POW

- I've been up since 6 am.  I know.  This does not seem like any sort of so-called un-Godly hour, but 'tis.  Might not be so bad if my body would allow me to fall asleep any time before 2 am.  Alas, this is my plight.  Every night I 'go to bed' between 9 and 10:30 and then I do not sleep.  For those of you who believe that this is the baby preparing me...let's just say that I am well aware of the coming torture that is a child who never sleeps (see: my first child) and so I could really do without the 'preparation'.

- I do not normally get up at 6.  If I can help it, anyway.  If I do it is usually because of, you guessed it, child number one.  She is still asleep.  Go figure.  I had Rocket Man wake me, in the middle of some (finally) much needed shut-eye so that I could make doctor appointments with a couple of fine physicians in the states.  One of the finer points of living half-way around the world.

-  Also, yay for sentence fragments in lieu of the real thing.

- Yesterday:  home-made (bread-maker) bread; home-made (and hand-made), from scratch (just in case you didn't get that part) biscuits.  Declared yummy by all who ate them which is a good thing for my first time making them.  Also, sliced, tenderized (Mama, you're hitting!  Mama use a hammer.  Mmmm, I LIKE beef, Mama.) divided and frozen beef for stir-fry.  The same, minus the tenderizing, was done with veggies for same.

- Lately: 5 loaves of bread-maker bread, most frozen; chicken breasts cleaned, divided into single portions (12) and frozen; more than 100 meat-balls made, divided and frozen; two batches of beans soaked, slow-cooked and then (you guessed it) divided and frozen.

- I'm not done.  I've got 1 or 2 more batches of beans to cook, 8 more servings of stir-fry meat and veggies to conquer, and then I'm going to attempt some pizzas.  As in home-made crust/pizza, not the frozen ones from the store.

- We are not pizza snobs here at casa crazy-pants; please do not misunderstand.  In fact, I went shopping this week and also purchased five boxes of piccolinos (small round pizzas, 9 per box) with prosciutto and cheese on them - they are one of our favorites.

- Surely this will help Rocket Man with the 12 weeks, count 'em, that Miss Thing and I (and baby2) will be back in the states without him (longer than that, really, but he'll make an appearance or two).

- Assuming he doesn't eat it all in the first three weeks.

- Must. Exhibit. Restraint.

- Yay.

- Fragments.

Best Good Fast Food

And Best Too-Big Dress:



Maybe one day it will fit, Mama.

 

Hey, what is this thing?

I know! A ball!

 

And, THROW!

So it is too big.  To be fair, however, the pattern is for a size 2T.  As in not even an 18-24 month.  And since she is only 19 months old, and a small one at that, I think that it is just fine.  Better for her to grow into it than to be already out of it.

Our best fast food of the day is Jason's Deli.  It is one of our favorite quick places to eat.  We went there tonight, in fact.  Miss Thing had a hot dog sans bun, strawberries, apple, baked potato and some of the beef off of my sandwich.  She also ate two crackers and had milk.  Her belly was protruding just a bit afterward.  Good grief MaGee.

That is all; carry on.

Good Eats

Although Alton Brown acts a tad bit kooky on his show, Rocket Man and I enjoy watching it on occasion, hence the theft of title.

Last night we had quite the family dinner. Rocket Man had training yesterday, which means that he was able to get home earlier than usual. In fact, he arrived just before Little Miss Itty Bitty and I returned from the playground.


Our meal consisted of spaghetti and asparagus. LMIB ate some of all of it.


This means that she had whole wheat noodles, onion, garlic, red peppers, mushrooms, beef, tomato sauce, and asparagus.

We also made her some of her own food which was green beans and rice.


As you can see, she rather enjoyed eating all of it. The ground beef gave her cause for concern the first time she put it in her mouth, but once she was aware of the texture she was good to go!

The main thing, aside from the fact that she ate all of those different foods, is that she really enjoys eating with us. She is oh so aware that she is eating what we are eating at the same time that we are eating it. For this and other reasons, she really enjoys going out to eat.

