Barcelona, the last day

All too soon it was Saturday, our last full day in Barcelona. But as I mentioned before, we stayed up very late the night before (BECAUSE IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY) playing Cards Against Humanity and turning our teeth purple with wine.

There was so much I still wanted to see, but I also knew I needed sleep, so when Beckett woke me up at almost noon, I can’t say I was too upset. And being the take-charge gal she is, she ordered me out of bed so we could go see the city!

Before too long, we’d made our way to Han, the apartment everyone congregated at, and picked up Sandy, and the three of us spent the day exploring the city.

First up, Park Guell. We grabbed a cappuccino from a cafe and hopped on the Metro to the station that looked closest to the park. Once we got there, we were a bit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so we grabbed a taxi, which took us up….and up….and up. Really glad we decided not to walk at this point.

Once at the park, we just wandered around and took in the views. Stunning.

SOMEONE (okay, it was me) got us lost in our park wanderings and we ended up outside of it, but we were all hungry (not having eaten anything yet) so we went with it and ended up in a very hilly neighborhood.

We tried to find somewhere to eat, but ended up getting a taxi to the Gothic Quarter instead. We were starving by then, so we went into the first restaurant we saw and basically ordered everything on the menu. So yum.

So. much. food.
So. much. food.

We spied a very cultural museum across the way, so decided to check it out.

After that, we wandered the narrow streets and passageways of the Barri Gòtic and did a bit of shopping. I was so glad we got to explore this area.

And then Sandy mentioned he hadn’t seen the Mediterranean yet, so we hopped on the Metro and went to the sea!

The rest of the evening was spent losing Beckett’s phone in a taxi, finding my traditional city Starbucks mug souvenir, and having a last dinner with our team. And packing.

And that is the end of the fun part of my trip to Barcelona. Getting home will be another (not terribly exciting but must be recorded for posterity) post…

 

Barcelona on my birthday

Okay, so I left off at Wednesday night’s wine explosion…

Thursday was another work day. The main point of this meetup was to set a road map for our team for the next six months. The team I’m on (Hermes) focuses on live chat support for WordPress.com users and support for all users of the WordPress mobile app. Our team (Hermes) was formed in August, and has grown by several members since then, so it was also a bonding experience.

Simon led a bunch of activities that helped us narrow down our goals. At first, I was skeptical – how was writing on post it notes with sharpies (as fun as that is) going to help us form concrete goals? But you know what, it did. Pretty cool.

Don’t we look so profound and thoughtful and stuff? Yeah. We are.

That evening, we split into smaller groups (there were 15 of us all together, not including a few spouses that joined us) for dinner. Yet again, we had a delicious meal. Shocking!

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The giant apartment we met in had a chapel.
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And a a really old foosball table.

Friday was…my 40th birthday! I already posted about the amazing 5.47 mile (but who’s counting?) run I went on with Beckett.

We spent most of the day finishing up the road map, had a lovely lunch, and then later, Beckett and I snuck off so we could go see Las Ramblas and get some pre-dinner tapas.

We took a team photo before going to eat that night. Everyone on the team was there except our newest member, Mahangu. We got him into the photo, though.

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Dinner was amazing, as usual. My coworker Jason spent a lot of time finding a great restaurant that we could all go to together (with 19 of us, it wasn’t easy) but he found a great one in Restaurant Cafeteria 336. We started off with bubbly, and then they just brought out a million small plates, each one more delicious than the next. (My favorite was a concoction of potatoes, tuna, and poached eggs.) I ordered a steak for my main course, and then we had creme brulee for dessert (they call it Creme Catalan, but it’s the same thing.) And of course, the wine was flowing freely.

Afterwards, we went back to the apartment (codenamed Han because Harrison Ford had stayed there once, according to the AirBNB listing – I stayed in Lando, and the other place was Chewie) and played Cards Against Humanity while trying to drink all of the wine in Spain. Always fun!

So that marked the end of my birthday, which was fabulous. (Of course, I just mean my birthDAY, not the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of my birth, which will continue for several weeks to come.)

Since we had stayed up very late Friday night, and Saturday was set aside as a day to explore, I slept until nearly noon. Maaan, that felt good. Since I took a ton of pictures on Saturday, I’ll save those for another post…

 

 

Barcelona, the first few days

I have a lot to recap about Barcelona, so I’m going to break it up a bit.

