dream on

the aerosmith song “dream on” is gorgeous.

sing for the laughter, sing for the tears!

ahh.

today while listening to music and trying to remember the band’s name i thought that its for SURE some sort of a drug name but couldn’t figure it out.

it was placebo.

go me!

hanging shelves

i’m getting totally awesome at hanging shelves and stuff. did 5 hours of house work today, with final result being that the entry way and laundry are about 85% efficient (up from what i’d say was 15% at move in time). it was done in stages – laundry hooks and 1/3rd of the closet i cleaned up about 6 months ago, but there was a big “push” today that i’m very happy with. especially because:
1. i really enjoy doing hands-on stuff myself. i mean, i really COULD have bugged/asked/worked with/annoyed tim to do this, but i actually was eager and excited to hang the shelves myself, once i made the decision that it has to be done this weekend.
2. even though it wasn’t perfectly smooth the end result surpassed my expectations
3. assuming no shelves fall overnight (haha, knock knock knock) this set-up really can live as-is until we really need more space.
4. the fact the closet is now organized means i can get the really fancy bag i wanted for ages.

i present the after, alas no before:

and the bag is this one, not sure about color:

the snag in hanging shelves was that i hit concrete. i never drilled into concrete before, so i had to make a homedepot run and figure out with one of the guys there whether i would be able to drill. sadly i needed a hammer drill, even more sadly they didn’t have one that i could rent that would hold the drill bit that i needed, so i just kinda did it with my normal drill. which means that top 2 screws on the rods that support the shelving are … loose. (i wasn’t able to put as much weight into the drilling as the other screws, so the bit didn’t go far into the concrete – maybe 1/4th of an inch). the other 4 screws are at least 1/2 inch into the concrete (plus the useless 3/4 inch drywall + 1/4 inch of the bracket itself).

BUT! it all worked out, again assuming nothing falls, so now the shoes are beautifully organized. (i still have like 5 more pairs of shoes at work, hah).

i have one main challenge left, and that’s scarves. tim and i have about 8 scarves, and 5 hats, and some random number of gloves (~7? not pairs, just 7) between us, and my idea was to hang a rack onto which all the scarves could be looped. except i hit concrete on that wall too, and am out of concrete screws. argh! i was so angry that i went and hung the towel bar in the bathroom. i should get that angry more frequently.

damn you, scarf! (hahahahaha)

5 hours of organizing is painful.

oh yeah, and tim replaced the dinghy shower curtain bar with a new chrome one using his new fancy dremel to cut it. there were MASSIVE SPARKS. metal was cut in our living room. too awesome. so now the bathroom had some mini tiny ultra tiny update, reality is that bathroom update is next on the list.

yay! productive sunday.

ending of spain

dumping my rough notes here, at this point its probably all i’ll write about that trip :)

Morocco and Cordoba

Sooolooks like I’m again falling s bit behind. I’m Iredell snow
theereare two days if things to write sbout,,, so let me do point form
and ill fill in later:

Morocoo is dirty poor
Many guides trying to reel us in
That street has no exit
Lack of spice pretty, abject poverty
Fast easy trip, worth it
Feels like middle east, tijuana for tim

Yikes, it is hard to retype from notes. I’m glad I took some. Ores,
because otherwise I would be super far behind on these entries. So!
Morocco, Africa. We have been officially stamped as having been on
another continent! This makes me having been in Europe, Asia (Japan),
Australia, north America and now Africa. Woot! missing is South
America which I reaaalllly hope to fill in soon. For no real reason
other than bragging rights I guess.

Getting over to Tangier was easy – a quick ferry ride, after going
through passport controls ln the boat. That was a smart idea…

The ferry holds both cars and people, so when you get out you exit
through the car loading dock. We arrived to Tangiere, and right away
as i expected we started getting hassled by a “tour guide”. This guy
kept flashing his la,inlayed card and saying he is “official guide”.
we politely rejected his advances as he continued to follow us off the
dock and down into the covered walkway that exited to generals port.
Eventually he gave up and we had a whole 3 minutes of walking alone
the next tour guide tried to pick us up. Well, we managed to get to
the cash exchange point first and alone, but after that it was only 3
minutes.