That is the best of both worlds as not only does she get to eat at the table like Mom and Dad, but she gets to see another new place, which is always high on her list of things to do.

It certainly makes 'going out' much more fun for us!

Hopefully we can keep up the good eater habits for a few years...but the picky ones are yet to come...

Just thought some of you would like an update!

I'm out.

Speaking Of

I poured myself a bowl of cereal this morning - mini-wheats: choice. Also: na-nang. - and noticed perhaps the most ridiculous thing ever: an advertisement. It was right there on the milk jug. Seriously? They've invaded the milk industry? Why on earth? It wasn't even a decent add. Nope, it was for something completely unhealthy. At least it was for a food product instead of, say, electronic equipment. Ridiculous.

Speaking of, see these cookies? They're sitting in a tin in my kitchen.


Yup, they're Christmas cookies from family. You are absolutely allowed to think 'gross' since they've been there for about two months now. Why on earth? Well, right before we traveled for the holidays, Rocket Man and I got rid of whatever was left in the cookie tin. We don't really eat much of them, and by we I mean me, since he eats zero. These cookies? They were the few that Rocket Man told me to keep because he was going to eat them. HA! As usual, he has eaten zero cookies. So there they sit, waiting for him to throw them out. My reason for throwing those that were left away was two-fold. For one, I doubted they would be much good once we returned, and two: Lookin' Fine in 0-9.


Speaking of, here is our dinner from a couple of nights ago:


Tilapia with some herbs and white wine, tomatoes and mushrooms. Long-grain brown and wild rice. Greek salad without the Greek olives. What is with H-E-B not having the Greek olives? Wal-Mart has them, but not H-E-B. Perhaps they should rethink their catch-phrase: Here Everything's Better.

Speaking of, things have been going much better in the house of everyone's sick (H-E-S). We were all ill up until the 18th or so, but now most of us are feeling better. Little Miss Itty Bitty has been taking really good naps the past week or two, which is very nice because then I get to sleep as well. I think it is because she is oh so close to crawling; she practices every day. Well, unless her teeth get in the way. Then she chews on whatever she can find.

Speaking of, guess which of my two 'children' I found attempting to chew on the leg of the bed yesterday? If you are thinking the dog, you would be wrong. It took her a while to figure out how to get her mouth to the leg without her big noggin getting in the way, but by golly she got it. Mmm, bed-post. Tasty indeed, but very silly looking.

Speaking of, remember that stocking I made...the one that I failed to check the tension on before completing? Here it is:


...and here is a shot that shows you a little better how very long it is:


Long and skinny. Jeepers. Silly looking indeed. At least now I know what I shall do to make a better one. Shorter, but not skinnier. I shall also move the ginger-bread girl over a tad so that her foot doesn't get stuck in the seam. Hopefully I'll be able to do that before next Christmas. We shall see, as LMIB keeps me pretty busy.

Speaking of, she's awake from her itty bitty morning nap, so I need to go and rescue her from her fishy swing. Hope everyone's having a good Friday and Happy Weekend!

Baking

Today I did something that I really never do: bake. I know how to bake, and I am usually successful at it, but I rarely attempt it simply because my husband? He doesn't eat anything that I bake. Unless it is completely healthy for us...as in no butter, sugar, and the like. Never. Ever. It is ridiculous.

The first item I made was a batch of cookies. Here are the ingredients:


Here we have salt, sugar (brown and white), flour, baking soda, vanilla, oatmeal, dried cranberries, chopped almonds and white chocolate chips.


The recipe also calls for some butter and an egg. These two combine with the vanilla and are beaten until fluffy.


Then the dry ingredients are added and mixed all together to make the dough.


Plop the dough on a cookie sheet...

...and 12 minutes in a (my) 350 degree oven later, you have some delicious cookies.


The next item on the agenda was pumpkin bread muffins.


