Swimming holes, dog time, rafaella carra ...and all i got was this lousy tick

Turns out Spanish people have fun 24 hour parties sometimes. Pablo and his girlfriend Patri had a party last weekend. i caught a lift with two of the post-docs from the university, and we met up with several others in Zarzalejo, the town I wish I lived in. We went a short distance into the mountains, up a dubious looking creek to an AWESOME swimming hole. We spent about 5 hours swimming, algae climbing, sleeping on rocks and cliff jumping. The dogs whined and barked, and Sua was fishing like the bears on National Geographic.
We returned to town, toured the garden and commenced a barbecue. I discovered Spanish horchata, which tastes very much like Mexican horchata, except it is made from the tuber of a sedge, called a chufa in Spain, or a tigernut in English although I am quite sure you have never heard of one. Apparently, this was a crop of ancient Egypt, and retains its popularity primarily in Spain. I made guacamole, some salsa and quesadillas with mushrooms. Everybody was so impressed, because Mexican and American pseudo-Mexican foods are viewed with a bit of mysticism. I tried to tell them these are like the three simplest foods in the world. The pathological fear and hypersensitivity to chiles was pretty funny...but they ate my food and liked it alot. About 86 beers later Ares the human, not to be confused with Ares the dog, said to me "Let's join them on the balcony for karaoke". What the @#$%^, Pablo has a karaoke machine??? Turns out the plan was to use some sort of internet-based karaoke, a stereo system and a computer screen...but it never actually worked so we just watched funny you tube videos. I got to see the hilareous repertoire of Rafaella Carra, an Italian singer. She made a bunch of videos in the 80's, always with an entourage of ridiculous coreographed dancers. It's almost as if they are making fun of the concept of dancing. In some ways they reminded me of the original oompa loompas. I truly lost my shit because the silliness was so unexpected. I recommend you look up her video for "Hay que Venir Al Sur" on you tube, it was my personal favorite. You can see a current picture of her below, hanging out with Eli Bernstein. About three or four in the morning I went to sleep on the balcony, because I wanted to be cold for a change. I had a pile of dogs on me all night. Some people think dogs smell bad, but to me dogs smell like my friend who will always be happy to see me, and might steal my food when I'm not looking... but would never betray me in any serious way, and might even endanger his/her own life to protect mine. My brothers and sisters were dogs. Dogs smell good to me as long as they haven't been rolling in shit or a carcass.
The next morning I woke up because Ares the dog was licking my face. Everybody gradually woke up and we had a slow breakfast and coffee session. I left with the same folks I rode with, who had forgotten to tell me the car was not going back to Madrid. So I was going to ride the train with Ruben, while Cristina drove somewhere else that I never heard. We had time to kill, so we had a beer. We kind of had to hurry to get back to the station where Ruben could not find his ticket. He purchased a second ticket just in time to watch the train roll away. So we had another beer...then actually had to run to make the second train. How many PhD's does it take to catch a train on time? Two, but one per train. Previously the train conductor told me that for me, the best route home was to switch trains after a few stops with a 30 minute layover. Actually it was a 90 minute layover, so I ended up getting off the original train then catching the next one on the same line after 30 minutes. Long story short...it was hard getting home yesterday. Customary long-ass metro ride ensued after the train. When I got home Santi had returned from vacation and pointed out the giant tick on my head. Thats what you get when your best friends are dogs.