The next guy was truly persistent. We were walking along the street
that takes you out of the port. Of course right away I explain that
no, thank you, in english and French. He continues to walk 10steps
ahead of us, and doesn’t lessee us alone. He starts to point out the
old city wall as i explain, again, that no, we are not interested.
Mind you I’m king this in a friendly but clear manner. We stop for a
fake picture with some random cannon that was located along the way.
He stops and waits for us. We continue and he starts talking to us
again. As we stop and try to wait him out, ANOTHER guy starts to
explain that there’s the old wall, and here is the medina. Seriously!
I actually started laughing out loud, how ridiculous is that?
The guy kept selling himself, first claiming that we wont be able to
do it alone in the city, then saying that we are being too paranoid to
not hire him, then his pics went from 30$ for 3 hours to $20, to $10
and then finally $5. And then finally, blissfully, he left us alone as
we ventured into the city.

Cordoba
Drive
Carre four
Lste lunch
Feirst shopping trip
Second shopping trip, paseo, kids playing hide and seek, white doves,
Quick photo walk
Dinner, local awesome place

Morning
Breakfast, mesquite, massive, beautiful, before the tourist on
slaughter, quote from book

Drive to Seville, easy… Until we get into Seville and proceed to get
lost three times in a row despite gps – turns are continuously not
where you expect them to be… Finally park new bus station, taxi over
to hotel.

Hotel in a small square
Small tapas snack nearby, sweet woman who laughs when i ask for her
help in order

Shopping, siesta for tim
Shopping …. Watch, stuff
Drinks, then paseo
Neighbourhood walk around ghe barrio
Nice place for dinner and drinks

Day two Seville
Breakfast unremarkable
Everyone stylish
We walk together to shoppingd district, find nothing for Tim , he dads
back after a drink, i continuum find outlet
Outlet
Back for my siesta – relax with wine at the lounges here for 2 hours
At mafic hour walk around but no magic happens
We go for dinner, then i catch a flamenco show , tim not interested so
he was off drinking and reading
The flamenco show…
After the show I’m hyped and google another flamenco bar, go there
with dutch couple
Late night, 2am, short rain

Morning day 3 Seville
Breakfast near smoking dads and babies
Shopping with tim, sfera outlet, lost on the way there

morocco and cordoba

updating from a random email I found!
Sooolooks like I’m again falling s bit behind. I’m Iredell snow
theereare two days if things to write sbout,,, so let me do point form
and ill fill in later:

Morocoo is dirty poor
Many guides trying to reel us in
That street has no exit
Lack of spice pretty, abject poverty
Fast easy trip, worth it
Feels like middle east, tijuana for tim

Yikes, it is hard to retype from notes. I’m glad I took some. Ores,
because otherwise I would be super far behind on these entries. So!
Morocco, Africa. We have been officially stamped as having been on
another continent! This makes me having been in Europe, Asia (Japan),
Australia, north America and now Africa. Woot! missing is South
America which I reaaalllly hope to fill in soon. For no real reason
other than bragging rights I guess.

Getting over to Tangier was easy – a quick ferry ride, after going
through passport controls ln the boat. That was a smart idea…

The ferry holds both cars and people, so when you get out you exit
through the car loading dock. We arrived to Tangiere, and right away
as i expected we started getting hassled by a “tour guide”. This guy
kept flashing his la,inlayed card and saying he is “official guide”.
we politely rejected his advances as he continued to follow us off the
dock and down into the covered walkway that exited to generals port.
Eventually he gave up and we had a whole 3 minutes of walking alone
the next tour guide tried to pick us up. Well, we managed to get to
the cash exchange point first and alone, but after that it was only 3
minutes.

The next guy was truly persistent. We were walking along the street
that takes you out of the port. Of course right away I explain that
no, thank you, in english and French. He continues to walk 10steps
ahead of us, and doesn’t lessee us alone. He starts to point out the
old city wall as i explain, again, that no, we are not interested.
Mind you I’m king this in a friendly but clear manner. We stop for a
fake picture with some random cannon that was located along the way.
He stops and waits for us. We continue and he starts talking to us
again. As we stop and try to wait him out, ANOTHER guy starts to
explain that there’s the old wall, and here is the medina. Seriously!
I actually started laughing out loud, how ridiculous is that?
The guy kept selling himself, first claiming that we wont be able to
do it alone in the city, then saying that we are being too paranoid to
not hire him, then his pics went from 30$ for 3 hours to $20, to $10
and then finally $5. And then finally, blissfully, he left us alone as
we ventured into the city.

