I honestly can not believe that it snowed today!

That's right. I fly across the Atlantic Ocean, away from the freezing cold of Ohio, bask in gloriously warm weather over the last week in sunny Spain, and then, of all things, it SNOWS! What gives?! I woke up this morning to a much chillier courtyard than I'm accustomed to, a bad sign agreeing with the newspaper's forecast. Had my coffee and bread, pulled on my jeans, and walked over to The Alamo wearing a hoodie and gloves.

James was about doing things, and I told him I wasn't sticking my hands in any mud today as they were quite frozen from the last time and it was a warm sunny day, whereas today they would surely turn blue and fall off after mixing a few buckets of adobe. Sebastien headed to Leon with Paddy to putter around and I stayed behind to give James a hand with some things at the house. We picked out some beams to use as a door frame, and then I gave him some pointers on his landscaping. It seems they have a small grove of quince trees on the property. In my opinion they looks like crap and all but one should be removed. And honestly, who needs, or better yet, wants that much quince? Yuck!

So Marianne arrived with an automatic drip coffee pot, and little but a clue as to how to use it. It was extraordinarily cute to see her figure it out. She made coffee for James and herself though, and produced some tasty apple tarts that she'd brought along. We say upstairs in the house talking about my Camino, what I'm packing, where I'm going, etc. James is determined that I'm going to pack more than I need, which from what I hear is a very common mishap, though, and spurred on by my light packing for the whole trip, am determined to beat the norm and actually pack just enough if not too little! I'm not lugging around anymore than I absolutely see necessary. I think the most frivolous thing that I'll have will be my iPod and the solar charger I plan on taking–but it really helps to walk and listen to a book or music, and other than taking along my laptop I don't have any other way of keeping the battery charged.

He and Marianne decided to head off and buy a toilet and new shoes for Poppy, so I came home and found Una noshing on the trash that she'd succeeding in spilling all over the kitchen. Mostly my fault I'd say though, as I should have thought better about the chicken bones and leftovers being in the can. I cleaned up the mess and replaced the bag, then warmed up the leftover soup and had that for lunch with some anchovies. Then I began my project for the day: cleaning up the salon (living room) in the main house.

All that was leftover from the shipment of stuff Paddy and Reb received from the States were a few boxes of books, a box of kitchen things, and a few boxes of CDs. I sorted everything out, putting the books away, sorting through the CDs, and generally tidying up. I'm going to leave all the decorative pieces in one place so that when Reb gets home she can put them where she'd like. Tomorrow Sebastien is going to help be take a dresser upstairs, and then all I need to figure out is how to put down the rug, and secondly how to arrange a room with limited configurations that contains a fireplace, a bar, a sofa, and a full dining set. There has to be someway to arrange it so everything is functional. We'll see. Didn't get around to cleaning up the workshop, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Paddy and Sebastien got home from Leon just after five or so, and Paddy took out a bag of frozen squids that he'd gotten at Lupa on Saturday. They were whole, so I wasn't completely keep on having them served for dinner, but he said he intended to cut them up. No problem with that. In the end he just cooked them with some garlic and olive oil, and we had steamed broccoli and baked spuds. I had to chuckle at Sebastien because while chopping up the broccoli he warned me that the stems were poisonous. He says a teacher had told him that. See, teachers do lie sometimes. That's my favorite part of broccoli too!

We finished up dinner and were just starting to have some of the fruit salad that we made the evening before when the James' arrived. Marianne had some wash to pick up, and James had bought a new 80GB external hard drive and wanted me to drop the music from my iPod to it. I told him he'll have to wait, because I can't install the program that pulls the music from the iPod on my computer until German comes back next week and I have a wireless connection. Anyhow, Sebastien seemed irritated and asked him to go out front so he could speak to him. Not sure what his gripe was, but he wasn't in a very good mood when he came back in, proceeding to drink, as per usual. Liver of steel I suppose.

I cleared the table and did the dishes, then kicked back to read The New Yorker some more. An interesting article about the conservative creators of “24” (I knew there was a reason I never had any desire to get into that show) as well as another about the press leaks and scandal that occurred around Hewlett-Packard. So rarely do I find a magazine so interesting that I'm motivated to read it from cover to cover. There's a cartoon in this issue that I though the CWRU kids would find amusing: A couple standing in an empty room, staring, dismayed, at a hole in the floor exposing a scape of stars and a moon. A third woman, supposedly a Realtor showing a property says “Of course, the real charm of the place is that hole in the space-time continuum.”

The snow started this evening just after seven or so, and was really light at first, but now the temperature has dropped even more, it's falling harder, and bloody sticking! I took pictures, ha ha. I think I'll be turning the little space heater on in my room tonight!

I really want to go to a Disney park for some reason. Damn advertising! And I really want to move to California. Okay, time to go reclaim my iPod from Sebastien so I can listen to my book and get to sleep! G'night.