From The Insomniac Side Of Things (and keep reading for the recipe at the end of the post)

It's really quiet at o'dark in the morning. I woke up way too early and after tossing and turning for an hour I decided to just get up and get busy. Good time to get a little blogging done. And since I've been speaking a lot of Spanglish lately, I'm gonna write like I talk. Only maybe not so much since I usually do use more Spanish and that might get really confusing for those who don't know any. I figure a word here and there will be understandable from the context of the sentence. Comprende?

The streetlights cast interesting shadows over our little barrio. Have I ever told you that our calle is only one block long? And some taxi drivers don't know about it so we have to describe where it is, between such and such streets and almost to the lake... One calle goes one way (south) to the lake and the other goes one way (north) away from the lake. And as you're coming south, our calle is "la ultima" (last one) before "la costanera" (coastal road). Once we turn onto our calle we tell the driver "Casi Estrada, casi, casi, a la derecha" (almost to the end of the block, almost, almost, to the right) and if he still appears confused we describe our fence which is "verde".

Since it's only una cuadra, it's really not hard to find.

Our barrio es muy tranquilo. Most of the time. Except when the young guy across the street has friends over and they work on un auto. The vrrrooom, vrrrrooom of the engines doesn't bother us so much but when they're working on the horn, radio or speaker systems it can get a little annoying. This doesn't happen too often, mainly porque su abuela no permite.

We still haven't met la vecina en frente. We're thinking she's a single mom who works in Cordoba because she's gone all day, leaving early in the morning and arriving late in the evening most days. And since her gate and garage door are automatic, we've never actually seen her outside except once when she had visitors and she came to let them in the smaller gate which is not automatic.

I think my hubby's back is starting to feel a little better and we plan to start back with the painting this week. I can't begin to tell you how anxious I am to get the living room painted, make the curtains and get them installed. With todas las ventanas, it's sorta like living in a fishbowl. In case you didn't see the post with the picture of my living room, you can check it out here.

Aside from the privacy issues, we also want to have the curtains installed before summer really hits and this room becomes a sauna. We've already experienced it a bit on a few of the warmer days this Spring. And during the winter las cortinas will help keep the room a little warmer. Without any insulation in here and single-pane las ventanas, cuando hace viento we'll need an extra barrier against the cold!

This is a pretty long post already, but I'm going to make it a little longer by including a recipe the daughter makes that's always a hit at parties. And it fits in well with Linda's Fall Into Flavor theme this week of "football finger foods". Linda herself has posted three, count 'em: THREE recipes. No doubt there'll be muchas recetas by the end of the day that we can all enjoy this football (or futbol in our case) season. So stop by 2nd Cup of Coffee and don't miss out on any of the yummy goodness.

Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts

1 cup ketchup
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
16 ounces sliced bacon
2 (8 ounce) cans water chestnuts, drained

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).Cut bacon slices into thirds. Cut some of the bigger water chestnuts in half. Wrap chestnuts in bacon and secure with toothpicks; place in a 9x13 pan. In a saucepan, combine ketchup, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce; heat just to boiling. Pour sauce over bacon and water chestnuts. Bake in preheated oven until bacon is completely cooked, about 45 to 50 minutes.

These are muy delicioso!