Status Update

I know most readers of this blog (all 3 of you) were getting a little concerned that nothing had leaked in the flat for the last couple of weeks.  Well rest easy.  The toilet up and decided to leak all over the bathroom floor tonight.  The worst part is I don't know whether the water is fresh or waste.

I take that back.  The worst part is that my incompetent landlords notified me yesterday that they are no longer my landlords, and gave me the name and number of the guy who now is (that was a happy introduction on the phone this evening--"Hi, I'm your new tenant.  My toilet exploded"), plus it's currently Saturday evening, plus Monday is a holiday.  I guess that's three things that all combine to be "the worst part."  The final kick in the teeth is that I already used that Hulk picture.  Man, wish I had held that in reserve a bit...

Cambridge and Chicken Pox

We went up to see Nate, Claudia, and Sofia up in Cambridge over Thanksgiving weekend.  We couldn't actually leave until Thursday night because I have a job that generally expects me to make an appearance every once and again, but made up for it by staying all the way until Tuesday because it was cheaper to do so.  Guess I only care about work when it's convenient for me to do so (ha ha, that is clearly a joke).

We always love visiting the old 'hood up there and seeing family--and the fact that we have to periodically leave the country for visa reasons doesn't hurt either.  We also managed to get loads of baby stuff bought up there, because Spain isn't the best place to do that as it turns out, so there's about 50 more things to cross off our list.  Unfortunately, Sofia had some sort of bug, which I caught while being the Best Uncle Ever and helping to clean up vomit.  My Thanksgiving dinner consisted of hiding in the bedroom to avoid having to smell food, and--later on--I ate some crackers, washed down with ginger beer.  I am thankful for: Saltines.

Anyways, whole reason I'm posting this is to post this photo of Sofia looking sick.  It also turns out that she has the chicken pox, which sucks.

PS I'm fine now thanks for asking.

Pride goeth before the fall

Or in this case, before the leak. Although it may very well be the fall of the bathroom ceiling if I can't get this fixed.

I was feeling rather cocky this weekend and even went so far as to boldly proclaim aloud that the flat had gone several days drip-free. The universe has seen fit to correct me on this matter. Sunday evening at about 10:30 pm the bathroom ceiling started leaking again, and continued to do so all through the night. Whatever our neighbours are doing up there, they seem to just be doing more of it. I know there's water building up up there and I can only hope their landlord gets them to shut off the water before I lose my bathroom. My landlord has assured me this message has been conveyed. Honestly it sounds like they've built a jacuzzi up there. There's constantly water running and swishing around. The icing on the cake is that the bathroom sink and hall radiator have begun leaking, just for kicks. It just makes me so angry. And you wouldn't like to see me angry....

Baby Stuff

There have been a few people asking about baby stuff-- colors, gender, etc. This is my attempt at answering some of those questions. Whatever colors you see in this photo are our baby colors as this comprises our entire collection of baby room stuff so far except for a white crib. In Andrew's post he put a link to pictures of the flat and this photo is in that collection, but I figured it might be easier if I just singled it out and explained it a bit. Basically the decorating scheme is "things that have history or meaning for me or that I just think are beautiful".

The painting in the photo is one that I did that really has no other place in the apartment so I figured it was gender-neutral enough to go in baby room. The rug on the back of the couch is a little hook rug that a woman in Bulgaria made and gave me for when my baby learns to crawl. It has way too much meaning for me to let baby drool on but I have carried it with me and waited for many years to use in a baby room so here it is. Notice there are pink and blue roses in it-- it's not a hint at gender. We still don't know baby's gender and hope to keep it that way for a couple more months.

The Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals were given to me by a very generous ex-boyfriend of sorts. The story behind them is funny, but not one I want to repeat here, and so I have held on to them until the day I could use them for something other than taking up storage space. The actual Pooh-bear is one I bought with Holly in Minnesota this summer and so it has happy memories associated with it. I couldn't find the original bear the ex gave me and so Holly was kind and patient enough to search through a few stores with me until we could find a Classic Pooh.

