Now we´re cooking. We own a bed, which was delivered to our house, but not carted up the six flights of stairs. The portrera - sort of like a doorman - told me not to buy any furniture, because it is very expensive and she had some to give us. It turned out that she had one single mattress and two bed frames of different heights. She said, "Don´t worry, people throw away mattresses around here all the time," at which point I asked her where I might find a cheap bed store. She told me to come by Saturday at 10 and we would go to buy a bed.

The bed store turned out to be an open air market where one could purchase anything from furniture (new and used), to animal parts for eating, to gray market electronics. Very well. We also got electricity this week, which was exciting. We almost missed our big chance because he left us a friendly phone message in Catalan, which we handled in the same manner we handle most messages on our phone in Catalan: we ignored it. Luckily he called the portrera and told her that he would be coming by. Unluckily, we had the keys. Luckily, we were in the neighborhood. Lights.

But no gas. I´m off to the GasNatural office to sort that out. We recently learned a form of past tense that lets us speak about things we have already done. Pretty useful. Our lives were starting to feel like Memento.

Apologies for the focus on matters relating to utilities. We´re sure you´d prefer to read about old Sevillian towns and friendly bullfighters and fields of rioja. In due time. For now, we remain homeless and - finally - funcionally literate.

More later.