So of course I was supposed to arrive the afternoon of Monday the 5th, but as we all know, that didn’t happen. I finally arrived Tuesday afternoon, tired but excited.

See how excited I am?
See how excited I am?

Got to the apartment where everyone was congregating, said my hellos, etc, etc. Not one to waste a moment, fellow Automattician Beckett said, “who wants to go on a gondola ride?” It got dark pretty early there, and I knew if I sat for too long, I’d just fall asleep, so off we went.

The views when we got to the stop were stunning. But we had to take a lot of stairs to get to the top. I mean, a lot. You’d get to the top of a crazy long staircase, only to be confronted with about seventy jillion more steps. My advice – take the bus to the gondola station.

It was getting very close to closing time when we got to the top, so we didn’t get to go in that castle, but maybe next time.

After our gondola adventure, we met up with everyone else for dinner, which was, like pretty much everything we ate here, amazing.

Wednesday was a work day, but the afternoon was devoted to a tour of Sagrada Família. I missed the tour but got some photos of the outside.

Work:

Play:

That evening, we went to dinner at a tapas restaurant where they just kept bringing out food. It was all so, so delicious, and very reasonably priced. At the end, they brought out a porró, which is a wine decanter that you use to pour wine directly into your mouth. Or…not.

Aaaand, I spent the rest of that evening doing laundry.

Barcelona, in food

So I have a bunch of posts to make about Barcelona but since I’m still pretty out of it from traveling (that’s a story for another post) I’m just going to post some food pics here.

The food was amazing. The ham! The seafood! The paella!

 

Birthday run

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!! (Did I not tell everyone on Earth yet?!? Just making sure.)

I may have mentioned that I’m in Barcelona, so my coworker Deborah and I went on a run early this morning. I like to run on my birthday, it makes me feel virtuous. Like, a good way to start the next year of my life.

We left the apartment at 7:45, and we made it to the Mediterranean right as the sun was rising. (It rises really late here!) It was just stunning.

I’m in Zurich, y’all!

Well, I’ve made it to Europe!

Traveling a long way is kind of surreal, isn’t it? Seems weird that just this morning, I saw the boys off to school, and now I’m in Zurich. Granted, it’s been the longest day of my life (well, close to it) but I haven’t slept since then, so it counts.

So, I won’t bore you with a play by play of my travel thusfar, but just wanted to remember some things.

Once I got to Newark, I had a bunch of time to kill, so I mostly wandered around, trying to get 10,000 steps in while also looking for a charging station. I tell ya, if Newark had fewer payphones and more charging stations, we’d all be better off.

Fortunately, my plane took off without incident and the flight was mostly good. (Well, the landing was the scariest in ever because it was super foggy, the runway was white, and we were in the mountains, so I thought we were still way up in the air when BOOM we landed. It was kind of terrifying.)

I was seated in Economy Plus again (so much legroom!) and despite the fact that I had all of the possible accoutrements to make sleeping possible (fancy pillow, eye mask, headphones, white noise on phone, cozy socks, non-restrictive, comfy clothing, blanket, melatonin) I just couldn’t fall asleep.

So that’s the last time I’m going to try it. Every time I have ever flown to Europe I’ve tried to fall asleep on the flight over (or back) and I have never, ever been able to. Nothing works. So I’m going to stop trying.

Consequently, my eyeballs are very heavy and I am somewhat punchy from exhaustion (I also tried going to bed late Sunday night and waking up early Monday to wear myself out, and those laps of Newark’s terminals were also with that in mind) but at least it’ll be 2 in the afternoon when I get to Barcelona and I’ll be excited to see everyone so hopefully that will help keep me awake until bedtime.

Okay, just a few more pictures…

85 months

This morning, the boys and I were sitting on the sofa, and somehow we got on the subject of why I started taking monthly pictures of them, and after looking through all 84 of the previous photos, I think they finally started to get it a little bit. It was pretty sweet, actually.

It may have made them a tiny bit more cooperative for this month’s pic, especially after I explained how difficult the younger years were. They may have felt a smidgen of remorse. Or something.

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Our exciting New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve…do you say the year that just passed or the one coming up? I guess it’s the one coming up. One of those things that always confuses me but I’ve never actually just figured out once and for all. Okay, so let’s say it’s New Year’s Eve 2015 (but Eve is in 2014, that’s why I get confused, but it’s the eve of 2015, so yeah. Confusion.) Since the boys were born, most years the boys have spent the night at Granny and Grandpa’s so George and I could go to the pub.

