Catch up on life part 1: Barcelona.

well hello again today.

I am not sure how much I have written about the past three weeks, but here goes.

The mom/aunt sue barcelona excursion. Friday aunt sue came to madrid. That was cool, a little bit of aunt sue and katie time. However, I gave her explicit directions and what did she do? 1- not print them out, 2-ask someone how to get to me, or 3- wind up out of the way? Wrong....choice 4- all of the above. After she asked someone how to get to me, they put her at a train stop I was NOT at...no matter though. I still reached her and we managed to get her some food and she went to the pool to swim while I worked for a few hours. I packed up my stuff (people were just moving desks around anyways) and we went to the supermarket to get her some things (ie. water, fruit for the morning, etc). And she bought a bottle of wine. Well, like the two big wops we are, we pounded the wine and headed out for the evening to hit up the tapas. After getting directions to some cachamaymee restaurant, we settled on a great tapas bar.

Enter Saturday. We headed out to get mom at like...845...we were supposed to be out and on the train by 830, but aunt sue had me hit the snooze button because she could totally get up in a few minutes...but man does she know how to play possum. Needless to say, we were late picking up mom, and her plane was early too, so she was waiting a good hour or so. We came back here and mom showered. Following that, we went to the train station in Chamartin because we had a bus to Barcelona that evening. We caught a bite to eat and headed to the Ventas station where we proceeded to see a bull fight!

>>Sidebar: I had thought for the longest time that bullfights were just some big song and dance about the matadors just riling up the bull and running away. I was completely mistaken. What they do is they have four rounds of stabbing the bull. The first guy is on a horse and stabs the bull with a long javelin thing. The second round, two matadors take these colored batons and thrust them into the bulls shoulder and leaves them there. The main matador then riles up the bull with a red tablecloth thing and stabs it in the heart via the shoulder. The fourth round, a guy takes a shiv and essentially severs the bulls spinal cord. All throughouot the stabbing, there are lesser matadors that have hot pink table cloths to rile up the bull and get it pissed enough to warrant stabbing I guess. END SIDEBAR<<

Anyways the bullfight was really cool, but we rushed off to go catch the train. Now I dont know how the rest of you plan on travelling, but if you intend to get sleep on the midnight train, think again....it is an awful place for sleeping. I sat across the way from a guy that REEKED and a guy that looked like John Mayer. John Mayer was pretty nice, but I think he was just waiting....waiting on the world to change. After a long night of not sleeping, we headed out to the hostal, which was actually kind of nice. The girl was really nice at the front desk, which was cool. We got some breakfast (I cant eat a lot after I get off a long train or an airplane...it makes me nauseous.) and headed to the olympic stadium in barcelona. Please check out the pictures, but they dont even do it ajustice. It took quite a while to get there because we did not take the metro there....it was a long way from breakfast, but totally worth it. Then mom and I headed out to the museum where we breezed through the hallways. FYI- if you ever do a museum with me, Im not one to look and gawk and inspect every single painting. I like my art like a movie...I like to see it and retain it but I dont need a lot of time to think about it. I will hang around the pieces I really really like, but thats about it. Anyways, then disaster struck. Aunt Sue is not the quietest person in the whole world...and she was hungry. So we went on the metro to get to the beach and she stopped to get something from the vending machines. But someone must have heard us loud Americans....and all of a sudden she felt a pick....and her purse was GONE out of this big bag she was holding. Mom and sue tried to find the culprit, but her purse was so small that the thief probably could have just held it in his coat. After like an hour of freaking out, we went to the police station (The cop asked her what color her purse was and she replied...butterscotch. Now, he knows english very well, but butterscotch?! Come on...not even good english speakers here know what color butterscotch is). The nice english speaking cop found out I was studying here and when he this out, he advised me to "Make a lot of sex with the Spanish boys, we are better lovers". I nearly died...he said it in front of my mother and my aunt! And then he said "What, you think your mother only make the sex to have you? She is not dead yet!" Exit police station. We then proceeded to take aunt sue out to make her feel better about the tragedy in spain (her passport and EVERYTHING was in it) and so we took her out for seafood. There were these really funny French guys sitting next to us....I understood most of what they were saying...they wanted us to come join them for wine, but we were pretty tired from not sleeping on the train and all. Then we went back to the hostal where I stayed up and talked to a Croat and a Brazilian for a few hours. They were both pretty nice, both on holiday, but the Brazilian was rounding out his trip and the Croat was just beginning.