There are a few more personal things that I would love to add to baby room, but I don't have them here. One is a quilt I made while dating Andrew. It's just a little throw quilt made of strips of solid color fabircs in varying widths. Nothing special, but I remember making it one weekend when we had first started dating and I've always liked it. Right now it's sitting in a trunk in Andrew's room in Utah so I'm hoping I can talk his mom into bringing it over when she comes out. The other thing I'd like to have in baby room is unfortunately in our storage unit-- at least that's what I'm hoping. It's a Mary Engelbright pillow with a quote from The Little Prince on it. That book was a big part of Andrew and my relationship when we first started dating and so I'd love to have that reminder in baby room. And Mary Engelbright was something that I picked up from my friendship with Holly, another one of the great friends of my life.

I have also been creating sketches for a painting bearing a quote from John Keats that I would like to make for the baby room. It will probably be a light yellow background with some bright blue butterflies and flowers surrounding the script. I found the quote in the forward to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-- not exactly the book to find baby room quotes in-- but it was something I wanted to be reminded of often as I spend time with baby. I'll post the quote below.

So there it is, baby room. Oh, there is a blue knit blanket on the couch, but it's not a gender hint. I swear we don't know anything other than that baby looks like Who from Whoville ( I think some people feel like we know but just aren't telling). I've had one dream it was a boy, one it was a girl. The blanket was just a very beautiful shade of blue and very plain and simple and because I love beautiful things I snatched it up.

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning,

These, these will give the world another heart

And other pulses: hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings?

-John Keats in a letter to a friend, 1816

Moving

Andrew here.  I'm finally getting around to posting about the move we got to endure last month.  Most of the trauma has faded by now, fortunately, but with it many of the details as well.  So I'll do my best to remember what I can.  Please enjoy it in all its painful glory.  These pics here are from the night before we moved.  Please note Cat really getting in on the action.  She was a really, really, really big help.

Without delving too much into what went into actually finding the flat, we ultimately decided on a place right down the street from my office, which literally cut my commute in half (10 minutes on foot, down to 5)!  So that was nice.  The idea was to sign the lease a few days before the beginning of October, and the landlord would let us start the move but not charge us for those few days.  In theory this should have worked great.  The problems were not forseen, but were myriad.

First of all, the flat was brand new.  As in, water had never even run through the pipes, the boiler had never been used, ditto the radiators, the gas had never been turned on, no phone ever installed, and no juice had ever run through the wiring.  I showed up to the flat the day before we were going to move the bulk of our things to let the cleaning lady in, as well as the guy to hook up the electricity.  Neither of these people showed up.  Water was also supposed to be turned on the the day before, but no dice.  Nevermind gas and phone.  So I swept out one of the rooms (what was ulitmately to become the baby/guest room) so we could pile all our stuff in it and not have to reschedule the moving van.  But to make matters worse, as I walked through the flat to check everything out I noticed the bathroom smelled a little musty.  I opened the window to let it air out and felt something drip on my arm, and realised there was a nice, steady drip in the ceiling, running down the wall, mirror, all over the floor, etc.  This was just the first of many, many leaks.  I couldn't get hold of anyone that day to come and fix it, so I figured it would have to wait until Monday.  In theory everything else (except phone) was supposed to be hooked up at the end of the weekend, so at this point I wasn't TOO worried about everything going as planned.  How naive of me.  (Oh yeah, I had also brought over a couple of crates of most of our refrigerated goods to put in the fridge, which obviously wasn't going to happen since we still had no electricity, so I had to take them all over to the office and dump them in the fridge in the kitchen.  So classy).

