The first cold snap has arrived requiring jackets to come out of the closet and heaters to be turned on for the first time this winter. Many of streets throughout the city are being strung with lights for the upcoming holiday season, but they won’t come on for another week or so. Just like in the states, Christmas here kicks off after a long weekend, but its not Thanksgiving, rather it’s Constitution day (Dec 6th) followed by the Day of the Immaculate Conception (Dec 8th) with December 7th being un puente or bridge.

The main Christmas fair in Barcelona is La Fira de Santa Llùcia (Lucia) located outside the Gothic Cathedral. Inaugurated in 1786, hundreds of small wooden stands sell Christmas decorations, ornaments, reefs and trees to the many, many people strolling around checking out the scene.

I remember as a kid back in the states, getting and decorating the tree was the center of attention, but in Spain it seems to be the nativity scene with hand crafted figurines and well built mangers also being prominently displayed throughout the market. The local addition to the picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus with Joseph, the Angel and the Three Kings looking on between an ox sheep and a mule is el caganer, or the shitter.  As the picture shows, the traditional one is a peasant, who with the aid of a pipe and a paper, is planting a pine. But this pose is also given to certain celebrities and political figures each year with past honorees being Obama, the Pope, and Messi.

December 22nd sees El Gordo, or the fat one, the biggest lottery in Spain while Christmas Eve is known as la noche buena or the good night. Kids in Catalunya gather around a cagartió (a small wooden log with a smiley face paint on one end and sometimes smoking a pipe) feed it and then lightly tap it with a stick as they sing a song so it can literally crap out candies and small presents similar to what we call stocking stuffers. The most common is a turrón, which is a large bar of almond nugget.

Traditionally Christmas day hasn’t been the main moment to exchange gifts, with the day reserved for a big meal with family and friends.  The typical dish in Catalunya is escudella, which is a slowly cooked soup that uses the various blood sausages or butifarra found in the region and a base of broth and la pilota (egg, pepper, ground cinnamon, chickpeas and bread crumbs), plus other ingredients depending on a family’s recipe. Canelones using left over meats, ham and if you want chicken covered in a tomato sauce are then consumed on St. Steven the 26th.

The 28th of December is the Day of the Innocence, or Spain’s April 1st and a time for pranks while the gift exchange waits until after the New Year and specifically, Los Reyes Magos (The Magic Kings) or January 5th. There’s an elaborate  parade that’s well worth going to. Full of beating drums and flashing sparklers, it follows the Three kings from the port to Montjuic mountain as they toss out fruit flavored candy to the waiting kids and eager grandparents, making it like a little person’s Mardi Gras that marks the end of the Christmas season in Spain and all public holidays until Easter!

The Elizabethan Gardens
Invites You to

Christmas in the Park

a Holiday Open House

 December 2, 2009 – 5pm-8pm

 Children of all ages will enjoy

• Pictures with Santa Claus
• Holiday Craft Making
• Marshmallow Roast
• Holiday Shopping
• Holiday Music

 Gardens Gift Shop: 25% off plants
and gift shop items

The Elizaabethan Gardens
1411 National Park Drive, Manteo, NC 27954,
252.473.3234
www.elizabethangardens.org

3rd Annual Holiday Illumination Celebration

at Currituck Heritage Park Saturday

December 12, 2009

Come to the Whalehead Club beginning at 3:00 pm for complimentary tours of the house museum festively decorated as the Knights would have done back in the 1920s.

Gather on the North Lawn at 4:30 pm for free hot chocolate and seasonal carols sung by the Currituck County High School Choral Ensemble, while Currituck Heritage Park’s giant cedar tree and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse are simultaneously illuminated for the holidays!

Treat yourself to an old-fashioned horse and carriage ride through the park with Carolina Carriages, starting at 2:00 pm.

 www.whaleheadclub.org

Currituck Heritage Park is located just past MP 11 on Rt. 12 North in Corolla, NC

I have work to do and this is where it starts

Sponsored by Kitty Hawk Kites, Kites and Lights was a hit last night on the Outer Banks.  People gathered on the dunes of Jockey’s Ridge under a wide array of kites with lights attached, and the beautiful sunset was a perfect backdrop for the evening.  Kites with Lights is an OBX tradition that is a perfect way to start the holiday season.

The infamous “Christmas House” has returned to the Outer Banks again this year.

The Paulos family has gone all out with Christmas decorations again this holiday season, and they invite young and old to take in the spectacle.  Feel free to park your car and wander around the yard to get the full effect and boost your holiday spirit.

In recent years, the home has been featured on the Today Show and HGTV.

A night viewing is optimal to get the full effect of the lights.  Time and effort this family puts into their decorations is astounding.