This recipe called for flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, pumpkin, salt, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. It also needed some oil, but I replaced that one with apple sauce.


The pumpkin, sugar and three eggs are combined...


...and mixed up to look like this.


Here are the muffins cooling. It took fifty minutes to cook these. Yes, it did. They are moist and yummy. The only downside is that they stick to the paper...won't be using that next time.

Anyway, that's my baking for the year; I highly doubt I'll be making anything else for fear that I'll have to eat it all!

Georgetown, Texas

Remember Ike? Boy, he was fun wasn't he?

A recap: we had already planned to head over west of Austin to Horseshoe Bay for some relaxing, etc. sans doggy avec infant. Instead we were avec doggy and infant...as well as everyone from the greater Houston/Southeast Texas area.

A fine time was had by all.

Plus, they didn't charge us for needing the much larger apartment because we had the dog with us.

So thanks for that; we appreciate it.

We spent the following seven days in a La Quinta up near Georgetown, Texas. Aside from the fact that we were in a one-room-with-the-sink-in-it deal with one bed for the three of us and no sound-proofing for the dog (wonderful), it was alright. By the third or fourth night we figured out that if we left the television on with a really low volume then for some reason Cooper wouldn't bark at every.single.thing.all.night.long.

RTC had to have a bath in the sink the first day we were there. This would be the last real bath she had there since basically they didn't clean the room from that day until we left a week later.

Which is gross.

On day two or three, we found a fabulous place to eat breakfast:


We did not have the redneck plate, though it was tempting. Instead we had pancakes and eggs and omelets and the like. They had pretty decent coffee and they loved LMIB. These days, who doesn't?

One weekend (Rocket Man still had to work all week, so he was on the phone and computer...did I tell you the hotel had free wireless in the dirty room?...all the time. Some things aren't different just because of Ike.) we drove into Georgetown to spend an afternoon. We had been by there in the middle of the week to do laundry at the U-Wash-M laundromat and had decided that we wanted to come back if we had the time.

The old town surrounds courtyard square. The courthouse is there of course, with its excellent dome:


Surrounding the building is quite a bit of green space that has some huge shade trees.


Those buildings you see past the tree are storefronts that as far as I know have been restored to look as they did "back when". They now house completely different shops of course, like an art gallery, an antique store, a chocolate shop and the Loading Dock, which I assume is a great college hangout.


The buildings are really interesting, and I love all of the colors used on their exteriors. I also love that the front is so very different from the sides and back. See that gray area on the building below? That would be what is really holding it up.


And these rusty stairs? All of the buildings have these on the sides. I love the juxtaposition of the obviously old and functional and the new shiny façades.


Down a block from the square we found this old church. Like my mother, I like old tiny churches. I also like graveyards, but that is another story. Note the beautiful day; the sky was so blue and the humidity is lacking in Austin (thank goodness) so we had an absolutely lovely day to explore Georgetown.


The church is now the Grace Heritage Center, owned and operated by the Georgetown Heritage Society. I bet you can get married there if you'd like. If I went to university in Georgetown and met my person there, then I'd want to get married there if I could.

I mean look at it:


The ceremony would have to be smaller than mine was, though...

Then you could just throw a massive party somewhere else.

Down the street from the church is the old theatre, which was playing The Producers. Appropriate for a college town. We were going to attempt to come back and get a photo of the place all lit up at night, but we didn't make it. I didn't have a tripod with me, so it is probably best that I didn't attempt a night photo.


We peeked into a store or two while we were down there, but we couldn't look for long since we had the dog with us (he enjoyed our walk around Georgetown immensely). We weren't allowed to leave him at the hotel alone, so he went everywhere we did that week. Talk about doggy heaven; he got so many rides in the car he was about to explode from the excitement of it all.

We went back to the hotel for a bit and rested up from the day outside. Later that evening, we went back out for dinner. We had noticed an Italian restaurant, Romeo's, on the corner in courtyard square, so we decided to try it out. They were supposed to have live music that evening and we know RTC likes her Dad's mouth-trumpet, so we figured she would enjoy the jazz group that was going to play.

