Flat post, flattened blogger

"Dante has a place in hell for people who are grave when they might have rejoiced."

Marilynne Robinson.

Something I could bear remembering.


On another note, I am recovering though still feeling rather flattened.

I have also been speaking to the Catalan Ministry of Education about the English classes that Eldest has to do....the very nice lady at the ministry is going to talk to her school to find a solution to the boring classes within the letter of the law.

We'll see what happens.

Feeling very nauseous

Snow's a melting!

Hope I'm feeling better tomorrow.  

Blech.

We interrupt our regular programming to say....

We got a Snow DAY!!!!!!!


Remember the excitement of snow days?  No work?  No school?  Running around in the lovely white fluffy stuff?


Most of you probably remember this all too well and recently, but we haven't had a snow day in over seven years, and as I worked at home, probably over fourteen!


WOOOOOOOTTTT!!!!!!!


SEE:

Just got a text message....snow day tomorrow too!!!!!!




......later.......sounds of breaking trees.




........later still.........someone has to tell the weather clerk, there shouldn't be thunder with a snowstorm.  Someone is doing it wrong.

The man...

ran the Barcelona Marathon today.

He didn't shave his head and he didn't hurt himself in any permanent kind of way, and he finished with a respectable time.

I am quite happy myself and he seems reasonably content in a travelling ache/pain kind of way......

We watched lots and lots of people go by, over and over and over again, as we jumped on and off the subway over and over to cheer them on.

We never once saw the man without him seeing us first and calling out to us.

It was actually quite a lot of fun cheering people on, it was actually quite great because they had people's names printed in large letters on their numbers so you could cheer them on by name.....great fun!

We did get up WAY too early for a Sunday morning, and though I didn't run 42.195 kilometers I did stand and run and jump with a heavy knapsack for seven hours and it was cold.... it is time for a shower and a nap.....

We were calling the front runners the Kenyans out of definition, and then I checked the race results.  They were Kenyans, with a couple of 'others' tucked in.  They were a whole different race, they just happened to be on the same course, these guys were F.A.S.T.  The world record, from 2008 (according to Wiki) is 2:03:59.  The winner here today ran in 2:07:something fast.  These boys were MOVING!

Look:

and here...no fancy 100 Euro shirts or 65 Euro leg squeezing socks.  Runners, regular socks, loose shorts and a singlet.

then the carnage at the finish:

Hats off ladies and gents....hats off.

runners

We were in Barcelona today and there were super fit fast looking folks everywhere.  You see, tomorrow is the Barcelona marathon, and while it does not draw as many runners as the New York or Boston marathon, it was still apparent that something was up.


Some folks looked sturdy, some very very small and very very fast.  Some looked happy, most at ease.


There were a lot of them.


What I want to know though is this.


Why do serious runners, the men that is, all have to have their hair shaved off to nearly military lengths.  Indeed, possibly shorter.  Some of those guys would make moss look wildly extravagant.  


I don't get it.  


You don't see women doing it.  Swimmers tend to shave their heads, but the friction and resistance issue is exponentially different in water.  Bicyclists do their legs, which may make them feel fast but which I always assumed had to do with getting cleaned up from road rash.


Runners rarely get road rash on the tops of their heads.


Is it some kind of macho runner thing?


Anyone?


Weirdness.

passwords

We all have far too many passwords to remember, goes without saying.

Then there are the irritating sites that require high security passwords for uses that are clearly not of high security for us individually, for example twitter vs. your bank.  REALLY!  I know twitter gets hacked a lot and it is a big fat hassle for them, but honestly, they're more uptight that the banks!!!!

Due to a recent massive virus attack at work I have been forced to update the passwords I have everywhere and I have also been forced to increased their security.

This has tipped me over the balance of password happiness.   Isn't that precious of me?

 I have been gradually increasing their security, as the IT types want us all to do.  No longer the simply easily remembered word. Back in the good old days we could use our kid's middle name and be done with the beast.  No,  I moved onto longer words; you know, middle name of both kids put together in chronological order; then onto longer words with associated numbers. Then you move to increasingly difficult to guess items.  Kids are out now, you've got to go with an anagram of the name of the salesman that sold you your second car or something equally stellar.

 Now I have added capitals and non-numeric, non-alphabetic symbols as well.  This proved extra challenging as I have to use the same passwords on both Spanish and English keyboards and some keys are easy to locate on one board, but hidden or unclear on another.  Finding one that had both some logic and was easily locatable on both boards took some time.  My personal favourite, and I wonder who dreamed this up is the dash/bottom of the line line, you know, these: - or _ .  HOW can I remember which is which on the keyboard????