The move itself went pretty well.  I hired a van and a couple of guys to help me manage the stuff.  We had very little furniture, as we were moving from a furnished flat, but there was no way I was going to carry all of our stuff up and down all 81 stairs by myself.  All told it took about 2 hours to load and unload the van, and this took care of most of our stuff.  This was the ONLY thing that went smoothly in the whole ordeal.  Unfortunately, since the flat wasn't exactly ready to move in we still had to leave a substantial amount of stuff in the old place so we could continue to live there.  So while most of the stuff was already moved, for the next 4 days I still took a minimum of two loads of junk, as it became available, from the old flat to the new one, either hauling it on a dolly or carrying it on my back like a hobo.  Jumping ahead several days, our very last load consisted of mostly cleaning supplies that I was hauling on the trolly.  Marie pointed out that I looked like a cleaning hobo, but not a stabbing hobo, which in turn prompeted me to begin singing "just can't beat the hobo liiiiife.....cleanin' stuff with my hooobooo wiiiiiiiiiife."  Those unfamiliar with The Simpsons will probably be more confused--but only slightly less entertained--than those who get the reference.  Anyways, I was mighty sick of all those stupid stairs.  Very glad to now just be on the 1st floor...and have a lift as well.

Over the next several days, I spent many an hour struggling to get the boiler and radiators connected and working, getting the water turned on, the lady's tub upstairs fixed, and getting someone in to clean as was promised.  The latter was pretty much a joke, which I immediately knew was going to be the case when she showed up empty-handed and asked where my cleaning supplies were.  Nothing happened without a minimum of 3 phone calls, often in Spanish, and several trips to the flat.  I was constantly dropping everything at work and running over on a moment's notice because someone was showing up immediately and I needed to be there to let them in.

After finally getting all the utilities turned on several days late, we were finally ready to go to IKEA and spend a whole lot of money.  Seriously.  Over the past month, I personally have kept IKEA from feeling the effects of the economic downturn, and I now live in the 2009 catalogue.  The night we purchased the bulk of the items I cheaped out at the last minute.  After paying several, several hundreds of Euros, when paying for shipping I opted to NOT pay the final 12 Euros that would require them to move the stuff all the way up to the flat, instead of just leaving it at the bottom of the building.  The couch fit in the lift with literally a centimetre to spare on the top, as I put it on its end and pushed it in.  I told myself I was ridiculous for doing something like that, but the next week when we went back and bought another wave of stuff, I did the same thing again.  On the other hand I saved a total of 24 Euros, and am now a rippling mass of knotted muscle.  At least my back is.  It was full of knots anyway.  Pretty much the same thing.

We moved in for good the day after the first IKEA trip (also a couple of days later than we had planned, but my old landlord was good enough to not charge me for the time).  Without going into details, the bed we were planning on buying turned out to not be a bed at all, so we just had a mattress sitting on the floor.  "Mattress" might be giving it too much credit, too.  We finally found a frame to fit our mattress (the frame is fixed and doesn't collapse, although for some reason you have to buy the frame and the legs separately...), but at a department store on the other side of town.  It wouldn't fit in a taxi or any other conventional means of transportation...so naturally, I thought to myself "why not just take this puppy on the metro?"  I'm going to assume that most readers of this blog have all had the pleasure of carrying a bed halfway across Barcelona on the subway system, so I'm sure I don't need to explain to you the perils involved in such a task.  Long story short....I was extremely lucky and will never ever do anything that stupid again.  Actually I also carried a cabinet from that same store on the metro the following week that was even heavier than the bed and gave me a heart-attack (Nate and Claudia know about my heart-attacks), but other than THAT I'll never do anything so stupid again.

About a day after moving in, we somehow managed to flood the basement in our building by simply using water like normal, because something wasn't connected right in the first place.  That was finally fixed, and was probably the largest leak in a pantheon of leaks that has included, to date:  a leaky ceiling, a flooded basement, two leaky sinks, a leaky radiator, and a leaky boiler (twice).  Oh, and Marie reminds me that the first time we turned on the washer it flooded the kitchen floor.  Of these, all have been reparied except for the radiator (just when I think I've gotten it as tight as it can go, I turn the radiators on and it starts leaking again) and one big Mystery Leak.  We noticed a few weeks ago that the kitchen floor looks water-damaged, whereas it hadn't appeared so in the past.  Best I can figure is that the tub--on the other side of the wall--wasn't properly sealed and now when we shower, water is getting in and coming up through the kitchen floor.  I would just seal it in myself, but the landlord prefers to have the Hungarian handyman take care of it.  This is the guy who, when we discovered one of the leaky sinks, shrugged and said (in English) "Made in Spain.  Eh?"  Needless to say, I have nothing but confidence in Kiril's abilities.

