American in Spain

Last night at eleven o’clock our power went out. I’m unfortunately accustomed to this because our circuit breaker is incredibly weak and about twice a month flips to the off position out of sheer laziness. So I got up to flip it back on, but it was already in the on position. It was at that point that I noticed how dark it was outside the window. After fumbling through the darkness towards the window, I looked out into the blackness. It had been raining with low clouds all day, and there was no light reflecting off the clouds from Colindres, nor from nearby Laredo or Santoña. The entire region was blacked out!
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For my entire life I’ve had to live with a last name that no one pronounces like I do. I’ve lived in four different countries, and practically no one says my name correctly to my ear. There is only one correct way to pronounce “Rasmussen” in American English! Why is it so hard? Because so many Americans don’t understand the pronunciation rules that guide the phonetics of English.
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The brainchild of my blogrollmate, Lance, he and I and three other people he knows are participating in a photoblogging project that we call Obiter picta. From the About page (as a lawyer, he couldn’t resist the Latin play on words):

Obiter dicta are incidental words, things said in passing. Obiter picta is a collaborative photo blog updated Tuesday through Friday. The participants’ contributions are not coordinated in advance. Any consonance or dissonance perceived in the themes, content or composition presented here is coincidental.

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Now that the barefooted days of summer are long past, Nora’s got to keep her feet warm. If she wears just socks, in the rare times when they stay on for more than ten minutes, they get sucked on, drenched in saliva, the saliva evaporates, and her feet are freezing cold. Thus, shoes are a requirement both because they keep the saliva evaporation away from her feet and because they are a good way to keep socks on. But this child lives in a fishing village, and her concoction of patience and entropy is enough to undo any knot I know how to tie. As a result, she’s discovered something way more fun to suck on than feet or socks: shoelaces!
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I don’t know many details about the experience on the movie set, but a few months ago I heard that my Aunt Lynne had a part as an extra in Public Enemies, in a scene with none other than a gentleman by the name of Johnny Depp, playing the part of John Dillinger.

Excited to spot her, I “found” the first copy I could, which was a handheld camera recording from a cinema, and I couldn’t make out any of the faces in the courtroom. Later I “discovered” a DVD-ripped version, and I still couldn’t see her! Finally I “got a hold of” an HD version of the movie, and there she was, just as clear as could be sitting there in the back of the courtroom, with Johnny in the foreground.
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…or Why You Should Put The Cork Back In The Wine Bottle. Yesterday I opened a bottle of wine to have with lunch, as I often do on Sunday. Normally, however, I either put the cork back in it when I’m done, or insert a plastic cap. Yesterday I forgot, and today when we went to pour some leftover wine for our midday meal, we found some intruders were in there enjoying our delicious beverage.

At least some of them were alive and swimming around…perhaps drunkenly.
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During her seven-month birthday festivities, when we were showing off her sunglasses to her grandparents, Nora kicked her feet up onto the table and posed like she was the head honcho around these parts. It’s good to be king, it seems.
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