Saturday, November 30, 2013

            It’s Saturday and while I am still trying to recover from turkey stupor we will venture forth this evening for another Thanksgiving dinner at the Oberles.  Olivia is in town and missed the Thursday version so Brian will accommodate her with a traditional Thanksgiving meal two days after the fact.  It will be fun.

            Susan went all out for our Thanksgiving meal on Thursday.  When all was said and done we had a group of friends around the table that included Mike, Santi, Jordi, Carol, Joana, Pepe, Brian, Vilma and Juanjo. Everyone brought a little something so that when we finally sat down there was an abundance of food and drink.

            We had beer, champagne, white wine and red wine and, if I remember correctly, we even had some water at the table.  In addition to the turkey we enjoyed mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, stuffing, spinach rice casserole cranberry relish, Bundt cake, pumpkin pie and pecan pie. The festivities began at 2:30 and our last guests left at 7:30.  The good news is that everyone pitched in to help cleanup so that the only task that needed to be done was to clean the oven and that happened yesterday.

            On a different note, the oatmeal saga has finally reached a conclusion.  Let me explain.  Susan likes oatmeal and, now that the weather has turned decidedly colder, it tends to be her breakfast of choice.  Back in Pasadena it was easy to buy McCann’s Irish Oatmeal since it seemed to be available everywhere.  That’s not the case here in Spain.  In searching the Internet I discovered a website called iHerb that had the oatmeal available at a reasonable price and so I ordered two tins and with shipping the final price came to a bit more than $26.  A week later I discovered that the package was being held hostage at customs.  In order to set it free I first had to send a copy of the bill of sale and fill out a customs declaration.  Time passed and I next received another document in which I had to once again specify the contents and for what purpose the contents were to be used. The other day I received a communication from customs informing me that in order for them to release the package I would have to pay a total of 44.67 Euros to set my package free.  In dollars that would be an additional $61.  If I do not pay the fees the package will be returned to sender.  I hope the carton has a pleasant journey back to the states.  By the way, the major portion of the fee has to do with its going through customs.  The actual duty on the product is $5.00. 

            That’s what has been going on for the past few days.  I hope your Thanksgiving was as enjoyable as ours or even more so.  I think I am going to take a nap to rest up for tonight’s task.