Directions:

The house is located in Kill Devil Hills near the Nags Head Woods entrance

Heading South on Rt. 158 into Kill Devil Hills
1. Proceed to light at Ocean Acres Dr. (opposite MacDonald’s)
2. Turn right at Ocean Acres Dr.
3. The road will change from paved to gravel as you go up a hill. Just over the top of the hill you will find the Poulos home.

Die Liste der Leute, die von der Veränderung in meinem Leben noch nichts wissen, wird kürzer. Heute habe ich es meinem kleinen Bruder gesagt. Er war absolut geknickt und voller Unverständnis. Allen Gründen, die ich ihm aufzuzählen versuchte, begegnete er mit einem “Ja, aber..”, also hab ich irgendwann gesagt, ich wisse es selber nicht genau, was irgendwie auch stimmt.

Als ich gerade die Wohnung betrat, empfand ich die Leere und die Stille schon nicht mehr als ganz so schlimm wie gestern Abend. Ich hab einfach munter vor mich hingeplappert (“Hallo, du große, leere, kalte Wohnung”) und mich gleich daran gemacht mein Abendessen zu “machen” (war nur ne Woschtstulle). Jetzt hör ich meine Fiddler’s, drehe meine Runde im Netz und verdränge die Tatsache, dass sich die Welt morgen mitsamt Uni weiterdreht.

Einen Monat gebe ich mir jetzt um zu entscheiden, ob ich ab jetzt alleine wohnen möchte (freilich in einer kleinere und billigeren Wohnung), oder ob ich mal auf WG umsteige. Vorstellen könnte ich mir beides – und das trotz der ausgesprochen schlechten Schottland-Erfahrung. Hab sogar schon Angebote für 2 WGs.

I can’t really complain over this weekend. I managed to get my assignment in on time and both yesterday and today I spent the day shopping. I even managed to clean my apartment today and put up all the Christmas Decorations. Will finish the lovely day with wrapping up all the gifts I have managed to buy.

The stores were open today downtown and it was lots of Santa dressed guys and carol singers and all those cozy Christmas things they have on Christmas markets. I really enjoyed it all and went to Wayne’s Coffee and got myself some hot cocoa with whipped cream. Now it’s time to make that gratin and then gift wrappings!

My sweet hubby let me sleep in til almost 9:00 this morning. Trust me thats late when you have a toddler running around. I got up and made a Green Monster for breakfast and wrote my To-Do list for the day.

1. Take chairs and dishes back to MIL.
2. Laundry
3. Dishes
4. 1 hour Elliptical
5. Decorate Tree
6. Sweep and Mop floors
7. Separate chicken and freeze (I bought 7 packages of chicken breasts on sale yesterday for $1.79/pound)
8. Clean bedroom

I never actually complete my entire To- Do list, or I should say I very rarely do. But it gives me something to strive towards. I usually end up triaging my to-do list based on what is most important, or sometimes I go with what is easiest and knock those out first.

I will decorate the tree after dinner tonight and might spend a few minutes cleaning the bedroom before bed later, but I’ll probably save the sweeping and mopping for tomorrow. I’ve already got a mental list going for the things I want to accomplish tomorrow.

I had a great workout today on the elliptical. I used to do the elliptical quite a bit, but ever since I’ve fallen in love with running the elliptical has been put on the back burner. I ran 5 miles yesterday, and I’m scheduled to run 9 miles tomorrow so I decided I would trade today’s scheduled 4 mile run for 1 hour on the elliptical to give my body a little break. I really enjoyed it. I read my book Stolen Innocence for the full hour I was on the machine and it was really nice. I rarely find time to read anymore except for a few minutes before I go to bed at night, and I usually end up falling asleep in my book and having to re-read some things. So it was really nice to just have 1 hour to myself to read and burn some calories.

Today’s eats so far have included: a Green Monster, Tex-Mex Turkey Soup, an apple, a soft pretzel and a few chunks of cheddar cheese. I’m planning on making Pork Tenderloin and some yummy veggies for dinner tonight. I’ll be back later with recipes and pictures and we still have to talk about the goals I’m setting for myself, but I might save that for tomorrow.

What annoys me now will eventually disappear.

To illustrate this, a “Trouble Shooter” is necessary. You can make a list of all the worries bothering you currently. Functioning like a time capsule, you can set a time (optional) to view it again. Probably, problems will have been solved by then.

There is a lot to do about Carlos Thays, the landscape architect.  Not only is his name mentioned quite often, now there is an exhibition in the Centro Cultural de Recoleta, that ends the 4th of december.

In fact Thays was more then just a landscape architect. In Buenos Aires, through his parks, he designed the general views of the city. Without his parks and open spaces, Buenos Aires wouldn’t be the Buenos Aires that we know today.

He was born in Versailles in France in 1849 and was French, although his father was Belgian (ha!). He has worked for Edouard André, an important landscape architect in France, and together with him he worked in several European cities and became known around the world.