We had some lovely food complete with white-wine sangria. It was okay, the sangria, but I much prefer the recipe I was given from some people in Spain.


LMIB had a fun time indeed. We just let her lay on the the booth beside her Dad while we eat and talk. Occasionally we pay her some attention as well, and by we I mean he:


She only enjoys that a little bit, don't you think?

This post is for Kathy S.

DUDE!

Have you seen this?!?


~photo from bakersedge.com~

As soon as I came across it, I thought of you!!

Imagine how your life in Spain would have been different with this lovely pan...no more mushy middles, no more crispy sides - just perfectly baked all around brownies!

Perhaps you should put the Baker's Edge Brownie Pan on your list for Christmas...you know, to make up for all of the Spanish stuff SlyKat stole took home with her...

Here are the details.

An Evening in Barcelona

I love desserts. We hardly ever have them because we try to be healthy. Okay, Señor CC truly rarely eats them (and if he does it is fruit or sorbet), and I take advantage of our travels to try new ones whenever I can.

Therefore, I just had to have churros con chocolate while in Barcelona. We attempted to find an appropriate restaurant, known for their chocolates and desserts, our first evening in Barcelona, but no such luck. We also attempted to go see the Font Màgica, but due to a Home Depot type home construction show going on, access was denied.

Fast-forward to Sunday evening. We had strolled La Rambla, the main pedestrian artery of the city, a couple of times during our trip and found it interesting. There were all kinds of street performers - people with marionettes, usually skeletons, dancing to music as well as guys dance-performing with a ladder - as well as flower stalls, and some excellent people-watching. While on one of these walks we noticed a sign that said churros con chocolate. Do these people know what tourists want? of course they do!

The place is called Cafè de L'Òpera, and the building has been in its current locations since the 18th century. The business has changed a couple of times, but now it serves churros con chocolate, which was what I wanted.

Just so that we are clear, the chocolate that comes to you is not anything like the hot chocolate from home. Oh, no. This chocolate is simply melted chocolate ready for you eat. It is thick and yummy. So thick, in fact, that your spoon can rest on top of it:



Churros are actually a breakfast food for los españoles. It is basically fried dough in what reminds me of the shape of play-doh when you use the fun factory. It is a very thick and heavy meal and it definitely sticks to your bones. I was only able to eat half of them because we had eaten dinner only a short while ago.



We then took the metro back to the Font Màgica, and this time we were successful! The home show was over and done with, so people were able to walk freely up to the fountain. There is a show that lasts about twenty minutes. It begins on the half-hour and comes complete with music, lights, and (of course) water.



The fountain is huge and the water can shoot up about 100 feet into the air. We were pretty far away from the fountain; I imagine that the people who get up close and personal with it get a little wet. The fountain changes shapes frequently and there were multiple color combinations. It was spectacular and a great way to end our last evening in Barcelona.



Hasta pronto,
~ CC

Exhaustion and Editing Don't Mix

I am tired.

Why?

That is an easy one. I was lucky enough to be able to stay awake and see 3:43 on the clock this morning. I have no idea when exactly I finally fell asleep, I only know that it was after that time. Lucky. Me.

I am sure you are wondering why I was up so late. Was it because Señor CC decided that my head was a fabulously comfy spot on which to place his pillow for sleeping? Nope, not this time. Was it because Cooper decided to growl and huff (and puff and blow your house down) at the imaginary dangers that only come out at night? Nah - not last night. Well then, what was it?

Who. Knows.

I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago - about six or so - and although I have the occasional soda (usually none, and never more than one a day) or something containing chocolate, I never have problems falling asleep. Methinks the tiramisu I ate last night for dessert contained a bit o' caffeine. Either that, or my sleep schedule was just a bit hinky last night.

Where is this post going?

