Milestone Birthdays

Age is just an abstract number, it has always felt like that to me. But some numbers carry more weight than others, for whatever reason we choose. I have to say that some early (supposedly) "big" milestones didn't particularly click with me in terms of the "woah!" factor. 18 was cool because of the watch my parents gave me (and which I still wear today) hidden in side a huge Simba stuffed animal - puppet. But since I still had a year left of high school there was no "growing up and moving away" feeling attached to it (although I was staying behind in Mexico to live with friends and finish high school while my family moved to Florida - because there was no French school there). 21 might have been a bigger deal had I been living in the US and the whole legal drinking age thing... But being in Spain meant I had been out partying and drinking legally for several years so no big deal! 😛

The first age that came associated with a fun number for me was 25. A quarter century!!! 😎 I was home from Belgium for a month or so, and celebrated my 25th birthday for a full week (minus one day)! I still remember being excited on the Monday to receive a package from the US with a birthday present from my cousin Candice. Then Tuesday night my university gang got together for a double birthday dinner before the other celebrant headed off with his family to Galicia to escape the summer heat. Nothing on the Wednesday. Thursday night I had a small celebration with my girlfriends from the university dorms. Friday night I threw a big party at home, taking advantage that my parents were away and so we wouldn't bother them. I don't remember if we did it up in the apartment itself or down in the gardens / bbq area (probably the latter), but I do remember I had to stop my friend Miguel from adding tequila to the sangría (which already had wine, rum and vodka as befits any Spanish "student" sangría 😛). Saturday - my actual birthday that year - we celebrated en famille at a nice restaurant (parents back and sister still at home). And finally Sunday some family friends came over to have cake and wish me a happy birthday! As you can tell I still have very fond memories of that birthday, even though they get fuzzier with each passing year...

The next big one was 30. Once again, completely unintentionally, it became an extended celebration - this time over a month!!! 🥳 I was still living in Belgium and just went home to Alicante for about a week / ten days. First celebration was shortly after I arrived, with my grandparents in the holiday seniors home they were staying in in the town of Bejís in Castellón. Then of course on the day itself at home with family & friends. And then a lovely dinner at home back in Liège with two of my closest friends when I got back. But for me the special thing I had actually planned was celebrating it a week later in Boston with Julia, my best friend from high school (she was doing her residency there), whose birthday was just 10 days after mine. I still remember us going to a nice restaurant near the Boston Aquarium (which we had just visited), and ordering cocktails to start and laughing when the waitress asked for our IDs and then looked all flummoxed when se saw our ages! 🤣🤣🤣 And then the big surprise!!! When I got back to Belgium my friends had organised a surprise party for me at home! 😍🥳 At it turned out to be just one month after the first celebration so - 30 days celebrating 30!!!

When it came time for 40 I decided this time I need to plan something: 40 days of 40! 😎 But not straightaway like 30, more spread out during my entire 40th year. Basically I turned 40 into an excuse to do a lot of fun (and sometimes expensive) things that year! 🤣 It started right on my birthday in Alicante (finally living back home), with a barbecue down in the gardens (with my dad in charge of the food production) that went late into the night with music, drinks and an evening swim in the pool. 🥳 My "baby" sister surprised me the night before (flew in from England), one of my Belgian friends (and her partner) was in town to celebrate with me, all my close Alicante friends where there... good times!!! And then I took off for a "birthday" road trip around Spain. A week with Valérie & Pietro driving from Alicante to Albarracín to Alcalá de Henares (and spots in between), then dropping them off in Madrid airport and heading into town to pick up Cris "brown" (I'm Cris "red") at the train station and heading off for another week of exploring old Castilla, including La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia, Pedraza, Sepúlveda, Rueda and Salamanca. Enjoying the amazing food (cochinillo y cordero lechal al horno!!! 😋) & wine and old ruins in cities and towns and kayaking in the Hoces del Duratón with vultures flying overhead. Was all in all a fabulous 2-week road trip and a great start to the 40 days of 40! But then I kind of got sidetracked and never really fully planned out the remaining celebratory days, just - like I said - using the milestone as an excuse to have some fun that year. Starting with the idea of celebrating my 40th while celebrating Star Trek's 50th!!! My first-ever (and to date only, oops) big convention, Destination Star Trek in Birmingham. It was also special because I finally got to meet in-person my online friend Juliette (of the blog Pop Classics - we "met" in the comments of Billie Doux reviews, then transitioned to commenting on each others' blogs and then connected on Facebook). A fellow Trekkie who lived in Birmingham? We had a wonderful time, including participating in getting the Guiness World Record for the most people dressed in Star Trek garb in one place. 🥳 I’m not really sure I did anything else before the final celebratory outing: a weekend in Amsterdam with a couple of girlfriends for the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary! It felt like the perfect event to finish my 40th year, since the concert was the night before I turned 41. 😎

And now it's time for the next big milestone: HALF A CENTURY! 50 is just a number. But a half century is cool! 😎 And this time I've actually been doing some planning ahead of my birthday instead of leaving things to chance or haphazardly planning it during / after the fact. What's the plan? Well you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out! My trip down memory lane and birthday musings have gone on far longer than I expected, so it would get kind of lost in here. 

