Feeling blue.

Somehow Halloween isn't the same this year.

I don't know why, but it isn't.

Wish we were there...they must be so excited right now, waiting to go out.

Maybe we'll fly over next year for the festivities.

Here tonight is Castanyes...chestnuts.  Traditionally you eat, well, chestnuts and sweet potatoes.  For dinner we had these:

Check out those monsters.  They are traditional local old-fashioned (there is a special name for that...the word is not coming to me) anyway, we got some of those.  Made quite a lot of them in fact.  Good thing they aren't too bad.  Not as sweet as sweet potatoes, a sample on the left, but not as bland as regular taters.

The locals here are kind of anti-Halloween, not everyone, but some folks have events that are pushing the local Castanya festival instead of Halloween.  They are worried about loss of culture, that the kids will lose interest in Castanyes and only want to do Halloween....I get that. I am also a little tiny bit offended too.  I love Halloween.

What I really miss about Halloween is the community nature of it.  There is no religious or cultural bent, just whole communities dressing up their houses and themselves, coming out and chatting, kids coming around...a big fat festival.....with everyone involved, and all the excitement leading up to it....no matter how hard you try, it just isn't the same when you are away.  No one else cares.  Indeed, I feel a little like I am offending some people because we want to do something about it.

Sucks to be them.

Still.

It just ain't the same.

Wish I could be excited about the house...but I'm not.

A lovely day....

I have figured out the problem with the architect.  It may be systematic.  We are looking up the word 'expect' in the dictionary, as in, when can we expect your call.

Doesn't exist.  We are left with the one word that means both wait and hope.

telling, and worrying.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

On a brighter note I had an absolutely LOVELY day!!!!

Sent the kids to school, had a nap (Eldest will HATE that when she reads it), went to a cafe for a snack and a coffee, beat the Mac and Picasa into working together.  (Sadly never applied brush to paper), played tetris.  Think I was a little tired.  Lunch...cleaned up from the party.  Had coffee with a friend in a cafe, went for a two hour walk in the mountains, dinner, stories....and sent of a nasty note to the architect, who is on the verge of being fired.

I am not going to think about that now though, rather I am going to go to bed thinking of long naps and long walks, good coffee and good friends.

Cheers all,

O

We had the Halloween party tonight, it went well I think...the kids certainly appeared to have fun.  The snotty girls were bearably snotty, one only had to be shot down twice, so not bad.  The wildly (emphasis on the wild) enthusiastic boys had a BLAST....You've got to love boy energy and enthusiasm, even if you do have to bar the doors and bolt the animals away....

Fun and enthusiasm is much appreciated in my corner of the world.

On that note, the architect got a bit of a tongue lashing.  The man was MUCH MUCH nicer than I would have been on the phone.  MUCH.  I did force him to ask the hard questions in the end, like, "Do you want the job?  We don't have that impression at all."  Like, "Why are you telling me to call the builder when you said that you would?"

He didn't ask all the questions I might have, like, "If I am phoning the builder to look at the house, why are we paying you?" or "How come you keep changing what you are telling us? Can't you keep your story straight?" or, "How is it that I spotted the glaring errors in the house plans and you didn't?"  or, "How come we have had to have this discussion over this doorway three times?"

If we're having to chase him around NOW, it doesn't bode well for the future me thinks.  Even if they do do things differently here.

Happy Halloween my friends.

Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!!!

Load up your brushes ladies and gentlemen!!!

Can I just say that I don't have work on Friday but the kids are in school and the man is at work.
Can I just say that I plan to do me some PAINTING!!!

Can I just say that I will NOT be doing me some cleaning up after the part-ay the night before...those kids want a Halloween fest, they can help clean up after it to....I've got me some colour to splash around!!!

Can I just say

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡WOOT!!!!!!!!!!

Like those funky Spanish fonts???  Catalans don't use them, but since the keyboard is Spanish I thought I'd just toss them out there....

cultural implications of linguistic tics.