I'm not even scratching the surface on how difficult it was to get the phone connected.  Despite the fact that the whole flat has been wired for telephone, and that the technician could clearly see how everyone else in the building has had their phone connected, his little magic wand wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear and I ultimately just told him to drill a hole in the wall (Spanish-style) and do whatever it takes to give me telephone.  I'm simplifying somewhat, as the whole process took over 2 weeks.  But hopefully you get the idea.  Now we have at least 4 phone outlets throughout the flat that are completely useless.  Kiril (Hungarian Handyman) looked at them and told me he had never seen anything like it.  I have, of course, since it's how EVERY HOME, APARTMENT, AND OFFICE is wired in the US.  Oh well.  I now have a phone and wireless router sitting on the floor beside the couch where he drilled the hole, but at least I also have DSL again.

Well, congratulations for anyone who made it this far.  I did not proof read either, which may or may not be apparent.  As a reward for reading the whole thing, please enjoy this collection of pics from the new flat.

Random Silliness

If this city had a Chinatown, our neighborhood would be it. We live in the midst of the cheap garment district where every shop sells poor quality knock-off clothing for 2 or 3 Euros a piece, if you buy 300 of them. G-STAR is a Dutch jeans and clothing company that is fairly popular in Europe. I saw a men's t-shirt down the street the other day with a G-STBR logo on it. It made me laugh, but the one that I found really entertaining is a little boy's shirt in another shop. It's a little boy's rugby style t-shirt with three words appliqued on it in different fonts. Across the top is the word "blithesome"; in the middle, in big bold letters is "GAIETY"; and along the bottom in a smaller print we find "calculated". Just thought I'd share.

Because You Asked

I know, I know, I know. Our blog has been a wasteland for almost four months now. Should I bother with excuses? I could ramble off a few but then I'd turn this into a long post that I would never actually finish, like the post I'm writing in response to Michelle's tag. I've been working on it for a week or two.

To be honest, I'm a bit flattered that anyone even cares even though I know how excited I get to read new things on other peoples' blogs. That said, I can understand how annoying ours is. Is it considered bad blog etiquette to read through your friends' blogs every day and then offer nothing on your own blog in return? If so, I am soooo rude.

I have received a few requests for pictures of "the bump" and so Andrew and I went to the park on Sunday and made an effort at filling that request. Unfortunately, I feel like my body is growing more than one bump. For some reason my behind and other less mentionable body parts seemed to want to get in on the growing action and have started competing with the baby bump. This kind of dampens my enthusiasm for posting bump pictures, but since anyone that actually reads this blog has probably seen me in worse states than the one I'm in right now, I will trust in your friendship and post. This is the moment my love for you overrides my vanity. Enjoy. I can't say it will happen often. Oh, this is at 30 weeks.

A Disturbing Sunday

I have much bigger things to blog about-- our trip to Tarragona, our trip to Zurich, our hotel in Zurich, the San Juan holiday, my pregnancy-- but stupid little things like a bird flying into our apartment or our slightly disturbing Sunday seem much more interesting to write about. I'll get to the other stuff later because I know you're waiting with bated breath for those posts.

This Sunday started out like any other Sunday, with our morning sprint to the Metro stop to catch a train to church. There is nothing worse than getting to the Metro and realizing you missed the train by ten seconds and then see that the next train isn't coming for seven minutes. Our ward takes the Sacrament very seriously so if you're not in those doors by the time the Sacrament song starts going, there are men guarding and holding the doors closed to keep you out. And those doors don't open until after the passing is done. No mercy for those in the foyer who just missed their train by ten seconds. Those people are out of luck and might as well go home because they don't understand anything that's said in the meeting after the Sacrament is passed anyways.