Cordoba
Drive
Carre four
Lste lunch
Feirst shopping trip
Second shopping trip, paseo, kids playing hide and seek, white doves,
Quick photo walk
Dinner, local awesome place

Morning
Breakfast, mesquite, massive, beautiful, before the tourist on
slaughter, quote from book

Drive to Seville, easy… Until we get into Seville and proceed to get
lost three times in a row despite gps – turns are continuously not
where you expect them to be… Finally park new bus station, taxi over
to hotel.

Hotel in a small square
Small tapas snack nearby, sweet woman who laughs when i ask for her
help in order

Shopping, siesta for tim
Shopping …. Watch, stuff
Drinks, then paseo
Neighbourhood walk around ghe barrio
Nice place for dinner and drinks

Day two Seville
Breakfast unremarkable
Everyone stylish
We walk together to shoppingd district, find nothing for Tim , he dads
back after a drink, i continuum find outlet
Outlet
Back for my siesta – relax with wine at the lounges here for 2 hours
At mafic hour walk around but no magic happens
We go for dinner, then i catch a flamenco show , tim not interested so
he was off drinking and reading
The flamenco show…
After the show I’m hyped and google another flamenco bar, go there
with dutch couple
Late night, 2am, short rain

Morning day 3 Seville
Breakfast near smoking dads and babies
Shopping with tim, sfera outlet, lost on the way there

Uk

Arcos, Giblatar

I’m exhausted. It’s been two very busy two days,and i know that unless i blog now it will all fly out of my head, but oh my god I’m barely able to type while lying down (with a glass of red, of course).

It looks like I stopped at yesterday, 10am. After salobrena we did a “long range” drive of 3 hours over to across de la fronterra, not jerez as i originally typo-ed. Drive was fun andverey picturesque. Spain has a massive number of windmills,which are super fun to watch. We even saw a solar panel farm.  

Ok, due go exhaustion… Point formish…

Arcos is a tiny town. We attempted twice to drive in, but it is so freaking narrow, ing and old that google maps completely mislead us, and we ended up parking and just grabbing essentials

Oh god i already typed his, must have been not in Tim’s notes app, arghhhh. Ok. 
Skipping forward because noway imagining up all of the above effort!

So! After typing up the myth on the weird computer, we shared drinks on our amazing, amazing patio. It wax the best hotel so far – you are above bird flight and above a massive ravine. 
The spectacular thing about the evening was watching a row of tiny steady flahes go across the horizon – many kilometers away (Tim says at least 50km away) – flash kn complete synch every second. It was eerie. As we figured out it was those windmills.

I woke up earlier in the morning to go and take some photos before the sun got too ugh – shockingly that was a success. Upon that we did the short hop between Arcos and Tarifa, except for a small mis navigation that gook us on a 30km street h of a no exits stretch of highway, arghhhhh. It all worked out though,and we got to our Rancho Relaxo,really named hotel Chillout Tres Mares. The atmosphere is awesome. Asian inspired, lounges everywhere, white sheets and dark town wood, small twin king lifts, perfection. It is slightly outside of the city, and it will allow us to stay 2 nights in one plisse in order to see 3 different countries – Spain (Tariffa), UK (Gibaltar), and Morocco (Tangier).

Sfter check in we dro r to G., whicsh was nice and easy. Minimal parking questions aside we did a pretty simple and predictable trip into G. 
Cable carried.
Monkeys.
Fish and chips.

Except that due to early rise, long drive, and exciting few days, my brain shut down around 3pm, so i basically zombied through the fish and chips, and relied on Tim on getting us home safe, he succeeded.

I’m already lettering out, and there is still Morocco tomorrow, so I’ll cut this short. Pictures will fill it all in! I hope.
    

 

arcos de la fronterra

this keyboard has funny keys again. ñ纪!

im skipping over a day that i already typed up on the ipad, the second day in salobrena.

god ç, this keyboard is WEIRD. im sitting in the lobby of a hotel, a tiny 13 bedroom hotel in arcos de la fronterra. this is one of the andolucian towns of the white hills town washed spain. this hotel has a computer, so im chargin up the ebook and doing this in the mean time.
we left saolbrena after several stops along the way. the ipad? (see_? funny keyboard) orange internet card run out, and there was no way to prepay it outside of an orange shop. the one in salobrena for whatever reasons didnt work out – i stayd in the car and read – so we headed to the next largest city, motril. * motril gifted us with an orange shop, as well as a clothing store where i got a little something for maha, and a little something for me.

