Gerrit discovered an annoying trait of our pool cover. Dirt and leaves which land on the top side of the cover get transferred onto the underside when the cover rolls up as it retracts. Then when the cover is unrolled to cover the pool again half the dirt and leaves from the top side end up washed into the pool from the bottom side. That's kind of the opposite of what you want a pool cover to do. It's not too bad to sweep the cover off every couple weeks or before opening it though, and we're leaving it closed most of the off season anyway.
It has been a very wet November, as of here on the 14th, and now we are getting fallout from Storm Cláudia which is affecting all of Portugal. Almost every day has been dark and cloudy, with lots of rain. Reminds us of a Seattle November, except that often the rain here goes from zero to a deluge in literally two seconds. The spigot can turn off just as fast too. The local news agrees that this November has been unusually cloudy and rainy, but they say things should start clear up a little around the last week of the month.
Pat is planning a Thanksgiving feast here for some friends. We will be the only Americans, it won't actually be held on Thanksgiving Day, and we can't even find a whole turkey, so she'll be playing it by ear. She was an ace at T-Day back in the US, so we're sure she'll have no problem creating her own version here. Probably not surprisingly to anyone who knows her, she is putting the ingredients, prep, and timeline in a spreadsheet, studying it, and optimizing it. Gerrit will try to stay out of her way.
Now it's Tuesday Nov 18 and the weather has completely changed, it's been clear and mostly sunny the last few days. It's letting all that rain soak in.
This is a long-standing tradition in Portugal and happens all over. There are rules regarding burns, and applications need to be made with the authorities prior to a burn, but the burns are an institution. We don't want to be the whiny American immigrants here and alienate our community, but boy this is obnoxious. Indoor cigarette smoking has been banned over much of the developed world, so why not start working on these outdoor smoke bombs in Portugal? There are some anti-smoke groups banding together, we hear, so maybe we can pitch in.
And alas, the skylight patching job Gerrit did last summer, which was perfectly water-tight with a hose showering it, still leaks like a sieve in the actual rain. Back to the tarp cover and the ol' drawing board.
The kids and grandkids (Emmett six and Avie nine years old) arrived here in the late afternoon of Thursday Nov 20. They had flown from Denver to Frankfurt, laid over four hours, then to
The next day the weather was nice but a little cold. We drove to
 Kids on the rocks
|
 But wait there's more
|
|
Saturday the weather was clouding up but still no rain. We took a little walking tour of the downtown historical area of Ponte de Lima, walked across the medieval bridge and looked into the little church on the far side, found a cool toy shop and playground, had a nice lunch, and did some grocery shopping on the way home. The toy shop is called Ale Hop. Sounds like a beer bar, doesn't it? They have an incredible selection of action toys though, like big scuttling crabs and crazy spinning LED balls which don't go where you throw them. The grandkids, and many others, were having a screaming good time and the patient, smiling clerks were happy to help them.
We'd had a great time with the family; we hadn't seen them in person since our Portuguese visa trip in the US back in March of 2024. It was fun to see how the grandkids had grown, to play with them, and talk with their parents. They will come back through here for a few more days at the end of the month on their way back from Andorra to Porto to fly back home.
(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done. Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)