His big example was Baron de Haussman, who changed Paris into what it is today, together with Adolphe Alphand.

In 1889 he sailed  to Buenos Aires as he was asked by Miguel Crisol to design a park in Cordoba. Unfortunately Crisol was hit by the crisis in 1890 and had to give up his plans for the huge park. Thays traveled to Buenos Aires from where he wanted to go back to France, but he was offered a job as Director of Parks, which he accepted.

In 1892 Thays got married in Buenos Aires, to Cora Venturino, a girl from Uruguay who was 25 years younger then him. She was known as ‘la señora de Thays’.

He became a member of different organisations and clubs, such as Club Français, Comité del Centenario, Sociedad Rural Argentina and many more, and soon considered himself as an Argentine. He was loved by everyone.

He has designed numerous parks in Buenos Aires (Parque del Centenario, Parque Lezama, Patricios, Barrancas de Belgrano, Colon, and Pereya) and several squares (Constitución, Congreso, and Mayo). At that time Buenos Aires had a very large amount of green areas in relation with its population.

His biggest work was undoubtly the Parque Tres de Febrero, better known as the Bosques de Palermo. This parks has 25 ha and has groves lakes and a wonderful rosegarden. The park was designed by Jordán Czeslaw Wysocki and inaugurated in 1875. In 1892 Thays was asked to enlarge and improve the park. He designed the Rose Garden, the the zoological gardens and the Botanical gardens. He and his family lived in the house in the Botanical garden.

Other than the public parks, Thays also designed gardens of many big mansions in the city, many of them situated in Avenida Alvear. He worked for Duhau, Mitre, Díaz Velez Drago, Blaquier and others.

He also designed parks in estancias all over the country.

Examples are estancia La Benquerencia in Monte, Dos Talas in Dolores, and 3 estancias owned by the President Julio A. Roca called La Larga (la)Paz (and la)Argentina.

Thays always used local plants combined with plants from allover the world. The local plants are Lapacho, Ceibo, Jacaranda, Tipa and Palo Borracho.

Carlos Thays died in Buenos Aires in 1934. Without any doubt Thays is the most important landscape architect that has ever lived in Argentina, he will live on forever.

You can visit the exhibition in the Centro Cultural de Recoleta (between the church and Buenos Aires Design) until the 4th of december (next friday), from 14h to 20h. It is a good exposition although I would have prefered it bigger with more details about his designs. If you pass by, just pop in, it’s for free. In the way to it they have made a butterfly garden which is really nice. Can someone give me the name of the tree blooming in the butterfly garden? The smell is devine…

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from the states!

I have to admit it’s the one major holiday I miss being back home.  Christmas is too pressure-filled with having to buy presents for everyone and a fourth of July barbecue is great summer fun, but more like a casual get-together. Thanksgiving, however, is something special because of its simplicity – a day dedicated to spending time with family and friends, eating and drinking too much and then falling asleep on the couch.  There’s no such equivalent here in Spain, unless you count most Sundays.

For those American expats away from home, many of the Irish bars offer some sort of Thanksgiving dinner and usually carry the NFL games. They tend to be a bit on the pricey side, but they’re the only places you’ll find turkey with all the trimmings, some sort of pumpkin pie and other goodies. There’s also an Anglo supermarket called A Taste of Home which has many of the ingredients necessary to make the feast (ie cranberries) if you’ve got a culinary bent.  Personally, I usually celebrate with a roasted chicken and potatoes and a six back of Bud.

Do you ever wake up with a “To Do” list building in your head so that your brain literally feels like a construction site- your appointments exploding like  jackhammers, errands churning away like a 6 a.m cement truck, your half completed assignment jeering at you like a row of sexually deprived and shamelessly vocal construction workers begging for your attention- all your commitments stacking upon each other until your day looks like a teetering tower of obligations?

Or maybe you’ve woken up before the climax of an unfinished fantasy totally bummed that the dream wasn’t really real and groaning at the thought of another 17 hour of “reality” before you can sleep again. Or worse, have you dreamed about the very thing you spent 17 waking hours worrying about, so that not even sleep brought relief?

Yeah, been there.

What keeps you from waking up feeling amazing and grateful?

I woke up feeling amazing and grateful the other morning. Not that it was the first time in my life, or an unusual experience for me. I thought again about how simple gratitude is, and how something so simple has the power to alter our day.

What keeps us from waking up feeling amazing and grateful every day? Are we addicted to suffering? Or has suffering become “the status quo” so that we don’t even identify it as “suffering?” After all, most of us wake up to bad news on the television or the paper. Bad news is like the breakfast of choice.

I like to ask these questions, and I’m not trying to change any of it. I’d just like to share what I find beautiful and amazing, what I’m grateful for in all the wonderful chaos.

