It's on the balcony now, covered with white sweaters that, 24 hours later, are still fairly damp. It's threatening rain today, so I'm keeping an eye on the weather situation. A sudden downpour could be quite a setback, sweater-wise.

Before I could use the balcony, I had to mop it off. Contrary to my previous belief, there is a drainage hole. It's obviously an after-market affair, drilled through sometime after our downstairs neighbors turned half of their giant terrace (which they never use) into a sunroom with a glass roof. Our drainage system, if you can call it that, is a hole drilled through the wall of our balcony that lets the water run off into our neighbors' gutters. It was clogged with leaves and who knows what else, so I cleared that out. The water doesn't drain naturally after a point, but it works just fine to swish it towards the hole with a mop.

I wished I'd discovered that hole before I spent fifteen minutes mopping. Even so, I was less than half-way finished by the time I did, and shoving the water around took a lot less time than mopping and wringing.

The rest of the day I spent baking. I had a meeting at my house this morning, and made some brownies and lemon curd bars to go with coffee, tea and juice. I was especially worried about the lemon bars. I can't turn off the upper element in my oven, so they didn't turn out quite right. They had this whole brulèe thing going on when they shouldn't have. Also, two of the women that I knew were coming this morning are real foodies, one of which bakes divinely. Seriously, if I were her you'd have to roll me to the supermarket. So I bought some fancy cookies to have as a backup.

I don't bake much, myself. I adore cooking, but I'm not real big on baking. This is probably because I don't follow recipes. It's not that I can't: I just don't. I love to look at recipes, I read cookbooks. Then I put them away, go into the kitchen, and just cook. You can't do that with baking.

Plus, yeast frightens me. It's alive! If your yeast is dead, or you manage to kill it off halfway through, you are screwed. I haven't dared to mess with yeast since we got here because our apartment is too cold and, given my luck, it would die for sure.

In any case, I needn't have worried. The brownies were fine, although I forgot to put nuts in. Brownies really need nuts, I think. As for the lemon bars: They may have looked funny to me, but not to anyone else because they had no idea what they were supposed to look like. And they tasted fantastic. Really, really lemony. My baking friend had three, complimenting me all the while. It made me feel proud-- almost, but not quite, proud enough to bake more often. I'm having another meeting at our house in a couple of weeks. I may chance luck and make them again.

The meeting went well, and I think we got plenty accomplished. Hardly anybody showed up, but I was expecting that. It's just as well, really. If they had, I'm not sure what I would have done. I don't have enough space for forty women, anyway.

Elvis got off work at mid-day, along with just about the rest of Portugal. The Easter holiday here started at noon. We're picking up our rental car around five this evening. I had hoped we could set out tonight, but Elvis vetoed that one so we'll be heading south tomorrow morning. I'm looking on the bright side. After all, my sweaters are still damp and I want to take some of them with me.

Elvis doesn't know it yet (although I'm sure he suspects), but we're getting up early early tomorrow. We haven't gone anywhere since New Year's, and I have no intention of wasting this opportunity, especially since we have to come back on Sunday anyway.

Of course, it's supposed to rain all weekend. It doesn't bother me too much. I figure at least we'll be watching the rain fall on someplace different.

Still. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't.

Happy Easter, where applicable. I'll be back on Monday.