It occurs to me that trying to accomplish 101 things in 1001 days means completing an item once every 10 days on average. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm waaaay behind now. I should have completed 16 things by now. I've completed 8. I've been being pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing and that has to stop now. Starting with one that other people are waiting on me for - the MIT OpenCourseWare class.

I'm going to add stories, reports and musings about my time in Spain in installments here. Part 1 (of however many I do before I run out of things to say or get bored).

You know how you go on a trip and everyone asks you the same questions so you get your answers down pat and know which stories are in your repertoire and you just keep cycling through them? Yeah, everyone asks me about the food. I don't exactly get this. Maybe because despite living in the Bay Area and appreciating the food scene here, I'm just not really a foodie.

Breakfast was pretty much cereal and milk - not that different from here. I could have stopped somewhere for churros and chocolate, but most days I just ate at "home" or skipped breakfast (something my host mom didn't like -- I found that amusing as my real mom isn't the 'you must eat breakfast' type). Oh, and when the guide books say that chocolate in Madrid is a thinck gooey drink - they mean it. Nothing at all like hot chocolate in the U.S. Not that I am complaining.

Lunch is the main meal of the day. Most places have a "menu del dia" where the entire meal is from 7 to 12 euros. The meal would include one item for a first course (usually from a list of 3 or 4 choices), one item for a second or main course, bread, a drink and either dessert or coffee. The beautiful thing about this system is that bottled water, soda, or a glass of wine all count the same for a drink. Also coffee upsets my stomach so - hello dessert! The bad thing is that Spanish restaurants don't have the same habit of keeping water glasses full as most U. S. restaurants. In fact, they didn't really give you water unless you asked for it. No big deal really.

Lunch, in Spain, takes place from 2 - 4. I like this system. Mainly because I was getting up at 10 and wasn't hungry for lunch until then. I would generally stop just about anyplace to eat. Well, any place that didn't intimidate me. There are a lot of small bar-like places that have lunch menus and I was a wimp and never ate at those because, honestly, I was a woman traveling alone and when I glanced in almost all of the patrons were male. Seriously, I feel like a dork for being that way. But it is what it is.

The food was - good, but not great. One Greek restaurant was better than average. The vegetarian place (probably the only vegetarian restaurant in all of Madrid) was good too. Everything else - just sort of blends. Nothing horrible, nothing great.

Dinner takes place at 10 p.m. I think people normally have a snack or something on their way home from work. I seldom did. So I was hungry sort of early sometimes. Dinner is also quite light. Mostly what I would consider a side dish here. Of course at 10 or 11 p.m. that is just fine as you wouldn't want a heavy meal right before bed. I ate dinner at "home" most of the time. This was interesting because cooking was not my host mom's thing. To explain how much it was not her thing - she had never used her oven. Never. The baking rack was still wrapped in plastic. It isn't anymore because I baked some chicken one night.

Some of the dinners she served: a salad of tomatoes, tuna and olive oil which was quite good; peaches cut up and in a yogurt and honey sauce which is also quite good; previously frozen spinach cooked and mixed with something that made me gag which was sort of droopy and... made me gag (which I did not let on to with the result that this was dinner at *least* 6 times, 3 of which were right in a row); bread crumbs fried in olive oil with grapes which tasted fine even if it wasn't the healthiest meal ever; and my favorite, in the makes-a-good-story sense, a plate with around 1.5 cups of peas and .25 cup of mayonaise on it. My host mom explained that I could mix the mayo with the peas. Yummmm (I don't like mayo). Yes, I had a plate of peas for dinner one night. Ah well. What is the use of traveling if not to collect stories such as these?

The only thing I strongly associate with "Spanish cooking" is paella - which I didn't eat becuse of my seafood thing. Other areas of Spain are known for other stuff but Madrid - not so much.

The lunch places had a disconcerting habit of serving fries with the main course. Baked chicken - with fries. Steak - with fries. I associate friench fries with fast food here, but apparently they are a more general thing in Spain.

