Almost the end of our time in Zaragoza

I'm posting some images from an amazing walk we took yesterday, mostly because they are pieces of a whole that is not recognizable. Maybe I'll post something about the context later.

Today we have a hectic social agenda, to say goodbye to people before we leave tomorrow. On Sunday, we'll drive to stay the night in Guadalajara, close to Madrid. Monday is travel day: up at 4AM to get to the airport at 5 for the 7AM flight. We return to Mpls by way of Paris. Somewhere over the Atlantic, we will (I hope) sleep for the eight hour flight as we turn back time 7 hours. We arrive at 1PM on the same day. Then: Shuttle to ramp, hope the car starts, home, to face the fact that the heat went out on my house-sitters, who got the gas people in quickly to do the repair on the boiler. God, I hope it works!

Declutter campaign: photos!

 

I'm learning how to use the new Picssa for Mac program so I can share and upload photos more easily.
I have way too many photos on the hard drives of my computers, and even though they are backed up to an external hard drive (most of them), I'm reluctant to delete them. This is a holdover from the days when we paid to print every lousy shot--I am a photo hoarder. This lack of organization also means it's hard to find specific images when I want them without spending lots of time since they are mostly unlabeled. I'm going to try to get a handle on this, and especially work on sharing batches with friends and family online.
Question: can I purge my photo files AND my shoe collection this weekend? or is that too much discipline at once? Maybe I should try one or the other first!

Street market in Amsterdam

I have a lot of pictures from the last several months that I haven't labeled or organized. Here are a few from my summer trip to Amsterdam--the street market had a combination of food, clothes, and oddities. I had never seen cabbages this pointy before, and I was highly tempted to get that blue wig in the middle.

A few San Francisco souvenirs

On the sidewalk by Dolores Park.

Frida on Valencia St.

Browsing at the Ferry building market.


a garden gate at Filoli.

A chilly Sunday

My Christmas cactus has a bloom!
Yesterday was cold and sunny, so I took a walk with my camera.

The roses that bloomed so late into the fall are still on the bush, and the berries are feeding the birds.


Instead of being industrious and cleaning house, I am being industrious and fooling around with pictures and YouTube videos. Ever since Blogger moved us all over to "beta" I have not been able to post YouTube videos, just links, despite messing around with settings and reading "Known Problems" posts, etc. I'll keep trying, though, because I like being able to post the video itself and not just the link.
I may follow the example of some other folks and move over to Wordpress, though, if it doesn't improve soon, because I am being forced to log in over and over to comment or even just to edit, whereas before it would remember my settings, and the
Blogger help folks never got back to me, of course.

Last night I watched AFI on SNL (too bad the sound board crashed in their second number, messing up the vocal). Davey, the lead singer, reminds me quite a bit of Bryan Ferry, and the whole androgynous glam scene back in the day, so I looked for some old Bowie (did you know there is a Goblin King action figure?)Roxy Music vids; Do the Strand!.

Wedding pictures!

I want to write more about the wedding ceremony later, but for now here are some pictures for family and friends--just a few!


We gathered at the Hotel before setting out for the Juzgado. Make sure the camera is ready!
The ceremony was held on Friday, Jan 12 in the juzgado of Zaragoza, on the Plaza del Pilar. The wedding guests gathered outside a little before noon. Friends and family were there from Portalrubio, Valencia, Barcelona, Guadalajara, as well as the U.S, Belgium, Germany and England. The civil ceremony itself was not long. A judge read the appropriate parts of the law (we especially appreciated the section that said that both members of the couple had to share equally in domestic chores!!). She spoke warmly and personally, and an interpreter repeated her words in English for Loren. The two witnesses were Blas's mother and a dear friend, Maribel. Yes, I cried.




Outside we threw rice!

The grooms were very handsome. Blas said this was the first time he'd worn a tie since his first communion.

The sun was out for the gazillion pictures that were taken in front of the fountain. Here are Blas's parents Daniel and Primi.

Blas's family, with Angela, Florencio and Carmen.

Rosemary,her friends Andrea and Sara, and their families.

Dear friends from the University.

Two generations of cousins: Blas's cousins Isabel and Antonio with his wife Gema,and their children Araceli, Marina and Aitana, and Rosemary's cousins Alba and Ruben.

Some of the very wonderful people who work with Blas and who have been such dear friends.

Folks who came all the way from the States! Dave, Loren's nieces Jenny and Crystal, dear friends Gail, Amy and Miriam.


At the Hotel Hesperia, there was a less formal ceremony with poetry, slides, music and some jokes. Very not Spanish, but wonderful--I did read the Sabina song. There was more crying, but the good kind. Then we started the party with drinks and appetizers before going downstairs for lunch and dancing. The battery of my camera died before I could get pictures of the dancing--too bad, because Loren danced the paso doble!

Comida opípara

El rey pide consenso.

Las gambas nos miran con sus ojitos.

La ensalada esconde sus tresoros.

Las navajas MMMMM!

Pinya para la ninya.

La dorada tiene dientes enormes, pero poco le valen.

Nochebuena: canapes, gambas, carabineros,navajas, bigaros, sopa de cocido, cochinillo con patatas y pimientos, pinya, turron. Cava. Discurso de SM el Rey y programa de Raphael.
Navidad: canapes, necoras, bueyes de mar, dorada, ensalada, fruta y turron.
Hoy: habia que elegir entre 3 menus para la boda, bwah.

