Viewed (and beautifully pictured by Briana) from the wrecked fortress on the hill over looking the town of Alcobaca, the Monestary is a well visited site housing the erie tombs (tombos) of King Pedro and (queen) Inez de Castro.

When Pedro was not yet king, he had a love affair and early marriage with a spanish noble lady, Inez de Castro. She was the lady in waiting for the woman intedned to be his wife and queen. After the secret marriage was discovered by the King, Pedro’s Father, He had Inez murdered.

Some time later, after Pedro had inhereted the kingdom of Portugal, he honoured his former wife by digging her fetid corpse free of the earth, enthroned her and saw her crowned as queen. To seal the status of his (late) bride, before she was reentombed, all members of the royal court were compelled to kis the decomposed hand of the dead queen.

The tombs face eachother across the trancepts of the monestary in Alcobaca as if to be together intombed in stone for eternity.

Sweet

Flickr Photo Download: Alcobaca

Blogged with Flock

So, one of the things about our time in Portugal was that we really missed our dog Wagner. Every time we saw another dog, it was “Ohh, there goes Wagner” before too long, all mammals were Wagners, then birds too…

Ok, that’s lame but it is true! We just couldn’t console ourselves. We had to take pictures of all the puppies we saw. Here is Sao Cao the Wagnerian spotted at the Holy Sanctuary near Obidos.

Wagner

Blogged with Flock

Auntie JL, Little Emily, Momma Leah and Solomon in sweet chicken dance bliss.

Blogged with Flock

Excellent awesome family wedding victory action!

Cousin John, and the little one celebrating a moment.

Blogged with Flock

In a genius ploy to elevate the status of the disabled everywhere, my sister and her henchmen have formed a secret society for the purpose of total global domination. Firmly stroking calm white cats, Jocelyn and her ilk have bent their madcap skills to the creation of plasma laser death rays and waffle borne mind control syrup. Their strident symbol, posted above, displays their nefarious intentions.

Will we ever be saved from their destructive wrath? Can we live in a world where all street corners have access ramps and the deaf can clearly understand even our most publicly stated utterances? I don’t know how we will survive… I will be found firmly elevated by four flights of non accessible stairs until the crisis is abated.

Blogged with Flock

My soooper sister Jocelyn Tomkinson has won the Terry Fox award. She has just achieved her biology degree and has entered a global health master’s program.

She is now officially the most awesome person in Canada. But I already knew that.

Awesome! You rock!

Briana and I are in Portugal and in Portugal it is not so common to have easy and reliabe access to internet. Result? Lots of funtastical stories with interesting photographs and no time to blog them.

While we are able to so far upload the contents of our SD cards to the Flickr website, so yawll can get a view of what we have been seeing. But if a photo is a thousand words, we would not have novels. Here is one funny story of our trip to posturise youself with:

So during the first half of our trip, on a visit to the medieval encastellated town of Obidos in the mid-coastal area of Portugal, I had recently become used to being an honoured master at the secrets of the manual transmission. (there is nothing like a nation of crazy, honking tailgaiting lunatics to advance your learning curve!). I had also, hovever, run over a screw or nail or porcupine or something else beause, to our shock and horror, we have a flat.

Ok, so no big deal, it is just a flat. I have had flats before and I spit in their general direction. This flat was ok, we pulled over, applied an almost full sized spare and checked out what to do next.

The spare said 80 kms on the side and I wanted the flat fixed so the rental company would not charge us a repair fee or something. I send Bree to the housewares store where we have parked to make the repair. She is to ask where the tire shop is. “Gulp. OK!” She gamefully embarks with her phrasebook in hand to the sooopermercado to find some direction while I finish up with the mal-auto.

Afortunado! The customer in line (no inglesh) knows a repair outfit (sooper-bom!) and so he hops on his dirt bike and we zip through the village roads following hin to a close-by rural mechanic.

Afortunado! His name is Carlos, he owns the shop and he has an eager to help mechanic fried (of advanced years, receding dental profile and remarkably usable english) named Roi. Carlos and Roi. Nossa Salvadores do Obidos. Sweet.

They hammer out the dent on the inside of the aluminum rim, pump the tire up, examine it, swap it to a trailing wheel rather than the leading ond and pose cheerfully fr a photo after I cheerfully give them 40 E’s for thier efforts and good spirits.

Fast Forward - Afortunado Nada: The next day of travel sees the Renault Clio at the side of the highway with the same tire flat. It seems Carlos and Roi had not really fixed anything but our delusions. We swap again to the spare and on the way to Nazare we find a tire shop. !200E’s! Original not repairable!

Afortunada. The spare is a normal tire is as good a a regular one and we use it on the rest of the trip. When we hand in the car in Lisbon, we learn that our E-Tailer car rental company has insured us against these problems and we will not be out of pocket. Carlos and Roi’s repair of the aluminum rim has saved us a greater expense and we are golden.

Thus concludes the story about Bree, Will, Carlos, Roi and the Clio and the case of the mysterious Afortunado.

Well it is that time folks. It is the morning of Wedding’s Eve and Bree and I are getting ready to leave our home for the last time as maid and esquire to alight upon the world, to be transformed by the eternal and ancient magics of community, commitment and togetherness, and to emerge as a whole; a stronger compact.

As it were we will become likened unto an alloy, whose combining produces a metal far stronger than the original materials.Like an alloy we will forge our individual strengths in the flame of our love and shape them with the anvil of our commitment to each other. truly, such a strength will be produced so as to withstand the test of time and the corrosive effects of adversity.

So we won’t be around here for a few spaces. I might get Joc to guest Blog for a bit. Thanks for the opportunity to use all the boy similes.

My Cool Sister J-girl, who has a lot in common with Lisa Loeb in my opinion (funky glasses, smart, realistic view of the world, quirky, artistic, sensitive to emotions) should also get be on the show Number One Single. Lisa L probably woudn’t stand for it. Sis is just too cool.

You see I have refrained from using a glam shot of her here as she herself would prefer to be thought of by her deeds ad actions rater than mascara choice. My Sister rocks and if the Christian Boys she knows could get over the massive guilt they have been indoctrinated with, they too could be exposed to this coolness. I am told that a lot of Xian girls are in the same problem. Wierd.

Two U.S. fighter jets mistakenly fired on a Canadian platoon takingpart in a massive anti-Taliban operation west of Kandahar on Monday,killing one soldier and injuring dozens of others.

Last Updated Mon, 04 Sep 2006 12:20:41 EDT
CBC News

See Related Post Here.
And A CBC report here.