My friend Manolo invited me out to nine holes this morning at a course near the Bilbao airport called Artxanda. The long, hilly course was a completely different game than I played the other day in Santander. Artxanda is very difficult both to play and walk. I hit several shots while I [...]

Man, talk about winning a poetry contest! Some 52-year-old bloke, named Paulino Cubero, has won the competition to author the lyrics to the Spanish National Anthem. Coming from the super-duper patriotic, “pledge allegiance to the flag every morning in elementary school”, United States to a country where they don’t even have lyrics for [...]

When some coincidence makes the world seems small, instead of saying, “It’s a small world!”, the Spanish say “El mundo es un pañuelo!“. I’ve heard the more cynical Spaniard tack on “…lleno de mocos!“. Anyway, last night, two things happened that made the world seem pretty small.

This evening’s sunset was particularly spectacular. So I made a panorama to showcase its beauty. Just as I was about to upload the photo, I looked over my shoulder and saw an even more gorgeous range of colors, so I had to take more photos and make another panorama. Enjoy!

Yesterday I played golf in a little town called Pedreña that is near Santander. Pedro, the guy that runs the Laredo Golf Club, called me up and asked if I wanted to play 18 holes in the morning. I jumped at the chance, since I have the 10th Annual Myrtle Beach Classic coming [...]

I would like to call your attention to the stars at the top of each of my blog posts. These stars allow you to rank how well you like each post, thus giving me feedback when you think I’m being a genius or a jerk. Not that this blog is remotely democratic in [...]

I think the roscón de reyes is a Spanish tradition that I have yet to mention on this blog. Traditionally, the second most important day of the winter holidays (the first being Nochebuena) in Spain is January 6, the Día de los Reyes Magos, or the Epiphany, as it’s known in English. This [...]

I’m about to share with you a family recipe that my mother-in-law makes. I have no idea how widespread this dish is throughout Spain, but neither my wife nor I have heard of it outside her family. In the family, this dish is called a moje, which is closest to the word meaning [...]

I honestly cannot recall ever being so moved by a speech given by a politician as I was watching Barack Obama’s Iowa victory speech on YouTube. The speaking abilities of Barack Obama and George W. Bush are completely on opposite ends of the scale. Tell me honestly, can you imagine Hillary, or any [...]

My email client, Apple’s Mail.app has been doing a truly excellent job of filtering spam lately. Several hundred emails a day get screened from my inbox. Today, I was looking for an email that I had just deleted and I ended up accidentally clicking on a spam message as I was digging through [...]