Today is the last day of the best February I think we have had, in terms of our business. We had a group booking in the first weekend of the month for two nights which filled the hotel. Then we were full for Valentine's day, for the first time. Last weekend was the only one (this month) where we had no clients staying in the hotel and little to no passing trade for lunch. But this weekend, there were 3 rooms last night (2 were Finnish couples) and 6 rooms today; we had a group of Danes that booked in for lunch today and we have another group booking for lunch tomorrow, technically, a different month. So all in all, we are happy with our flow of business and it continues to improve, despite this economic climate.

We were written up in a Costa del Sol based Finnish newspaper this month and so we have started receiving queries and reservations from Finnish people. We have previously had many Swedes and Danes and been included in a couple of issues of coastal Danish magazines as well. This is the photo of us published in the article in which we are told there is a good review of Ivan's cooking and the hotel.

Espanjan Sanomat - Febrero 2009 - Nº107

We had the windows finished in our new apartment last week. One of the new doors was installed as well, without the large piece of glass which will be installed when the second door is in place. We started painting the flat as well so it is really starting to take good shape. I'm hoping to be sleeping in there by the end of March!! The complete move of all our belonging may take longer than that as we will not have the benefit of a moving company to assist with that so "poco a poco" as they say here.

The weather has been bright and warm of late although today it is cloudy and raining. We're hoping that the cold weather has relatively little time left to run as we are ready for the milder temps of spring and the blossoms of wild flowers bursting with colour everywhere. Already the cherry blossoms are out in spectacular pink as usual and there are several other small flowers appearing in the countryside, yellows, purples, blues, whites, it is very lovely and should be gearing up very shortly as we move into the month of March.

We have a new bird cage that Ivan built, it is rather large and red and has 3 birds in it. Fred and Ginger have been relocated to this cage and a new male canary which Ivan would like to breed. He bought a new female canary but she was not very well from the start and died a couple of days later so we are now waiting for a new one.

We are expecting Ivan's parents to come for a visit for Semana Santa. Semana Santa starts this year on 3 April. We already have several booking for this week but still have plenty of availability so if you're interested in booking, now is the time to do so as the queries will increase in the coming days as people have a eye to arranging a break from all the bad news about these days.

I'm working on revising the website a wee bit. I have finally decided on the new format of the website making a wider which is more suitable to the contemporary sizes of computer screen. It will be more or less the same, the content will remain the same but the format will change. I still have not figured out how to incorporate PHP into my website as I am not sure how it functions and I am not a professional webmaster so I do not have lots of literature at my finger tips to do some research, even with the internet available. I know PHP would help me in reducing the amount of time I have to change some things on my website. When I've finished revising it, it will look nicer and be a bit easier to navigate. This will definitely take some time to do as I have so many pages in my site now and want to add one or two more.

I'm also trying to get a brochure for the rooms completed but I have been working on that for more than a year now and it is still not finished. I'm not a big procrastinator like my friend Andy in Los Angeles (sorry Andy) but it is just a slow process, deciding on the content, the form, and then putting it together.

I can say that I have procrastinated like my friend Andy in LA in terms of getting a disk of photos of my wedding to my sisters. The wedding was in May and here we are in March and still no disk. I have at least finished compiling the photos which I want to include and they are in the proper order but yet to be burned to a disk. This week I hope as I am not being held down to doing any accounting this week!!! I finished that last week.

Well more later. Ta ta amigos.

We had a very bad and extremely sad experience on Sunday evening. Ivan and I went for walk in the countryside to collect pine cones; we like using pine cones to start the fires in the wood-burning stoves instead of fire starters which tend to smell too much of gas for guest rooms. There is a particular location we found which is full of conifers that have lots of cones. We took the three dogs with us as usual.

While searching for cones, the dogs run up and down the road following us. Well they came across a piece of raw meat that some evil dark hearted person left with poison in it. Ivan caught the dogs sniffing it but unbeknownst to him, Pasky, our German Shepherd had consumed something of it for a few minutes after we got in the car to return to the hotel, there was some odour coming from the back of the car where the dogs were. We stopped to check what was happening and Ivan knew immediately that Pasky was reacting to the poison he was afraid the meat had; Pasky was vomiting, frothing at the mouth, having convulsions, muscle spasms and diarrhoea. We called the vet on call right away and then rushed to the hotel and then on Ronda but the poison was very strong and fast acting. Poor Pasky was dead on arrival at the vet. He attempted to revive him but without success, he was gone, just like that. This all happened in the space of an hour.

The vet said he had not seen a poison kill that fast before and he has seen several dog poisonings of late in Ronda. Some horrible person leaves poisoned meat in the street for dogs to find and kill themselves with, nice eh? He urged us to report this event to the police as there is an on-going investigation into these occurrences. We reported it to the Forest Services as we found out that the land where we were is actually owned by the Junta de Andalusia, the regional Andalusian government and that the area is open to hunters. They think that it is just mean spirited people that leave meat around to kill the hunters dogs; it could also be local shepherds attempting to kill off any predators of sheep and goats. Whoever it is, they are breaking the law as the Spanish central government realised that poison should not be just left lying around for anyone to consume because some beings become unintended victims like our Pasky!! We heard that the Guardia Civil are out questioning people in that area now and the rangers are searching for more poisoned meat with trained dogs.

Noble Pasky

We miss our Pasky very, very much; we only had him for four years, since he was 7 weeks old. He was a beautiful, loving, affectionate dog who was never aggressive, always gentle, sometimes (well, a lot of the times) seeking attention and jumping up on his owners and anyone else around which was too much. But it was all in search of love and attention, which I think he got a lot of. He now lies not far from where we will be living inside the hotel.

IT's been raining all night and most of the day since I got up. Not a nice day for walks with the dogs. The weather was springlike Thursday and Friday so this rain again is a disappointment.

Next weekend is Valentine's Day. We have an offer on our website and I have taken a couple of bookings for it already and have received several queries. Hopefully we will be half full at least for the night.

The village has installed speed bumps throughout the village on the main street as traffic did pass too fast though here. It's a pretty significant "bump"; it was completed in November. This week it changed color. Yes, it was painted red and then Friday, white lines were painted onto it. This is a classic Zebra crossing, only thing is you can't use this "cross-walk" to get to the other side as there is a fence there and a 10-20 foot drop. Funny, the speed bump was required, but then the rules for speed bumps require the thing to be painted like a cross walk even though you can not cross it on foot as it were. Well, this should not surprise you.

Hey, I got some good news on Friday. After waiting for four years, having originally applied in January 2005, I now have a Spanish residency card, finally... picked it up on Friday and then I immediately applied for my Spanish driving license. As I have a Dutch one, I should not have to take a written exam or a driving road test but my Dutch license expires in April so I needed to get the process rolling ASAP. My advisor told me the process could be "lengthy" as "they" (ESP DMV I presume) will send my original Dutch license to Holland for verification of validity (no surprise with that as nothing happens fast here). In the meantime I have no European driving license so hopefully I won't get stopped by a traffic cop (that is to say I still have a US driving license but it would be nuisance to be stopped). Ah, the novelties of Spanish paperwork and bureaucracy.

So the almond flowers have finally started to arrive. This year they are quite late in arrival as normally we see them in December and it is now February. I guess all this rain will help.