Rocking Your World 2021: Week 36

So now we are in September. How did we get so far so soon?! It is a strange thing that here in Spain, at the start of September, we instantly feel a change in the air, and know that Autumn is on the way. True to form, we have had cooler days this week, (not cool enough to manage without the fans yet though), and have even had some rain. I am glad to say that we haven't had any storms like poor Lisca had, but some parts of northern Spain have had severe flooding. I read at lunch time yesterday, that the rambla at Aguilas had burst and the town was cut off from both ends, and that is only about a 40 minute drive along the coast. So we are very grateful that we just had enough to lay the dust and give the plants a little drink. It is a good start to the Autumn.

As promised last week, I did go to Lidls to buy a whole chicken and I cooked it on the rotisserie bar in my new mini-oven.  Here, they rarely truss a chicken which I found strange when I first moved out but I am used to it now. So I had to tie it up myself before putting it on the skewer. I didn't do a very neat job but it held up for the cooking time.

I had no idea how long it would take so I kept testing it with my meat thermometer until I was sure it was cooked through. It looked good and tasted good, and has fed us well for several days. (Roasted, cold with salad, in a casserole, and then a stir fry). Back many years ago, just after my divorce, when I was bringing up two boys on benefits, I learned to get every drop of goodness out of a chicken, and I still tend to do that now. I have an Instant pot, like Lisca often mentions, and cooking up a chicken carcass with water, onion and a carrot, makes lovely stock to start a casserole, soup or gravy.

Anyway, Sunday's chicken was a success that will no doubt be repeated fairly regularly. And I am pleased to say that once the chicken was done, I used the little oven to roast potatoes and did not need to heat up the main oven at all.

I also went mad and made a fresh fruit flan with a sponge base. I rarely make fancy desserts these days because I have to watch my sugar intake, and I am the one who likes the desserts! But it made a nice change. I need to look out for a smaller flan tin. We both like the egg sponge base, but my tin is really too big for two people. However, we didn't waste any!

On Sunday night we made our way over to our village theatre for a music night. It was sceduled to start at 9.30 but we should have known that would probably mean at least 10.00 Spanish time. So when we got there the seats were mostly empty, but the light was perfect for taking this photo.  Folk soon started to arrive and there must have been over 100 there when the first chords were heard. 

The concert was free, and all the artists were from the Almeria area, to raise the profile of local performers. It was titled 'Echa a Volar' which literally means 'Throw away to Fly' but I later learned that it translates as 'Fly Away.'

It was again taking place on the outside stage at the front of the theatre and we sat on socially distanced chairs on the plaza. So we were quite a distance from the stage but they had good, clear amplification and a gantry of lights that swept rows of lit circles back and forth across the stage, changing colours as they went. I would have found that very off-putting if I was singing, but they all managed.

There were three individual girl singers, all very good in their own style, and two men, as well as several muscians. I really enjoyed listening to this man playing what my son tell me is called a keytar. He was playing keys with his right hand and strings with his left which I thought was pretty clever and it made a lovely sound. 

He was a very talented musician, also playing the piano and keyboard and singing, and he accompanied all the other artists as well as having a spot for himself. Here he is playing guitar for the girl to sing. She was my favourite. She looked very young, but she had a powerful voice and obviously put a lot of energy into her singing.  It was a good night out.

One very exciting thing that happened this week was the arrival of my new computer. Chris ordered it, as well as a new laptop for himself, and a company in Valencia worked on it to add all the extras he knew I needed. We got a message to say it was coming on Monday so the first thing was to disconnect the old one. My console was a big black tower which was a dust trap and generated a lot of heat, and it ran Windows 7 which has been out of support for the past year.

So once that was removed, the next job was to clean the space under my desk as well as the desk top. It is surprising what a big space it looked when it was done.

The new console is a small silver box, about eight inches square, and the black box standing up beside it is four Terabytes of memory to accommodate all my didgitl stamps, scrapbook kits and pictures!

It turned out that my current monitor did not have the correct connections so I have been given Chris' lovely monitor. It is bigger and clearer and I have wanted something similar for a while. He has now got a new one himself but I still love this one. I am so grateful to have a techie husband who understands the working of a computer. He did a lot of online searching and has now managed to take all of my files from the old computer and put them onto the new one. He has also reinstalled my Corel Paint shop pro, and also the software to use the Silhouette cutting machine. The two things that couldn't be transferred were Adobe Photoshop and Word/Publisher, and I have taken out a subscription for both of those, as they are what I use the most. Now everything is set up and I am surprised to find that Windows 10 runs very much the same as 7 did, so there is not too much new to learn. Just a few changes in how I navigate the folders. We have sorted out some of the muddle of cables that I had under my desk but there is still some work to be done there. So now I am hoping when I publish this, that there will be fewer Blogger issues, and my comments will publish as they should.

With all these new machines arriving, we were swamped by cardboard, as well as all our usual recycling - I have a trio bin with bags for cardboard and paper, plastics, cans and waxed boxes, and glass. When they are full we drive to the edge of the village where there are recycling bins for each of these. So we really loaded up the car yesterday morning. The first two cardboard bins we went to were over full already, but we actually found an empty one in the end. We also went to the oil bin where we can recycle bottles of used cooking oil, so all in all it was a good excursion.

On the way home I got Chris to stop at the baker's that I mentioned in my 'Noche Blanca' post a couple of weeks ago. So we came home with two hot, soft but crusty  bread sticks, so it was obviously time to get the kettle on and have some elevenses. Who could resist the smell of fresh baked bread.

Now I will link up with Rocking Your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles, and with a bit oif luck I will be able to visit everyone and comment properly this week.