Hace mucho frio

We learned some weather phrases in Spanish class today. But I still don't know enough to tell you that it was cold this morning. I can only tell you that it is cold now, "hace frio ahora." Apparently, for this morning, I need to use a past participle. Moving on. It was clear, breezy and cool today. On the way home from class, in the late afternoon light, I noticed the Sevilla side of the river was beautifully reflected in the multi-paned window of the riverside restaurant that rests on the west end bridge abutment in Triana:

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I'm nearly done with the current paper I'm writing. At this stage, I get so OCD about the writing, I have a hard time doing anything else. I'll be happy to get it submitted and to move on to other things.

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The extra hour from the time change has messed me up. I didn't sleep too well last night. Hopefully, being tired now from not sleeping well, I'll sleep like a rock tonight.

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Did a little laundry and tidied up the house a bit today. We have friends, Scott and Shelley, staying with us for a couple of day while they tour around greater Spain. They're in Granada now and come to Sevilla tomorrow evening. It'll be nice to catch up with them.

Fall Back

European "summer time" ended this weekend. For a couple of weeks we're only 5 hours ahead of Rachel in Miami and only 8 hours ahead of Emily in Santa Barbara. This may be the last time Europe "falls back". The EU is on pace to eliminate annual time changes for good this year. So, when we switch back to "summer time" in the spring of 2019, that'll be it, Europe will just stay there. I wish the US would do that.

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Pretty chilly this morning when I went out for my walk--about 47 degrees. Supposed to be a few degrees cooler tomorrow. On the other hand, the breeze was nice, the air was clear, and the clouds were pretty. We even managed to dry a load of laundry on the roof. Us and everyone else. A glance across the roofs in the neighborhood showed lots of people took the opportunity of a breezy, sunny, dry day to do laundry. There were even 4 different occupied clotheslines on our own roof--a record over the 4 months that we've been here.

I took a few pictures this evening, nothing new, but the lighting was interesting. Here's a look down San Jacinto, streamers across the road in preparation for the processions on All Saints Day November 1st (a nation holiday):

A look down the river with the Torre del Oro in the center and clouds looming to the south:

Yesterday and today, there were paddle board races on the river. Racing paddle boards is not really as elegant as the traditional rowing events, but they seemed to be having fun:

This afternoon, it was all a memory and workers were putting away the temporary dock:

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I didn't post this yesterday, but I liked this shot of a dachshund watching us from a ground-floor window as we walked home from the grocery store:

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Talked to Rachel for a while today. She's been exploring this crowd sourced science project called FoldIt for her class. Volunteers look at complicated protein structures and solve small folding problems on their own. Those small solutions are then aggregated into the solution of a larger problem for the organizing scientists. It looks pretty interesting, so go do it!

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I have to go do my Spanish homework now. I'm supposed to watch this episode of Mr. Bean called "El Dentista" and describe the action in the video using sentences in Spanish.

Hard to Watch

The end of a week of political violence in the US. The inevitable next step down on this seemingly endless downward spiral staircase. At a high cost to innocents, we collectively learn that words matter. I have no illusions that this will reduce the quantity of vile rhetoric the comes largely from Trump and GOP, but I have some hope that the people that matter, the people that vote, will no longer tolerate the vitriol because now they understand that such words cost innocent lives.

Yesterday, I watched President Obama's rally speech in WI--an intelligent, fact-based, thoughtful discourse on the current American body politic. If you juxtapose this speech with any of Trump's speeches, you are struck by just how far we have fallen. For example, see this completely fact-free highlight reel from a West Virginia rally with a helpfully sycophantic lead-in from some random FoxNews personality.

After each of these steps downward, we are left wondering how much lower it can go.

Is It Too Early For Christmas Decorations?

I walked with Laura to her class this morning just to get some air. I noticed this little deli decorated for Halloween.

As I continued about 50 yds down the street, I saw this bakery had one-upped them by putting up their Christmas decorations:

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It rained most of the day today. I mostly stayed in and worked on a paper. Made a lot of progress, but every once in a while I got up to walk around. The bar across the street was business as usual, at least from what I could see from our window:

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This evening we had dinner at Café & Tapas sort of the McDonalds of tapas bars. It's main advantage is that it's right around the corner. Good for when it's cold and rainy.

And the food is pretty good.

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Emily passed her phd qualifier today. We sent her some Cold Stone Creamery Cupcakes to celebrate.

I know I wasn't as stressed as she was about it, but I was definitely feeling a bit of stress. I think most folks that have done a hard science phd will say that passing the oral qualifier was the peak of the experience. The thesis defense and degree are less uncertain, more under control. You don't choose to defend your thesis unless you're ready. The qualifier is always iffier--maybe you're ready, maybe you're not, we'll see. Emily was ready. She's smart, she worked hard and she passed.

Impromptu Flamenco

Laura's language school, Sevillahabla!, had an international pot luck this afternoon. Students were asked to bring dishes of food from their home countries. Laura brought an apple pie and some baked macaroni and cheese. I was invited and so headed over there around 2pm. Laura's dishes were pretty popular. One of the Spanish teachers repeatedly complemented her on the apple pie. I think if Laura wanted to, she could run a pretty successful restaurant here, in spite of the wicked competition here (there're literally restaurants everywhere here).

Just as the gathering seemed to be dying a natural death, one of the teachers asked one of the students, a Japanese national here in Sevilla learning flamenco guitar, to play his guitar. He generously obliged:


This turned into a dance party. Two of the Spanish teachers showed their flamenco dance talents. Later, it just turned into a dance party:

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I liked the way the morning sun hit this mural with the feather branches hanging across it:

Generally a lovely sunny day here. The weather is supposed to change this weekend with highs only in the 50's for a while, unseasonably cool.