Umm...new subject:

We are invited to a casual dinner get-together this evening. I am hoping that everyone on the email invite will be able to make it. I have met most of them at least once, some of whom I know are great people with whom I do not want to lose touch after this project sails to Italy. Yes, it will. A concrete box, sailing to Italy. Good times.

Back to the dinner party.

All we were asked to bring is ourselves and whatever we want to drink, as usual. I wanted to bring something else, so I made...

Wait for it...

BROWNIES!!!!

I know. You are ever so impressed, since I never bake. Sure, I've made things to take to school for activities and I've baked at Christmas and for other gatherings, but for myself? For Señor CC? Never. Okay - I made pumpkin pie at Thankgiving. It was yummy. But you've gotta make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, so that one doesn't count.

I love desserts. That is one reason I don't bake. Another is the fact that Señor CC doesn't eat them. Nope, he is healthy and makes good food choices and that means that if I bake, I am left to eat the whole thing. Back to reason number one: I love desserts...and therefore I would eat it...all of it. So I don't bake.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all of this is that when I tell people that I don't bake (and explain why, etc) they immediately assume that it must be because I don't know how to...and then they inevitably proceed with their detailed explanations on how to do this or that...as if telling me how will change my ways and I will suddenly start baking. Why is this interesting? Because I never say that I don't know how. I simply say that I don't bake. Their jump to the conclusion that I must not know how is amazingly swift and almost everyone does it. Hence: interesting. Done and done.

Proof that I have (successfully) made brownies:

ACK!!!!! MUTANT BROWNIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so here's where I attempt to tie the themes of this post together:

In my tired state, I accidentally hit ctrl+i instead of ctrl+alt+i when it was time to resize my brownie photo in photoshop elements. The result is the fantastic photo you see above. I would be very interested to see who (or what) would eat brownies that looked like that. I suppose this is where I see the silver lining in regards to the 3:43 clock sighting. If not for that, we would not all be privy to the alien brownies.

I plan to take these brownies to our friendly get-together tonight. I hope that they will be eaten, since I don't want to take them all home with me. I suppose everyone who attends will have to be the judges of whether or not I do know how to bake - I'll let you know how that goes.

For now, here is a more realistic depiction of said brownies:

Mmmmmmm....

Hasta pronto,
~ CC

Tapas for Papa

This one is for Dad, since he is always asking what we're eating in Spain.

As mentioned in an earlier post, on day two in Barcelona, between the spectacular church Santa Maria del Mar and Palau de la Música, we were hungry! Luckily for us, just around the corner from the church is a place called Taller de Tapas, or Tapa Workshop.

Tapas are small servings of food, usually just enough of whatever you have ordered for a couple of bites for one or two people. Tapas began as covers (the verb, to cover, in Castellano is tapar) for glasses of sherry. Sherry drinkers used a small piece of bread to cover their glass so that flies would not get into their drinks between sips. It is said that bartenders and pub owners began adding a small bit of meat, most likely jamón, to the bread to make it a snack. This grew from being a free snack with your drink to what is in some restaurants today a whole meal.



I am sure that you can tell from the above photograph of our steamed mussels that this particular restaurant serves tapas for a meal; otherwise we would certainly not have so many. Seafood is excellent in southern Spain and this fact held true for the northeastern coast.



One of the great aspects of eating at Taller de Tapas is that the menu is in Castellano, Catalán and English. This fact certainly makes it easier to know what you are ordering. We wanted to be sure that we were full after our meal, so we ordered something we knew we would both enjoy: pollo a la plancha (grilled chicken).



Another of our seafood treats, and my favorite, is the calamari a la plancha (grilled squid). Yes, those are entire squid hoods cooked in olive oil. Mmm. We also ordered patatas bravas, potato wedges with a pepper sauce. They were okey dokey; a little too much like fast-food potatoes to me.

Speaking of fast, our service was just that. This is difficult to find anywhere in Europe, really, as the culture does not demand it. I do not mean that it was fast like home - I imagine that will seem very strange to me if we ever move back there - but it was fast for Spain.

