Last Chance: the Dark Side of Democracy

First the plug: This is the last day to vote for Moratinos Life in The Best of Blogs travel and leisure category. I am chuffed to have so much support out there, but somehow we are still well behind another blog from another American expat: this one in Saudi Arabia!

So maybe she IS a bit more relevant to today´s news, and maybe she does look fetching in her abayya. But I´m the better writer. So there.

Quality writing doesn´t always mean a lot in the wide-open frontier Internet world, not to mention good taste. That´s why dung blogs like Perez Hilton and Drudge Report are famous, and writers like us -- the people whose blogs are nominated in this little contest -- toil in relative obscurity. I am not sure why the administrators put the final decision into the hands of the mob, but hey... that´s democracy.

So tap on the Best of Blogs icon on the upper right of your screen, and then scroll down to Travel & Leisure, and check off the dot next to "Moratinoslife." Then good things will happen to you. Eventually.

Good things are happening here. We are cleaning like lunatics, moving things around, moving them again, losing them for a while, and then finding them under our pillows. We have an injured Aussie lady on her way here today, and I do have a nice room for her to sleep in, and the floor isn´t even crunchy! We need to hang pictures one of these days. Poco a poco.

We bought a mess of liver for dinner, lamb liver, much more edible than the calf kind. I never liked liver before I came here and discovered this stuff. The Spaniards prefer the calf kind, and so sell the lamb liver for about 40 cents a kilo! What a deal! And they throw in all the rest of the little creature´s organs, too, so we stew them up for dog treats. It makes for a disgusting bundle from the butcher shop, a real anatomy education.

We are rediscovering the furniture left behind when the former owners left. The green bedroom in the photo has the antique bed with wood inlays, and the living room/kitchen are home to two very fine tables. The one Paddy is waxing is an old workbench that weighs a half ton. Getting it in through the window was a pantomime worthy of Tin Pan Alley. The other is a small side table. It looks like the outcome of two amateur woodworkers, each pursuing his own vision. It spent the last few decades in the barn hosting spider families, but now it´s promoted to stereo duty.

Thomas is staying through the weekend, putting up a new gate out back. So here we have your hosts, an American and an Englishman, the pilgrim guest from Perth Australia, and the working man from Maastricht, all gathering ´round a table laden with Spanish lamb guts and Vichysoisse. Gotta love it!