Over the Sea and Across the Continent

Yes, we're back in the midwest, and indeed it has been an insanely long summer. It seems as though every time we settled down somewhere, we had a plane to catch, a highway to drive, or some fish to fry. And so we did. June saw us in Portugal, and to a lesser extent, Spain, whereas July saw us primarily in Spain, with a short stint in Portugal. By the time the latter half of July arrived, we were back in the US, but only long enough to say hi to a friend or so, before hopping into the '04 en route to northern Minnesota, via Chicago and Grant. I can't post pictures, because nobody has that kind of time just now, but my foot did an excellent job all summer, both on the excavation and on the trails in Oregon. Oh, those trails were in September, after we had spent a while in Wisconsin on the fishing boats, and then back in Cincinnati, where we still feel quite at home. We had some unexpected visitors for a while, then offered ourselves up as unexpected visitors in due course, but it all seems to eventually bring us right back to where we started, at the laptop, writing something academic to convince The Man to broaden my horizons. Hopefully That Guy isn't reading this right now, but if so, in my defense I really did grow up speaking Portuguese, and it's a completely different language from Castellano, especially the Extremeduran variety. In closing, I would like to include this photograph, commemorating the mid-90s, a time when no gravel pit this side of Loures was safe from jumpers! Oh, and everyone needs to check out the band that is Horse Feathers for a pleasant surprise.