I'll just drop a hint. Tomorrow's post is called "Challenging 50". 😉

#Challenging50 - blog post #1

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D78 - Good times!

Definitely a much more cheerful weekend than last week! YAY for "Fase 1" and restaurants / bars / cafés having opened up their terraces and being able to get together with friends (up to 10) for a drink / snack / meal! 🥳

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D68 - FRIENDS!!!

The absolutely most wonderful thing about progressing to Fase 1 of the de-escalation? Getting to finally meet up with FRIENDS!!! Also family 😉 Basically someone you don't live with! Maximum groups of 10 people (ideally maintaining social distance recommendations). Either in someone's house, or in a restaurant/café terrace (allowed to open now at 50% capacity, indoors waits until next phase).

I didn't head out anywhere yesterday, decided to let the people who were a bit more desperate go out and get it out of their system (we've seen a pattern here, first day in the rule change people tend to go nuts and just ignore the rules!). But tonight was a lovely little dinner party with friends overlooking the Med! 🥳 So nice to be able to just hang out for a few hours... 

Although the whole "keeping our distance" thing lasted all of 2 minutes...

Coronavirus Lockdown Spanish Edition - Day 51 - Celebrating apart

I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I don't know how we'd be getting through this lockdown without video conferences!!! Especially when there's something to celebrate.

Today is Mothers' Day here in Spain, and my mom is all alone at her place! Due to the quarantine rules she can't come here and I can't go there (other than to take her groceries, but since today is Sunday and shops are closed - if I get stopped by the police on my way over to her house it's a 600€ fine!). And my sisters are in Sweden and the UK!

Coronavirus Lockdown Spanish Edition - Day 20 - Canceled festivities

If there's one thing you need to know about Spaniards, it's that they LOVE their traditional holidays! Particularly in small towns, and in certain city neighborhoods that feel like towns. They're bright, colorful, festive... and very noisy! 😂 Marching bands galore, music late into the night, and in this part of Spain (Valencia region) lots of firecrackers and related noise-makers. The big ones around here (Alicante province) are the Hogueras (big ones in Alicante city for June 24th, smaller ones in other towns on different dates) and the Moros y Cristianos (main ones in Alcoi and Villajoyosa, but getting bigger in many other towns like neighboring San Vicente where the university is located).

The thing is... these events bring out massive crowds. Social distancing? Impossible! So one after the other cities and towns have been announcing the postponement of their big holiday. The Hogueras de San Juan in Alicante? Shipped off to the first weekend in September to wrap up the summer instead of launch it. Fallas in Valencia scheduled for mid-March? Just 10 days before (with some of the monuments already half set up!) finally shifted to 2nd half of July. Moros y Cristianos in Alcoi (end of April)? They're considering the first weekend in October. And so on, and so forth. 😥 

Coronavirus Lockdown Spanish Edition - Day 14 - Life goes on... online! (cont)

I honestly can't imagine this lockdown going this well, if it weren't for high-speed internet, social media channels, and video-conferencing options! (and I shudder to think what would happen should the internet collapse)

Ok, true that there are quite a few people out there who either don't have internet (don't want / can't afford) or are familiar enough with the options to make the most out of it, but I'd say a majority of the locked-in populations in Europe DO have a decent broadband connection, 4G on their smartphones (for when the wifi doesn't work), and know how to use them (or have someone to explain it) well enough to do video calls using FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber or whatever else is out there. Some of these can also be used for group calls, or people can set up online meeting rooms in Zoom, AdobeConnect, Google Hangout or Meet etc. We've also got text and video messages flying at us from all directions (to the point we've all received a forward that recommends reducing the sending of video messages to not collapse or dramatically slow down the service with heavy files).

