I want to

not complicate my life

get back to doing yoga, so I'll have to get up earlier

find more time to read

find more time to paint

not complicate my life

get enough sleep most nights

have a jigsaw puzzle on the go

listen to brilliant stuff on my iPod

not complicate my life

find time to write more

go back to school some day

live in Vietnam for a year

walk the dog more

travel more



I want too much.

Either that or I need to sleep a whole lot less.

Or pray for reincarnation.

So, what do you want that you can't accomplish tomorrow?

SNOW, family, peace, beauty and nature. Perfect.

This weekend was very nearly perfect.  Indeed, I think it was perfect.  I cannot think of a single thing that would have improved it.  Not one little thing.

We slept, we napped, we walked for miles and miles and miles and we ate well.

The hotel we stayed in was perfect, we had a little apartment that we rented which was glorious with lovely views of the mountains.

Down the street was a forn (bakery) that also had a cellar.  See:

We went up to the mountains in search of snow.  You see, the rents couldn't come and visit because the of the snow in the UK and the weather here.  So we decided that we couldn't sit around the house feeling forlorn.  Off we went.

For all of you who are slogging through the endless winters up there further north, I am not sure how you'll feel about all this.  Don't want to look like I'm gloating...this was the first bit of snow we saw.  We were all so excited we had to take a picture.  Sad, but true.

It got a little snowier.  Dusted I guess we would call it, farinat is the Catalan which means 'floured' which seems pretty perfect to me.

There's the mountain, it's called Montseny.  It is very beautiful.....this is a photo from where we started.  We made it up into the snow, which I think is pretty good going with a couple of kids. The dog could have gone to the top and back twice if we weren't so gol darn slow.

See what I mean?

He LOVES snow....loves it.  I have to agree with Helen too, I am not the least bit sure why his feet don't get cold.  They don't seem to though.

You'd be hard pressed to get me to lay belly down in the snow for that matter.

Hope your weekend was wonderful too.

O

Silk purses

The weather yesterday was absolutely the pits.  It was raining and blowing a freaking gale, at least 35 knots, gusting to ???? which I guess is about 65 km/h (wild guessing here) the wind chill was around 1, which in Canada is lovely, but in Canada we have things like, oh, insulation in the houses and less than 4 meters of single pane glass.  It was freaking COLD in here.

Worse still, my folks, who were supposed to come Wednesday evening, are stuck in the UK and can't come and visit.  We want to see some of this snow, and play in some of the fluffy stuff if it is going to deprive us of our family.  So, despite that yesterday was bloody cold and dreary and we were back to work and school today I am feeling cheerier as we have just booked a hotel in a snowy spot for the weekend.

We're bringing the dog, and we're going to go and do some cold, snowy walking.

Should be very good!

Narcissism

I was sitting around the other day in the atypical peace created by Youngest entrenched in her first passionate read.  Harry Potter book 1 (Bless you J.K. Rowling).  I was listening to Shelagh Rogers interviewing Steve Maich and Lianne George about their new book "The Ego Boom".  I would like to read that book, they talk about the increasingly narcissistic world in which we all live, and related to that, the narcissists we have all become.  

They site facebook and social network sites, such as blogs and twitter as examples of this increase in this behaviour and our move away from communal living.  A place where we can toot our own horns to the weakening of the fabric of our friendships and relations in real time.  There are, no doubt, thousands, nay, tens of thousands of people who use these sites simply as confirmations of who they are.  It's a numbers game and the one with the most friends/followers/readers wins.  There is truth that no one wants to hear the sordid details of your last crap/shag/cup of coffee, but.....if it is well enough written, if it speaks to something that others can relate to, however mundane, people will read it.  There are facebook users who restrict the number of friends they have so that they are actually friends whom they see in the light of day from time to time.  This, I feel, negates their ideas.  Never mind people like me, who are forced to, or have chosen to live far from many of those who are closest to them on a psychological level.

The authors also neglect to look at the very real connections that come out of on-line communities.  Personally, I started the blog out of a desire to not have to reiterate my entire life everytime I wrote someone an e-mail.  RTFB (read the fu*cking blog).  I do direct people to it as well when I get an e-mail asking what we have been up to for the last six months.  Goodness.  Yet one of the interesting things that has happened is that, while my family reads it (HI!!!!)  and some family members, who I otherwise would not know nearly as well (hello out there!!!!) read it, which I count one of the really great bonuses of writting this, very very few of my actual friends read what I post, and of those virtually NONE of them comment.  I've posted about this before and continue to find it somewhat mystifying.  

Then there are the friends made through blogging.  I have met a few people who read here, and whom I read and have been delighted that I did (though it makes the man nervous).  Still, there is a new form of friendship that emerges from these interactions whether you actually meet in person or not.

I seem to have drifted from the original discussion around narcissism, but I think that I haven't.  There is an unspoken reality about blogging and some uses of facebook that dictates that communication must be bi-directional.  There must be, by and large, a web of interaction not a single shining star in the firmament.  That we interrelate with each other as a web of interconnections.