Boring discussion about language to follow, but...

well, here it is.

There are some words in Catalan that have silent letters that explain about the pronunciation of the letters that follow.  Two that come to mind are setmana and atmella, week and almond respectively.  The 't' in each case means that the sound of the following 'm' is lengthened like a double letter.

Where it gets interesting is that the older people here, who never learned to read or write Catalan, or only learned as adults, pronounce it correctly - though many cannot spell it.  The younger generation, who are learning the language with written as well as oral information are actually pronouncing it incorrectly and are saying the 't' and not lengthening the following 'm'.

I find it fascinating that in spite of a surrounding culture of pronunciation, they are following the written - and incorrectly understood - orthographic rules rather than the community at large, and there are many cases of this.

Are the younger speakers trying to 'correct' the language?  I think not, because they all make some GLARING grammatical errors that are so predominant they are likely to become the norm in a generations time.....are they trying to sound more educated?  Why is it that they are ignoring the common rules?  Is it that many of them don't speak Catalan at home and so they pronounce it more phonetically and there is such a large number of native Spanish speakers making the same error that it is entering the lingua franca on the playground and therefore into the community at large it a way...

I will have to ask a Catalan scholar.  I know a few.

It happens less in English I think for two reasons, first of all, it has been a predominantly literate community for a very long time, so the oddities of the written language have less impact.  Also English is so very full of these weirdnesses, such as the unspoken 'k' at the front of know and knife, that it has little impact....that said I bet we all know people who pronounce the 'w' in sword.

I keep finding myself pondering the implications of all this...

Fascinating.

Rumblings from an empty head.

First, I got Picasa to run...a little squirrelly, but it ran.

Second, ten and a half hours of actual in-class contact hours of teaching in one day is a lot.  I think my brain is melting.

Third, I am freezing.

Fourth, I want to start taking more pictures again, I am boring myself!  All I have are those weird, hopeless and bizarre photos that people take of their renovations....

Fifth, Youngest's cold seems to have lasted for all of one day.  Sweet to be so young, no?

Sixth, I have just discovered that I am staring vacantly into the middle distance, so maybe this terrifically boring post should end.

I am combing through my day trying to find anything I could say that would be remotely amusing...

OH!

I was re-translating a speech for someone, and in Catalan you can say that you have been brought together  at a meeting or conference "by the hand of someone".  However they way they had it written it sounded terrible.  You see, the someone around whom the conference is focused is actually dead...has been for a while, so as I read that the hand of this person had brought them together, it sounds all very slasher flick-ish---this tattered gruesome hand spilling putrid flesh pushing people all together into the same place...

Maybe I am not describing it well, but I laughed pretty hard about it at the time....

What I must say in Catalan from time to time!

ummm, something that sucks and something that doesn't.

Mac iPhoto, you suck.

Mac, if you are going to make Picasa behave so badly, you suck too.

Mac, if I cannot make some of these automatic windows bigger somehow, you suck.

Mac, I don't like drag and drop every time I want to delete. That sucks.

Must. search. keyboard. shortcuts.

OK. Now that's off my back....

Look what we got today!

I like the detail. It will go into the new house, if it is ever done, it is staring to seem like a pipe dream. I may have to start being a little less polite and a little firmer with this process.

Ho hum.

Below you can see bits of my life....  a paella pan, a garlic braid, left for us by GM who just came to visit, the new table, some brushes....the new piece of furniture that will eventually someday go into the new kitchen, but which is currently housing some of my painting supplies, more painting stuff off to one side, and a bottle of wine that we get delivered to the door.

Sweet.

Maybe after a nap Mac + photos won't suck so much. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying the process, but Mac had better not get between me and my pics.....

that would suck.

Cheers,

O

Getting local

It helped that I slept in until 10 am, though I was still a just a little cranky from time to time.

I've been having fun with the mac, you see, though we bought it last week, we didn't get it till Friday this week.  Sort of a long story, but it has been fun playing with it.

