousand bucks on the bucket.

Then you go in, and it either

a) doesn't make the sound at all and persistently is fine the whole time you are there,

or

b)makes the sound, which the mechanic cannot diagnose, which them disappears completely and never reoccurs, leaving you feeling a little bit like a ninny, and a little bit taken.

Chuck....he's just like a car in some ways.

Chuckbacca has been feeling a little weird these days. Sleeping a lot, falling asleep really easily, not getting up to greet people, but greeting me with absolutely frantic delight, following me around the house (which he hasn't done in AGES) getting tired in the hills and taking a long time to recover.

Finally went down to the vet.

She couldn't find anything, which was reassuring because this leishmania thing is a drag and we have to be so vigilant. She thought, and I agreed that it may be any one of a number of things. Jet lag, annoyance that we are all back at school and work, a virus, being out of shape, having too much fur for the heat here......

That said,

After we went to the mechanic vet and she couldn't find anything wrong....

He's just fine now, thankyouverymuch.

We interupt our regular programming

Inspired by ElPadawan's gorgeous photos of Georgian Bay, I am actually going to get around to posting some photos from the summer.

They didn't get up before this for two reasons, first,  I was insanely busy and second because I miss the boat and found it a little hard to go through the photos.....

Whatever.


So, here go the photos.  This first one is part of the channel that we took this summer when we were sailing.

Well, that didn't go well, I tried to upload about 10 photos and got only the last one in the wrong place.  Seems the new blogger screen needs a little work still.....

Ahhhh, you get a little window thing so you can select where to put them in your text...kinda cool....

Here we have his Chuckiness on the first day sailing. To say that he was not an entirely comfortable dog with this whole boat moving and swaying would be an understatement.  He spent the trip primarily curled up under our feet where he felt safest.

Above is some of the scenery from Georgian Bay...love the rocks.  Below another navigation mark.....

The girls spent quite a bit of time teaching Chuck to swim.  In fact he already can swim, he just hates too.  Nothing a little bacon or chicken can't overcome though....

Not a happy doggie face there, though at the end he was willing to wade it, it was only when his feet came off the bottom that he wasn't so sure about all this silliness.

 

There she is, Oreneta in Ontario!

And Chuck later on in the trip.  He got happier on the boat and more accustomed to the entire venture....which is a good thing.  All to do again next year!

Have a great day!

Cheers,

O

Villa Villekulla

As far as the neighbourhood kids are concerned, the new house is Pippi's place in real life.

No furniture, the adults aren't worried about dirt or water, a garden overgrown and mad, water everywhere and it is all a little dusty and musty and kids fort-y....

Half the neighbourhood and their cousins were there today.....I ended up just hanging out semi-supervising....they ranged in age from 2 to 18...honestly. 

The group is now somewhat divided by gender...the girls are all up here hanging their dolls off the balcony at the boys and dressing up in horrifying Halloween masks and leering at the boys.

We are debating bathrooms in the new house.  There is a possibility that the only shower may be downstairs, the exit would be in full view of the street when the windows are open, which would mean that we would all have to skitter around the corner as fast as we could in our towels everytime we had a shower...and then if we had guests over....

We may have to come up with another solution.

Maybe all the local kids can think of something.  I'm taking them all up in the mountain in a bit....them, the dog and their dolls.  A fun Sunday.

Safareig ideas.

A friend lent us a calendar of some safareiges that had been renovated and turned into fountains. I took photos of them to remember some of the ideas, and I thought I might share.....












See all those ones with the mossy rock things...those are quite traditional, and our house did had one. Indeed the rocks are still there. We are probably not going to keep that, I am not sure I want to pay for water to be running down that day and night forever. A little extravagant in a land that is so dry. Maybe that is the point though.




A little more for those of you who have made it this far. We sort of have a garden with this house too. There is a walled garden in front that USED to belong to the house officially, but hasn't since the civil war, as well, the lady who lived there before us used it all the time.