Today is Thanksgiving day. I couldn’t imagine a better day to begin!

Jetzt, endlich, beginnt das, was ich schon die ganze Woche über vorhatte: Ich habe eine Liste erstellt mit Dingen, die gemacht werden müssen. Das sind Sachen von Kühlschrank-Putzen über Uni-Kram sortieren bis hin zu meine Oma(s) anrufen und ihr (ihnen) erzählen, dass ich nicht mehr mit ihm zusammen bin.

Ich habe mal ganz klein angefangen heute Morgen, somit ist der Kühlschrank aufgeräumt und geputzt und der Küchen-Fußboden hat wieder seine ursprüngliche Farbe. Weiter geht’s jetzt damit, dass ich den Wohnzimmer-Fußboden leerräume um dann Staub zu saugen. Ein bisschen fühlt es sich ja so an, als würde ich die Trümmer meiner Beziehung wegräumen.. Und noch etwas habe ich festgestellt: Es macht mir viel mehr “Spaß”, aufzuräumen und sauberzumachen, wenn ich weiß, dass ich es für MICH mache. Wenn ich putze, habe ICH es schön sauber. Lasse ich es, habe ICH es eben versifft. So einfach ist das.

Das Single-Leben hat, bei allem Drama im Moment, durchaus auch ein paar schöne Seiten. Na ja – wenn es nicht so wäre, hätte ich nicht Schluss zu machen brauchen.

Bitte verzeiht mir momentan jede Form von Sarkasmus oder Zynismus. Anders überstehe ich das alles im Moment nicht.

World Dance Champion, Margaret Burns, opens new dance studio in Bradenton, Florida. DANCE WITH CLASS is a large beautiful facility with a stunning dance floor. 4069 Cortez Road West.

Sunday Tea Dance at 3pm. Every week dance foxtrot, salsa, waltz, tango, swing and other ballroom dances. West Coast swing is on Mondays followed by a practice. Tuesday is International Technique class. Wednesday is Beginner Class with a Public Dance after. Thursday will be Salsa. Join the fun.

Learn to dance.  941-896-8834

dancewithclass.usa@hotmail.com or visit www.purpletigerdance.com for contact info

For those of you interested in boogieing to something different than the usual, there’s a monthly dubstep club that’s been getting good reviews from people who know. Located at Sala BeGood near the Marina/Glòries Metro or Bogatell metro. The address is c/Sancho de Avila 78. 8€ cover drink included, 5€ before 1.00. The lineup is below

to do/to read

Originally uploaded by magicmoir

I haven’t written a word of fiction in about five months. Which is shameful, really.

At first it was because I changed jobs, which was a much bigger upheaval for me than the people that know me give me credit for; “So where do you work now? ~ Well that’s just next door, right…?” And for the first few months the job was all I could think of, not necessarily the new stresses that I was under, or that I was having to learn something new, but because I had done my old job for so long it was something that I could do intuitively.In hindsight, in the end, I was probably doing my old job without thinking at all. Which is probably how I was able to write a novel and hold down a full time job at the same time. I could walk around work and formulate whole conversations, scenes, stories, and the odd chapter in my head. I couldn’t always remember all of them afterwards, I’d often had to stop and take notes before talking to people*, and I’d occasionally try to fit strange bit’s of dialogue into conversations with my colleagues and customers to see if it worked and to gauge their reactions, but for all intents and purposes I was doing my job well. So when I then changed jobs, and had to start thinking about what I was doing, I no longer had the spare room in my head to write. It was so involving that I couldn’t pries myself out of this world and into the world that I was trying to create. When I first realized this I tried to give myself the time to think, and to write, but by the time I had managed to empty my head of thoughts of work it would always be the time to head back.

Then a month ago, or so, I started to read Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger. It was the first time, in quite a long time, that I started to be drawn into a world that was not the one that I was living in, and it began to remind me of why I enjoyed writing With His Head In The Clouds. I had/have an idea for a second book, and had written the beginning and even several scenes further in, but work had robbed me of the time to immerse myself in it. Now I had the want to start writing again, but found myself unable to get back into the right state of mind. I decided that I’d finish reading Her Fearful Symmetry, then move onto my own first book, and then start writing again. Except then I wanted to read A Picture Of Dorian Gray, and then The Bear suggested that I read Moondust, and then I became completely distracted and found that I was spending a lot of my free time looking at photos on the internet. I had a long weekend last week, and wasted a great deal of time not reading, looking at pictures, and writing, well, blogging (six posts in four days, none of which amounted to anything worth reading). However, it did show me that I had the capability to think outside of work. I may not have as much time as I once did but I do have the want, the capability, and the passion to write again.

My plan of action is thus;

Less Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.

Finish reading A Picture Of Dorian Gray, and then read; Moondust, With His Head In The Clouds, As yet untitled, and the start writing where I left off.