Before this I was listening to Ideas, again on a CBC podcast, and the speaker, Sue Gardner is the executive director of Wikimedia.  (The link is only good for four weeks.)  She was discussing the perceived flaws of our on-line interactions, and she labelled three.  The most compelling of these was the idea that the communities we form on-line are communities of self-reinforcment.  Little crowds of yes men who madly confim our beliefs however odd, misguided or dangerous they may be.  

Her first response to this was that it has been ever thus.  How many university Economics departments allow "crackpot communist" thinkers in.  Read an issue of the Economist one day, and you will find a stunning universality of opinion. They don't even allow bylines for crying out loud.  Just the one communal editorial voice. How many purveyors of the internet and software give real value to the opinions of back-to-the-land ludites or listen to them on a regular and serious basis.  Even our neighbourhoods are increasingly like-minded.  People can predict everything from the stores you will visit to the magazines you will order, from where you will vacation to the sports you will play, from the way you design and decorate your house to the way you will vote, all from your postal code.  What is that if not a self-affirming community.

The opportunity that is provided with the internet is not the creation of these self-affirming communities, that is inevitable in all walks of life, but with the internet we all have the unprecedented opportunity to be privy to the thinking of other.  It has never been easier to sit in on the conversations and to join the forums.  Many do.  We can join a forum of people who believe and are passionate about everything from the weirdest conspiracy theory to the Young Conservatives forum board (is there a difference there?)

Where does this leave me.  I think, based only on the interview, I have to read the book, that the authors of "The Ego Boom" have missed the boat on some of these aspects.  Yes, there is a rise in narcissism.   Yes, there is a rise in the desire of parents and schools to focus on self-esteem (one of their chief criticisms in the interview). Yes, the marketers have glommed onto this (surprise surprise) and now sell us things, not because we will be improved by them, but rather that we deserve them.   There is also an enormous rise in interconnectedness between people that would have been impossible as little as 10 years ago.  As an expat I am reminded of this daily and it is fundamental to my basic happiness.

They have also overlooked the reality of how younger people use these networks, and how they are used outside of the North American framework.  Too narrow a vision.

They have also not taken into account how this vision of the world as interconnected will impact on the thinking of the generation growing up in this new model.   These young people are experiencing on a moment by moment basis a world that is ever increasingly accessible and interconnectable.  They are acquiring skills at filtering information and making connections between information that was previously done for them by the Encyclopedia Britannica or by the editor of their local paper, by an authority. 

 An article in the New York Times discusses how the aging brain is weaker in pure speed and in the ability to cram in and retain facts, but that it appears to be actually stronger in the ability to make connections between facts and to synthesis these facts into new ideas and new processes.  

All well and good, but then this morning I was listening to Quirks and Quarks on CBC again, and they were doing a special show on the 10 biggest unanswered questions in the Universe.  They had a series of, mostly physicists, putting forward their big questions which ranged from the obvious, but clearly valuable, "How did the Universe begin, or rather, did it begin", to the fascinating, "How do Quantum systems relate to the biological world", to the bizarre, "Does time exist".  They discussed dark matter, the dark side, and all the stuff that fills up the bits of the Universe that are not the 4% we can identify.  Then the audience asked some questions.  They ranged from interesting to bland.

At the end of it all a kid came up.  Jake.  He sounded like he was about 13 or so.  His question was, if I may quote rather generally, "OK, so we have all this dark matter and dark side and blah blah blah and blah blah blah (I kid you not, he said that on National radio.  Gotta love a teen), so, how does it all connect to us and to each other?"

Brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  There was a pause as the scientists took it on board and then they invited him to help them figure it out in five years time when he's a little older.

Not only was the kid bright.  Not only was he synthesising the seperate and unrelated questions of the different professionals, but he asked them how they all fit into a system.  How they connected into his world, and into each other's world.  He pointed out the flaw that they put forward by isolating their questions from each other.

They hadn't put that together themselves given the dead airtime pause.

This is something that, according to the neurologists, the aging adult brain is supposed to be good at, this flexible synthesis of ideas, this overview, this ability to look at the big picture and it's connections.  It is not supposed to be as strong in the younger mind.

I think the kid, while bright, is also a product of his time and world; a world that is interconnected in every conceivable way.  A world that looks like a web, where everything shakes if you wiggle one strand.  He wanted to know how it all ties together.  The scientists didn't know, and sounded like they weren't sure they had thought of it that way.

I don't think all is lost in the youth of today.  I do no think they are a roving band of hopeless narcissists.  I think they are actually pretty amazing, and we should hear what they have to say when they call us on these things.  They see the world in ways we don't, due to their access to the internet, to the web, to these tools that connect and interconnect us in ways that were never possible before.  Whatever mainline media and the schools preach at them.

Go for it Jake.  You rule.  

Girona, un cop d'ull

With a friend, we went off to Girona today for a quick overview of the city in crappy weather.  It was PERFECT.  Now we know we have to go back, and we have to give it a complete weekend to get through all we would like to see and do.

At least a weekend.

Then I even had time to come back and have a nap.

Sweet, no?

Thought I'd share some photos.

The first one you may have noticed is the new header photo de moment....another here:

I have talked about the caganers before....scroll down a bit.  These are a more traditional shape, but they aren't usually chocolate.