Monday morning: we got up (aunt sue got up first for some ungodly reason) and showered . We found out that 3 people were mugged the night before in addition to aunt sue and it was right outside the hostal...and the police were not doing a damn thing about it! After being successfully freaked out, we waited until light for breakfast and leaving the hostal. Anyways, we got some food and the ladies told me to tell them where we were going. Well, I wanted to go to the mosaic park because I love that stuff....it takes patience and skill to do it and it was everywhere in this park. Well we had to go a ways to get there and on the way there was this cross in Parc Guell....and Aunt Susan saw this church up on a hill. Well, she had to go see it because it was in the Fodor's guide (BTW- aunt sue carried around the Fodors guide like a monk carries his bible....she read it every day to us and she essentially wanted to live by it). We were pretty far away from it and only had so many hours in barcelona....so I said lets see whats in the park while we were here. She really did not want to do that, and after throwing a small fit, she complied with me. Don't ask me where we are going if you dont want to go. Anyways, the parc was beautiful and Gaudi's cathedral was beautiful. We found this bar outside the cathedral and we also HAD to go to it for a beer, and after spending an hour refinding it, I was exhausted. Luckily the train back was much faster (3 hours) and we came back to madrid to find a carnival outside my front door in full swing. We each got hamburgers and came back to my dorm and unwound from a stressful weekend.

Tuesday-Friday were pretty much the same type of day. I went to work and the ladies went out to enjoy the sites. Tuesday, though, we went to this chocolate place where we had amazing desert....churros and hot chocolate infused with orange. But the chocolate is like melted fudge instead of the milky hot chocolate....very good but you can only really eat a little. The rest of the nights we just had beer and food (thursday I was introduced to doner, which you will find out about when i talk about the Pede adventures). Other than that , the rest of the week was really boring.

Saturday we headed out to the airport and sent mom on her way then aunt sue and I talked for a while. While I complain about my family and all the misery they put me through, I truly love them and wouldnt trade them for anything. They make the best memories with me and for that alone I am thankful. I was a little sad to see them go, but thankful that they did otherwise i would have never kept my sanity! On the way back to my dorm, Olga found me (she was waiting for me) and I went with her to a type of renaissance festival in alcala. It was really kind of nice...we went with her family and then JJ from the lab came with us too. The little boy, Victor, thought we were married. It was really cute. There were lots of little shops around, but I refrained thankfully. Sunday I woke up and literally did nothing. I really needed a defrag from all the people interaction I had and needed to keep up with movies etc.

There, good enough? My hands hurt....i think im going to watch one of my fave movies and pass out.

More on the Pede clan and this week when i can feel my fingers again....

Disaster

I know I have not been keeping up with current events, but let me just tell you what has happened today.

This morning I knew I had a bunch of solvent to evaporate so I got up early. However, I had a splitting headache so I went back to sleep for 20 mins...the rain was nice it helped with the sleep but not the headache. So I got up and looked in my desk drawer for feminine products....and wouldn't you know it....Aunt Susan took the last of my supply. Frustrated, I embarked on my way to work....except I got rained on very much and my para-agua kept flipping inside out. And I planned on catching the grocery store being open at 8:30....not so much. Ok, so I get into my building and ditch my stuff at my desk and bustle off happy as a clam still to the lab. I found that the stir plates were not working on one side of the lab, so Dania, one of the post-docs, called maintenance for me. Well the guys came, and started flipping some switches...and with one switch everything turned back on (yay!) and 2 seconds later, everything shut off. JJ had a matrice (round bottom flask) on the vacuum machine...and I heard a crash. He spent 1 month making the product and it was gone in two seconds. Did I mention JJ needs to write his thesis by march or he is out? Oh yeah...

Apparently there was some smoke coming from the electric box and everything just went dead. I would have cried and punched something. But, 1/2 an hour later they killed all the power to our floor, and 20 mins later everything was working swimmingly. However, my polymer film is in the process of being vacuum dried....and it keeps getting bubbles. I have reworked the same sample ~7 times. It BLOWS.

We went out for Chris Pede's birthday last night. That was kind of fun, we all went to Zahora and ate some really good paella, then we went to this churros place where we had a cup of liquid sludge with a ton of churros. It was really good, but the churros were a lot. At least it was not downpouring like it did on Monday night. THAT was fun...the Pedes came out and we walked around for 20 minutes and got completely soaked.

I need a cigarette. Or a quelude. Or something to take the edge off today. Most likely will settle for a glass (in a small cup) of red wine and probably just some sleep or an episode of Weeds....and most likely will just settle for the episode of Weeds.

Love you and miss you all, will try to increase the flow rate of my blogging.
<3

Day 26: meltdown.

I had an American moment today. And I know it was awful....but I had to!

I ate peanut butter. mom and aunt susan brought it over with them on the plane.

And chocolate covered espresso beans.

I am so ashamed.

More on barcelona and the week from hell later tonight.