Those who know me could easily guess that the title "The Pursuit of Happyness" would bug me. In fact, my youngest sister took great joy in bringing up the title multiple times when I was at my parents' house for Christmas. And yet, no one has intuited that I was equally bothered when I heard of "The Last Mimzy" (previewed when I went to watch Bridge to Terabithia which I heartily recommend - great movie!). Because, you see, mimsy is *clearly* an adjective, and yet the title is using it as a noun! However I have been able to maintain my sanity because the two words are really not the same word at all. One is spelled with an s, the other with a z. Whew! Crisis averted!

Hmm, it's January 30 and I think I can say with confidence that my "15 minutes a day of cleaning" thing has been a moderate success. I'm getting better at doing the cleaning each day instead of just saving up those quarter hours for Saturday. Certain tasks take me easily beyond the 15 minutes, but once I get started I don't care so much. The big gain has been that the goal makes me get started. Started is good. My houselet isn't the most beautiful thing on the planet yet - not by a long shot. But it is better on the whole.

February's goal will be to stretch every day. Up until a few months ago I could just plop down into splits anytime. No warm-up needed. That isn't so much the case any longer. (Which I know because I have a gymnastics class every Tuesday night.) I don't know why, but it isn't a trend I wish to encourage so I guess I'll have to actually work at staying flexible now.

So I don't really do New Years' Resolutions. I do smaller, more frequent resolutions throughout the year. Which I am adept at breaking just about as quickly as the average American breaks his or her New Years' resolutions. Yay me?

Anyway, in addition to a vague intention to really start thinking about maybe getting on some of my 101 in 1001 list items, I'm going to make a New Years' resolution this year. Really. Except it is going to be spread out over the year so I can flake 12 times instead of all at once. My resolution is to pick up 12 good habits this year - one per month.

January is the dawn of the "clean or pick up for 15 minutes each day Monday - Friday leaving weekends free for fun." The benefit is that if I flake, I *can* pick up a missed day on Saturday (but NOT Sunday). But that is no fun. Since I hadn't thought of this resolution until Friday nightish, I did all of last week on Saturday (and also I had a friend coming over and the house was not even up to 'friend who claims to be bad housekeeper' standards). But starting today, it's 15 minutes per day.

Ouch.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

I had two grandmothers. One of them had a debilitating and very painful disease for the last 20 years of her life. She got all of her nutrition through a tube directly into her stomach (or large intenstine maybe) for 5 + years. She was mostly bed ridden, except she refused to stay in bed because she didn't want her muscles to atrophy. She made dinner for Grandpa nearly every night no matter how many times she had to sit down to rest during the preparation. Clearly she had ample reason to complain. But she didn't. In fact, she only started complaining about how she felt very shortly before she died.

My other grandmother complains regularly. Her hip hurts; her feet hurt; she's bored; there's nothing to do. Granted complaints of the last couple of years can be blamed on the Altzheimer's. And it truly does change people's personalities. I get that. But even before then, 10 - 15 - -20 years ago, this grandmother complained. I still love her, of course, but when it came right down to it? I want to be Grandma K when I grow up.

Except I find myself complaining. A lot. This hurts and that hurts and I screwed up my knee doing such and such and now I can't do thing A or thing B. So when I got a weird feeling in my neck after sleeping at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, I shut up about it. Now we're on day 4 post-back-in-my-own-bed, and it hurts. It really, really hurts. The only position that is remotely comfortable is when I raise my arm. Every other position is painful. It's sort of a muscle ache-but more burning than just a knot feeling.

So, now I have complained. And I'm sorry that I am turning into Grandma N but I just don't think I have what it takes to be Grandma K in me.

Week two!

Of my big long Spain trip. That occurred almost a year ago. Ahem.

Day 8 was a Sunday. I had managed to purchase a full metro pass (abordo de transportes) but was still feeling my way around the Metro in Madrid. The bus to Madrid was old hat by then. What hadn’t registered was that one of the Metro lines that I planned to use was down for construction – part of the big “get Madrid ready for the Olympics that they had really hoped to host but didn’t get” gig. All of Madrid seemed to be under construction because they were one of the finalists for the 2012 Olympics. Instead of waiting for final word, they were already deep in prep mode when word came that they hadn’t gotten them. So there was scaffolding, there were closed lanes, there were streets cut off, and, pertinent to the story of day 8, there were closed Metro lines. Which resulted in me being pretty much lost for much of the day because I didn’t get off where I thought I needed to, and then when I went to look for “El Rastro” (big, famous flea market like thing held every Sunday) I walked in the wrong direction. Apparently. Not a big deal as I was pretty used to wandering around half-lost much of the time and seeing whatever was where I was. I ran across El Templo de Debod – 30 minutes after it closed. I did get to a restaurant that I picked out of my Lonely Planet city guide before it closed, barely.

Based on my host mom’s earlier announcement that we were going to a discoteca that evening, I left Madrid earlyish since I hadn’t actually caught any info about what time we were going. For reasons that I’m not 100% sure of, but which I think include the host mom’s friends not being able to come, we didn’t hit the dicotecas at all. We did, however, go to a bar in Las Rozas. It was very quiet as far as bars go, and the whole smoking indoors thing was somewhat annoying (spoiled California girl that I am). My host mom spoke/flirted with 2 men in the bar primarily. I understood, well, some of the conversation. Enough to pick up some talk of politics, and a discussion on my host mom’s marital state (separated for years, not divorced). Going home D, my host mom, asked if I thought the men were cute, or if I liked them. That disconcerted me a bit. Mainly because the men were easily at least 15 years older than I am. Secondarily because I hadn’t really expected my host mom to be all girlfriend-y with me. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except she seemed to want to relate to me in a way that I don’t relate to my own friends. When we were in Navacerrados (during week 1) we sat in a bar/restaurant and held a conversation (of the ‘her talking, me listening and maybe getting in halting one word answers every once in a while’ type) about how cute the server was with the proprietress – who was the server’s mother. While the server could hear. Said conversation included a discussion of how women look for two things in a man – a big wallet and a big “package” (and I do believe the word paquete was used). This type of conversation would have made me uncomfortable in English. When the subject of the conversation was out of earshot. And the mother of the subject wasn’t there. Point being, I’m not the ‘picking up on men in bars’ type and my host mom was. But whatever. It was sort of a lame night out as far as that goes. I don’t pick up strange men in bars, but I do love to dance and Madrid is known for its night life. I never did get to go to a discoteca.

Day 9 was sleeping in, wandering around Las Rozas on foot, and shopping with D and discovering that she is the type of demanding, sort of strident shopper that makes me very uncomfortable. As in got into an argument with a clerk because they had something on display that they didn’t actually have in stock. And filled out the paperwork for an official complaint about it (there is a system that is either Madrid-wide or possibly nation-wide where official complaints get filed with some organization that monitors stores or something like that).

Day 10 was a long day in Madrid because language instruction was officially cancelled for a few days. I made it to El Parque del Buen Retiro which really was lovely. Saw a building or two there (loved the Crystal Palace and my immediate though – for no discernable reason – was that it would be a great place for a wedding reception because it was so pretty and open). My next plan was to follow a 6 km walk as described in the Lonely Planet guide (best purchase I made!). The first thing I did was run into 2 women who asked me for directions. In English. After more than a week getting by on my limited Spanish, and hearing nothing but Spanish, and feeling sort of lost (both physically and linguistically), having even a 2 minute conversation with strangers from Toronto was bliss. I felt an odd sense of relief. It was so effortless to talk and listen and understand. I was practically giddy.

I followed the walk which went from older more traditional area to a more “modern” section of town. It started by the big museums, passed some of the more famous fountains, and through an outdoor abstract art exhibit and some relatively boring businessy areas of the city. It was in the boring, non-tourist, business area where I ran into a former co-worker. Stuff like that is so random. Half-way around the world in a place where you don’t expect to see anyone you know, and there you are, 5 feet from someone you know. More English conversation! Except Mary was there on business with a current co-worker of her so it was about 30 seconds of conversation. I also stopped in the National Library along the walk and managed to ask for and receive directions, in Spanish, to the Cervantes and Don Quijote exhibit. It was the 400th anniversary of the book being published and they had tons of manuscripts and paintings and illustrations and tapestries and that was an enjoyable hour or two. About which my high school Spanish teacher would be thrilled if she knew of it.

Day 11 – I started the day with shopping for groceries and household stuff at the store down the street. Then I headed into Madrid and the Centro de Arte Reina Sophia on the suggestion of the two Toronto women from the day before. I don’t normally think of myself as a modern/contemporary art type of person, but I really *really* enjoyed the whole Juan Gris exhibit. I saw Guernica which was somehow smaller than I expected, and discovered that I wasn’t actually wrong about not particularly caring for Picasso, although it was interesting. The fourth floor had a bunch of installations - as in contemporary art pieces that take up the whole room and involve flashing lights or melting wax figures or whatnot. That is also something I’d consider “interesting, up to a point, but not particularly my thing.” So I felt rather cultured about the whole day and went back to Las Rozas where B didn’t show up for English lessons. Again.

