Buenas noches,

I'm taking advantage of the excruciatingly long commercial breaks in Spain to blog a bit. ;) We're sitting on our new (relatively speaking) couch with the heater on under the table.

Do you all remember what a "mesa camilla" is? Probably not. Well, it's just a table with a nice thick cloth over it and a heater underneath. So you can pull the cloth up to your neck and be nice and toasty. Really, I'm not sure why they're not more popular in the US... Although it is true that there are a number of fires each year when the heater gets left on or gets too close to the heater!

Anyway, we're having a cold wave...do you say that? It's a been a little warmer the last two days, but on Sunday it snowed! (I mentioned that before) CRAZY!! It's probably been about seven years since the last snow. And coming from the Sierra Nevada (in California), it was honestly anti-climactic: slush really. But a little bit stuck on the cars and on the roof tops and of course the orange trees. Of course the kids went wild, scraping up as much snow as possible to have a snowball fight.

I didn't bother leaving home all day.

And speaking of the house...the cold weather and the rain (aside from the snow, we've been having Portland weather) are a horrible combination for my new paint jobs! The paint on the wall in the living room is lifting from the humidity seeping through the wall and in the bedroom it's actually dripping down the walls! I hate dripping walls! And I promise there are no leaks in the ceiling. It's just a combination of condensation and the actual rainwater seeping in... Awful. There's black mold around the windows.

Apparently this isn't unique to my fifty-some-odd piso. It happens to a greater or lesser extent in all the houses around here. You'd think that after a few houses it would occur to somebody to put some sort of barrier against humidity in their building...not so. As it is, their bricks covered with cement on the outside and plaster inside... Not really cool in summer and I can assure you they don't retain the heat in winter.

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Change of subject: I had a lovely dinner tonight. :) We finished our pata of jamon (the cured whole pig legs that hang in all the bars here) and I made a great broth with the tougher pieces. Then with leftover pisto (a kind of ratatouille) I added rice and broth: delicious!

It just wouldn't be right to leave you without a culinary note.

besos from La Roda