Dog sitting, Chinese cooking and orange picking...

My friends have gone to Portugal for a few days, and so I'm staying at Villa Rehoboth with Brandy the dog. It's a good place to work on the computer and make progress on some of the curriculum writing that I'm aiming to finish by the end of the year... and I'm also doing several loads of laundry every day: washing the bedding left by a group of more than twenty retreat participants who left only yesterday.

I'll be making a trip home every day to check on my own animals, but today was a public holiday and so my housemates and a friend came to visit and have lunch at "my house." Chicken chow mein was on the menu, and I discovered that a paella pan is ideal for stir frying all those vegetables and noodles. Then we enjoyed taking the dog for a walk down a nearby country lane and picking the ripe oranges that were growing wild there. And, finally, gathering up as many pine cones as possible, as they're great for getting the fire started in the fireplace when the evening chill sets in. That's Spain in winter!