Feeling a bit lonely or isolated? Just pull out your device and video call a friend. Video, not voice! Nothing really substitutes the face to face, but "virtual" face to face can help. Since this lockdown started 2 weeks ago I've had a video chat with my mom (who lives 15' away) almost every day (interspersed with regular voice calls), several video calls with my sisters overseas, video calls with individual friends and several group hangouts. In fact in these two weeks I have probably spent more time hanging out and chatting with friends than in the past two months! Were we really all too busy before? Or did we just not make it a priority? Now we are each other's lifelines... Company for when we're feeling lonely, an audience to crack jokes with, therapists when we need to complain or commiserate about whatever... Our second day locked in I had a 5-way Skype call with close friends in Spain, Belgium, France and Austria. Last Sunday I had a 90' FaceTime call with a friend in San Diego.

Milestone birthdays

Why is it that we seem to mark some birthdays as more special than others? Place more significance on them? Dunno really, not even sure every culture around the world does this... And those that do, don't necessarily have the same milestones!

I guess my own mixed cultural background comes in to play here... 

The first big milestone I remember - yet didn't celebrate - was 15. I was living in Mexico then and the "Quinceañera" was a big deal! But I mostly saw that through a friend's birthday two years after mine, as my family was on holiday in the US Southwest (fabulous summer camping in the "4 Corners" area!), and I was actually in Vegas for my birthday! Perhaps if we'd been in Mexico instead of out of the country there might have been a "Quinceañera" flavoring to the celebrations? Your guess is as good as mine! And it's not like many of my friends would have been in town, they were all off on their own summer holiday (international school).

Random ramblings: catching up with an M.I.A. CrazyCris

First of all: THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the 5th Annual World Oceans Day Oceanic Blog-A-Thon! There were some wonderful entries, and I'm so glad we could get together again to share our love for the oceans in our little corner of the blog-o-sphere! :o)

But that was almost 3 months ago... where did the time go?! :o(

And thus the title of this post. So... yeah. Sorry 'bout that! I've definitely been M.I.A. since World Oceans Day, and even for a bit before that! And sadly I don't think I'll be very active in the near future... although I promise to try!

And here's why! Good things and bad things.

Random Ramblings

• I've gotten quite a few new visitors to the blog (WELCOME!!!)... all coming over for a visit from Snug Harbor Bay because my friend Kim wrote a lovely post about me yesterday!!! Fabulous surprise! (I thought you were just going to show off the hat and scarf Kim!) One of the things I like best about blogging is all the fabulous people I've been able to "meet" through our respective blog posts and comments. It's opened the world up for me and allowed me to make new friends in a fun way! I liken it to having pen pals back in the day (I tried once or twice, never stuck), except 100 times better! I hope some day to get to meet some of my "virtual" friends in the "real" world soon (Kim -> Spain + Italy for when???), but in the meantime it's wonderful hanging out with you guys online! :o)

• For the past 36h the news has been all abuzz about the Pope's "retirement" (15' section in the news today at lunch!!!). I don't have an opinion either way, but I do seem to remember about 10 years ago people asking why Pope John Paul II didn't retire and hearing it said that popes couldn't retire! Guess they got it wrong... just 'cause no one's done it in 800 years doesn't mean it can't be done! Still, it's weird to think of a Pope retiring! But he sure looks feeble in the news images... can't be an easy "job".

• Speaking of random news items, it turns out the Brits like to bury their Kings in car parks! lol! That was all over the news last week, did you guys hear about it? Talk about an archaeological treasure hunt... and find! Richard III remains "Crookback Dick" in my mind, not thanks to Shakespeare, but because of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Black Arrow"! That was my first intro to the King (and the War of the Roses). Fascinating (and bloody!) period of British history... Now I'm wondering: what kind of State Funeral will the British Crown give its newly found monarch? An Anglican service doesn't seem right considering he was Catholic... but I have trouble imagining the head of the Church of England presiding over a Catholic funeral service... Anyhow there's a really interesting post about the dig itself over on The History Girls, very good read!

• I've tallied up quite a few movies these past couple of weeks (damn Oscar season!), have to prep a post on them... I'm only missing Amour to wrap up the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, will try to catch that this weekend. But I'm wondering whether or not to give The Master and Flight a go to get a look at their Oscar-nominated performances... neither movie really caught my attention, but I like to see as many of the major contenders as possible before the big night... Speaking of the Oscars, how ridiculous is it that Ben Affleck wasn't even nominated for Best Director considering he's winning just about every other "best director" award out there this season? He just got the BAFTA on Sunday! (bravo!)

• *sigh* I was really hoping I'd be able to make a grand announcement about spending 6 months this summer working in Iceland... but I didn't get the job. Major bummer! Sticking with the English classes for a while longer (and every week hoping none of my students cancels on me). When is this stupid global crisis going to end and there be more opportunities for people with a biology/environmental background? Anybody know of a decent environmental education or conservation position out there? I love my students but I'm tired of teaching English!