I am keeping up with the tradition. I may add that I have never before been in a garden entirely planted with spiky thorny grasping nasty plants.

Holly trees...(who knew THAT existed) and rose bushes and I don't know what all else but one of them is a nasty spreading ugly thing that has thorns on the tip of every leaf and there are lots of them.

All massively overgrown after three years or more without being tended. Got some work ahead of me and some garden planning!

Wet walls

I went into the house yesterday to ponder....ruminate....imagine possibilities.

While I was there, I had a look at this area behind the door to the patio. I had been worried about it as the sand just kept falling, buy Hubris Architect said that it was nothing, just the plaster. Sorry about the blurry photo.



So I picked at it a bit. I figure if it is loose enough to come off in chunks, it is going to have to come off eventually anyway.


I was however rather alarmed by what I saw. That nice light beige stuff? Crumbly but dry. The dark brown? Soaking freaking wet.

Ho hum.

You can see these weird straight lines between the wet areas and the dry. Haven't figured out what that is all about.

From the position I figured that there were one of three possibilities about where the water could becoming from.

1. The sink in the pati....a leaky drain and it is wicking in.

2. Something on the other side of the wall.

3. (and most worrying) that it is leaking from the roof all the way down to the ground floor.



At that point I lost my nerve, went home, put on happy music and painted.

Ostrich-like I know, but there it is.

Today I felt braver. I pulled more of the plaster off to see how far the damage went....a long way.

Then I went upstairs to look at the big fat crack in the wall there that is right over top of the wet spot in the kitchen.

See it there? Floor to ceiling.


Then I pulled out some of the plaster.

It is wet back there, very very wet. It is also, as far as I can see, pure mud, these walls don't seem to have any rocks in them at all.

There are also some VERY deep cracks in it.


See?

llalalalalalalala.....

Ho hum.

Good thing those walls are three feet thick.

Ohhhhh, on the good news front, our very good friend who also is an electrician/plumber/gas installer also knows an architect that he personally has used and with whom he has worked often.

Hope rises up again.

Welcome to the rollercoaster ride that is home renovation.

Homework...all kinds of it.

OK, the other answer is this: (-2) to the power of four = (+2) to the power of four.

Indeed (-x) to the power of y= (+x) to the power of y as long as y is a even number.

HAH! I can't believe I got that!

We had the joy of Spanish verb conjugations, as well as synonyms and antonyms today from 10 to 10:45 pm. Yeehaw!

It is tricky to find synonyms and antonyms in a language you don't speak.

We are still looking for an architect. When we spoke to a friend who used the latest one, we were told that he is quite stubborn and our buddy had to have some fairly serious arguments to have the house done his way not the architect's way. Seems he has lost sight of the fact that he is no, oh, say, Frank Gehry and therefore we want just a wee bit more imput into the house we are going to be living in.

Fingers crossed.

The worst of it is we have a great friend in TO who is a fabulous innovative and interesting architect......who can't work here.

We'll have to get a chunk of land there some day if only to get to work with him.

TOMA! Math goddess for a moment!

Eldest and math are back together again, and OH so happy about it.

She has math homework every single day. Something I am most delighted about considering what was going on last year.

This also means that we are checking her math homework and reviewing questions with her every night.

Now, may I add, the man is freaking brilliant at math. Heck, he works out equations in the evenings for the entertainment value. I kid you not, I look over some night and he has this booklet out and a pencil and he's working away at them. NO idea what they are all about, but there it is. My Mom is also excellent at maths, my Dad and my sister both work with numbers. I liked math for a long time, but eventually reached a point (in grade 13) where I was confused.

I have always been the math dummy in the family. (not that pathetic, just the competition has been a mite fierce)

ANYWHO....

Eldest had one math problem that she couldn't figure out. I didn't get it at first and called in the big guns...."Honey, how does this go....."

Brace yourselves, cause I'm gonna do some wicked gloating here.....

I figured it out FIRST!!!!!

*happy dancing and general (rude)self-congratulatory hooting*

Da da da da DA DA!

okokokokok,

I know....how many does he get right and how many do I get right...nonetheless.!

