Retreat from a tasty retreat.

Hola Carolyn,


Yeah, it's finally here., he said in his best Eyore voice.  When you read this I'll be in transit north of the 49th coming back to see what trouble winter got the homestead into while I was away. It won't be with a totally heavy heart actually, since a month away is all the recipe called for. Plus, I'd be untruthful if I said there weren't times down in Merida when I wished I had my workshop to mess around in or other familiar haunts to retreat to. I would have made a barely passable Columbus because I'd have gotten a touch homesick about the time we passed the Canary Islands.

Anyhow, some observations about my first time away and in just one place for this long.  Of all my five senses the taste buds got the best of the deal. There are spices galore in my luggage. Now I really appreciate what Marco Polo and the Spice trade was about - it was taste buds, man! Some of this stuff has to be marginally narcotic, it's just too good.  Tough cuts of meat and humble greens or tubers can be rendered unimaginably delectable by the artful addition of these heady substances. I've never been a full-tilt evangelical foodie but I can now see how such a thing happens. When so much legal sensory gratification can be attached to the fundamental process of eating - that's gotta be a good thing, brothers and sisters!

What I still cannot get my head and taste buds around is the hot peppers thing. They're an absolute staple here. There are bins of them in the supermarkets like we'd find potatoes here in North America. I'm surprised they haven't found their way into breakfast cereals! What is the attraction of setting your throat on fire?? That's not a taste sensation. It's just pain - pure and simple. One more for the " Stuff I just don't get" list.



Yup, all in all a good time was had by all. We've asked to be pencilled in for a similar sojourn again in 2014. Here's hoping that nothing untoward intervenes.

Only shortcoming I can think of is that I didn't get any real reading done. I read a lot of Spanish, but that was for the purposes of living the life of an ex-pat for a few sweaty and delightful weeks. There was just too much unfolding in the immediate vicinity of my own senses to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief, or the careful perusal of lines on a page. That Stephen Hawking book I brought along and the 
various things I packed into my I-pad just didn't get any loving at all. The sheer novelty of being able to go out and about without insulation in February just took up all my time. There's a television here with lotsa channels in English even but it has 
only been on once, out of curiosity more than anything else. Sort of a pop culture high colonic.




I do agree with you, Carolyn, about the various cinema Bonds. Connery still seems to have the right combination of menace and panache. Moore was close in the first of his movies. Then it turned into some pretty cartoonish stuff.

 Brosnan was suitably suave but maybe a bit short on the ruthless end. The others had their moments but didn't usurp the role from good old chauvinistic ( and maybe even misogynistic) Mr. Connery. Daniel Craig does have that Machiavellian thing, for sure. The jury  is out on him still.



Okay, to the riddles we must go!

Mine from last time was sunset. I always understood that the sheriff said get out of town by sundown. 

I think yours is snow shovel. I hope not to consort with such things again soon.

here is the next one:

Boxes and operas

Soft and hard

Death to all things dirty

Always slips away in the indoor rain

.

P.S. Well, here I am at YYZ (Pearson International Airport) in my home and native land. We're on the ground but about to be snowbound it seems. Carolyn, your unselfish saving of the snow seems to have worked. At the moment it's here, big time. This kinda stuff is fine where |I live but here in " Tranna" about five inches seems to scare the you know what out of folks. I'm gonna post this and then take it from there.