Random Sunday Time-changing thoughts

Daylight savings started today. Or is it ended? I never remember if Winter or Summer is Daylight Savings time! I guess because I was barely aware of it when I lived in the US as a child... In any case, as we'd say in Europe, we switched to "Winter time" and moved our clocks back an hour in the middle of the night.

Does anyone do that? Get up at 3 a.m. to switch the clock back to 2 a.m.? In this day and age most of us probably barely remember to do it, as our cellphones switch automatically. Wristwatches are easy and fast to change... but the car clock is a drag!!! 

On the news today they were talking about the time change... showing the weirdness of the nighttime radio announcing it was 2 a.m. for the second time in the same night, or how people out partying enjoyed an extra hour before pubs closed, or how much it sucks for people working night shifts who end up working an extra hour and not getting paid for it!

But mostly they were talking about how this might be one of the last times we go through this... It's been commented more and more each year. About how annoying it is (twice a year). About if it's really useful/necessary (economists say the savings are basically nothing for the average household). Etc. Then this past summer the EU ran a poll on its Facebook page asking people across Europe to vote in favor of keeping/cancelling the time changes. And a majority overwhelmingly said ENOUGH! So now the EU has asked the countries to consider it... and there will be a vote in Brussels (if it hasn't already happened, I get timings mixed up) and then directive sent out to all governments stating the end of the changes. If that goes through then all EU countries have to stop with the Fall/Spring time change (or it will be confusing for businesses who deal across Europe, not to mention travel!). It will be up to each country to decide if they keep Winter or Summer time...

In the case of Spain the government is also studying replacing us in our "proper" time zone. Right now we're in GMT+1 (a.k.a. CET or Central European Time), but if you look on a map then you'll notice the Greenwich meridian goes right through Spain, we should be at GMT! Same time zone as the UK and Portugal... Franco's the one who moved Spain into GMT+1 out of solidarity with Germany I've heard (not sure as to the accuracy of that why). I wonder if the present Government will move us back when they decide on the time issue...

Personally I can't decide if I prefer the Winter or Summer time... I enjoy the nice long summer evenings, but they're not really necessary. However they also mean longer daylight in the second half of the day in winter. But that means it's bloody dark very late in the morning! I've always appreciated the Fall time change as it makes it easier for me to wake up in the morning (I need sun to awaken properly). But is it really worth exchanging slightly easier wake-ups for shorter days? Dunno!!! 

Still here, still writing!

So far so good! 

I mentioned in my previous post that I intended to be more active on the Blogs, and it's been going pretty well now these past five weeks! The one post here in August, another on Cris Crossing the Globe (only a year late that one! 😝) and eight on Adventures in Camelot (and Sherwood). Yay me!

The thing is... September has been relatively peaceful. Four of those eight posts were already well advanced drafts from last summer, and all of them (but one) covered a TV series rewatch (so posting will stop with the end of the season). And I'm about to embark on three months of "where in the world am I?!". Will I be able to keep writing? I'll try! At least about traveling! Maybe here on random thoughts or awesome books or super movies or funny memories. I'll try!

For sure I've got to put something out about finally setting foot on the only continent I've never been to before... 

Summer is over. Autumn is here (although in Alicante it still feels like summer, bloody hot!). So much work awaits me these next three months, but with it so many adventures to come! Colombia. South Africa. Vietnam. England. Laos. Italy. Sweden. Here we go again! 😎

Missing (in Action): a crazy redheaded blogger!

Action is definitely the operative word! I've been M.I.A. precisely because of that A! Very busy, with little or no time left to write! Well, I do have the evenings at home, but I get in so late and so tired that all I want to do is grab a quick bite for dinner, veg out for an hour in front of the boob tube, and go to bed!

So far in 2014 I've managed to publish every month (even if it was just once, pathetic!) up until August. Then silence through September and October. I actually have several drafts started, things I was excited about when they happened and wanted to share, but then couldn't find the time to finish writing them! :(

Yay for regular maintenance!