Here it is, let's see what you can do.....answer provided later.

Find two different numbers taken to the same exponent, that when worked out, have an equal value.

Sooooo?

Good luck all...ask your teens who've done this math more recently, they may figure it out faster.

No googling allowed!

You want how much in cash????

Our lawyer phoned us at 6:55 pm the night before we bought the house to tell us that the vendor wants 15,000 of the money for the house in cash.

Say what????

OK......

What????

Aside from all the other issues....

Our little village bank ain't going to have that sort of cash just laying around.....

Went into the bank first thing in the morning and I'll let our bank manager know.

What was that all about you may ask?

Well, the manager wasn't surprised. They taxes have to be paid and in Spain in general it seems, the vendors aren't trusted enough to come up with the money, so they have to pay on the spot before the house is turned over. As most people don't have 20,000 Euros lying around, and the check takes a while to clear, they want cash.

Strangely, he had enough cash too, though it was a heck of a lot of 50's to be carting around.

Weird.

If you are ever asked to do this, just make sure that the documents you sign actually include the total price of the house, not just the amount that the check covers. Foreigners may not want to get on the wrong side of the tax man.

Met with another architect yesterday, I am coming to the conclusion that a fair number of architects are somewhat glutted by hubris.

He seemed OK, a bit of a poser. He wants us to keep the sink in the back cause the tiles are a hundred years old and from some traditional town. I know what he means, but the suckers are ugly, and I have to look at them every single freaking day....plus the "courtyard" is tiny and if we keep the safareig AND the sink we won't have anywhere to sit down......I need a home, not just a museum.

He wants to be paid 10% of what we pay the builders, that is over and above what we pay them. This does bring in interesting ethical questions. For instance, it is just as easy for him to design something a little (or a lot) more expensive as to design something cheaper, indeed probably easier to go more expensive. You can please the clients and you don't have to think very hard.

Plus you make more cash that way.

Also, as he is the one who is supposed to supervise the builders, he would not have our financial interest at heart as the pair of them together could inflate the bills quite nicely.

Hmmmmm.

Have to find out if this is a typical arrangement.

If nothing else, I am learning to ask the stupid questions and not finding myself surprised by things so often.

Whew.

Help me! Help me! I cant help myself!!!

My kids are pretty calm around wasps and bees. They don't LIKE them, but they don't freak out or run around and scream.

Chuck is not the same.

Hysterical.

Completely off his nut terrified. He alternately jumps at them to get them and runs away with his ears in this really unique and peculiar position.

Clearly screaming out for me to DO SOMETHING.

Then again, if I had an internal compulsion to bite wasps, I too might be frantic to have someone remove it.

Help! Help! Get it out of here before I eat it!!!!!

Stupid pup.

ANOTHER use for olive oil.

You know I have said that the Catalans use olive oil for EVERYTHING.

I just discovered a new use.

They used to (still do?) wash the tile floors with olive oil.

I haven't quite figured out how that would happen....but that is what I am told. They did it for the shine. I imagine it also would have soaked in to some extent.

Wow.

Baby button

Woke in the night last night and SOARED out of bed, went to check on the girls, who were sleeping, and stumbled back a little confused. I was sure one of them had been calling me frantically.

Weird.

Zzzzzzzz.

This morning the man reminds me there is a very small baby now living downstairs, only a few months old.

Seems it was crying briefly in the night.

That old internal baby alarm still seems to be working just fine.

Bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread

I am now, or at least currently, the VERY proud owner of a wood fired bread oven in my new HOUSE!!!!

Holy geez!


The photo above is where the bread goes in....after we clear out a forests worth of pine needles.


This is where the fire goes, down underneath the bake oven.

An exciting view of the walls of the chamber for the fire....larger stones angle up to support the large single stone that seems to make up the base. You can see that below.