We are back to movie night as the new computer plays films, and the sound is better.  It was (no surprise) delivered with a Spanish keyboard.  Fine, I am reasonably used to that, the only thing was that inside, it thought it was a Canadian keyboard.  That meant that many of the keys didn't correspond to what they did. So, I would press shift + 8 to get what I thought was ( but I would get something completely different.

It got better when I figured out what the problem was, I just typed by habit....but for anyone else it was a big fat head psyche.  We can now switch back and forth between keyboard commands at the click of a button.....and we have accents, which is excellent.

What else?  Youngest had a basketball game, which they lost...ah well, and we got the food delivered for the Halloween party, now I have to get candy by the cart load.

Tomorrow, work on the house, and clean it!

Don't tell me my life isn't fun-  Barcelona....I remember there was a place called that.  Time to go and visit again I think.

Cheers,

O

It's 3am

I just got back from a dinner with friends.  It started at around 11:30 pm and ended around 1:30 am.  Most people finished up the meal with an espresso.

Then, with full stomachs and caffeine loaded veins they went home to bed.

I had a decaf.

Then I ran into a friend in the street and ended up talking till 3 am.

I think I will be a wee bit tired tomorrow.

Just a wee bit, no?

Ramblerambleramble *ACK!!* MATH!!!!

I had gotten into this great rhythm of posting in the middle of the day, or at least writing in the middle of the day so I could go to bed earlier.

That has kind of gone out the window the last few days, and I am starting to notice it just a little bit.

However, tomorrow is Friday, so there is only one more day to stagger through before the pace lightens up.   To top off the about three billion things I have on my to-do list (so many that I am not the least bit concerned about the 30+ kids that are visiting our derelict toilet-free house next week), I got a call from the mayor. I hang with all the right people you know, so the mayor's office called me up this morning and wanted me to get back to them urgently.  I duly did so, and onto my rather overfilled plate fell a translation, that he needed done yesterday.  WoooT!

The fun thing was that, with the exception of a few phrases, I could do it all MYSELF!!!  (I will admit right here that it was INTO English and out of Catalan. It'll be quite a while before I can do it the other way).

So...

Since my day has been insanely busy, Canada busy and the end is in site, that would be the end of my brain functioning, I am going to post this really cool activity we had to do back in grade 5 or 6.   Here's how it worked.  I still remember it cause I enjoyed it so much.

Gonna have to do it again I'm thinking.

The task is to express all of the numbers from 1 - 100 using only the number 4 and the basic math symbols, +, -, x, divide (which I can't find on the machine), plus square roots, squaring and fractions.

I'll have to scan in or photograph my answers.

Who's gonna play?

*crickets*

No one?

*chirp chirp chirp*

Awww, c'mon.....

Cheers,

O

Look at the invitations!

The invitation we are probably going to be using...should be good I hope.  Sadly we don't have time to get it printed onto card stock, but what the heck. 

I actually took the photo when we were down in Andalucia two Christmases ago, and cropped and edited it.

Fun, no?

Now I just have to get it all printed up.

Today I ordered 30 pumpkins.

Yup, it has leapt up on us this year, and we are a little surprised about it all, but the Halloween party is upon us and we are NOWHERE near as organised as we should be....

I have ordered the pumpkins anyway, and I did manage to purchase a derelict house we can use for the venue.  Should be quite spooky, even if they do have to go to the apartment to pee.

Bwah hah hah hah hah!!!

Dr Wicked, chips and Chuck

	230
5
lab.drwicked.com

Below is the 230 words I wrote.

Some minor editing completed.

I have no idea what to write for today's blog post.  It is kind of weird because I have been so vastly prolific, well to be more accurate, I was vastly prolific  for about a week and I have been coasting on those back posts, with some timely ones tossed in, for a while.  It is like the blogging muscles are atrophied a bit.

I love Dr Wicked's site, it makes me write and write and write, and sometimes that is enough to unstick the glue that gets the writing going.