It's a good thing mandated regular maintenance exists... Or the surprise I got this week when the hot water heater guy came by could have been MUCH worse later down the line... I mentioned that it didn't seem to be working well, not heating as much, trouble starting sometimes cutting off (in the middle of a shower!)... Not fun! So he started knocking on the chimney, and then asked me if I'd seen birds coming in and out... 

Check out what happened when he took it apart:

Nesting material, including a couple of tiny unhatched eggs.

The nesting material went waaay down the vertical pipe too!

Damn swallows! Now I'm going to have go find some kind of mesh thingy to put around this before the birds come back and start all over again...

So this dipping my toes back into the blogging world seems to be progressing by millimeters! Lots of extra work to wrap up before I stopped for vacation, visitors during the holiday so not much time there... and LOTS of time spent with wedding organization! My sister's getting married here in Alicante in 2 weeks, and as she lives in the US, well that means lots of help on the family's part! So still not much time for the next 2 weeks... But I do plan on finding some time to work on the photos I took today while diving over a 2000 year-old Roman wreck! ;o)

Here comes the sun...

Just wanted to share this original Flashmob from an Unemployment Office somewhere in Spain (could be Madrid)...

Sunny day in Alicante today, lots of people need more Sun in their lives these days! Here's to them, here's to us.

12h12 12/12/12

Ding, ding, ding, DING!!!

At the time of this posting it will be exactly 12h12 on December 12th 2012 (in Alicante)... So if you just look at the numbers that's 12 12 12 12 12. Lots of twelves! :p

Just a random moment to laugh at the numbers... although maybe I should head out and buy a lottery ticket ending in 12? ;o)

Will be back for regular blogging as soon as I finish with my weekend photos... I spent it in Belgium visiting fabulous friends! Got to see some snow, eat lots of yummy food, go to a concert, hang out in the Christmas market and drink mulled wine and buy about 3 kgs of chocolate to bring back home for gifts! :p

Random Sunday Ramblings

It's been a very quiet Sunday for me. Pretty much a quiet weekend (with a couple of exceptions)! Which is fine by me when a) I'm dealing with a blasted cold and b) the weather is uncharacteristically icky (grey skies and rain all weekend!). Today it's just been me, my computer, my sofa, the TV and a box of kleenex. And a bit of organising around the house just to feel productive. I was supposed to go hiking today, but it got switched to another weekend because of the weather (hiking in rainstorms here can be dangerous, not to mention it rains so rarely that most people in Alicante are a bit "allergic" to rain!). Big sigh of relief!

Do you have a "go-to" movie for when you're feeling under the weather? I've got a couple, but my favourite is definitely The Princess Bride! I don't know how many times I've seen it, but each time I enjoy it all over again. Big smiles, laughs and plenty of quoting! I've been thinking about it for over a week now, and finally popped it in the machine today! I could share oh so many clips from this... but I'll leave you with my all-time favourite cinematic duel atop the Cliffs of Insanity:

Meet Canada's most recent astronaut!

Have you heard the one about the guy who floated up into Space thanks to a helium balloon? Hard to believe? How 'bout if I told you he was only an inch or so high... believe me now? Here's the proof!

Crazy fun!!! A couple of Canadian teenagers put together a capsule with some cameras on it, a cell phone with GPS (so they could track it on landing) and that little Lego guy with his Canadian flag. They attached it to a helium balloon and then... up, up and AWAAAAAAAY!  97 minutes later, and 27 km up the balloon exploded and the contraption started falling... safely thanks to a parachute they made and were smart enough to include! :o)

I read about this on a Belgian news site, but you can find a complete article here (Canadian news channel).

How cool is that?! :D

Apathy vs the will to Blog

Have you ever felt so out of touch with your own surroundings that everything feels a bit unreal? Felt like time is moving along at a snail's pace or that you're looking in on your own life from outside a window?