And so we walk very very quickly to the Metro stop every Sunday morning. Running would cause a sweat so we keep it to a shin-splint inducing fast walk. This Sunday morning we got to the turnstile and saw that there was a train there right then. Andrew got through and hopped on that train while I tried to follow. Somewhere in the process of pushing through those obnoxious little turning bars, my dress got caught and pulled them back, locking me in with the hem of my dress wrapped around the end of one of the bars. I had to scream for Andrew and then try to figure out how to get myself free. Eventually I was able to loosen the dress and then hop the bars. I think the train conductor must have heard me because the train actually did wait. Unfortunately during the whole ordeal, the bar had jammed my thigh between its end and the side of the machine. I felt quite injured and had to hobble onto the train where I sat and fanned myself to keep the tears of pain from forming.

After I got on the train, Andrew pointed out that it looked like I had just hopped the turnstile without paying which just made me feel guilty on top of my overwhelming embarrassment and throbbing pain. I almost posted a picture of the bruise I got but it looks so minor compared to how much it hurt-- and that would require posting a picture of my fat white thigh. Even a day later as I walked to the gym I could feel my whole thigh throb with every step.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful until we decided to take a walk in Parc de la Ciutadella. It's a beautiful park that is about a three minute walk from our flat. There's a gorgeous fountain there, the zoo, several lanes you can stroll through, and a little lake you can take a rowboat out on. See the above photo. As we were walking by the pretty little lake, it was hard not to feel calm and relaxed and just very peaceful. That is until you looked down and noticed that the seagull that seemed to be swimming peacefully in the lake was actually gnawing on the end of a torn-off wing of some other bird. It just seemed so incongruous with the whole scene and was therefor all the more horrifying.

The rest of the day was pretty boring. We watched Nadal and Federer and ate popcorn and apples, but wasn't that post so much more interesting than a rundown of a weekend trip?

Swallow vs. Cat

In the mornings I usually wake up, eat, read, have cuddle time with Cat, and then head to the gym. This morning I had an appointment with a doctor so I hurried out the door and went to the gym afterwards. Before leaving the apartment I close all our windows -which are actually doors- on the off chance that someone gets brave and decides to try to break into our sixth story flat by coming over the edge of the roof or jumping from a neighboring building. I don't put many tactics past the thieves we live amongst. This morning was no different in that respect.

Four hours later I came home and was greeted by a very chatty and needy Cat. She is usually that way if Andrew comes home for lunch and I miss him or something. For some reason she feels the need to tell me about it. It didn't look like he'd been home today and the only thing different about the place was a little kitty hairball under the desk. She doesn't usually get so excited about those though. I just gave her some treats and attention before getting a few other things done.

As I was about to make a sandwich, I heard a light banging noise in our spare bedroom. Cat was already there looking in the room waiting for me to figure out what it was. She already knew. There, hanging between the door and its curtain, was a rather exhausted and frightened swallow. I panicked at first and closed the door, trying to shoo Cat away while I figured out what to do. Her attitude seemed to be a bit of an I-told-you-so one, which is better than the just-let-me-take-care-of-that-for-you one I was afraid she'd have. After mixing a few cuss words in with prayers I was saying for the bird, I went back in and opened the window. It headed for the opposite wall a few times and seemed determined to smash its way through the plaster to freedom. Eventually I was able to get it to turn around and take the less damaging route to freedom through the open window.

I can't figure out how it got in here other than flying in during the night last night. We sleep with all the windows open because of the heat (burglars here usually don't come in while you're home). The funny thing is that I slept in the spare bedroom last night. I had gone out for a girl's movie night and had been brave enough to order a Diet Coke at 10pm. Usually any caffeine after 3pm keeps me up all night. That is still the case. At about 5am, I wandered into the spare room to read without waking Andrew up. I have no idea if the poor bird was buzzing me all night because once I was asleep I was out. It could have built a nest in my hair and I doubt I would have woken up.

