There´s a hole in everything. That´s how the light gets in.

You find the most extraordinary things on the Internet. (including Libby.) I think that´s why we love it so much...It´s what people thought TV was going to be, or radio, maybe. We´re still at the point where the novelty hasn´t worn off, and there are few rules, and everyone feels so wild and free and expressive. For the most part I feel it brings out our best. Or sometimes our beast.

The whole world is watching, after all. Everyone has a bully pulpit for the cool stuff they used to only be able to bore their friends with. Stuff like this photo, which I think is a right scream:

Or this site, which provides you an opportunity to share your chicken photos with fellow poultry fanciers: www.randomchicken.com .

Anyway. The ad and marketing and tax collectors and money-grubbing people haven´t moved in and figured out how to spoil it for everybody yet. So I am enjoying it, so far as my tiny bandwidth and remote LAN line-of-sight connection will allow. (Viewing a YouTube video requires major commitments of time and patience.)

Patience is very very important these days. It is very gloomy. The rain is pouring down from ever-lowering gray skies, up to the moment you realize the rainclouds are right down here on the ground with you, soaking you not just from the sky, but from the sides and bottom, too. Our clothes dryer works more like an oven than a dryer, so instead of wasting all that electricity we just stand in our wet things front of the butano heater or the fireplace and let our pants and coats steam. It makes me feel like the Devil. Which is not always so bad.

Tomorrow me and Libby leave for Paris, so my spirits are lifting a bit, even though we may have to hike 14 miles into town from the airport once we get there -- all the buses and trains are on strike. We reserved a place with an airport shuttle van outfit, but they warn of "extremely long delays." Film at 11.

We ARE Americans, after all, intrepid pioneer types. And we DO have a national holiday to observe, people...even if we are doing it a couple of days late, in a remote city not always accommodating to Yankees. We will steam our beans and cook our carrots, pie our pumpkins and stuff and roast our 10-kilo turkeys if we gotta slog across 10 foreigner-infested suburbs to do it, dammit! (Besides, Jeanne bought new candles and napkins and champagne glasses, and Jeanne, a force of nature from Buffalo, N.Y., will not be denied.)

Aside from all that, I have an interesting new person to meet, an expat photographer who is friends with my bud Eric, the adobe architect from California. These kinds of friends-of-friends meetings quite often yield up excellent discoveries. It is quite lonely sometimes out here in Palencia, and I´m looking so forward to having lots of conversation and people and activity going on around me, in that beautiful city.

I just hope I can get away with not spending too much money. (The voice deep in my head says a loud HA! Paris is right up there with London when it comes to clearing out my pockets. Maybe not as bad as New York, though. Or Mario.)

Meantime, Moratinos exerts its quiet charms. One big fun activity is teaching Libby to drive the stick-shift Kangoo car. When whiplash and seeing my life flash before my eyes gets too dull, we bounce along back to The Peaceable and yell at the dogs for being dirty and stinky. Without TV or YouTube we are then forced to endure hour-long games of Scrabble or Sudoku, or months-old editions of The New Yorker. Libby is right now writing a portrait limerick meant to sum up my character and Self for the world. Hers are so bad they are good. And they take less than 2 minutes:

My mommy is the best
In times of sorrow and of jest
She´s smart and sassy
and silly and classy
And I love her more than the rest.

Jeez. I´d have expected something more like ¨sorrow and unrest.¨ Or at least some creative rhyme on "pest." Or "infest." Or even "blest." Oh well, she is young.

There is time and leisure enough for such literary criticism, out here on the rainy, gloomy perimeter with every dog in the village howling, many hours before the train pulls out for Madrid (where there´s a big party on Weds. night) and then the EasyJet to Paris.

I´ve got nothing to complain about, really. But don´t get me started on that.