Seriously exciting photography, no? My parents bought an old house that they renovated extensively when I was a kid and I was always quite mystified by the endless and incredibly boring photos they took of the house. In the spirit of my folks, here's a shot up the chimney from the fire place in the kitchen.


I actually took that photo because I didn't want to stick my head that far in, and with the flash you can actually get a pretty good view.

The man also managed to remove the cloth wall from around Eldest's loft, we can now see it rather better:



This here is the safareig again, where laundry would have been done. Youngest and a friend spent an hour getting it clean, and filling it and emptying it. We are now thinking that we may keep it, with water and lilies and fish. Maybe a little fountain noise. I am not sure. It is so freaking BIG in a small space...though it is also quite traditional....hmmmmm

In this one you can see the overflow rim which is the half circle, and the tiles on which you would scrub the clothing. I imagine not the silks.....


The tap at the top where the water comes into that rectangular sink, the water from there streams down into the main tub.


We'll paint and put up lovely tiles if we keep it, and lots of plants.

It may be nice when all is said and done.

There, more home reno...this may slow down until we get the architect in place.

Always an adventure.

I love to cook bread.

New house!

The internet crashed yesterday.....that was annoying.

Bought the house yesterday....that was pretty cool. And pretty slow. Goodness it took a while.

Yup, now we're landowners here.

We went over today and cleaned it up a bunch....the little back.....hmmmm...... I don't know what to call it in English, it's a pati in Catalan. It could be a garden, but it is walled on every side and the ground is paved in either bricks or concrete.

Anywho, this space out back was an inch and a half deep in earth and leaves et al, then weeds on top of that. We had to clear all that out, and under it all we found a sink, a safareig, which is where laundry would have been done, and what may have been a barbeque, or an outdoor oven for cooking when it is too hot to do it inside. These outdoor areas were not really spaces for relaxing in as we think of them, they were work spaces and storage spaces. It is an interesting transition.





There were also walls in the living room made of fabric. Those are gone too. THAT was a gross job. The fabric had been painted many many times and the paint must be full of lead. Masks around for everyone.




Below is one of the two pie safes, for lack of a better name, that we pitched. It's a classy place, there was both indoor AND outdoor pie safes. What more could you ask for?



One of the biggest local organisations, that amongst all else it does, runs weekly activities for kids was having sign up day. Virtually everyone we know in the village and a lot of people we don't came by, and they all had a peer in. Many of them wouldn't come in even when they were invited. Their kids had no such inhibitions. Youngest ran tours for a good part of the afternoon. One guy gave himself a tour. A middle aged guy, I'd NEVER seen before just sort of let himself in while I was down the street pitching out some garbage. I came back while he was in there, said Hola. He kept looking!!!

Bold as brass.

I didn't offer him a tour.

The place looks better, but we're going to make it worse before we're finished.

More tomorrow.

More long hot showers too when we're done.

Read the label

Chuck LOVES his new food. With a passion.

Chuck's new food is not loving him.

It is emerging a little, um, rapidly from his system.

Then today I read the bag where they advise us to gradually introduce it mixed in with the old food.

Woops.

Poor pup.

Photos

The man was asking me for photos of all four of us together so he could send one to some friends.

Zip, nada, nothing....

Not a one.

Partially because we have no family here so one of us is always holding the camera...mostly though because I am not quite interested in it I guess. We are all here, why prove it?

That might be why I still don't know how to use the timer on the camera.

Maybe I can train Chuck to take some snaps of us.

What do you thing?

No?

Cava

Chuck's Leishmania, while returning, is not severe...NO NEEDLES (for now).

That is good news.

CAVA!!!

Headed off to Ikea today with a friend to check out stuff for the new (fingers crossed) house.

The Ikea catalog can be a whole lot of fun, no?

CAVA!!!

Cava is what I keep hearing cried out at work.

My boss LOVES the stuff, and we are having quite the cava fest these days.

Cava is Catalan champagne.

We had some on Monday, at lunch in honour of my boss' birthday, and at night for another woman's, today because some of the students were new...lunch and night....tomorrow the same...

Thursday looks free,

Friday I am supposed to bring some in to celebrate the house...

Monday another girl because she is going to Austria for the year.

Then there is the third anniversary of the second bikini I ever bought, that has to be Tuesday.

Festa!

CAVA!!!!

Too bad I don't drink.

Amazing Beethoven's 5th

You have to go over and see this...Beetoven's Fifth: You can hear it, plus see it...you have to check it out to understand.....seriously cool.

Also a little difficult to explain.

Cheers,

O

To clarify...and more info

I was wrong about one aspect of yesterday's events in Arenys, and it does change the tone of the entire event.

The Catalans got the permission for the referendum first, and then the falanges chose to come and march.

Less menacing it seems to me.

It went off very peacefully....music, festa festa festa.

41% voter turnout. 6% more than for the European Parliamentary elections.

96% voted for independence.

Very peaceful.

Only 50 falanges showed up (400 mossos showed up though).

Nice.

Arenys de Munt

You probably don't know who the Falanges are, but they are fascists. Spanish fascists. Franco's party.

They are alive and well and demonstrating here in Catalonia. Coming in by bus.

Lovely.

Seems they decided that they wanted to come to Catalonia to tell the people here what they think of their language, culture and beliefs.

They don't think they should exist. Just letting you know.

They came here rather than the Basque region presumably because they are afraid of the Basques.

Catalans are planning to have bands playing, a festa...music maybe even bouncy castles...who knows.

(Let's hope Eta doesn't show up)

The really historically amazing part of it all though is that the Catalans in that town, Arenys, got permission for the first ever referendum (symbolic, it contains no real power) to vote that Catalonia has the right to be independent, democratic and socially integrated in the European Union. The right to separate from Spain.

Organisors in Arenys have had police protection for the last fifteen days as a results of threats they have received.

Nice.

400 Mossos are scheduled to arrive there. The town has a population of about 8,000. These are the same cops that were beating up students and bystanders along with causing the riots in BCN last spring at and near the University.

Nice.

The falanges are going to march wearing the uniforms they wore from the civil war. That'll make all the older folks really comfie.

Nice.

The really alarming thing about the falanges is that they are not just a bunch of right-wing skinhead disenfranchised yahoos....though there are some of them as well, there are lots of folks in suits with minivans.

Nice.

I declined the opportunity to go and watch. I was actually tempted. History literally in the making. All too often history is not all that pleasant when it is being made.

More later.

Kitchens

The man and I went down to the house again today...it was good we went together, we had a chance to talk things over without interruptions. I had been trying to solve the kitchen puzzle, and had to go over and see it...too visual....I need to actually see the space....

Getting going with it...Geez it is slow and the man doesn't love talking about it....

Ho hum

I might just add that I am in a PURGING mood!

Too bad we aren't going to be able to move into the house for a while...we need a roof that stays up if nothing else. Must continue on the hunt for an architect. The first one was slow, patronising and does little design work (???), the second the man didn't like...she of the quote for less than a year. Not good with communication, nor with providing info, asked some folks with a lovely house for their architect's name....great...only speaks Spanish.

Ho hum.

Still looking.

When we aren't in BCN seeing the Kees Van Dongen exhibit at the Picasso Museum.

Sweet.

....later...I found these great photo resources for kitchens...I got so tired of the Architectural Digest type giant semi-professional kitches. They're so...shiny. Check out here for Historic Ontario Kitchens, and here for a flickr group of world kitchens.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want THOSE kitchens...but something a little less shiny would suit the house better.

I'd say that more than two thirds of the world's population uses their dirt floor as the major work surface in their kitchen.

puff the magic dragon

The new neighbours downstairs are growing marijuana on our terrace.

Hm.

See:



I am not a happy camper. Youngest and her friends were playing up there when I discovered it. The Catalan kids recognised what it was....now there's a fun conversation to try to have with their parents....

There was a note to say that if it bothered us we should knock on our downstairs neighbours door.

I have now met one of my new neighbours. Said it was a "friend's".