That's kind of how I've been feeling these past couple of weeks. Ever since I got back from New Zealand it's been hard to fit myself back into my old life. Right... old as in 4 months old! Funny how being gone for 4-5 intense months can make coming back to where things are calm and not much is going on (personally or professionally) seem a bit scary, and depressing! How can things be the same when you've done so much??? Argh!!! Anyhow, it's resulted in a sense of apathy that I'm having trouble shaking... like someone hit the "pause" button on me and I'm waiting for something else to come by and knock me into "play" mode. Not good.

Therein lies the excuse for the absentee blogger... I've got blogging ideas popping into my head every now and again, but when I get home I can't be bother to sit down to the computer and develop them! And then when some time has passed I get frustrated with myself for having forgotten what seemed like some damn good ideas at the time. Part of me is hung up by the backlog of posts that are semi-prepared from the trip (for CrisCrossing the Globe) and are there in limbo, waiting for me to finish up with them... Kind of a "deal with the stuff pending before you get into the new", and I end up in a vicious circle where nothing gets done!

So I'm breaking the circle by just starting up with some random blogging again, and I'll slowly release posts on New Zealand over on the other blog, just back-dating them to when they were supposed to be published (I wonder how that will appear in people's readers...). Ditto with the Project 365 photos. I'm not going to dump them all on you in one massive month's-worth chunk, but perhaps 5 at a time. I actually forgot a couple days... damn! Took me a while to remember my cellphone has a camera so I don't need to be carrying around my DSLR just to get a daily photo! I figured it wouldn't be as fun a project once life had gotten back to "normal", and indeed, I quite forgot about it a couple of days! :o( The photos I have taken might not be too interesting because they're frequently last minute "oh my! I haven't taken the 365 photo yet today!". I'm going to have to try and make mundane things seem interesting through the camera lens, should be an interesting challenge! Which isn't to say I'm going to give up on random shots with my cellphone. ;o)

Napping

Here and There and Everywhere is going to be taking a series of naps over the next month!

Japan - New York

Ever wondered how to get from Japan to New York?

Google maps has very detailed instructions!


View Larger Map

Go to Google maps. Write in Japan as point of origin and New York as destination. Then read through until you get to instructions #27 and #38. Report back here. :p

Oh, and by the way: the road has tolls! ;o)

(Another good one is Japan to China. Go to instruction #43, lol!)

Spotted animal?!

When you look out the window and see a spotted critter in the park...

you wonder if you're still under the influence of the half bottle of Rioja wine you had with dinner the night before!

But when you switch to the zoom lens of your camera (click to enlarge):

It's still weird! A pink polka-dot horse?!?!?! lol!!! :p

Rambling thoughts...

I went to the Opera last week... they were putting on my favourite, Die Zäuberflöte:

Mozart's Magic Flute! The Opera has been closed for renovations for over a year now, so they've set up this huge tent to continue with the shows:

It's just as comfy as before, better visibility... but the sound... OUCH! The acoustics are terrible! Sniff!!! It's like the sound barely makes it past the front rows and then just goes flat. Painful. Particularly because I loved the interpretation of the person playing Papageno, and the choreography and set pieces were very original! Must remember for future occasions that Opera must be seen/heard in a place with good acoustics. And a tent ain't it! >:(

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Winter seems to be sneaking up on us at an accelerated rate this year! The trees have all been changing colours faster than last year, and the leaves falling off almost all at once! I just hope the rain and wind will calm down enough for there to be some left this Sunday when I go on another hike in the Ardennes. I'd like to see a bit more Fall foliage before it's over!

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Speaking of hikes, I'm running behind on telling you about those! Next up is the crazy hike where we walked around a dry reservoir, saw a castle, had to take several detours (lengthening our outing by ~5km) and ended up hip-deep in freezing water... And then there's a semi-urban/rural outing from last Saturday... And I'm heading out again this Sunday (unless there's a downpour). Need to select and edit photos (and video from the first mentioned) faster!!!

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I've also noticed I'm waaaaaaaaay behind on Monthly Movies and Monthly Reading! The summer movies weren't really inspiring enough to write about. And although I saw a couple of lovely French movies in September, I shockingly haven't been to the cinema at all in October! As for the readings... I think I'm going to have to change that format to some kind of "Book Reports". I read so much last Spring what with rehab sessions for my ankle it's too many to list, so I'll just mention those I remember/liked best. Plus many of them are series so should be reviewed as a group. Eventually...

