friday review

I know I sound like a broken record, but how did it get to be Friday again!?! Here's a summary of things I've missed from the past week, as well as updates, in my favorite list format. :-)

• M.A. treated Big Jim and me to dinner Monday night at a restaurant we had never tried in Canillas. Very, very good food and free of tourists, which can be an added bonus at this time of year. I had gazpacho (I am searching for the best bowl in the area; this one received high marks) and banderilla de pollo, which essentially is a grilled chicken kebab, and Big Jim had pork al ajillo. M.A. was repaying us for the weekly meals we shared with her during the 5 months (yes, 5 months!) her new kitchen was being installed. The funny thing is now that her kitchen is finally finished, she hardly uses it. While the work was being done, M.A. got in the habit of eating with friends or in restaurants and now can't seem to break her new routine.
• According to my further research, the proper traditional tortilla is made with no onions. However, when people actually make them, almost everyone includes onions. Go figure.
• Thanks to everyone who e-mailed regarding L.'s stolen watch. No news from the police. Her theft has sparked conversations regarding what exactly it is our local police do. Apparently they handle no crimes (L's case has been turned over to the Guardia Civil). From what we have gathered, their main functions appear to be making sure building permits are in order and clearing the car park before the Saturday market. They are quite creative in this regard. Rather than ticketing and fining people who don't move their cars before Saturday morning, they simply have the cars towed to various places in the village, and the owners have to search for them.
• Big Jim's scaled-down job search for August continues to prove fruitful; many positive calls this week. :-) No progress on getting him to move the four computers he's working on out of our computer junkyard of a house. I thinking of making an end table using the two CPUs sitting next to our winerack. :-(
• Pretty unspectacular meteor shower again last night. We wound up inadvertently getting into a political discussion with our neighbor R., who is also American (it may seem there are many Americans here; not the case, just a fluke that all four of us live close by to one another). I always try to avoid these conversations because R. is an unbashed racist, and in my experience I've found it impossible to have rational debate with racists. The discussion started innocently enough; because he's been in Spain since 1986, I thought he might know how our absentee ballots are counted in the upcoming presidential election. If one is registered to vote in one of the 50 states, I assume the absentee ballot would be added to that state's numbers. However, if someone lives permanently abroad and cannot register in a specific state, where do the votes go? Does anyone know the answer to this? Anyway, R. missed the point of the original question and went on to proclaim Bush's superiority and Kerry's "wishy-washy-ness". Because I know R. is a steadfast Republican, I tried a different approach. I asked him if he thought Bush was a good Republican, if he thought Bush well represented the basic tenets of the Republican party, ie, fiscal responsibility, small government, etc., etc. R. quickly admitted no, Bush is not a good Republican, "but he sticks to his guns and is tough on terror." Urg. There were two ETA bombings in Spain last weekend; did this news reach any of the American media? There is more terrorism in the world now than ever. A commission warned Bush in February 2001 of an impending attack on American soil, did he jump into action then? No, he waited until after September 11. I eventually went to bed, leaving Big Jim to argue on my behalf.
• Construction for the wine festival is coming along nicely. Big Jim managed to get his hands on a couple of the souvenir posters and a program. This is the 29th annual festival; I had not realized before that the Noche del Vino only originated post-Franco. The farmers continue to sample their wine. I have to confess I don't like much of the local wine. It's a bit thick and too sweet for my palate. We're lucky, though, that Antonioformerpoliceman is our neighbor. I do like his wine, and we've recently found out that he is considered the master winemaker in the village. He sells 2-liter bottles for 5 euros, yum.
• Tourists abound. While walking the dogs one morning, I came across a group of French tourists aimlessly wandering on the edge of the village. One man asked me where the square was with the church. I turned them around and gave him directions in Spanish, which he then translated to French for the rest. I do love the multilinguistic aspect of Europe. We used to have a German neighbor. James conversed with him in German, and I in Spanish.

I've had a busy work week myself, but not too crazy. I've been working ahead, though, because I have three deadlines for the middle of next week. No matter how hard I try to balance my schedule, as a freelancer, this proves to be impossible most of the time. But there are many other benefits of working for myself that I would not trade.

Happy Friday, and watch out for black cats! :-)

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