Saturday, March 17, 2012

We will be heading out to the Cuchara Mágica this evening for a 9:30 paella date.  In addition to Pepe and Sara, Paquito and Giocodimani, Miguel Ángel Gea is in town with his friend, Ana, and they will be joining the party, also.  At the moment Rachel is relaxing and doing a bit of reading and Susan is in the kitchen getting the ingredients together to make a sopa de ajo.

I had my doctor’s appointment yesterday at 12:20.  The MRI seems to imply that undue pressure was placed on the right side of my left knee causing some bone spurs and, as a result, water has collected there and is part of the reason for the pain I am experiencing.  There is no fracture and there appears to be no damage to the meniscus.  I am to continue with the medication I am taking for another week, keep applying ice and elevating the leg, limit the amount of walking that I do and slowly re-introduce cardio into my routine.  I will start doing some magnetic pulse therapy on Tuesday, which will help diminish pain and remove the accumulated water.

We took a cab back home and it dropped us off on the Gran Vía because the entrance to Borrull was blocked off.  I crossed the street with minimum difficulty and forty-five minutes later Susan and I headed to La Fórcola for lunch.  We started of with some veal carpaccio and followed that with a pizza.  I had a pear strudel for dessert and Susan went with the chocolate ice cream.  Rachel joined us for coffee and we all had a liqueur to finish off our meal.  I made my way back home to take things easy and Susan and Rachel went in search of other fallas.

They returned home having taken multiple photos of the falla at Na Jordana.  It is an enormous head of Leonardo DaVinci, which stands seven stories tall, weighs ten tons and 90% of the head is made of wood.  If you pay 2 Euros you can take a tour of the inside of the head.  I can only imagine how impressive it must be to see it close up and personal.  Here is a link with an embedded video http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/03/13/valencia/1331646850.html

We had visitors last night.  Pepe and Miguel Ángel Gea stopped by for a drink.  We chatted for a good hour or so.  Gea is in town to do some filming for the Magic Ágora project.  Gea is world-renowned for his work with coins and I believe that he will be filming what will become the video library of coin sleights.  Rachel was napping when they arrived, but when she awoke she joined in our conversation.  When they left they remarked that looked forward to seeing us Saturday evening for a bit of paella and, most probably, a bit of magic.