I did give in a couple of times and have fast food for lunch. Burger King and Mc Donald's have a strong presence in Madrid. Subways exist. Starbucks will get its own entry later. There is also a place called Rodilla that serves sandwiches made on white bread with the crust cut off. The meal deals would have 3 or 4 of these half sandwiches, a drink, and maybe a side dish or salad of some sort.

Oooh - warning. Even if they call it caprese (salad or sandwich) - they mean normal (not fresh) mozarella and dried basil. They have fresh mozarella - I had it on another salad somewhere - they just don't use it on caprese salads. Or the 3 places I tried it didn't (I'm a sloooow learner).

Okay, I take that all back. Got a family in Spain.

Why is it, however, that the weeks leading up to vacation are so stressful? I'm not even talking about packing and locating documents, etc. I'm saying that I will spend an average of 12 hours per day at work until I leave on vacation because I have to get everything ready for other people to take over my work. Granted, I am the only one of our 3 person department who has been working on this product for more than 3 months. And it is a critical part of our development cycle that I will be missing. But I may just find myself working overnight before I leave to get everything done. (No, I won't. But I might be in a situation where I should just to make sure things are squared away. But regardless, I won't. I will do my best but after that, the people left here will have to figure out how to deal.)

Still no family for the Spain thing, but I have taken the excellent advice offered and contacted the agency and they seem to think there is still a reasonable chance I'll get matched up as all of Europe comes back from their August vacations. So I gave them until the 23rd to say for sure. Only because I really, really want to meet and live with a Spanish family.

My backup plan, as of now, is to visit Ireland, England, and [one other place - either a particular B&B in Spain or one of the Club Meds that offer trapeze]. The order and exact dates of that plan are going to be arranged sort of on the fly. Which is not how I do things, but, well, it is what I have at the moment. I'm thinking 'adventure' and it is almost drowning out the 'scary.' I might even have company for part of that.

But right now the whole being away from work for a month thing is causing serious work stress. Because it really does come at the worst possible part of our development cycle. And my two "minions" will also have shorter vacations during September as well. Which they can't change. Not to mention that some changes were made to the scope of the project and, well, it means more stress and more work. Which I should be doing now but when I found myself in the kitchen eyeing the cookies and considering another ice cream sandwich even though I am not hungry, I knew I needed to let off stress somehow.

I haven't yet told TPTB here that if Spain thing falls through I'm still taking off. It is such, such a bad time for me to be gone that I almost feel they would be justified in asking me to postpone my trip. Even though I already postponed it once at their request. I allow myself to be pushed around enough (some of it is the nature of the job) that I'm torn between doing what would be best for the team and just taking the time for myself because I've earned it. And I need it. But I really cannot, right now, see how everything will get done if I am not here. I'm not exagerating here. Our whole team is 3 people. My 2 "minions" just started here and are super smart and capable, but have never been through this process we are about to enter. The 4 weeks I would be gone are pretty much the most critical time in the process for my team. So it is understandable that I feel incredibly selfish and bad-manager-y for cutting out.

Also, when I went through about 2 months of high stress making major job decisions earlier this year I gained at least 10 pounds. Which I haven't lost. I so very much do not want to add another 10. I am already way past acceptable (for me). And I so wish I could exercise the stress away. But when? After I get home, not having had dinner, at 9? Before I leave for work at 8?

Anyway, now I have vented I will get back to work before I make my dilemma worse by getting further behind.

One of my 101 items is to take a vacation in Europe for more than 10 days. When I wrote that I knew that I had a month long sabbatical coming up and I knew that I was planning to apply to a particular program that allows you to stay with a family in Spain (probably Madrid) for "free" (after the $450 program fee) in exchange for 15 hours per week of English instruction. So I finally sent all of the application materials in. And now I am in the long "wait for some family to choose me out of the line up" stage. I feel like a kid waiting to get adopted. Was my introduction letter good enough? Am I too old? Do I sound like a person they'd trust to live in their house for a month? They basically keep trying to match me up until August 11 at which point they give up and I have a month off of work with no place to go.