I am so proud of Cat, though, for not attacking it the whole time I was out this morning. I didn't see any blood or even any feathers missing on the poor thing. I think Cat was just in shock after having spent so many days hoping one of the pidgeons that land in our porthole window in the bedroom would come in and "play" with her. Or maybe she's learned that playing with birds generally ends in me prying her jaws open to let them fly away and then crying if they don't. Either way, I'm proud of her but that's the last time I blog about my cat. Not a crazy cat lady yet.

This One's for You, Amanda

A couple weekends ago we had the opportunity to use our guest room to its full potential. Amanda's friend Jenny and Jenny's husband Justin stayed with us for a bit. They're musicians and were about to embark on one of their many world tours. Before the tour started they decided to stop in Barcelona for a bit and then take a cruise around the Mediterranean. We managed to talk them into staying with us and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

They stayed with us just one night before they left on their cruise and then crashed here a couple more nights after they got back. The first weekend they were here we went out and wandered around the old city for a bit. We took this picture in Placa Felip Neri. If you look just behind me you can see a lot of pock marks on the wall. Apparently during the Spanish Civil War this placa was where many insurgents were executed, hence all the bullet holes. Not a happy thought but it is still a very beautiful little placa. We couldn't help but wonder who made the holes that were ten or twelve feet off the ground. The placa isn't that big so the shooters couldn't have been aiming from too far away and Catalans are certainly not known for their height.

I just thought Amanda might enjoy seeing actual proof that we all met up and had a bit of fun. I should say that Jenny and Justin are both just fabulous. Jenny recently got a job in the Army orchestra and will be going to boot camp in the fall. I don't think Andrew and I ever got over that. We kept bringing it up at random moments during their stay-- walking through Metro transfers, sitting in our living room, whenever the awe struck us. Full on boot camp! She'll be the toughest d*** viola player you've ever seen when she's done.

Fun with Mary Kay

It's been a busy week so I'm a little late in getting this on the blog. My friend Holly, who most anyone who actually knows me and reads this blog would know, sells Mary Kay products. She hasn't been doing so much selling of the products lately and so to jumpstart things again she is having a contest. It's fairly easy and hopefully I can explain it well enough.

How it works is you just have to visit her blog (follow this link) and scroll down to her post about the contest. If you just leave a comment on that post then you're entered into the contest. She is giving away $100 of Mary Kay products of your choice to the winner. The contest is only open from June 9th to the 16th so you have to act fast. If you mention that you came over from my blog then I get $25 in free Mary Kay products. So that's pretty simple.

Holly said that Mary Kay has come out with some new products that look really good. I'm a big fan of their waterproof concealer. I carry one in my purse always, one in my makeup bag and I have another backup tube in a storage drawer. I'd tried to stray from it and bought some Laura Mercier concealer and ended up taking it back because it just didn't seem to work as well as the Mary Kay. Good luck to anyone who enters!

Intimidation

The other weekend all the museums in Barcelona were open until 1am and free. Andrew, being the museum and free stuff enthusiast that we all know him to be, managed to drag me out to take advantage of the weekend. We tried the Picasso Museum, a must for anyone who comes here, but the line was down the whole block and we figured that while it's a must for anyone who visits, it's not a must for anyone who lives on the next street over and can pop over at any time that there isn't a line full of visitors. So we decided to head to the Museum of the History of the City instead.

On our way there we had to cross Via Laietana, a fairly major road in our neighborhood. Right as we were about to do so we noticed a few armored police vans pulling up and blocking off one of the roads. We might have been able to ignore that but then more and more vans pulled up and more and more policemen in full riot gear hopped out of them and lined up blocking the street. You can't ignore the potential for excitement there so we decided to hang around and see what was going down.