I just went to log into facebook and decided it wasn't worth the hassle of typing in the password.  The stupid thing is enormous and there are so many keystrokes.  There must be a better system, no?

I went to change the password on my stat counter site and they didn't accept my non-numeric, non-alphabetic symbol of choice.  I had to invent a separate password for that site alone, a sure guarantee that I will never be able to get in again without going through the entire 'I've lost my password' e-mail saga.....

I have heard of people that have used complex formulas based on the date and page numbers of books they are reading at that time.  Pity those who work in industries where they have to change the password on a weekly basis.

Or, the rotating password horror.  People who have a stable of passwords that they spin around and around as the weeks pass, sort of a modern day pony express.  The poor ponies gradually working their way across the continents or shuttling back and forth eternally between the same few changing stations.

Sometimes I think that virus writers are actually the marketing departments of anti-virus software companies, no?  Either that or they are mad scientists trying to bring about the end of civilisation as we know it by creating the simultaneous melt down of all computer literate people caused by the crashing of our neurological systems under a weight of unrememberable passwords.


BWAH HAH HAH HAH HAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mammography

A friend came back from getting squished and was telling me about it.

She put the palms of her two hands laterally across the front of her cr*tch and pushed them together while growling out, "If it were men, they'd find another way."

True, no?

Cheek

I have a perpetual and chronic problem here with people asking me at the most inappropriate and unprofessional times if I could teach their kids/themselves English outside of where I work, cause it would cost less, or cause they don't like my workplace (where I am really very happy).

First.  I work there, so if you don't like it, what are you saying?

Second, pay me what you'd pay them, no?

Third, do you think I adore you/your kids so very very much that I would want to break my contract and jeopardise my job for them?  I barely know you!

The ones that really bite me are the folks who ask me when I am asking them for professional work, like yesterday's architect.

The ones I really get a good hate on for though are people who basically ignore me completely, sometimes quite rudely and then ask.   Two different mothers on Youngest's basketball team who never. speak. to. me.  -which is quite impressively rude in a small town- and then have the unmitigated cojones to ask me to teach their kids.  After I say no, they go back to the silent treatment.

Cows.  Wasn't that polite?  May they someday be immigrants in another place and folks treat them that way.

The best story though?  The very best?  A co-teacher was at the gynocologists.  Yup, feet up in the stirrups.  The doctor looks up from, well, from what she was doing and opens that conversation, "You teach English don't you?  Could you help my daughter......."

Architects!

My architect and the municipal architect and I all met up this morning.  Seems to have gone well, we have a timeline for submitting papers and all that.  He was happy.  I think that is good.

Met with the bank's architect after that, 3 architects in 1 hour, has to be a record of some sort.  He had to do a brief review of the house.  As we went in he asked me, and I was ready to murder him, about English lessons for his daughter.  I am so utterly sick of people asking me to do English lessons for their kids.  Phone the freaking school!  No I have no burning desire to teach your kids outside of my contract.

He pulled it out of the fire though by mentioning the school himself, maybe he saw the look in my eye.

I made it clear that I cannot do it outside of my contract, and thank god for that.

Could have killed him.

Anyway, progress seems to be in place, albeit slowly.

Plates still spinning above me, I haven't dropped too many yet.

Cheers,

O

Kindness.

I was back to feeling a mite jaded again this weekend after a number of kind of unpleasant little irritants, all on the same theme.

I think I don't want to go into it all, cause it isn't really what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is not all the million mosquitos of irritation are soaring around my head, but rather how wonderful my walk in the mountains was today.

It was warm, it was sunny, it was beautiful.  The almond trees are in bloom and so are the cherries.  There is nothing that is beautiful in quite the same way.  I found my first asparagus of the season and I was in heaven.  They are so very very good.  I ate it raw and right after I picked it. Yum.

Heaven.

I threw pinecones for the dog who was utterly ecstatic.  It is very hard to be grumpy when the mutt is so utterly happy.  I found a second asparagus.

Then I saw a man climbing up the hill towards me.  In his hands he had a big bunch of asparagus and a second smaller bunch.  I laughingly exclaimed over his luck and noted my pathetic tally of two.  Guess what.  He gave me the smaller bunch of them.  I don't think he can know how much that meant to me.  A gift of delicious fresh food, rare and the first days they are up.  Honestly though.  Restored my faith utterly.

In men anyway.

A simple act of kindness.  It is so cliched now, but sometimes.... sometimes..... it really can make such a difference.  I went through the rest of my day and into this evening a much happier and kinder person.  Much.

and, tomorrow morning, truita d'esparac!