21 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Travel
There was once a time that I was a tour guide aboard the USS Blueback – a US submarine docked in downtown Portland. I confess: I am a submarine junkie. There aren’t many of us. I made a video of the Blueback in my early days of movie making. It’s here.
20 Monday May 2013
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Most Spanish people we see are not fat. A disclaimer: We see only city people, and they are usually skinnier because of the walking and the peer pressure. However, I have some ideas about why the Spanish are svelte.
19 Sunday May 2013
Posted in Travel
Yesterday was birthday number 69. Sixty-nine! Having just survived two life-threatening events, I am keeping my bald head above water in an ocean of feelings, defeating whirlpools of self-pity amidst the contemplation of mortality.
14 Tuesday May 2013
My guilty pleasure is: street markets. I absolutely haunt the one in the park next door: La Devesa.
This market shows up every Tuesday and Saturday morning, and for some reason I always see things I haven’t seen before.
12 Sunday May 2013
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Girona is about 250 miles north of Valencia, and Valencia is, of course, the Land of Orange. So is Girona, given the proximity.
11 Saturday May 2013
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This year they’re separated by only a week. They both began as small celebrations of flowers. Nowadays, one carpets the city with parades and carnivals. The other just carpets the city with flowers.
09 Thursday May 2013
Posted in Travel
If you’ve been reading along, you know that Tom visited many floors of the Dr. Josep Trueta Hospital — Emergency, Neurology, three different intensive care units, and Cardiology – as though trying to figure out whether Orthopedics or Gastroenterology might be worth a try. He could have been a Secret Shopper for Spain’s Department of Health.
08 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Travel
Wherein Tom discovers a new strategy for the advance of immersion language learning in Spain.
I counted fourteen gowned sycophants in the room, buzzing about a solitary, supine individual like bees in a hive. At their center — it chafes my sensibilities to type this — playing the role of the queen, was me.
07 Tuesday May 2013
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The hematoma didn’t dissolve. Msrs. Black and Decker were summoned. McDreamy approached the project with the enthusiasm of Bob the Builder fresh from a clearance sale at Lowe’s. The incision exceeds two feet in length; there are forty-one staples. Half of my skull was removed. It’s a good thing chain saws weren’t on sale.
06 Monday May 2013
Posted in Travel
I open my eyes to a Niagara of gauzy pastel blues and yellows, softly waving in the air. Appropriately, a waterfall of cacophonous Catalan chatter sprays my ears. I am entangled by intubation.
It is visiting hour at Josep Trueta hospital in Girona, Spain, where I am awaiting the prognosis of what has initially been diagnosed as a subdural hematoma, which is doc-talk for a clot of blood under the dura mater that covers my brain. The pressure is incessant. There is pain. They conduct a CT scan and tell me clot is the size of a deck of cards.
The Expat Almanac 