I called this post "Intimidation" because that seems to be the first impression policemen here go for. None of this Officer Friendly coming in to the schools to talk about how drugs are bad and policemen are your friends and are here to keep you safe. In Europe it's been my experience that policemen are here to make you feel like if you step out of line the kaibash will be brought down on you, swiftly and without mercy. Even if you're marching in a demonstration against facism, which is apparently what called them out in force (and riot gear). The funny thing was, they were just guarding this one side of the street, and not the other side that leads to where we live. Guess you can demonstrate against facists only in areas zoned for such. But we never got to see any heads knocked together, to Andrew's great disappointment.

Oh, the history of the city museum was interesting, but probably only because we live here and it was interesting to see how the city has evolved. Some remarkably well-preserved Roman ruins, though.

The rain in Spain...

...falls mainly on the weekends. In the mountains. When I'm trying to climb.

I was ultimately able to get a few climbs in after the weather cleared up somewhat, but friction-climbing on slippery granite was a very educational experience. The pics were taken from about 2/3rds up the face. As beautiful as this is, it's still not the nicest place I've been climbing here. That's the sea in the distance. The last pic is me, from a couple of trips ago. Next time Marie comes we'll get a pic of her too.

The Epic Voyage

This summer the Benson family is planning another great Bear Salt Lake getaway and so Andrew and I are heading home to join in the fun. It will actually be pretty exciting because the entire family will be there. This hasn't happened in quite a while, at least not since two, or three, or four more members were added to the clan.

There was talk of not letting the Bensons get all the fun and trying to sneak a Petersen family get-together in this trip, too. So Andrew and I went ahead and hopefully got the ball rolling by booking our tickets. Finally. It has been quite the task getting that done.

I thought it might be easier if we just posted an outline of our plans here so that anyone who was involved in them could have a place to refer to, but then something made me feel not so easy about putting all those details in a public place. So I will email everyone a more detailed timetable, but the gist of it is that both Andrew and I will head to Baltimore to visit with my side of the family for a few days. Then we're off to Utah for a couple weeks of bonding with Andrew's side of the family. Then he and I will head to California for a short bit for him and a much longer bit for me. He will fly out of SFO and head back here while I stay in California with Dad for a couple weeks before heading out to visit Holly in Minneapolis.

So there it all is. We'll send out emails to everyone with exact dates and times. We did just want to get the word out for anybody who actually checks this blog since I know everyone is trying to coordinate stuff this summer, or will be at some point.

Hungry?

Rik and Rok have got you covered, although I wouldn't recommend it. Oh what fun you can have with bizarre translations! We found this cereal at a local supermaket (does the brand in the centre of the box ring any bells for Nate and Claudia? I should hope so) and originally I just tried taking pics of it with my phone, but we went back and bought it so I could photograph it in style. I haven't had the courage to open up the box and actually sample, er, Choco Crack yet, but even if I had it wouldn't be anyone's business. Marie wanted me to add that other cereals at the store included "Bran Sticks" and something like "Crusty Cocoa," but I don't think our faux-Egyptian (Fauxgyptian) friends have anything to do with them.

Flamenco!

I guess party season is starting again. This time the Spaniards celebrated flamenco. I had read about a festival called Feria de Abril and a couple weekends ago Andrew surprised me by taking me there. As far as I could tell from what I read, some people got together a couple decades ago and decided to petition the city to have a four day festival. There wasn't anything in particular to celebrate, but they were Spaniards so reasons for celebrating weren't high on the agenda. Planning and having a party was. The festival was actually started somewhere outside of Barcelona but the Catalans decided to run with it anyways and turn it into an eight day event instead of a measly four.

The idea with this party is that groups from all over put together a flamenco performance and host it inside a tent. There were probably 30 giant tents each with a stage, seating and tables for several people, and lots of food and alcohol. The festival was free to get into and then you could choose a tent to eat at and watch or join in the dancing. It was actually really fun to walk around and see all these women dressed up in their flamenco dresses with big combs and fake roses in their hair. We got there about 10pm, which is when the party was just starting. The tents weren't really filled until about 11pm or so, and then everyone was eating and dancing away no matter their age or bedtime. Sometimes while a dancing group performed on the stage, men and women would get up and dance on the floor if the mood struck. Other times the tent owners would just play music while people ate and some people danced, not bothering with a performing group.