Remember

felices fiestas

Here is a "Belen" we made out of clay several years ago. In our version, a llama and a camel visit the baby jesus along with the shepherd.

OK, folks, this is it.

Today is a day to turn to positive voices, to remember how hard so many people are working for constructive change. The folks over at Dharma Bums have a lovely post today that inspires me. We can focus on the media hysteria or we can look at all of the ways that ordinary people are also working hard to make a difference. I choose to spend today looking for inspiring examples.
My voting place is the nearby Unitarian Church, and the folks who volunteer there are always sweet and efficient. I have never had to wait in a really long line, probably because I am able to go when a lot of other people are at work, but that may be different today because I expect the turnout to be HUGE in my area. I am so excited because it looks very likely that Keith Ellison will be my representative to Congress, Amy Klobuchar will be my next Senator, and Mark Ritchie will succeed in his goal of bringing the office of Secretary of State back to a Minnesota tradition of clean elections. Many folks I know have done some volunteering, hosted a house party to help people get to know candidates better, of participated in some kind of public action. Even a friend who is a self-described conservative evangelical Christian has spent the last year working almost full time with Impeach for Peace to persuade his friends that their values are not being represented by the folks currently in office.

Tonight I'll keep the TV and the radio off, and help my daughter with her Science Fair experiment. I can check the local election results at MN Campaign Report Here is a picture of my polling place--I didn't have to wait in a line, and the folks who work there have done this before, so all went smoothly.

Meet Louis

We had a wonderful birthday party (a surprise!) after the last performance of the play. Hopped up on cake, the kids improvised costumes and filmed each other imitating Madonna talking in a fake British accent about how she stole a baby (!). Good thing I still have a password on this computer, or the stuff would end up on YouTube. R. is twelveteen.

Louis is the newest member of the family. He is a birthday present. I am glad he will be living at the farm with the guys, because my cat would plot his demise.

News from Northfield

Here, by request, are the latest pictures of house construction. It's going to be done very soon! The heat works, the boiler is waiting to be installed. The tile in the shower stall has been placed. This week, the appliances will be delivered. Although some details will not be done until spring, the house will be ready to live in within the next three-four weeks
The floorboards are all laid. L. kept the oak floorboards from the Lakeville farmhouse. He also found some gorgeous old floor boards from a gym in the ReUse center; they had to sand the green lines off them. So many parts of the house are recycled, and have a story behind them. Here's what the view south looks like now, with the leaves starting to fall off the trees,and the farmers harvesting the corn and beans down the road.

October is here: what are you wearing for Halloween?

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow. Ah, Minnesota! When I moved here in 1988, I was completely ignorant about all things winter. Now, fall is my favorite season here. Another lover of fall is Sharon, who tells incredible birding stories with terrific photos at Birdchick. Her latest stories are about banding hawks up in the Duluth area. And don't forget to check out her pictures of rabbit disapproval.

All that thinking about school lunches and organic food the other day sent me to the Saint Paul Farmer's Market, where I got some incredible apples, yukon gold potatoes, peppers, onions, a chicken, beets, and some yummy chocolate sauce. We have been eating it with bananas. Halloween approaches, and I have been heavily lobbied to make a trip to "the costume store" this weekend, so we will hook up with some friends to make a pilgrimage to Twin Cities Magic and Costume over in St Paul, next to Cosetta's, although I have decreed that we have to recycle some elements from the costume closet (my child doesn't have room in her closet for her regular clothes because there are too many "dress ups" in there, and now she has started to raid my closet).

In the past I've been quite happy with some of my costumes, but this year I haven't quite yet decided what to be. Since my mother is visiting from SF and she is in the food business, I think I'll browse around Becks and Posh, catch up on SF foodie blog gossip (the Michelin Guide has issued its stars, and boy, are people in a tizzy!), and see if I can find some inspiration.

The layout of the house in relation to the barn

To get a better idea of the layout of the house, the barn and the garage, here's a picture that shows the approach from the driveway, looking southwest; the garage is on the left, the barn is on the right, and the house itself is visible between them. The garage is not attached to the house. You can see how the buildings are arranged around an open space which I have been thinking of as a courtyard, although I'm not sure how it will end up. This is an earlier stage of building, before the windows were in.

This is what the house looks like from the opposite direction, from the south looking north and east. It sits on a slope. The driveway come up on the left, behind the barn, and around to the back of the barn. This view shows the main floor and the basement. Part of the basement is underground, but you can see that there are windows and a door so you can walk out on the east. On the main floor, the kitchen windows are on the left; the dining room is in the middle, and the living room is on the right. All have lovely views to the south. The building has an L-shape, and the bedroom wing extends north on the east side, past the living room.
The third photo shows how the buildings look from the east, still from the southern slope, but now looking toward the kitchen end of the house, with the door that will probably be the main entrance. You can see how the barn and the L-shape of the house enfold a space in the middle. From this level, you might not realize that there is a basement floor. Guinness is exploring the exciting scents, probably food from our picnic. Now the siding is on, the exterior is painted, and the inside is prepped and ready to paint as well. If things keep going as well as they have been, the house will be livable by the end of October.

State Fair Saturday

Parade...


Rides...
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Food...


A good time was had by all.