Photo Dec 31, 9 26 22 PM
9:26 pm, Froot Loop snack.

And the year after that, they had their tubes in/adenoids out on New Year’s Eve, so that was a quiet night in.

Except the year they were a month old. Or maybe we did go out – I think my mom came to stay that night. That time is a bit of a blur.

But ever since then, we’ve gone to a friend’s house or the pub or done something. But since I leave for Barcelona in a few days, I told George he could go to the pub and I would stay home with the boys. No problem. I’d finish the book I was reading, have a little wine, go to bed early and wake up refreshed in 2015.

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10:37 pm, Oliver and Miles going strong.

Except…I opened my big mouth and asked the boys if they wanted to stay up til midnight. Linus and Miles were gung-ho, but Oliver noted that on previous attempts to stay up late, his eyes would just close because he got tired. Heh.

So, we stayed up. At around their usual bedtime (8:30ish) they started getting a little sleepy. Hours yet to go, but they were determined.
Now, I know what you’re thinking…why not just put on that Netflix countdown at 9:00? Well, we live close to the river and you can actually see the fireworks from our front porch, so I’d actually told them they could see the fireworks at midnight.

Which also makes it impossible for me (a light sleeper) to be asleep at midnight anyway. So. Midnight it is.

The boys played video games, we watched some TV, I put on a movie, and I gave a late snack of sugary cereal.

At around 10:45, Miles and Linus waved the white flag. They went to lay down in their beds, but with the lights on so I could wake them at midnight. I humored them, but I knew that they would be impossible to budge later on.

Indeed, when I went back at around 11:45, they briefly opened their eyes and told me they’d rather sleep than watch the fireworks. Alrighty then!

Oliver, though, the one who thought his eyelids would fail him, was still full of good cheer when we watched the ball drop on Times Square at midnight.

We went out on the front porch, where, through the trees, we could see the big display that the city puts on over the river. After all that anticipation, though, Oliver was too cold to stay outside more than a few minutes. Ha ha!

Linus and Miles woke up this morning rather perturbed at me for missing the fireworks. Ha! I told them we’d get some sparklers today and light them tonight for our own mini display.

Happy New Year 2015! (Now that, I know.)

 

2014 in review – personal version

January

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Went to my first meetup as an Automattician in San Francisco, where I turned 39.

I got a pink bike.


February

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The first tooth is lost!

Linus played soccer.


March

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Mardi Gras.

Went to Portland, Oregon for another meetup.


April

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Started a Whole 30.

Got a new car!


May

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Chicago meetup

Miles started baseball

Molly got married. We restaged some old family pics.

Kindergarten ended.


June

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Started kitchen renovation


July

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Playa del Carmen meetup

Completed my first triathlon!


August

SAMSUNG CSC

Went to the beach

Visited my childhood home.

Boys started 1st grade


September

Park City meetup. I made a video and showed my colleagues. I got inked again.

Completed my second triathlon!


October

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Had LASIK!

RIP Stinky


November

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Got a treadmill for my desk

(it was a slow month.)


December

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Boys turned 7.

Christmas happened.

So, I guess this year was more eventful than I thought. Here’s to hoping 2015 is just as fun and happy!

2014 in review – blog version

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 190,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 8 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Meanwhile, on social media…

Even though I support bloggers all day long, I still tend to post more on Facebook and Twitter than on my blog. I guess because I get more immediate feedback, and I crave feedback in the form of likes and comments. (At least one thing I’ve learned as a Happiness Engineer is that I’m not the only one.)

But there are of course huge drawbacks. Even though, of course, Facebook will store everything we ever write or think and use it against us one day, it’s really hard to go back and find old posts. So I’ve decided I’m going to start sharing some of my FB, Twitter, and Instagram posts here on my blog so I can archive them better.

So here we go, the week of December 21-28, 2014:

December 24, 2014, 1:37 pm
Rip my heart out, Oliver. “I like shopping alone with you because then no one says, ‘ooh triplets!'”

December 25, 2014

Mom and Larry win at gift giving!
Mom and Larry win at gift giving!

December 27, 2014, 9:20 pm

Renny and Pammy!
Renny and Pammy!

 

December 28, 2014, 7:14 pm
For the first time ever, I can hear the boys talking to each other in French!*
*it seems to be about poop, the universal language of boys.

Ah, social media. Ain’t it great?!