For Phantom

Food, always an excellent blogging topic! And one of the things I love most about where we are. Fortunately, another thing I love about where we are is that it involves lots of walking, which helps balance out all the food.

Here's what we had for dinner last night, and in fact what we have for dinner most nights: a loaf of crusty French bread, fresh from the bakery around the corner, accompanied by various things "para picar." In the back, a rosca, or toasty bread with serrano ham and cheese melted inside. Then we have bowls of olives, mussels, good old potato chips, and prawns. In front, a plate of lomo (cured pork loin) and spicy chorizo sausage (my favorite), and a bowl of berberechos (cockles - didn't know you could eat those, did you?). There's plenty for everyone - dig in!

Taking requests

So the semester's over, we've flown across the ocean for our annual visit to the LWI's family, and I find myself in the position of not having any real stories to tell but being in a Place Very Different From The Place Where We Live.

So I'll take blogging requests. What would you like to see, in pictures or in words, about where I'm at now?

Howler of the week

Around here we're all in the last exhausted stages of grading final exams, a process enlightened only by the occasional bizarre goofs or inexplicable misstatements that show up in the essays. So far today the LWI has had Mussolini as a Russian czar, and the Fabians as a bunch of party hounds (something about how they regularly had feasts and celebrations). Last semester's favorite was from a student who somehow conflated the Bourbons and the Huguenots into the Bourbonauts.

For my part, I offer this: "The Scientific Revolution brought about a major change. Researchers were beginning to notice the fact that the sun and all the planets did not revolve around the moon as previously thought."

The LWI, after a moment of stunned silence: "You win."