I'll probably still go to Europe, but maybe not all in one place. And I don't particularly want to travel alone because I am not outgoing and it is sort of scary anyway. But who else can randomly take a whole month off? No one in my family. And I don't have friends that I would even consider asking. I'd even do a series of traveling with people for a week here and there. But again, who plans a trip to Europe with 3 week's notice? Other than me. Not to mention that though I moved this sabbatical from May to September at the request of TPTB at work and now September is super inconvenient. May would have been ok. But no one knew that back in March when we were discussing it. So there is no blame, but it means that I'll be more stressed at leaving work than I would have been.

Really, I'm just sort of worried that I haven't been chosen yet and it has been at least a month since I sent the application. Probably more. So I am feeling all unloved. By total strangers. And worried that if I have no concrete plans I will give in to the pressure to not take the time off of work. Already I'm thinking "I'll only take 3 weeks instead of the 5 in my current plan."

There is a resident homeless person at the library. He sits outside with his bags and backpacks and generally plays a recorder (wind instrument) and tries to talk to people as they go in. Every once in a while someone will stop to talk when he hails them. I've stopped and talked with him (read: listened to his monologue). Ever since the powers that be told him to move to the side of the library and not right smack dab in front of it, going in and out is easier. (I am the *last* person who would suggest not allowing someone to sit on public land because they are homeless. But he really is quite persistent, so asking him to sit out of the main flow of traffic seems ok.)

Last night I wanted to make a quick stop ay the library. Since I was nearby for gymnastics anyway, going over right after class made sense. As I entered the library he said hello and something about me looking nice today. Whatever. He was at least 40 feet away so I ignored him entirely. Then as I was getting ready to go to the check out counter, I realized I couldn't find my card. I sat on one of the chairs to search through my purse. He sat down in a chair facing me and tried to talk to me while I was searching. (I haven't ever seen him inside the library before.)
Homeless dude: It's warm in here.
Me: hmmm
HD: Isn't it warm?
Me: Gotta go. (card apparently not anywhere in my purse, maybe they will let me check my books out anyway)
HD: You're going already?
Me: Yes, bye.

So I checked out (which you can do without your card for a dollar). Left the building. He apparently beat me outside the better to call to me once again that I look nice today. Three times in one five minute visit. This I did not sign up for.

The point of all this is that I did not look nice. I had just come from gymnastics. My hair was a mess, I was slightly sweaty, my hands had chalk on them. While he always talks to pretty much anyone, he is never that persistent. And his general schtick is "What are you studying?" All I can think is that what he meant last night was "You have big boobs today." You can sort of tell when that is what has attracted someone's attention. It is odd, because despite wandering the earth with roughly the same sized chest since I was in high school, this is the first time that I felt so put on the spot based entirely on my bra size. Maybe that is because I am oblivious (entirely possible). Maybe that is because homeless dude hides stuff like that less well than other people. Maybe it is because I don't generally walk around wearing a leotard. But in any case - yuck. Just yuck. I don't want to have to don my baggiest clothes just to go to the library, but I may have to because the whole thing made me uncomfortable. And yet nothing he did was out of line. It was just too... something. Wrong somehow.

Updates:
I'm only at 97 on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I'm trying to make most of mine real goals and meaningful to me instead of simply grabbing most of them from other people's lists and just adding one or two I care about. I mean, yes, there are some that I don't care about that much and I did steal a few from other lists because they appealed to me too but all of them are personal. Things I do want to do. I'm even trying to be somewhat realistic so I've limited myself to only 4 or 5 travel related items. (Yeah, because I've taken all of 2 trips in the last 7 years. Nope, make that 3. So 5 in 3 years will work, right?)

My amazing non-existent period has come and gone after its 4.5 month hibernation. Seriously -- 21 weeks between periods. I'm never what anyone would call predictable, but still. But point is, period came and went and it wasn't even a bad one. It wasn't particularly heavy or long or crampy. My biggest worry once I noticed that it had been so long was that once it came, it would be ugly. But since it wasn't, I'm perfectly happy waiting another 4 months.

A friend at work turned me on to a web site where you can buy jewelry for $6 per piece. The jewelry is not super-nice, but most pieces have been nicer than one might expect for the price. They say free, but shipping and handling is $5.99 so, yeah, it's $6 a pop. Also you can't go browse and buy whatever you want. They have a featured piece that changes every 15 minutes. So you have to go back and check every once in a while. It's sort of cool. So far I have gotten two things for myself and one for my mom. I have to be careful to get only stuff I really like and not stuff that is just okay. I'm actually really excited about what I have gotten. I'd be even happier if I could change around the stones in some of the stuff they offer. But as it is I just wait until something comes up with the designs and the stones I want.

Yeah, that wasn't at all interesting. That is what happens when you try to blog consistently. You have to take the chaff with the wheat.

Okay, apparently I was feeling sort of PMSy that day. Not that I don't feel all of those things in little amounts, but I think I was dwelling on it and making it all grow so much bigger in my mind. Which is fine as long as I snap out of it eventually. I was finally brave enough to put most of it up on the LBYM boards and, well, it was a little scary, but not too bad. I mean, by and large, they are all strangers to me anyway. I think.

Speaking of PMS, at some point I really should go see a doctor about my amazing non-existent period. I think it has been at least 4 months. Almost 5. I don't want to go to the doctor again until my 6-month blood pressure check so I'll make sure to mention it then. You know, I wouldn't care at all, in fact I'd be sort of happy, if it didn't make me worry that the next time I get a period it will be absurdly heavy and no fun. I did look it up online and I'm pretty sure it isn't PCOS since I don't have very many of the other symptoms at all. But this is the longest I've skipped ever.

They are talking about weight and diets again over on LBYM. I'll respond there once I figure out what I'm thinking here. Someone who was overweight and has lost a lot of weight over the last year or so asked:

Do you choose not to try to lose fat because you don't feel it's important enough (relative to the other priorities in your life) or because you don't feel it's likely that you would succeed at it? Or is there another reason?

So here's my answer:

I choose not to try to lose fat (at the moment) because even thinking about it makes me feel awful. It makes me feel less valuable as a person. It makes me feel fat and worthless. It makes me feel inferior to other people around me. It makes me feel angry that I have to struggle with this while other people around me eat as much or more and don't have to worry. Thinking about and concentrating on my body makes me constantly aware of my flaws. It makes me feel judged by the people around me. It makes me feel helpless and out of control.

I know exactly what I need to do to maintain at 120 (a "good" weight for my 5'4" self according to the charts). I did it when I was 13 - 15. I merely have to eat only 20 grams of fat per day while doing gymnastics workouts 6 days per week, 5 hours per day. Problem is - I don't have 30 hours a week to devote to working out right now. I know what I have to do to maintain at 130 - 140 too because I did it throughout high school. Dance for 2 hours each morning plus a few afternoon practices and performances here and there. Unfortunately I don't have 10+ hours per week to devote to working out either. I could maybe find them if I dropped a volunteer committment or two and stopped reading.

So why am I not all gung ho to lose fat? It is not important enough to devote my life to it (not to mention that when I was 15 years old and weighed 115 - 120 pounds I still felt like I was horribly overweight because the other gymnasts were more in the 90 - 100 range). It just isn't. I devoted all of my free time to gymnastics in the past and yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, I liked competition. Yes, I was really strong and very fit. But I hit a point at which the recurring injuries (back, ankles) were too much and I wasn't going to get substantially better at the sport so I quit. Mind you, I still tried for over a year after an injury that left me only doing 3 hours of my full workout before switching to something easier on my back (beam usually) for the last 2. I didn't just drop it easily or on a whim.