Our meal was accompanied by a Catalán must: pa amb tomàquet (pan con tomate; bread with tomato). This scrumptious item is easy to make. You can have garlic on it or not; that is your choice. You use very ripe summer tomatoes, cut them in half, give them a little squeeze to get the juices going (and to get rid of them - we don't want soggy tomato bread - eww) and then rub your bread with them. When I say bread I of course mean the stiffer European bread, not your American loaf. Next comes a sprinkling of salt and then at the end you drizzle a little olive oil on there. Yummy indeed!

I have also read here that there is a so-called cheating method. Apparently you can make a batch of the stuff by cutting your lot of tomatoes, grating them into a bowl, adding the salt and olive oil and then serving the bowl with the bread. This way people can spread the stuff onto their bread as they want it and nothing gets soggy by sitting around. Of course, it tastes so good that I find it hard to believe that it ever sits long enough to get soggy!

I will mention that we ordered a pitcher of sangría to go with our meal. This is something I do not recommend because the sangría at Taller de Tapas is not exactly...authentic. It was a whole lot like drinking colored and slightly sweetened rum from a glass. Oh yeah, nothing like straight liquor with your tapas.

Next time, we'll stick with cerveza...or better yet, when traveling, agua sin gas for lunch all the way.

Hasta pronto,
~ CC

Where, Oh Where?

Let's see...where have I been?

Nowhere, really. Here, but not blogging.

A monthly wrap-up for your perusal:

We attended a show at the bullring that included a fabulous piano player, singers, band (complete with Kenny G-esque sax player), flamenco dancers and dancing andalucian horses.

I then spent my time finalizing our plans for a visit to Dublin, Ireland and environs. We were there from the tenth until the fourteenth. Mostly it went off without a hitch.

I've been to castellano classes once a week.

The car is in the shop and every time we call we are told "I think it will be finished the car at the end of this week or the beginning of next week." That is what we get for having a car in the shop in Spain in August...when everyone is on vacation.

On the twenty-fourth we attended a team-building (excuse for a party - ha!) extravaganza at a chiringuito here in Sotogrande. What is that, you ask? Why, a chiringuito is a beach bar that serves tasty treats in addition to copious amounts of alcohol. Karen has a post that deftly describes the evening complete with a photograph. Yes, we did eat the fish cooking on stakes on the sand-filled boat fire.

Cooper has had some interesting developments this month as well. For starters, he has a new bed. It is big and floppy and he appears to like it (now that he has accepted that it is the norm). Secondly, the vet who owns the kennel where he stays when we leave town declared him "un perrito bueno" and told me that he is so good with other dogs now. Any of you who know Cooper at all...or have heard our doggy meets doggy tales...know that this is an improvement indeed. We were going to have a doggy play-date with two seventy-pound-plus golden retrievers this past weekend, but it fell through. Good times are guaranteed when that occurs - we'll try to videotape it. Lastly, today he was groomed and although he still was so excited to arrive there that he was a bit loud, today was the first time that when I arrived to pick him up he was calm and collected...and of course he did not want to leave. Go figure.

So. There you have my month more or less. Yes, I did participate in 12 of 12. I have not posted it yet for whatever reason. It will come soon enough, along with more info on most of what I have written about here. All will have photographs, of course. I can't seem to do much posting without the photographs. They are my favorite part.

Hasta pronto,
~ CC

June 12 of 12

It has been a while since my last post. I can't say that I have been particularly busy since May 12th, but for one reason or another, I just cannot seem to get it together to post anything. It is not a lack of information or ideas, but a lack of motivation. I am awaiting its return so that I can do a decent job of this blogging thing. Until then, I provide the latest 12 of 12. To see the rules as well as what other people all over the world are doing today, check out Chad's blog.

9:40; Sotogrande, Spain

First thing after dropping Señor CC at work this morning I donned these lovely items and went for a run. Today I did the Paseo del Parque circuit; I am guessing that my legs shall be tired tomorrow because of the hills.