Now I've got a post. *cue the light bulb going on*

Here begins the formal post:

I was just sitting here, staring at a blank page, having an unusual minor block about what to write, when a waft of smell came over me.  A pungent and delicious mixture of rosemary and lavender.

It's Chuck.

Most of the parks in our village are heavily planted with those two delightful smelling plants, and Chuck LOVES to rub through them when investigating what dogs have been there before him, and in preparation for doing his own thing.

He comes home smelling heavenly.

On a related note, his feet smell like nacho chips.  I have to admit that they smell really good.  Do most dog's feet smell that good or is it only him?

Now I have a wicked craving for chips. 

To go to the local bar and get some or not, that is the question.

Maybe I'll see if the man would go....heh heh heh

New photo up

Thank you everyone for your comments and kind words, especially Doug who tipped me over into changing it up.

Hope no one out there has vertigo.

Today was a bit of a right off, honestly.

Youngest went off to a sleep-over party.  It started at 10:15pm; on the way down, we stopped off at one of her friend's houses, and they were still having dinner!!!!

Sometimes Spain feels more unusual.

They slept for approximately 20 minutes last night.

She is 10 years old.

She was totalled today.  Completely wiped out.

On an up side, I got a bunch of chores done, and the man and I thrashed out a bunch of house details before our next meeting with the architect....exciting things, like what kinds of lights, floors and electrical outlets we'd like.

All in the planning.

The garden out front.

Seems it's ours and it isn't ours.

It is more ours than anyone else's but it is actually street, for all that it doesn't look like street at all.

Every single leaf, branch and stem in there is very very prickly.

We have cut back a LOT of stuff, but it looks no better as it is all piled in the middle waiting to be hauled away.  We have probably six bins worth of stuff....that should take about 12 weeks to get rid of.

YEEEEhwwww

The man went and chipped some plaster today, we have about a quarter of the living room done at this point.  Gotta get a bigger ladder.

Who exactly am I anyway?

I find myself pondering and re-pondering my header photo.

When I first started this blog up (over three years and more than a thousand posts ago...goodness) I very much identified myself as a cruiser, and I missed the sailing and the Bahamas so much it hurt.

Hence the photo.

And the colour scheme.

Which has been there ever since.  I still love the photos of the Bahamas, but it is starting to feel untrue to my life.  Maybe I should go through a series of regular header photo changes, you know, from the summer in Georgian Bay, from Canada, from Spain and from the Bahamas.  Seems like work somehow, and that isn't how the blog should feel.

Still trying to figure this out every time I look at the blog.

What I am really trying to figure out is how I want to define myself.

I am discovering that that header photo is a key image that depicts who I am thinking of myself as (there's an awkward sentence!).

I'll ponder a little longer, but I suspect some changes will come into place.  I suspect it will kind of hurt to do them too.  A farewell of sorts to an era in my life that I adored and still miss terribly.

*sigh*

Then again, life now ain't all that bad either.

I've gone over to the dark side.

I went off this morning, and bought a mac.  Mac Pro laptop to be exact.

Haven't had an apple product since the Apple IIe my parents had in the 80s, but Vista...I don't think so...not if I can help it, and the new windows7...I don't want to spend that kind of cash to be a guinea pig.

Mac, should last, and at least I am fairly sure it will work well.

What do you think, did I do good?

Don't be hatin', m'kay.

Monda was very nearly a perfect day.

Lazed around in the morning, puttered at the house, caught the bus down to the beach, swam with the kids and a friend in the water that was a spectacular blue...very salty, very wonderful.

Ate an utterly delicious lunch outside under an umbrella on the beach, went into town, walked through Montjuïc which is a beautiful park, went to the Miró museum (god I love his work, why do I go so infrequently?) and sat on the floor with a pair of kids looking at art work.

Truly a wonderful day.

We are so very very priviledged to live here.

Even sweeter cause it was a Monday.

