New Hôm Nay

I don't know if it was the first snow of the season (in September), or the barometric pressure, or what - but I was so tired! I had just been chatting with my friend who also has a 3 year old, about how good our kids are. My friend said, "I can take a nap with Aimee free in the house and I don't have to worry about it. I know exactly what she'll do." I said, "Alex is pretty good too, I could probably do that too. It's Sam I have to worry about." So after putting Alex and Sam down for naps, I thought, Why not? I'll just take a nap too. Even though Alex can now climb out of her bed and basically roam the house unsupervised, she never does that. I heard some clunking sounds from the direction of her room, but that's not too uncommon. Some days she doesn't sleep, but she generally stays in her room and plays.

So after Sam got up I was in the kitchen giving him a snack when in walks Alex with a huge grin on her face. Her hair was completely PLASTERED with A&D ointment - which has been sitting on her changing table for years without her ever touching it. I couldn't help laughing, but after 4 washes with baby oil and shampoo neither of us was laughing anymore. Her hair is still stiff and sticky. In case you've ever wondered, A&D ointment just doesn't make a good beauty treatment.

Se que doy asco y pena, soy un puto vago y tengo mi blog abandonado, casi una semana sin postear...
Espero que esteis tan acostumbrad@s a la gente patética como yo que no me odieis por esto y perdoneis mi propio patetismo. No tengo mucho acceso a Internet a mi alrededor, sigo intentando encontrar un proveedor que no de mucho asco y es realmente dificil.
Ademas no paro quieto un minuto, he hecho millones de cosas y conocido a gente muy curiosa. Me lo estoy pasando genial en Madrid y no se donde me iré ni cuando ni siquiera si lo llegaré a hacer.
Latinoamerica me llama mucho de todas formas...

Abrazos y nos leemos pronto, creo...

Whew. This month has been busier than I wanted. I usually work 3 days a week but for the past 3 weeks I worked full time (2 weeks of ward attending on the VA neurology service, and one week of work meetings and recertifying ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support)). I'm hoping for things to settle down now, and looking forward to enjoying the fall weather. This morning I was surprised by the first new SNOW on the tops of the mountains near our house - a rude awakening! The leaves are barely starting to turn color - I hope the valley floor doesn't see snow for another month yet. I don't think Sam has a winter coat that fits!

Speaking of Sam, he has had a runny nose and 2 white sores on his tongue for the past 2 days. I wonder what this is, and I hope I don't get it. Since he has sneezed directly into my face a few times, I'm sure I'm exposed. Oh goody.

Despite my schedule I've managed to stick my nose into a few good books lately. I've read one chapter of The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, and I can see a kindred spirit in him already. I felt like I could close my eyes and point to the page, and almost anywhere in the chapter I'd land on a good quote. I remember laughing out loud at one description of someone whose "cheese is falling off his cracker." Wish I had a sample for the blog, but I don't have the book with me. I'll work on that.

I also started reading Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. I think anytime someone starts talking about "repainting" or "re-visioning" or "re-thinking" some aspect of Christianity, it makes some people really nervous and threatened. There is a Wikipedia page about Bell in which some of his critics call him various names, like "relativist" and "liberal" and the like, but I find it interesting they are calling him these names rather than pointing out flaws in his thinking or inconsistencies in his positions. If they want liberal, they should read something by John Shelby Spong - perhaps "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism", a book whose title I really love (haven't actually read the book though). Bell is pretty moderate, if you ask me. It seems he is just out there saying what a lot of us(maybe most) have been thinking, and is trying to swing the pendulum from way over on the "orthodoxy (right doctrine)" side, to a balance between orthodoxy and orthopraxis (right living). I think it's a healthy change. I bet I'd enjoy going to Mars Hill, the church where he is a pastor. But alas, I haven't found a Rob Bell or a Mars Hill in Utah yet.

Other books to consider, when there is time - Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, by Marcus Borg - anyone out there familiar with this author?

and

The Kalahari Typing School for Men - by Alexander McCall Smith - I cannot say enough how much I have enjoyed this whole series!

I overslept this morning. For some reason I didn't wake up at the usual time and ended up sleeping to a very late hour, an hour I was annoyed to have slept until. Two things came of it: a groggy head (which I have now), and a vivid memory of a dream which is the basis to this post.

We had gone to Al-Dar islands with the family, and in the dream it was exactly as I remembered it (except it looked nothing like the real-life version). One thing which was disturbingly different was that the tide had eaten up more than half of one of the three football pitches. My dream-self lamented the loss of this pitch that was the scene of many childhood footy heroics, and I kept going on about global warming and how this was the first time that I had really felt the effects. I even vowed to write a post about it and put it up on my blog. Subsequent recollection of this statement while awake is the driving force behind my current furious typing. Funny thing is, the football pitches I had seen somewhere or another, and it was just a case of cut and paste over the already existing image I had of the islands. If anything, where they were positioned in my dream meant that a big chunk of the beach and sea were buried by these pitches. Another eco-disaster, considering all the ongoing land reclamation work in Bahrain, so maybe the sea was fighting for its survival in the dream, refusing to have so much land imposed on it while I slept.

The dream later evolved into starting a 4-on-4 game and having Cristiano Ronaldo step in to make up the numbers on my team. The bastard never passed the ball to me before I woke up. Thanks for nothing, buster. Oh and Jose, we wouldn't have had it any other way. Cheers for all the brilliant soundbites, and don't stay away for too long!

Los que de verdad son piratas son las mafiosas empresas proveedoras de Internet.
Llevo una semana intentando decidir quien da menos asco, pero cada vez que lees alguna letra pequeña o la opinión de los usuarios te dan ganas de reventarlos a palos.
¿Alguna recomendación?

Parece ser que voy teniendo suerte por donde paso.
Mi primera entrevista con una empresa Japonesa y salgo con un contrato en la mano.
Desde ahora soy traductor freelance para una empresa de Tokio. Lo cual quiere decir que puedo seguir viajando todo lo que quiera ya que no tengo que estar en ninguna oficina. Lo unico que necesito es mi ordenador.
Una maravilla.

Aunque yo no creo en la suerte.

Primer paso: que un amigo te lo recomiende y te lo de a conocer, en mi caso ha sido Juanillo, tremenda pieza de Sevilla.






Segundo paso: irse a Yokohama, Japón e intentar encontrar el estudio Yellow Blaze, que no es facil...






Tercer paso: intentar contactar con Shige. En mi caso me llevó unos cuantos emails, innumerables llamadas de teléfono y otras tantas visitas al estudio.






Una foto de las mil veces que me encontré con es estudio cerrado.

Tercer y ¿último? paso:
Que Shige, el que para muchos es el mejor tatuador de Japón te reciba y te diga que si quieres una cita para tatuarte tienes que esperar una media de 2 años O_o
Casi nada.
El caso es que le debí caer bien y aparte de darme unas pegatinas, me dijo que me pasara el año que viene y que lo mismo podría tener suerte. Aunque no prometía nada.
Merece la pena pasarse por su página y ver la galería de fotos.
Increíble...



Éste es uno de mis favoritos.

Un vídeo para Juanillo: