The last destination on our whistle stop tour of Spain was Madrid. Barcelona was big. Granada was cute. Seville was medieval. And Madrid was hip and sexy. It immediately had a different feel from the other cities. There were also rainbow flags ev-er-y-where. I dunno if it was just the neighborhood we were in, but it seemed like every bit of the city that we saw was the same. There was even a sex club next to our fancy hotel. We got brave one night and went in to check it out. It seemed like the more raunchy activities were all downstairs and we could just sit upstairs, fully clothed, in the tiki lounge and just have a drink. But the guy at the door didn't speak English and we couldn't really ask and then we got scared and ran away.

The first night we had reservations at the oldest continuously operational restaurant in the world, Botin. We got a set down in the basement which seemed more desirable than sitting upstairs. Daniel had eaten there many years ago and wanted to see if the grilled prawns were still the best thing ever, but after we ordered they came back and said no prawns tonight. Boo. So we both got the suckling pig that I read online was the most famous dish. And it was really good. As we were leaving the host guy said, "Did you see the wine cellar?" And we said no and he said oh you can't leave without seeing it. So back downstairs we went, and then down another level into a dark cramped brick covered tunnel filled with dusty wine bottles. And he kind of gestured, "Over here, there's more." And as he did he rubbed his hand on my crotch, and I thought, oh no! Don't acknowledge it, he'll get embarrassed! It's so cramped in here! And then it happened again. And again. And again. And then he put his hand on the small of my back and then ran his hands down and grabbed my butt. Haha. At that point, I looked at him and said, "Ohohokay, buddy. I think that's enough." I was SO excited to tell Daniel that I got groped. As we walked up the stairs from the cellar, I turned back to him and we both said at the same time, 'I just got molested!" This dude was doing it to him too! Like WHAT did he think was going to happen, best case scenario in a crowded tourist trap restaurant. So funny. We've both STILL GOT IT!

We did yet another tour in Madrid and our tour guide was awesome. He's even written books on Spain and gave us each a copy I look really forward to reading. We learned a bit more about the flip side of Spanish history after the Moors with the Spanish monarchy. This one is of note because they inbred SO fucking much that the later sovereigns were like deformed and sterile and it was a whole thing. We went through the Prado and our guide knew just about everything there was to know about just about every painting in there. It was really impressive and we had a wonderful day of learning. My fav.

The next dinner was at a Michelin star restaurant. We weren't sure we'd be up for it after so many nights of eating out in a row, but it ended up being a great idea. My dick didn't get groped, but my palate did get challenged. So many dishes I had ZERO idea what it even was that I was eating. And we paired it with a bottle of Krug, a nasty little habit we've developed, so that made it even more fun.

The Reina Sofia museum is full of modern art. It was sorta more inspiring than the Prado because I felt like I could do all of it. In fact, I might try. Instead of finding art for our house, what if I just made forgeries of existing pieces. It would be fun to try anyway. Our final dinner of the trip we just could not stomach more tapas, so we made a few aperol spritzes in the "red level" lounge at the hotel, then walked over to Popeye's and had a very disappointing chicken sandwich. The day we didn't fly home until 4pm, which was kind of sweet. Slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, took our time getting to the airport, and when we finally got home it was already time for bed. Win win win. All in all a great trip!

Our driver took us about an hour and a half directly to our Seville hotel. We did the Hotel Colon Check in, and then headed out a little, but again we were a little limited by the temperatures. Just so damn hot in the middle of the day. And the Spanish don't really subscribe to the religion of air conditioning. Our room was just slightly air conditioned. We actually spent the first night sleeping with no covers. But then we cranked the air down to 60 and left it running with the curtains closed nonstop the remainder of our stay and got it down to serviceable temperatures. I'm sure the maids were absolutely horrified at the waste, but the building just wasn't built to withstand such high temperatures ... and neither was I.

I told Daniel there damn well better be some feliz compleaños balloon in the room when we arrived, because the next day was my 45th birthday. And he delivered! Haha. There were some balloons (most of them inflated), a little tart, and a bottle of Freixenet! I mean, I didn't drink it, but it was a nice decoration. Freixenet, freixenet, ooh lah lahhhhh.

Naturally we had another guide who showed us all the times the muslims built something and then the xristians took it over. The food in Seville was pretty legit. Our first night we had tapas (obvi) but they were like elevated and delicious. One was a shrimp toast that we couldn't stop talking about. Then my birthday dinner was a tasting menu overlooking the river and I think that was maybe the best meal of the entire trip.

The next day is what we call a "David Day." A David Day consists of absolutely nothing scheduled. It allows for a day of rest and doing absolutely nothing, maybe sleeping. Or it allows for more spontaneous plans to be pursued. This time, we saw a modern market building called Las Setas (the mushrooms) on our tour and saw that they had a "modern" Flamenco show and went online and got tickets. The setting certainly was modern with lots of projectors and color changing LEDs, but the Flamenco was just Flamenco. So I felt like the light show kind of detracted more than helped, but it was still really good. And our tickets came with a free drink - bonus!

Our train ride from Barcelona to Cordoba was honestly a little long. Like 6 hours, but probably exacerbated a tad by us drinking too much bottomless wine at the fancy dinner the night before. When we got to Cordoba it was seriously 43°C outside, just boiling hot. The driver was cool though, because he asked us if we'd eaten. It was past 4pm and we had not eaten. But since we were already pulling onto the highway the options were limited. Not that I need to defend myself, because we saw a sign for McDonald's and asked him to pull in. It was so good.

Then it was another like hour car ride out into the countryside to this place called Bobadilla. This beautiful resort with horses and pickleball courts, and a few giant pools surrounded by beds and umbrellas. The first full day there though we took a car ride over to Granada and met up with our tour guide. I really liked Granada. I think of all the cities we visited if I had to move to one I would choose Granada. It was a perfect mix of midsized cute city.

We also visited La Alhambra, the moorish fortress. It was really cool and a perfect introduction to Spanish history, which is entirely comprised of the Muslims built this, then the xristians took it over and built on top of it. There you go, you know the whole history of literally every city. My friend Lee had been to Alhambra and said it really struck him how beautiful and ornate the Muslim sections were and how drab and boring the cathlick sections were. And while I agree to some extent, after a while the moorish decorations just get exhausting. Like fellas, an ounce of restraint would really send this to another level. But it's just moor, moor, moor.

Then the next few days we just spent lazing around the resort, swimming, and eating at restaurants on the premises. One night was a casual dinner, the next was a communal BBQ, and the third was at the fancy restaurant. All very good and much needed rest and relaxation and from there it was on to Seville via car service.

I'm doing something I haven't really done before and that's cheating by blogging later about our trip. I had ambitions that maybe I could blog on my phone while we were traveling but yeah, no. So I'm gonna finish blogs about España and then backdate them so it comes up on my history in the correct order. Deal with it.

Barcelona was cool. It's got a very big European city feel to it. Once again I had a little DuoLingo hiccup since I spent the past months studying Spanish to find out they speak Catalan in Barcelona. Whatever. It was no problem, just a lot of signs and stuff didn't make sense.

Everyone in the family successfully made it! We arrived a day early which I think ended up being a good decision. There was some fiasco with the car service not being at the airport as scheduled and Daniel went into super travel agent mode to get it all resolved. We gave each of the kids an envelope with 20€ spending money. All they had to do was make it to 8pm to beat jetlag. Everyone did except Sam, but we gave him his money the next day anyway.

As you can imagine, rolling around town with 19 people makes things a little bit difficult. But Daniel planned one activity and then one dinner event each night and that worked perfectly. The first full day was Sunday and Daniel got us TICKETS to Sagrada Familia international mass. Apparently that was an even bigger deal than we realized. Several of the people we met said, "No, you can't get tickets. You just have to wait in line for hours." And we were like, nope, we had tickets bitch. So that was cool. Then we made everyone go on a walking tour of the Gothic quarter, which of course I loved, but I think it was wearing thin by the end for most people.

The next day we went to Park Güell, Gaudi's little masterpiece. It was cool but it was sooo hot outside. I had to go to Zara to buy ankle socks because I figured I probably wouldn't wear shorts, but it was absolutely required to wear shorts. My poor white legs had never seen the sun. Then dinner that night was at a Flamenco show. Turns out I fucking love Flamenco. I liked it so much that I demanded we go to another show later in the trip.

The next day was a beach day and dinner was a paella cooking class. Then Sagrada Familia tour and a fancy tapas menu. Tapas are good ya'll, but by the end of the trip I was like I don't want anymore fucking tapas. I just want one big meal all of the same food and I want it all to myself. I most def breezed over some details of Barcelona but all in all it was a huge success. Daniel did an amazing job planning. And the next morning we hopped on a train headed for the middle of nowhere to relax and prepare for our own personal vacation without family.