Eldest's work

I was over working on the house on Saturday, pounding more plaster off the vaulted ceiling

(look what I did!)

Then Eldest came over and asked if she could draw on her walls. I said, SURE!!!

So she did.

She drew the family crest,

then she drew

a warning to her family.  We may have to plan her funeral if the bathrooms don't meet her exacting standards.  That should be a new experience in Catalan.  Wonder how you say enbalm.

Then she went on...

To 

Something I can easily agree with, and then finally, this:

Think I'll let her draw on her walls whenever she wants.

Maybe.

Only in Spain

could you sell,

mussel shaped candy.

Architect visit three....and the BEACH!!!

Third visit with the architect and his daughter in the bag.

They had better drawings and we spent more time sweating details, I liked some of what they had done...they built a little closet into the front hall.  That was good.

I didn't like where they put the washing machine so much....changed that up, it was eating the dining room right up.

They were killing eldest's room with misunderstanding, they thought we wanted to build a terrace over top of it, but no, we wanted the terrace over youngest's room, which changed things RIGHT up....

We had hilarious discussions about bathrooms.....

We may end up with a multi-level master bathroom before all is said and done...funky anyway...we'll have to think carefully about style.  (No glass doors on showers.  God how I hate those things.)

We will be able to put a small terrace off our bedroom with a doorway, thereby enabling us to actually get furniture upstairs larger than a modest teddy bear.

I am glad about that,

I was wondering how many bears we would have to buy to make up beds for each of us.  And where to find bears that didn't have uncomfortable glass eyes.

The architects weren't as creative in their thinking as I had hoped, think I was a little zanier.

They like bigger bathrooms than I do.

I have to confess that I view a bathroom as a necessary space in which we can perform what must be performed, but that large palatial rooms at the expense of living space is not a personal priority.

We are probably going to put a sink in both of the girl's bedrooms, eventually.  Eldest immediately, youngest when she wants her own bathroom...that way one can wash ones hands/face/teeth/whatever even when the room is occupied.

Reduction of bathroom squabbles is a good thing in my life.

You could tell that neither of them cook much  (a man and a university age girl) from how they had done the kitchen....we reworked some of that....see how it goes.

It is an interesting process anyway.

Last time they said that we would be able to start on some of the work right away, this time, they said we would have to wait to get the license all at once.

Ho hum.

We may not get the first man in for another two months.

.....on another note.....I went to the beach and swam in the SEA!!!!

Life is so sweet.

Compliments, Anglos vs Spanish.

I am reading this fascinating book called "Watching the English" by Kate Fox.


It is an English anthropologist studying the English people, not the Scots or the Welsh, let alone those grungy colonials.  She's studying the English.


It is, I have to admit, fascinating. Especially as a grubby colonial with English family.


One of the things that struck me in the book was her comment that many English women open conversations with a compliment, coupled with a self-denigrating comment, the reply follows the same formula. This is a form of conversation opener and a kind of 'social grooming', a way of maintaining a relationship...relatively meaningless, but makes everyone happy and keeps us all in touch.


What is striking for me is that many Catalans here have commented on how often I compliment people.


There was one woman who, when pregnant, said she LOVED to run into me because I always commented on how wonderful she looked - for all intents and purposes an obligatory remark when speaking to the obviously pregnant, at least within my stretch of the world.


Seems the Catalans routinely comment on how fat and whale-like pregnant women look.


Fascinating how differently we work in small matters some times.


I would still prefer to be told I was glowing with health and beauty however fat, baggy-eyed, greasy and nauseous I was/looked.


No?


Then again, I'm an anglo.

an open letter to Barak Obama

While I feel I should be offering you my congratulations on the recent announcement that you are to be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize,

I find I can't.

I would like you to understand that yours was the first campaign that I have found compelling.  I was profoundly relieved and delighted when you were elected President of the United States. 

As the European Union elections swung further to the right, I was relieved and delighted to see the United States swing away from the route they had been on for too long.

