March 13th 2008
Written by Geoff Forster
Thursday March 13th 2008
Up at 6:00. Jane heads off for Gibraltar and I quickly walk the dogs in the murky pre-dawn light.
Back in the apartment I go up to the sun terrace. The sky is brightening and it's a beautiful sunrise.
I battle with a lousy internet connection trying to load photos for the blog. Telefonica give a terrible service. I called an engineer out last week after a few days of near 0kbs upload speeds. He looked at my wireless internet - tried to blame that - I swapped to a cable directly attached to the Telefonica supplied router. No difference. He then shrugged his shoulders and blamed the rural situation for it. He then logged the call as a test and said that he'd found no fault. Apparently lousy service is acceptable in rural Spain.
Anyway today I'm back to 0kbs upload speeds. Which not only means I can't upload or attach files, it does effect downloading too as there is an up and down communication between servers (handshaking). I spend the rest of the morning trying to read up about the best Shopping Cart solutions and weighing up their pro's and con's.
I walked to see the donkeys with the dogs. A lovely day, a little cooler than yesterday as the sun is shining through a thin layer of very high cloud.
We get back and the internet is still down.
I water the plants and take a few more photo's.
This is an orange flowered succulent Jane planted last year. Planting succulents in Spain is a good idea as they can survive drying out for a while if you forget to water. 
This is a yellow daisy flower.
An Angel Pelargonium
More exploratory reading about e-commerce.
Jane's gets back safely at just before 19:00h.
I cook cheesy pork sausages from Morrisons in a home made spicy tomato, apple and onion chili sauce. Served in Pitta bread.
We spend a couple of hours with the dogs and cats. We watch 'In the Valley of Elah'. Directed by Paul Haggis. With Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Jason Patric. The son from an 'Army family' goes AWOL after returning from a tour in Iraq, father and ex Sgt. (Jones) goes to find him ... a good film.
Jane couldn't face more of 'Slipstream' which we started last night, I might have to watch this one by myself, it was a little weird.
Hi Geoff and Jane,
Great to see the blog back.
Keep up the good work Geoff, felt as if I was out of touch with you not knowing what was going on in your life.
Hope your new job is ok Jane, seems a long day you have now, Think of the money like the rest of us have to in the UK, least you have the good weather when you get home and on weekends – unlike over here.
Love to you both
Carolyn x