Yes, I could and should lose some of the extra weight I'm carrying around. I know that I can get to 160ish with a moderate amount of effort. By which I mean only 4 days per week of exercise (I'm currently down to 2) and slightly more attention to food choices. I've bounced up to 180 in the past 2 years because of a knee injury and my work schedule messing up the regular free weights class I had been taking. Yes, I should learn to do it on my own, but the class motivated me. My eating habits are actually pretty good already. I eat mainly fruit and vegetables. (Case in point: lunch today was baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, broccoli and sugar snap peas, some fruit salad, strawberries, vanilla yogurt and a sprinkling of granola.) Chicken on occasion. I don't like seafood, so fish is out. But lentils and other legumes I can do. White bread is mostly out, as are white rice and potatoes. I do eat too many sweets (normally one thing per day) and I could change that. I don't want to enough at the moment.

My main problem with the whole debate raging on the LBYM board is that the biggest part of the weight wars is not the diet or the exercise. It is trying to realize that my value as a person is not dependent on my pants size. Truthfully, I'm not there yet. I still use words like "should" and "ought to" when discussing food. I still think that "if I were only x pounds lighter I could do such and such" when I could probably do such and such now. I still think that I don't deserve a relationship at my current size and that no one could possibly find me attractive. I see my body as an indicator of my self-worth most of the time rather than a wonderful thing with many abilities. I can go down the self-criticism path effortlessly and hate something about every single part of my body. My brain is great. I can feel confident and accomplished there (not mega-super-genius smart, but good enough). So sometimes I stay in my brain where I'm good enough and I don't hate myself. I'll sit and read for 5 hours on a Saturday instead of doing something active because, well, it's fun and I don't have to worry about something being jiggly that shouldn't be. It makes me feel good. Hikes by myself do too, and I do that most weekends. But that isn't serious exercise, it's just walking around. It doesn't have an effect on my weight.
To clarify - I am currently roughly 180 and I am not totally weak and blobby. I do gymnastics and yoga every week. I just don't run marathons.

So I guess the answer is that it isn't important enough to me AND I don't think I would be successful enough without humongous amounts of effort AND there is another reason -- my body image issues are such that it is easier to not face it at all (other than the occasional, or not so occasional, bout of body-loathing).

Through some random link following (I think it was stalking TWoP writers), I discovered the 101 things to do in 1001 days concept. Apparently a bunch of bloggers do it. So I am making my list. Once I get to 101 things, I'll attempt to make the pretty blog thing like other people. It is hard coming up with 101 things. I guess I should categorize stuff so that it makes sense and maybe it will spark some new ideas. So far I am writing down stuff as it occurs to me. SO far I have stuff that fits into physical, spiritual, personal, interpersonal, educational and vocational categories.

The problem is that I am basically a lazy person. Some of the items on my list wouldn't be hard to do, I just don't do them. So maybe having the list will inspire me.

I am the first person to admit that I am really bad at the whole pills and medication thing. You give me something to take every day and it will last about twice as long as it should. I don't remember, I don't bother. I've always been relatively healthy so I just don't stress too much about stuff like that. (When and if I ever need birth control? Not going to rely on the pill. Not if it is up to me to take them.)

So I have some prescription anti-inflamatories for a continuing knee problem that I have. I am under the doctor's orders to take them "when it flares up" so already I am great because I can't mess up the whole taking pills on schedule thing. No problem, right? Well, these poills came with tons of other little instructions. Each one another sticker on the bottle. Some of the stickers wouldn't fit so there is this little sticker flap attached to the side of the bottle. How do I measure up? Let's see...

Limit alcohol use while taking this drug. Daily use of alcohol may increase the risk of stomach bleeding. Good thing I don't drink alcohol daily anyway. I did have half a glass of wine yesterday.

Do not take aspirin without the knowledge and consent of your physician. Cool then. I'll stick with Advil.

Take with food or milk. Um, I ate some toast an hour or so ago.

Take this medicine with a full glass of water. Does half a can of Squirt count?

May cause drowsiness of dizziness. Not so that I have noticed.