I am honestly filled with hope concerning what you aim to do, both on the international and the domestic level.

You ran a brilliant campaign. 

You filled a nation, and beyond that, a world with hope.

That is a mighty thing to accomplish and I DO congratulate you for that.

I urge you, President Obama, to use the stage of the Nobel Prize to speak to the world.  To speak to the world with the same astonishing bravery and forthrightness you displayed in Cairo.  To speak to the world with the same inspiring brilliance you offerd when you spoke for change.

Move the world.

Remind us all, as you did in your acceptance speech that you cannot do it alone. 

That it takes us all.

That we can.

Yes we can.




Once we have,

we can all accept the prize.

only then.


When we have,

with your help;

because we can.


if the prize is accepted before that, it will be awarded based on a campaign, not an accomplishment.


We can do so much more.

You can do so much more.


President Obama,


please.






You have offered hope.  That is powerful.  I am deeply grateful that you are in office.  I am deeply hopeful.


Do the honourable thing and decline the award until we have changed the world.


because,

you know

that indeed,


Yes.


We


can.

Crazy expensive light fixtures....

I went into BCN the other day to look at light fixtures.

I have rarely seen a light I liked.  Honestly.  Somehow most of them are at best tolerable.

True to form, I found some lovely ones.

Look here and here and here to see some of them....

True to form, they start at 650 Euros.

Who would pay nearly a thousand bucks for a light fixture?

I figured out a new plan....

And it makes me very happy.

I was struggling to find time to paint, and simultaneously going to the mountains most days...

SO..

(what a stroke of genius...honestly, pathetic how long it took me to think of this, like NO ONE else has ever done this....duh)

On the days when I am walking the dog alone in the hills, which is once or twice a week, I am going to take this specially pre-packed bag of art stuff with me...walk a little faster for the majority of the route, and find a half hour, or even a quarter hour when I can do a little painting of what I see out there....


Here's what I take....

Pencil case with art pencils, decent pencil sharpener and decent erasers.
Tin box with chalk pencils, blessedly cased in wood so I don't get filthy.
Two different sketch books,
Small water colour kit (Windsor Newton no less!!!)
Travel size contact fluid container filled with water....

and other weird accumulations at the bottom of the bag, like a French brand knife I adore, a hair tie, bandaids, allergy meds...etc etc etc....

Should be good for taking to BCN and keeping kids happy in museums!

My latest pastime.....

I went over to the house the other day to knock some of the plaster off the ceiling and see what we have under there as far as the vaulted ceilings go.

Not as pretty as I had hoped they might be, but nice and we will expose it all in the end. 

This is the sort of work that requires no skill, rather, persistence and shoulder muscles.

Expensive to pay someone else to do, a pain to do yourself...

Good for working out aggressions though.

I may be over there periodically knocking plaster off....kind of like beating on a punching bag and peeling a sunburn all at the same time.

Why I love where I live.

That's my back yard.

Alias Grace

Alright!!


I am no longer an Atwood virgin, I have officially finished my first Atwood book.


Let's see.


I liked the historical background.


The woman can write a story...frankly it went on a little long....and she is given to, shall I really say what I think? Yes, I think I shall.


She shows off.


(so shoot me, it's what I think)


There are sections of the book where she gets intolerably writerly....and I do have to admire them, but I fall right out of the story.


With a thud.


To my mind that is a touch of hubris at the expense of a good story, and if you are writing fiction, writing a good story seems an important component.



I have officially read an Atwood and a half, and I am full now.



thankyouverymuch.

Jeans

I had just about given up on ever wearing jeans again.

I have one pair I adore, but they are so old and worn that I truly can only wear them in public on the most extremely casual of occasions, and only when facing forward as there is a huge rip across the bum I haven't gotten around the mending.

I paint in them mostly.