Yeah, sure.

Ho hum

The Catalans would say that "tinc ganes de translladar-me a la casa nova." I am hungry to move to the new house.

Deal closes next Friday.

Tea

Tea...

I love coffee in Spanish or Arabic speaking nations...

Tea is my normal morning hit. I love it, and the kids know I need it. If I am being particularly cranky in the morning they will even ask if I have had some.

I haven't had any tea all week.

Till today. *squeal*

Went into BCN yesterday to my favourite tea and coffee vendor and got three different types, a lapsang souchong....LOVE that, Bengal Fire, which is a chai, and an organic Earl Grey loaded with Bergmot.

Lapsang is steeping as I write and I am so utterly happy to be able to have some of this deliciousness to start my morning. Should have gone to the bakery for fresh bread as well.

I love living here.

Who bought that for you anyway?

Chuck's leishmania seems to be surfacing again. Sucks.

We may have to go back to giving him needles again.

Ah well.

Went into BCN with the girls today, and as we were sitting outside of MACBA watching the skater kids and the tourists and everyone else going by...and eating sandwiches from THE BEST bakery in BCN, this guy goes by. He wasn't all that big, probably about 5'6"...about 18 or 19 years old, and he was wearing the BIGGEST t-shirt and the biggest baggy *ss pants you ever did see...kinda like this stuff. Anyway, hip buddy goes "swishing and flapping" past us as Eldest puts it, and she chews and ponders for a moment or two, then announces that some folks in those kinds of clothes simply look like someone put them through the hot cycle. You know, used to be 6 foot 7, but OOOOOPs, washed that boy in hot water, and now look at him.

So true.

Teenage boys; cold wash only.

Buying property in Spain.

One of the weird things about buying a house here is how utterly unprotected you are. In Canada you have your own agent who looks after your interests and makes sure everything is in order. On top of that you need to have your own lawyer who looks over it all again.

Here?

Nothing.

There is only a selling agent, who is looking after his interests, and to some extent the clients. If you are getting a mortgage they do some research to guard their interest, and to some extent yours, and then there is the notary public who guards the government's interest, and to some extent yours.

We have a lawyer.

There are enough aspects of this to be a little hairy.

Another odd thing, though this is because it is a village I think, we already have a key to the house. Weird, no?

The bathroom-in-the-garden smelled bad when we went in today. It hasn't been used.

Ho hum.

Can I also just say that people who go on and on and on and on and freaking on at meetings are a drag. When they are doing it at a quarter to midnight it is intolerable.

On a good note, the money arrived from Canada! Yipee and a big sigh of relief.

The toilet

The older houses here used to have an outhouse out back. Literally, a plank with a hole in it, and once a year it would be emptied out, usually by a farmer who paid for the honour of carrying your crap fertilizer out through your house, bucket by drippy bucketful....

Seems that ten years ago when they built the new toilet over the privy the house used to have they didn't bother to empty it first.

A good heads up, or rather down, from a neighbour!

Met with an architect

Well, actually not an architect, a "technic" from his office, a skilled minion I guess you could put it.

Most of the visit was fairly predictable, show her around, find out what she has to say....blah blah blah....asked how long the reno would take.

"Less than a year"

Say what???

To replace the roof, put in a bathroom, run electricity and some gas????

We're talking 6 weeks MAX....(plus the inevitable overruns)

HUH?!?!?!?

I forsee rude comments about Spanish workmen.

Lots of them.

Summer's over...

We're home, back in Spain. Flight was OK, good in fact, and we are staggering around fairly jetlagged, but good.

Love my local corner store, we had popets, baby octopus, with stuffed squid heads and ailloli for lunch.

cold beer for the man.

Going to the local bar for dinner.

Can't decide if unpacking is more like Christmas or a chore. We bring stuff back so that is fun, but there is no surprise, and there is the putting it back.....

Off to walk his Chuckiness. You shoulda heard him whining in the airport to get out of the box.

Like a cat in heat.

More later,

Cheers,

O