With the puppy

Merida, Venezuela (Jan 1, 2004)

Somehow I forgot this photo, that is one of my favorite, from a previous trip to Venezuela, the first day of the last year. She is a cousin of Mayli and the puppy was at that restaurant in the Andes that we also visited in this trip. Somehow it seems appropriate to start the year, after the somewhat depressing thoughts of yesterday, with a photo of a child and a puppy.

Today we woke up again without heating. It is probably some stupid wire that is not connected well, but for the second day in a row the burner refused to start and we woke up freezing. So, contrary to our usual habit to linger in our cozy bed until late on Sundays, we went out as soon as possible to a diner nearby, to enjoy a brunch next to a warm fireplace. Then groceries, and back at freezing home to do the first of many washing machine loads (we still have to wash and put back in the closet all our summer clothes that we used in Venezuela).

Ah, we also finally hanged our new shower curtain that arrived before we left to Venezuela for Christmas, but that we didn’t have time to hang until now. The interesting part is that the fabric of the curtain is made with hemp, which is nothing else than cannabis sativa, most commonly known as marijuana (grown in a way to have very low levels of cannabinoids, which are the active intoxicating principles of marijunana). Hemp has been used for millennia as a textile fiber (I remember buying potatoes in Italy contained in hemp sacks) because it is very easy to grow in many climates, and requires very low amount of fertilizers. The sails of ancient sailboats were made of hemp, because it can get wet without rotting: for this reason it is a good material for a shower curtain (much more hygienic than the plastic curtain we had before). Not sure is legal to grow it in US, though, as we had to buy it from Canada...