When they reached this stage of decrepitude, we were at 'low tide man'...a little broke, so I started wearing the man's jeans...we are nearly the same size, but the cut didn't really work on me all that well.  Loose and tight in all the wrong places.  I wore them for a while, even put a rip in the knee, but they really weren't comfy for either of us.

They are going out to goodwill today.

I looked in BCN...OMG are jeans ever expensive here.

I looked in TO, not SO pricey, but I am too old to use neat on my p*bic hair just to go out in public....no go.

I found a pair last spring at my favorite used clothing store, they were OK.  Not great, no hallelujah chorus or anything, but fine.

Then they went into the dryer.  You see, the friends we were staying with this summer their dryer sort of broke.  Well, it works fine, on high heat, full throttle...with no timer.

I believer the jeans were in the dryer for about 16 hours straight.

They are a mite uncomfortable.

I have been trying to stretch them out by short wearings, you know, half an hour here, an hour there.

Life is too short for that sh*t.

I've been wearing skirts a lot lately.  Comfy, and easier to find with a reasonable fit at the funky used clothing place.

I was in there on Friday looking for longer and warmer skirts for the winter and for teaching (it seems that I feel I need to wear longer skirts here than I do in TO, even walking around on the street.  I am fascinated by this difference.)

ANYwhooo,

There was this pair of jeans, hanging on the overcrowded rack, sticking out a little and looking OH so cool.

Not my usual look, greyer rather than blue which I favour, but....

I tried them on...

Heaven.

Weirdly they are very long in the leg and kind of bell bottom-y which I haven't worn since the 70's,

but

but

but that feel of comfort....

just right.

Let's hope they still feel that way when they come in off the line!

PROGRESS!!!!!

OK....

Youngest had a game today, they won, she got a basket. Good stuff.

The man and I met with the architect, and IT'S A GO!!!!!!

He got the man's seal of approval as well. They had a preliminary sketch of what we had in mind, and had made no suggestions themselves, we'll see what happens next. They took lots of measurements and will have drawings ready in half a week.

They is the architect and his daughter (who is lovely pretty and seems lovely in and of herself as well). She has done the first stage of the schooling to become an architect and is onto the second!

They took us over to see their front door and told youngest who was with us that sometime they can show us a secret tunnel that comes out in their house!

Youngest was also charmed.

The also took us over to have a look at a house in the neighbourhood that he had worked on. It was lovely, not at all the style we have in mind, far too modern...I want it to be like it was, but comfortable.....you know, warm with an indoor bathroom, electric lights that don't scare me, hot water, more than one electrical outlet per floor, and with functioning drains.

Other than that, just the way it was!

He want's to submit for permission with the ajuntament in two stages, the first for the basic work that doesn't need permission so we can get things underway, and then again for the changes that require a little more thought...

Fingers crossed, it is up the ajuntament if I get my painting room and terrace or not, I would be most disappointed if I don't. Hope hope hope.

Nice to take another step forward anyway.

remember these???

I am delighted to report that I have a cold. That seems like maybe I am being ironic or sarcastic or something, but honestly I felt so dreadful for two days I am simply thrilled to have your basic down home common cold!

Eldest was madly studying for a test that involved recognizing parts of speech, when I remembered these! When I was a kid these came on TV periodically. Were they part of TVO? I have no idea...but here you go:

For adjectives there is

this

and here is another video just for the fun of it. In fact this conjunction video was my favorite.

Loved those when I was a kid!

Tomorrow morning we meet the architect (again) and youngest has a game....

I have no good ideas for a title.

Witty exciting post was planned,

Derailed by a throat that is apparently lined with glass shards.

Hope this downgrades to a common cold.

I am, masochistically, tackling Alias Grace as my recreational reading.  This is of course written by my all time favorite author Maggie Atwood.  Any regular readers are aware that I am LYING like the proverbial rug.

Not sure this is what I need on a weakened constitution.

*gasp*

If it still feels like this tomorrow, I'll head for a Dr....

Can you get strep throat without a fever?  Don't think I've had that yet.