We had a wonderful weekend this week. A babysitter let us go out for dinner and dancing on Friday night, and on Saturday my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to visit. I made a homemade pizza while the ladies went to the market in nearby Santoña and had it ready upon their return. A leisurely afternoon ensued with Marga painting her sister’s and Nora’s fingernails and toenails.
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It’s a bit of a slow news day today…
Usually when Nora and her mother come home from their after-daycare walk and playground romp, Nora comes into my office to give me a “Hello”, a hug and a kiss. When I ask her how daycare was or what she did after daycare, she’s normally pretty evasive, sometimes even coming right out and stating, “I don’t want to tell you.” So it was quite a change one evening when she came home shouting, “Poppy! Poppy! I have something to show you!”
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Last year we couldn’t have our annual Fourth of July party because we were in the States for the holiday, but this year we returned to tradition, throwing a party for some friends with hamburgers using my special “American” recipe. We didn’t give much notice, and it coincided with San Fermín, the enormous Booze & Bull festival in Pamplona, which some of our invitees were attending, so we ended up with a nice dinner party of seven adults and our little Nora.
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I’m pleased to see that some of the local businesses where I live are starting to use Facebook properly to announce events and sales. I’ve recently subscribed to the updates of a local bar that sometimes hosts live performances. Usually this only results in knowledge of the concerts I’d like to see, but cannot go to because of my parental duties, but this weekend, my in-laws were visiting, and my wife and I escaped to go see a local cover band, called Lost In Covers.
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For all the same reasons I outlined two years ago, I have had a very fun time watching the UEFA Euro Cup 2012 this year. The Spanish are never as patriotic as they are when their national fútbol team, La Roja, are doing battle in a tournament, and since I moved to Spain in 2005, they have been doing very, very well. People have started calling the never-before-accomplished winning of back-to-back Euro Cup, World Cup, and Euro Cup championships the “Triple Crown”.
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The most important thing to happen this month, besides my parents coming to visit, was a series of four visits to the dentist. The first visit was the worst by far, and once we secured the association between going to the dentist and getting to eat ice cream in the morning before lunch, Nora was actually asking when she could get to go to the dentist again. If you’ve ever been to a dentist, you’ll know that they don’t like to let you leave without securing your next visit, so we’ve got another one planned for July to do a checkup and make sure all her teeth are adjusting to their new composition.
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Dear people who oppose ObamaCare,
I’m curious about your thinking about possible solutions to the messed up US healthcare system. One starting assumption that leads directly to opposing ObamaCare is that healthcare is not a right, that poor people should not be given healthcare and allowed to die simply because they are poor. If you agree that only the wealthy deserve to be healthy, then you are a cruel, inhumane person and please stop reading this letter.
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If you even remotely dabble in or read news about social networking, you may have heard of a recent hoax in which a graphic was passed around by millions of internet users depicting the digital readout from the time machine in the Back To The Future trilogy, with the date being June 27, 2012, the date the hoax image went viral. The creator of the image, a social medial manager by the name of Steve Berry, created the image to promote the Blu-ray box set release of the trilogy. This is not the first time such a hoax image was passed around the internet.
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If you asked me to list my top five favorite foods or beverages to consume in Spain, morcilla, goat cheese and red wine would make the list for sure. Morcilla is a spicy blood sausage. There are many types of blood sausage all called morcilla, but the most common and best is morcilla de León or morcilla de Burgos, which consists of pig meat, pig blood, pig lard, rice, onion and spices stuffed into pig intestine. The blood makes it jet black.
Recently, my wife came across a recipe for individual serving pies containing morcilla, red wine and goat cheese. When she mentioned it to me, I darted out to the store to buy the ingredients. Last Sunday, we made them. Needless to say, they were quite rich. Here’s the recipe:
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The town where I live is celebrating its annual San Juan festival this week. Most Spanish towns have a town saint, and for many of them, that role is filled by Saint John The Baptist. There are several things that I love about this festival. It amuses me that it’s really just a thinly veiled version of the pagan bonfire solstice festivals held across Europe (the bonfire is to shoo away the witches, in case you didn’t know).
Riffing off the Valencian falles tradition of building elaborate, yet explosive, parade floats to burn, the townspeople of Colindres also make little miniature floats, usually the size of small cars, which are wheeled, by hand, around town before finding their way to the designated place to be judged, doused in gasoline, and ignited.
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Fantastic.
Four year olds are pure id.
“Daddy, after I finish this dessert, I want another bowl filled to the top with nothing but [whipped] cream. Okay?”
Convinced my daughter to watch Star Wars with me by promising that it had a princess.
George Catlin, Prairie Meadows Burning, 1832
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
George Catlin painted ominous, swirling clouds of black smoke that loom out of the distance and drive the Indians before them. The artist was an eyewitness to such terrifying events, and described the fire’s “thunder rumbling as it goes.” But he also wrote that prairie fires made for “some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country, and also some of the most sublime.”
Mmm… Coffee.