Outside of the tent area, there was a carnival with some of the scariest rides Andrew and I have seen. They just don't seem to worry too much about safety here. One ride consisted of a platform with several padded benches on it that were made up to look like mechanical bulls. When the ride started, the platform would gyrate and shake as much as possible, knocking people off the benches. Nobody was strapped in. There wasn't much to hang on to. And the padding didn't look too abundant either. Shoes were actually flying off the riders and into the crowd watching. But that was nothing compared to the ride with two giant metal cages on each end of a giant seesaw-ish thing. People would stand in the cages and then the cages would swing back and forth, almost going upside down. Not an unusual ride until you think about the fact that those people were just standing in the cages, no padding, no being strapped in, just metal bars to hold on to, and then they were swung 20-30 feet in the air. I guess most people there are too drunk to care about whether or not they might get seriosuly injured on the rides so the carnival thrives.

There were also stands selling artisinal foods and spices, and let's not forget the churros. We decided to keep it milder than our last forray into carnival churro food and so I ordered a piece of cake and Andrew tried to get just a few churros. Andrew doesn't like cake here because he says it's always dry so I chose a piece of the moistest looking cake I could find. There were about four layers of what looked like chocolate cake and then some filling. Unfortunately, the layers I thought were cake turned out to be buttercream frosting and the little bit that I thought was the filling turned out to be the cake. We each had about two bites before gagging and throwing the thing away. 4 euros! (6 dollars!)

Andrew was making fun of me for spending so much on some really bad cake so we went to get him his churros. The last time he ordered churros he didn't know how much to order so he got a half a kilo or something. It ended up being way too much and we debated whether or not it was kind of us to give the uneaten churros to a homeless man. We decided all that grease would probably cause him more harm than good without the use of his own private bathroom, so we didn't pass them on to anyone. This time Andrew decided to just try getting 200 grams of churros, hoping that would mean about 4 or 5 churros. It turned out to be pretty much like the same amount he got last time, minus one or two. I think between the two of us we ate about ten of them and that was only about half of what Andrew got. It was really all the deep-fried dough sprinkled with sugar that we could handle, but hah! it was 4 euros, so I got to make fun of Andrew for wasting 4 euros on a way-too-rich-to-eat dessert too.

We took the picture of the candy for Michelle. Just tell us which flavours you want, and we'll try to bring some to you.

Whole lotta videos

Hi everyone (like, all 6 of you that might ever read this),

If this post has a bit of a different flavour, it's because this is Andrew posting as Marie. First time ever.

Yesterday, May 1, was a holiday in...well, all of Europe, really. I had work off, so we took some time to walk around Montjuïc, a hillside on which there's a palace, fountains, park, a bunch of stuff from the '92 Olympics, and so forth. Noah, Aaron's son, requested videos of family members, so we set out to make him one. These are our attempts, each one poorer than the one that preceded it. Mostly. Marie won't let me post my favourite video, as it contains profanity, and also insinuation of potentially illegal activities (apparently it might be "against" the "law" to spy on your neighbours with a camera, or so I'm told).

Then, Marie found some stray cats, and we decided to take some videos of them for Sofia, Nate's daughter. She likes cats, we hear. I think it was mostly an excuse for Marie to play with the stray cats. So that's the point of the cat videos there. I've also thrown in a few other pics from that day. Hope this makes up for the fact that we haven't posted since, like, October.

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

A couple years ago Andrew and I were at the California State Fair and discovered this website. I had a little fun with it then and forgot about it until Andrew's brother and sister-in-law posted some morphing images of themselves on his family's blog. I decided to take a little time to have fun with it and I think this is the best one I got. Andrew's came up with Benito Mussolini. The website only lets you save your morph to a blog so I posted it here thinking no one read our blog anymore so it didn't matter. And then, hurrah!, Holly actually read the blog and commented. Slowly this blog is reviving.

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Geneology - Free family tree