Tomorrow we are heading to Spain. This is our big family vacation we do each year, so all 19 of us will converge in Barcelona for 5 nights. Daniel and I are going one night early so we can beat jetlag and be prepared to help everyone else on arrival day. Stephen went early with his family to London and Paris and will end in Barcelona. My parents will be in and out, and everyone else disperses at the end of the trip. Daniel and I head south to Seville, Grenada, Andalusia area, then up to Madrid then home.

I'm pretty excited. I've been trying to kick this stupid cough for like 4 weeks now. Originally I had a sore throat, cough, stuffy nose after traveling to California for Megan's graduation. And that went on so long that I finally went to a doctor who said I probably had the flu, but now it was like a pneumonia bacterial infection, so I did a round of antibiotics. I'm still not 100% better so I went back to the doctor and she said it was just post-infectious lingering cough. She gave me steroids to help kick it faster, so now I'm roid raging. Better than coughing on an airplane for 10 hours. I have cough drops, a cough suppressant pill, and a mask if that should become a problem, but I'm feeling better today finally.

I try not to make my blogs just a recounting of every medical malady I encounter. But that's pretty much the narrative now. While we are away I will be turning 45 years old. I am not bringing my book of secrets with me because it would be a little heavy, so I'll have to read my 1, 5, and 10 year predictions when we get home. The 10 year predictions have been pretty wildly inaccurate. I couldn't begin to predict what will be going on 10 years from now so I stopped trying. I filled the book and that will be the only volume in existence. It was a fun activity for a decade or so.

Okay, who knows, I might even take a picture when I'm in Spain and post it here. I try to take at least one picture per day when I'm traveling, that's my goal. I also said I was going to try to take a picture of as many obscure locations as possible for maximum views on Google Maps so maybe I'll remember to do that. Wish me luck and I'll czech you all on the flip side!

I just had a million dollar idea. I saw a preview for Final Destination III, so they might have already thought of this, they didn't make it very clear. But check this out. Choose Your Own Adventure DVDs. How cool would that be? They could film all these different scenarios and you could watch the same movie over and over again. Remember those books? g*d they were cool.

My recovery is going well. I didn't really anticipate the levels of pain that I've had. It makes me weary to have my tonsils out. The irritation of the tissue has caused a sore throat something like strep. Hydrocodone has helped, but made my work attendance a little low. On the plus side though, breathing at night has been exponentially easier. I woke up this morning before my alarm clock feeling pretty good. I hesitate to say I'm cured because it could have been the unbearable pain that woke me up. Nothing a good hot shower didn't calm down. But it does make me hopeful about my sleeping, a feeling that is quite rare these days.

The other day I made myself a wish list. It's a list of everything I would like to purchase for myself. It is part of my new quest to not only own nice, new things, but also get rid of my crappy, old stuff. It includes everything from silverware to underwear and everything in between. So far I've managed to get two of the 8 new pillows I want and new drinking glasses. The total of the list is around 2,000 dollars, so it will probably take me a while to get it all, but that's half the fun. If anybody wants to get me a late birthday present, I can forward you a copy of the list. I don't have any product placement for you today, but I'll think of one for tomorrow. I am roasting a stuffed turkey right now in my new roasting pan with my new meat thermometer that I'm basting with my new baster, so I gotta run, but I'll keep you all update on the recovery. Laaaaaaaate.

Update: Did everyone hear that KaboomTown has been rescheduled for September? They were so disappointed that the fireworks show got rained out, that they've reinvested a bunch of money to make it bigger and better. That means KaboomTown gets a redo and our KaboomTown party gets a redo also! More importantly, another opportunity to have Kaboomcrown'n'cokes. (Not that we haven't been drinking them regularly ever since.) That leaves just one thing to say... KABOOM!

500 more miles on the car, 500 more P-town memories. Lets recap, shall we? The whole reason that I even decided to go home was because my brother from California was in town and I haven't seen him in a long time. But as it turned out, I didn't get to see him even once the whole time I was home because he was busy with one of his best friends marrying his wife's little sister. It all sounded a little incestual if you ask me.

So Friday night I dropped in on Simply Fondue to see my friend Blake that I haven't seen in a while. We chit chatted for a while and then I went home. Saturday I was woken up by JennyC■■■ who wanted me to go to Stonebriar mall with her. And I did just that. We shopped for new clothes for her for a while with her mom and then I decided that I needed to find a new outfit to go out in since I had made some plans so I went to Willowbend. I walked around for a long time and didn't find jack shit to wear. It was pathetic. I was getting frustrated and had an entire day to kill since my family was all at the wedding, so I stopped into Toni & Guy and asked if they had any appointments available. They had one open but it was with the top designer guy so it was more expensive. Sounded good to me. An hour and a half later, I walked out of there looking and feeling like a million bucks.

I went to Coach then because my friend Clay that I was going out with works there and I needed to discuss our plans. He got off at 9:30 and then came to pick me up. We ended up at a bar called Minc around 11:00. We had one drink there but it was really dead because there was some huge $40 cover charge party going on elsewhere that everyone was supposedly at. So we decided to go downtown to the Village. I'd never been there before, and after skipping out on the line and the cover charge by darting in the ajar "Re-entry Only" door, we made our rounds. Not 10 minutes after being there, who do I run into but my old pal Ryan S■■■. I didn't even know he was going to be there. That was too much fun. We caught up on all the pertinent gossip. The cool thing about every other fucking city on the face of the planet besides College Station, Texas is that when the bars stop serving alcohol they don't turn on all the lights and kick you out.

I started noticing though that Clay, who had driven to the club, was almost doubling my alcohol intake, so I decided to switch to water in anticipation of having to drive home. Its a good thing I did too. We ended up staying until about 3:30 in the morning dancing to the best remixes of today's hottest hits. I was completely drenched when we left. It was so much fun. Clay had to crash at my house for the night, but since we had 4 empty bedrooms that wasn't a problem.

Today I woke up and went swimming for a while, got my first taste of the sun this summer. I got packed and ready to go and then met Chevy at Starbucks to share some smokes and stories, just like in the days of yore. Now I'm back home in College Station and I'm really rarin' to go for this next week of work. Hope you all had as much fun as I did this weekend and I will see you on the ol' flip side.

I am back from Houston and my brother's 24th birthday. Boy did I have a good time. First we went to a restaurant called Floridito's. As many of you well know, I hate seafood and refuse to eat it. But Stephen wanted seafood for his birthday so I agreed to try it. I had something like a grilled banana leaf mahi-mahi. It was so good. It wasn't like any fish I've had before. It had a different taste and texture than I was used to and had all kinds of carribean stuff like mango on it. That was delish. His wife, Rachel, bought us each a drink called a Rum Runner. It was also very good, though very alcoholic.

From there we went to Dave n Busters. Rachel was funding the little operation and bought us each a Water Moccasin shot. I had one at Shadow Canyon the other night and it was a light, easy shot and a very tasty treat. Rachel wanted a shot that wouldn't be hard to take so we each had a birthday shot for Stephen. Then we told the bartender that it was his birthday so he bought Stephen a shot too. It was called a Tiger's Tail. I'm not sure what all was in it, I know there was some Jäger in there. He said it was good. A beer later a group of Stephen's friends showed up. It was a semi-surprise semi-party for him. When there were 6 people, Rachel once again stepped up to the plate and this time ordered 6 shots. These were called a 'Buzz.' They were huge shots, filled to the top. Everyone was joking we needed a straw for them. I took mine like I thought everyone else would but I ended up being the only one to shoot it, the rest took half and half or just drank it. I guess I'm still in that 21st birthday mode, but I thought it was a really good shot.

After that we spent the night in the arcade playing skee-ball, driving games, etc and always giving our tickets to this little black kid who never once said thanks. He just stared at us like we were crazy. He musta been about 4. It was funny. We did end up spending some of our own tickets. They weigh them and print you off a little voucher, so we tried to put our finger on the scale to up the count. Apparently the thing is pretty sensitive, cause when I really had 24 tickets, it printed out a voucher for 829. I got busted, but naturally argued with the guy acting offended that he would accuse me of such a thing. Stephen bought a couple big bouncy balls with the tickets. It was a fun night, I think we left around midnight. It was kind of weird though to be walking around with a beer fairly drunk while little kids are running around you playing video games and cashin in tickets. But it was a hella good time. Then we went home and went to bed. That was the extent. Tonight I think I'm gonna study for my government exam on Monday. I'm so studious. My roommates are both gone right now but their cars are here so I don't know whats up with that. I guess I'll give them a call in a minute. Peace out, sluts, have a good Saturday night.