9:45; Sotogrande, Spain

Chompy-lones and I were attempting to play with shoe last night when the unthinkable occurred. Yes, the poor thing is ripped in two. I am not sure which end Cooper prefers as I did not throw it afterward. I searched high and low and finally beneath a chair to find shoe-two. Luckily he is only a doggy - as long as there is a shoe to play with all is well in his world.

12:04; Sotogrande, Spain

I spent some time going through my scrapbook items. I chose to begin with "Christmas 2005" since that is fairly thematic and will provide me with lots of pages (we did go see everyone that year). I have cut all of the photos and arranged them into appropriate pages. There will be 19 in all. Yes, nineteen...

12:05; Sotogrande, Spain

What does a lones do while one is working on photographs and ribbons? Why, he rests, of course! He has been making a trek to his night-time bed for naps during the day lately. I believe it has something to do with the neighbor-dog who cries all day long. No exaggeration.

12:49; Sotogrande, Spain

Once I felt crafty with the scrapbook items I decided to take it another step and try out my new long knitting needles (THANKS, MOM!). They are nice indeed; smooth enough to slip in the loops easily, but not so slippery that stitches attempt to make their escape. I knit, then took it apart, then knit once again, then took it apart, and finally knit to leave it in and make something...I hope.

13:40; Sotogrande, Spain

In the midst of the knitting and taking apart-ness that was my afternoon, I may have spent some time online looking at some options for a European vacation of sorts. Yes, it is a package tour. Yes, I live here and totally should just be planning it myself - I agree with you on that point. However. Oh yes, there is one of those! I would be going on this trip by myself. I would rather go with someone, and the best way is to go with a group and let someone else take care of the planning for once. I want to see eastern or central Europe...the brochures are in the mail!

17:56; Sotogrande, Spain

Okey dokey. So now I am obviously back to the knitting - towards the end of it all, actually. I simply cannot knit, cross-stitch, etc. without something else going on. Well, that isn't totally true. I can on occasion, but usually I like to have something in the background. What is better than some Scrubs? "Oh, and by the way - Bob...who doesn't get that?"

18:36; Sotogrande, Spain

I am on my way to pick up Señor CC so that we can meet his friend and visit the bike shops in La Línea. I was asked to be there by 19:00; he wasn't ready until about 20:00. Good times.

19:10; La Línea, Spain

After a quick call to Señor CC to let him know I had arrived...and an equally quick realization that it would be a while, I decided to take advantage of the extra time and take some photos. Today was a lovely day and fairly clear; we could see Africa quite well. I attempted to capture the view of the continent but was not particularly successful because I did not have my zoom lens with me. I was fortunate enough to catch these two surfing in the beautiful blue-green waters of the bay this afternoon.

19:13; La Línea, Spain

Round-abouts are hit-or-miss in Spain. Sometimes they have been decorated and sometimes they have not. Luckily for me, on the road that hugs the bay they are done up quite well. One of my favorites has this shiny sailboat in it.

19:59; La Línea, Spain

We finally made it over to the parking garage, complete with little red and green lights that indicate whether or not a space is free. Our friends were there to greet us and show us to the bike shops. We did a bit of looking, I managed to confuse the poor guy who worked there by mutilating some español, and then we scheduled a visit for Thursday.

20:02; La Línea, Spain

Every town or city I have visited in Spain seems to be full of lovely secrets such as this one. Usually I am walking through the streets where all appears to be like any (albeit old) city when I stumble upon a plaza or park. It makes exploring the best approach to any location, and the result has always been delightful.

22:10; La Línea, Spain

We dined at Moltobella restaurant, a member of the Grupo Patagonia. The food and company was fabulous. The translation on the English-language menu left a little to be desired in the accuracy area but more than made up for it in sheer entertainment. Savage Mushrooms were on the menu as were Turkey Buckets. I had the buckets and I must say that I certainly didn't taste anything fowl; rather, it was quite delicious and I highly recommend it.