"You can tell it's the first day of spring," the wife announced as she arrived home.

"The seagulls are back behind the Chinese restaurant."

You can add to that the Eurasian collared dove the heelers and I flushed up on our daily walk to the post office.

Did I mention we had the last snowbank in town? From me shoveling the snow from both our driveway and the neighbors' driveway into a huge pile underneath the aspen?

Finally disappeared on Saturday.

Greenest spot in our entire yard. Entire block, for that matter.

And today was nicely cooler, after two days of record heat.

Pretty sure I also failed to mention the wife coming to me a month or so ago, and asking if we wanted to join the Cinema club this year.

This small group works out a deal with Chuck, and every Wednesday he brings in a lesser known movie, one that would never make it to our town if it had to depend on market demand.

Fifty bucks a membership, good for eight showings during the end of winter and early spring.

On Wednesdays? They just shifted Crossing Jordan to Wednesdays, and Lost is back on the air.

No thanks.

So she didn't buy a membership.

For me...

But yeah, she bought one for herself. Been to four different flicks already, without me.

Had dates every time, too.

You know, youngest son, eldest son, eldest son and girlfriend, and Tina. She says I would have enjoyed The Painted Veil.

So tonight was Volver. And she didn't have a date.

So yeah, I went. Penelope Cruz is a brunette, after all, you know.

Wife hadn't expected a foreign film with subtitles. I had, since I checked the link above before I offered to go. We (and Chuck) agreed it was awful hard to keep up with both text and camera in the first five minutes. Just too much conversation. But after that, you barely noticed you were reading the dialogue.

So, I would say a good film. More contemporary than it looks. By the conversation with wife, Chuck and his wife, and others after the film, I'd guess I was the only one who found it predictable.

Which may say more about me than the film.

The ladies with Chuck seemed pleased that only one member walked out in the middle of the film. Apparently not all the other film choices have fared so well with our low diversity community.

My guess is she left when the subtitled words "pussy" and "muff-diving" were flashed across the screen.

But maybe not.

I especially enjoyed the scenery behind the scenes. Windfarms just exactly like ours, like what we will probably see all across our landscape in the next 15-20 years. Probably built by the same Dutch company.

I have no doubt Spanish villagers actually have those huge, heavy black wooden doors, with decades or centuries of wear on them. Graffiti in Madrid. Neighborhood parking with less organization than a country folk festival.

There were several references to people being driven crazy by the wind.

Something I suspect Spaniards simply accept as a known truth. And at which most others in the world would probably laugh.

No one laughed in our theater.

Here on the windy Divide.