So I guess I'm not horrible. But on the other hand, I pretty much know that I should go back to the doctor because it still hurts after months and I'm pretty sure he said to come back if it didn't go away. Plus after a really long hike I did last month it hurts more and in a slightly different way. But I haven't been doing the physical therapy either and I feel bad going back to the doctor when I didn't follow instructions in the first place. So, plan: do physical therapy as instructed (every day) for a month and bug the nice sports med doctor after that if nothing changes.

I hope this doesn't sound insufferably snotty, but seriously, if you apply for a job and are contacted by someone saying they want to do a phone interview, wouldn't you consider it somewhat basic to maybe, I don't know, look up the company for which you are interviewing? Yes, I know, I didn't give a ton of notice for when the interview itself was, but you got the email saying I wanted to call you, *you* suggested the next day. I expect you to have some clue as to which company you are interviewing with.

I don't particularly love the whole interview proces to start with. I hate talking on the phone. So when I am doing screening interviews, you gotta do something to make me interested in you. Anything. When asked why you applied to this particular position at this particular company, answering that you saw the position listed on craigslist so you sent your resume in is... not what I'm looking for. When I ask if you are familiar with our product, asking what product that is again... not wowing me with your interest or enthusiasm. So, blech. And I'm too nice (a.k.a. wimpy) to say "forget it" right then and there so I had to suffer through 15 minutes of trying to pretend I'm interested and then promise that I will get back to you after we have weighed the relative merits of everyone we're talking to.

Also, today? Not going well. Nothing earth shattering. Except they cancelled Joan of Arcadia and now I will never know how or when or if Kevin walks again much less if he dances at his wedding. I won't get to see what happens to Grace and Luke. I won't see Lily or hear her down to earth observations. Adam will forever be a schmuck in my mind because he was never given enough time to redeem himself and that is just sad because I don't want him to be what the writers made him in the last few episodes when he was so not that in the year and a half before that. This was a show that made you think. It talked about faith without being schmaltzy. It didn't claim to have all the answers. It had great actors and actresses. I cared about the characters. They never pretended that any of them were perfect when they weren't (um, hello Rory!) and I liked them all the more for that.

I'm not normally a nerd. Well, okay, I am frequently a little nerdy, but I generally read books without feeling compelled to make vocabulary lists. Really, I do. Except for books that my book club reads. For those I break out the dictionary. Now in a book about the making of the OED, you'd think the list would be longer than, say, the list for a Nero Wolfe mystery (Some Buried Caesar). But no. They are about the same length. Anyway, here are some of the fascinating words found in The Professor and the Madman:

lexicography - process of writing, editing, or compiling a dictionary
louche - of questionable taste or morality
wen - harmless cyst, especially on scalp or face (ewwwww...)
lubricious - shifty or tricky
reify - to regard or treat an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence (I knew that!)
postlapsarian - after The Fall (as in the fall of Adan and Eve)
tocsin - a warning; an omen; an alarm sounded on a bell
pudicity - modesty, chastity
fascicle - small bundle; one of the parts of a book published in separate sections
rebarbative - tending to irritate
argot - specialized vocabulary or set of idioms used by a particular group, jargon

Priapism you can look up for yourself. Suffice to say that you learn surprising things when reading about the making of the OED.

Back again, after another year long break (or almost a year anyway). My weight is up. 178. Which isn't exactly a personal high, but it is close. Yuck. Also -- I am so tired making value judgements about everything I eat. So much so that it is becoming counter-productive. As in "I know it is *wrong* to eat this brownie but I want it and you can't stop me na na na boo boo." Gack! Could I live without the brownie? Yes. Do I eat a brownie every day? No. It's complicated. And a huge pain.

Anyway...

I am really tired today because I stayed up super-late last night reading. I swear, I need some sort of keeper. Something that makes books somehow inaccessible after a certain hour. 3 a.m. Ludicrous. And not only am I tired, but I have been on the verge of a cold for several days. Was finishing some random Greg Iles book worth getting sick? NO.