Below is a mikvah, Jewish ceremonial baths.  There was, once upon a time before the inquisition, a large and thriving Jewish population in much of Spain.  First they were forced into ghettos, called Calls in Spanish, and then they eventually fled, died or converted.  Old Mikvahs are being found in Catalonia, and I assume elsewhere in Spain, though I don't know that for a fact.  This is one we saw in Girona.  Well, the remains of one.

The Catholic Bishop liked to feel his presence was acknowledged.  This is the side door.

This little lovely was showing the wind direction near the Cathedral.

The view of the river.

Funky house, no?

Part of the Arab baths, which were never used by Arabs, but were rather built in the 11th Century when they were fashionable, and then rebuilt in the 13th. Finally used by a group of monks as a kitchen/laundry area....

Girona is lovely.  Well worth the visit, and indeed, well worth our return visit.

I love stone.

Hope you liked the tour!

Visited Vic

We went off on a little day trip to Vic the other day.  That was delightful and easy too!

What I liked best about it?  When I spoke to people in Catalan, they RESPONDED IN CATALAN!!!

*GASP*

I am becoming such a nationalist, but honestly.  Everyone spoke Catalan, and everyone continued to speak Catalan, whatever my accent.  It was so lovely.

Vic.

It was clean.  It is and obviously was rich.  Lots and lots of churches.  Big churches.  Old churches.

The Cathedral in Vic was amazing.  It is enormous and is filled with these astonishing paintings.  I am not sure I LOVED the paintings themselves, but I loved their impact.  Astonishingly, these were done in the 40s but a Catalan painter Josep Maria Sert.  This is after the civil war within Catalonia (well, and the rest of Spain too). Where'd they get the cash????  How the heck did they score a Catalan painter?????? A story I'd love to hear.

There were small and beautiful details,

and big, but very lofty details,

These tumbled-down dumps appeared to belong the the cathedral, which seemed a little weird.  They were the housing originally built for the pilgrims who came.  Hopefully it was in better shape at that time.  Hopefully they aren't still in use.

I like this shot, not because it is gorgeous, but because it covers 2000 odd years.  The pillars in the front are from the Roman temple that was built, oh, 2,000 years ago...the grey stones are a medieval castle that entirely covered and hid the temple, behind that are modern flats with laundry and an asbestos roof!

Think we should do this on our place?

Vic.

Reading passionately

Youngest is reading, what I think, is the first book she can. not. put. down.

LOVE that.

Harry Potter, book 1....bought it for her (in English) two days ago around 1 pm, and by 9pm she was half way through already......

Magic when you get grabbed by a book like that.

Glad I bought book 2 as well since she finished 1 last night.

Then I got book 3 today!

Two dogs, one dinner.

Um....can we talk?

Look what she's doing!  That's MY dinner!

Ah ha!  She's gone....

Hold on there buster....I just left for a moment.....that was mine!

C'mon, give me some, m'kay?

Hehehehehehhhhhh
Silly schmuck....
Now it's allllll mine!

Mmmm.  That's much better.  *urp*

Now it's time for a nap, no?

No.

Who me?  Would I do something like that?

Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.

Look at what I got!!!

We went off this morning to get basketball shoes for youngest, and to go and be proper tourists in one of the local towns.....there was quite a cool museum there, we saw some neolithic tools that were found near where we live...and got the shoes for Youngest, and I got these:

Those would be red Doc Martens....I love them.

The dogs seem to as well, I cannot get a photo of them without a dog in it.  I actually had to take about 15 photos as they kept playing in the middle of it all.

Love 'em....

EEEeeeekkkkk! Say WHAT!?!?!?

Mona Lisa has a face....that is good.  It is also the easiest part of the puzzle, the rest is shades of black and brown and green......la la la la la la.

Babysat another dog for the day....a hilarious series of photos...for tomorrow as I ended up chatting with Nomad for an hour or more and so I am online quite late and quite tired...totally worth it.

Picnic lunch in the mountains.  What a glorious day.  Got out of the HOWLING wind and it was lovely.  I am even a little sunburnt and I was wearing sunscreen!

We were sitting around chatting last night and ended up checking our heart rates.  The man, who is a lifelong athlete and is training for a marathon, has a resting heart rate of about 45.  That is off the scale low for athletic 18 year olds.  The man is a wee bit older.  I checked mine and was alarmed to discover it was 80!  Granted that was not a resting rate as I was taking it at the end of the day, not first thing in the morning.  80 is in my age group, indeed in nearly all age groups, "below average".  The only thing left on the scale below it is labelled something like "nearly dead, write your will".  My heart rate probably accelerated when I read this. I also debated laying the blame fully on the first set of architects.  If I work at it a while I can probably blame them for everything from ingrown toenails through global climactic disaster....but, maybe that wouldn't be quite fair.

I get some exercise, walking the dogs in the hills for between an hour and two and a half hours a day depending on my class load.....so I was alarmed.

Took it again this first thing this morning.   Twice.

64.     Both times.

64 is officially "good"

Good is good, I think.

Good.

I still walked vigorously up the hills though....