Day 12 was spent near the Palacio Real (which I decided probably wasn’t worth whatever price they were charging for admission, but which was huge and pretty from the outside). I did get to the one foreign language used book store that the LP guide mentioned and it was great. I traded in the books I had brought with me and picked up some new ones. I also managed to find a really good Greek restaurant for lunch. They saw through my pathetic attempts at Spanish right away, but it was easily the best restaurant food I had up to that point. We did manage about a half hour of forced English lessons that day.

Day 13 was a sort of nothing day – slept late, hit the ATM, followed the son (B) around hoping he’d want to do something English related until he was forced to sit and spend maybe 10 minutes doing workbook pages.

Day 14 was more of the same. I had planned to go off on my own, but D had planned to go to Madrid with B and I seemed to be expected to come along. So I did. We didn’t do much – just drove to Madrid so D could do some errands and then back to Las Rozas. While we drove around I learned that while the previous government was okay the current one is terrible, horrible and no good (according to D). After B went to his dad’s for the evening/day, D showed me some family photographs of trips she’d taken and stuff like that. But a very mellow day overall.

I am not very critical when it comes to movies. I can enjoy the fluffiest of chick flicks. And I am a huge gymnastics fan. So I really, really wanted to like Stick It. Really wanted to. I wanted to have fun watching the gymnastics. I wanted to care about the characters. I wanted the movie to explain gymnastics to the not-yet-a-fan crowd. I am sorely disappointed.

There were a few faults I would have let the film get away with. The whole sentencing a teen involved in major destruction of property to a gymnastics club - eh, whatever, gets us into the gym. The being able to do a double back dismount off of the beam after not training gymnastics at all for a year - unrealistic but so what. Being able to compete well against elite gymnasts after only one month of training after at least a year off - we'll go with it. All the gymnasts in a major elite competition conspiring to protest? The judges? For a really weak reason? (Yes, there are some rules in gymnastics scoring that don't have to do with the gymnast's actual performance. But these are not news. Gymnasts know these things well in advance and are extremely careful to follow them.)

But this is a film that was made by committee. No, I don't actually know how many people had a hand in shaping the film. But it was mushy throughout. I don't know what it was trying to accomplish. Observe:
*There were the shots obviously geared towards the young men in the audience (puh-leeze).
*There was the almost defensive "gymnasts train really hard and they are really tough and strong" *commentary* interspersed throughout. People, did you not take 7th grade English? Does the phrase "show, don't tell" ring a bell? Anyone? Plus the commentary was clunky. And defensive. Which, sure they'll take you seriously if you whine "but we work haaaard."
*There was the story of the main character and why she left gymnastics, etc. which could have been compelling, but wasn't. At all. It was not fully fleshed out enough.
*There were shots that looked as staged as a Zigfield's Follies show or the dancing spoons in Beauty and the Beast. Obviously there for the visual effect, showing off the patterns, etc. But inserted so randomly as to be confusing and not clever enough to be interesting.
*There was maybe some attempt to deal with competitive and catty nature between the gymnasts which was well beyond anything I have ever seen in a gym. And I spent many years in gyms.
*There were hints of the parental pressure that some gymnasts have, slighter hints of pressure from coaches - but none of it really dealt with in any meaningful way.

They even managed to mess with the gymnastics. The cuts from the actors to their gymnast/stunt doubles were ridiculously obvious. Huge skills were given landings that clearly did not match. Instead of just showing a rountine all the way through, or even parts of a routine in a straightforward way, they did silly special effects. I mean, hello, you have Nastia Liukin there. She pretty much does her bar routine perfectly every. single. time. No need for multiple takes even. And yet. They somehow made the routine look choppy.

More ranting later. Maybe. Unless I run out of steam by then.

Ugh. So. Work. Yuck.

Tonight I need to test stuff as we take a short little partial downtime. So as not to inconvenience our users, said downtime will begin at midnight. It should end within a couple of hours. But still, guess who will be sitting up, awake, waiting for things to happen tonight? Yes, hi. At least I get to go to sleep after that.

Next Monday I get to start my workday at 4 a.m. for another short little partial downtime followed by a long stressful day making sure that everything goes well and that we didn't introduce any new problems. Which yes, we've been testing internally but there is always *something* that happens.

Ugh. It would behoove people who know me IRL to not try to speak with me for the next week or so. I'm oh so very pleasant when I'm sleep deprived.