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Never get into a fight with a can of tuna fish... you are guaranteed to lose! Those jagged tin edges on the open lid are DANGEROUS!!! Too painful (and bloody) to record at the time, here's the life-threatening injury a week later (blurry 'cause can't seem to get a decent photo using only my left hand!):

One thing's for sure... our fingers are incredibly well irrigated! Damn thing wouldn't stop bleeding! Too wide to go in for stitches. Just kept applying pressure, and for some reason that old childhood scary story / joke about "bloody fingers" kept popping into my head! lol!
I've also noticed that the middle finger is useful for a lot more than a certain rude "gesture"... trying writing on a blackboard with it!!! I've had my students up doing my writing for me this past week... ;o)

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Speaking of fish, Fishy Fridays is making a come back!!! Re-inauguration tomorrow with a special announcement! :o) And then I promise I'll try and maintain my twice a month fishy schedule... We're only a quarter of the way through the Liège Aquarium! :s

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And now it's time I got back to work... I have 200+ essays to correct from my various classes, and I know tomorrow's group is going to be clamouring for them. *sigh* Correcting is so tedious!

post-Halloween zombiness!

Boy am I glad November 1st is a holiday!!! I couldn't possibly go teach in this zombie state today! And thankfully I've got tomorrow to recover as well (although some tourism will be involved)! YAY for 4-day weekends!!! :o)

I hope everyone had a good Halloween weekend! 

Farewell to Paul, our football-loving octopod.

I don't know if you saw this on the news yesterday... but football-loving-octopus-lovers are in mourning:

I'm not usually into football-related topics outside of the World Cup... but I had so much fun with the Paul stories this summer that I can't help but feeling a bit sad. :o(  Spaniards wanted to adopt him (to save him from ending up on a German bbq after Spain's semi-final victory against the Germans), they even put him on their flag:

And I managed to get my English students interested in a news report when I did a listening exercise based on a YouTube video showing Paul's prediction in favour of Spain! 

He was so much a part of my World Cup fun last summer that I adopted my own little Pol the Octopod at the Mallorca Aquarium. He won't be making football predictions, but he has been named the mascot of my new travelling blog! After all, you'd thing eight legs are better than two for travelling around the world! ;o)

Apparently Paul will be cremated, and the Aquarium in Germany has a "new Paul" ready to take up residence in the tank (octopi are always very popular in aquaria). Even here in Liège they've been talking about dipping into the football prediction game since we received our very own octopus from the Antwerp aquarium last month!

Farewell Paul, may you enjoy an endless supply of mussels from here on out!

More info (and videos) on this BBC page.

Letting out my inner child...

Careful! Special delivery!!! 

Guess what the...

... brought in today?

Randomness...

Random thoughts from today...

• I remembered today how much I HATE laundromats! And this one (2 blocks from my kot, only good thing about it) is particularly crappy... only 4 working washing machines and 1 working drier. And I had a load of light and dark to do (I've got enough clothes to get me through 2 weeks, and with sheets and towels can complete enough for 2 machines). Talk about wasting time... Thank heavens I've got free time in my class schedule during the day 'cause this place has to be impossible on weekends! :s

• I am so behind on my blog it's not even funny anymore! Even with free hours here and there in the day, it's hard to sit down and write when I have to prepare classes, or when I'm tired (or recuperating from the extremely nasty cold that hit me last week) and just want to veg out watching a TV show, or catch up with family and friends on Facebook or Skype...

• When was the last time I talked about movies? Or the books I was reading? I have to bring myself up to speed on those 'cause I've got access to some really good ones here! We've got a great independant movie theatre (I saw a couple of lovely French movies in Sept!) here, all in VOS (no dubbing, YAY!!!), and I've managed to renew my suscription to the local library... Add to that the books friends have been kind enough to loan me, and as you can see: