Just stay calm, David

All in all, it was a productive long weekend - I managed to churn out four business letters (mainly complaining about stuff - I may actually have found my true calling - apparently complaining about stuff in Spanish comes fairly easily to me), and the same number of essays. Let's be clear here - we're not scaling any literary heights - you'll not come across any feuilleton-quality gems in the bunch. But if you have ever wanted to:

• write to the publishers of Lonely Planet guidebooks, pointing out imaginary nitpicky errors in their latest guide to San Francisco
• complain to your local municipal traffic bureau about the dangerous placement of a traffic light
• get satisfaction from some fly-by-night bookseller on the internet because your alleged first edition of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" wasn't up to snuff
• complain to the municipal authorities because you got a permit to open a yoga studio, not the "Business English for foreigners" school you had planned to

then I might have some templates I could pass on.

In other news, Brad left for home this morning. When I got back home from lunch at around 4:30, I suffered a major panic attack upon entering the empty apartment. i hadn't realized how much I would miss him. But after an hour of lying on the couch with a full case of the heebie-jeebies, I rallied and pulled myself together. Enough to - you've guessed it - write another letter of complaint, before going out to the supermarket to replenish my stock of Albarino.

I've also been catching up on Season 2 of "El internado". Can't possibly do it justice in this post, but I will just pass on that the number of corpses in el bosque has now risen to 3. And that's not even counting the cadavers of the 5 dead orphans, because they are over 20 years old. Bad boy Ivan continues to brood (this mainly involves biting his lip a lot and glowering - the young man who plays him has definition limitations as far as his acting repertoire is concerned, preferring to rely on his good looks, which are undeniable) , while goody two-shoes Marcos engages in a kind of behavior that can best be described as smoldering. Somehow the plot finds many excuses to have all of the better-looking teen actors on the show prance around a lot in their skimpy gym outfits, when the camera team is not just lingering voyeuristically in the girls' shower, for no particular reason that advances the action. Did I mention how much I love the cheesy goodness of this show? Plus, it improves my Thpanish - they are a foulmouthed bunch, who enjoy cursing up a storm, so it's quite helpful.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!