My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
“I saw a bank that said ‘24-Hour Banking,’ but I don’t have that much time,” comedian Steven Wright once joked. Ha! To hardened veterans of the Spanish banking system like us, 24 hours sounds laughably swift. Rich and I have been trying to untangle an issue with our Seville bank for over a year, and…
I love the Spanish news. No matter what else is going on in the world, they find time for articles like the one about 600,000 grumpy pensioners protesting under the slogan “ I’m old, NOT an idiot. ” Enraged by the endless closing of bank branches where human-to-human transactions occur, members of “the third age,”…
If I was wrongfully burned as a witch, and then 500 years later someone named a street after me in a fit of remorse, would I feel the scales of justice had finally been balanced? Not even close. As paltry as the apology may be, I give Seville credit for joining other Spanish cities in…
So I walked into the living room the other day and found Rich staring out the window at a pigeon. The bird — a lone male — was standing on the church roof just opposite, his feathers spread in full mating display, his head tilted to one side directing a come-hither look at my husband.…
When I read that a Catholic priest was using a squirt gun full of holy water to bless his parishioners’ Easter baskets while social distancing, I realized it was time to embrace the wacky side of the new dystopian order. This was in a suburb of Detroit back in April of 2020, and when Father…
“My sister’s dog has taken up painting,” remarked my sister-in-law Deb during a recent Zoom call. “He’s pretty good. Abstract art, of course.” “Yes, I can see how it would be hard to achieve realistic detail without an opposable thumb,” I replied. “But back up a minute. Her dog paints? Pictures? How?” It’s a simple…
I didn’t realize orgies were back in fashion until I read about the one Spanish police raided on New Year’s Eve. More than 50 participants were arrested in a suburb of Barcelona — not because anybody cared about their sexual hijinks, but because they’d violated Covid restrictions limiting indoor gatherings to ten people. A neighbor…
Many years ago in California, a salesman showed up in my office holding a cardboard tray enticingly stuffed with cookies, candy bars, and chips. “I’m going to leave this in your break room,” he said. “No, I don’t want any money up front. We’re HonorSnacks . We trust that when one of you takes something,…
I love entertaining and over the years I’ve learned to cope with all sorts of potential disasters: blizzards, drunken guests (yes, Dan, I’m thinking of your three-martini-chugging experiment), being cornered by a friend’s heartbroken suitor who read me his terrible poetry for an hour, a feral cat tearing the hide off one guest’s lapdog and…
In the US, brownies are nothing remarkable, but one of the benefits of expat life is that if I show up with a fresh-made batch here in Seville, I am worshiped as a domestic goddess. My husband being a die-hard chocoholic, I always add — in lieu of chocolate chips, which are rare and of…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