on the way to arcos de la fronterra we had:
1. a short stop over for food
2. a brief lesson – my first!!!!! – in manual drive. its not so hard! i mean its hard as hell, but i loved it. i wish i learned how to drive a manual before i learned how tp drove an aut0pmatic – it is really truly fun!

arcos greeted us with a frustating, insanely terrible frustrating trip of one way INSANELY narrow streets where we aboslutely could not drive a car through. after 2 sepearete attempts at following google maps intstructions, we ran into the sicutation where google recommended we drive up a set of stairs. we finally gave up and parked the car and just hiked it up the road with the bare minimum of “wants” and the key ingridients of must-haves (ipad, ebook, cameras, passports). its a bit scary that most of our needs are digital.

the hike was exhausting – it was still sunny (5-6pm) and it is HOT (30c). after a long and painful hike we arrived – afeter a a lot of complications and navigating the tiny streets – to the hotel. the hotel looked unimpressive, and dark, and small, and though it was recommended by our holytourguide Rick Steves, we both felt weird about it. the hostess took us down a set of stairs, and then another (after the hike!) and we both thought that this sucks. and then…

the angels sang

she opened the blinds

and the curtains

and the doors

to our huge

open

massive

patio facing an enormous drop into a valley opening up to 300+ km of open air. it was maginificent. it … perfect after that hike. completely unexpected. boy, were we glad we payed the extra 10eu for the “patio” versus the balcony. i wish i could show pictures now!!

after getting in, i tanned some more while reading, while tim saught out drinks. his exploration resulted in the definite idea that the patio-bar around the corner is the best deal, so we hoofed it over there. after a glass of wine i walked around and took some photos (observing a weddng that was taking place – a videographer, a photographer were shooting the couple, and the rest of the streets were filled with at least 50-60 completely overdressed people). after that – quick stop at the hotel room to change – and off to a nicely spanish-italian dinner we went. our waiter was italian, so it was a fun experience speaking more than one language at a time. :)

man, its hard to make a smiley on this keyboard!!

anyway, here i am, ebook probably all charged up, and my mind blown away by the completely new keybaord lay out Ñ= <<<< thats a smiley face, argh. i must go now to release the computer... short entry fo 700 words, ha-ha, tonight. hugs! * the cities here have dedicated free wifi zones, which really help in figuring out where is the next closest city with a real orange shop. also, good for tweeting.

Salobrena part do

Salobrena part DO

The difference in pronunciation and languages between areas of Spain is pretty awesome. For one, two-“dos” is pronounced DO.

The day of relaxation in Salobrena went to plan. After a quick, hot, beautiful hike through the old town (so picturesque!) we had a huuuuge cheap lunch of 1/2 raciones. We ordered 3… Should’ve ordered 2.

The rest of the day I spent at the beach. Tim even joined me for a bit, until we had some beers, and then he went off to an afternoon siesta around 5. I continued to read, dream, think, meditate on stacking rocks, and so on until sunset, at which point we rejoined and had a very unhealthy but awesome dinner of 3 wines, 3 beers, and the 3 tapas provided for free. Thoroughly sunned and smashed, we returned to the hotel – 2 minutes away! Everything is in this town. – and passed out.

Notes from the day:
1. there is an adorable and awesome breed of dog sound here that is just the Best. I officially want a dog from this reed, but I’m worried that its some local mutt. No idea when I’ll get said dog, but holy cow… They are small, smart, adorable, portable, fuzzy, and funny. 
2. We are scary lucky with the weather. I’m writing the next day and its another perfectly sunny day. 
3. I’m running out of outfits and shoes! Bout a 5eu pair of flip-flops but they are not so comfortable either.
4. Tapas given by default are amazing. When waiting for tim to get up from his nap, post beach, I got a glass of wine for myself. It took forever to make it, to the point where i started to wonder what is taking so long to pour a glass of wine. Finally she comes out with the glass of wine, and also a ing plate with a few pieces of the locally smoked proscuitto, olives, and a tiny piece of baguette carefully drizzled with olive oil.
5. We officially found the most nice hotel owner. He is always smiling, sweet, and let me charge up my ebook after i foolishly drained it by connecting it to the iPad charger. And just in general he is so nice.

Plans for today: lessons in manual driving, and trip over to Jerez de la Fronterra, a tiny hill town. It is supposed to be super picturesque, though we have already had amazing luck with this town.