Home Again

The sunrise out of the balcony on my hotel room I stayed in for the Retail Convention in Spain last week. We were in a pretty big hotel on the Marina in the city of Palma. Seeing the sunrise was a regular event, since were were scheduled to leave everyday at 8 or 9. We were also scheduled for "Dinners" which most of the time meant hor'dourves and wine until midnight or after, which made for a very tiring but very fun week.

This was the approach to the beach on the Sunday. Luckily, the girl I was traveling with had one of here friends from HQ take us to a beach about 45 minutes away from our hotel. The road leading up to it was very narrow, it would be a single car road for the US, but in Spain most people have tiny cars that could just barely pass each other going each way. Then there is a dirt parking lot, and you had to walk along a trail for a few minutes before getting to the actual beach.

I've never been on a beach as nice as this one. It was pretty crowded with locals and tourists. It made for an extremely relaxing day. It was a little overcast, but the day was still warm, and so was the water. It wasn't until halfway through this day that I finally felt like I was out of the country.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures or sightsee for the rest of the week, since we were all under a full schedule. There were around 75 managers and other retail affiliated folk attending the conference, which during the day was presentations, workshops, and a long lunch in between. For one of the dinners the company rented a catamaran, and we took it out on the sea, and into a bay where it parked and then the dancing began. I was pretty motion sick from the ride over the waves in the sea, but once we anchored it was pretty still. The rest of the night was dancing and drinks. The DJ played a lot of Italian and Spanish pop hits, which was fun at first, but tiring for the English and German speakers a couple of hours in. Everyone says that the Americans are supposed to be the loud and obnoxious ones. But soon after the music started the dancing and the half naked yelling and whistling Italian and Spanish contingent started whooping it up, we all discovered that the stereotype isn't necessarily true. In the words of one of the managers from the UK - "How often do you get the chance to attend an Italian wedding reception in the Mediteranean?" We also had a scavenger hunt as our teambuilding activity one afternoon, which took us over the mountains of Mallorca. We split up in 10 groups of about 7, and had to travel around to a couple of different towns and take pictures, collect items and all kinds of various scavenger hunt type things. It was a bit like a Real World Road Rules activity. Also pretty funny because the groups were divided so the different countries weren't grouped together so everything had to be translated from Spanish into English, and then into Italian. We did a lot of training and the days were pretty long, but all of the sitting in cold air conditioned rooms looking at power point presentations was made up for enjoying the events at night. It was an almost perfect balance, except for the complete lack of sleep throughout the week.

Procrasti-wha???

I have, of course, like everyone else have been meaning to update the good ol' blog for quite awhile now. New job, combined with laziness, combined with the mental pile o' crap that I've been meaning to blog but never did is my only excuse. I figured I'd start off easy. With a picture of the dog. I'm happy Morsa's Hazel turned out ok. Having a sick pet sucks. I've had a couple of sick Shelby moments, between the vomiting for 24 hours and the cat scratch in the eye, plus a few others here and there. I'm glad I grew up with my parents, who taught me that pets (and people for that matter) are more indestructable than we think sometimes. Like when my Ma cured Tina's kitty eye infection with some left over people pink eye drops. Anyway.

I've been baking a lot of chickens lately too. It all started with a New York Times article about broiling steaks in a cast iron pan instead of the broiler pan that comes with your oven, which is a great idea. It works good as a small roasting pan too. That pan has quickly become one of my favorites. I'm working on perfecting my seasoning now, since I have figured out how long exactly to cook a chicken without poisioning myself with salmonella. I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty paranoid about raw chicken. Which isn't very logical, considering the amount of raw eggs I have consumed while making cookies. Maybe once it's mixed in with two kinds of sugar, the threat of food poisoning isn't so scary. It's nice to have a good chicken dinner. Then I have a week to eat the rest of the chicken in sandwiches and salads and whatnot. It usually doesn't last that long. Also thanks to big bro for the excellent knife set. I wouldn't be carving chickens every week without it! Any tips on successfully carving a chicken would be appreciated. I get lost around the thigh area, and usually resort to pulling off the meat with a fork or my fingers. It gets kind of barbaric.

My friend Nico was in town last week. It's always great when he's here because he has the knack of bringing all of his friends together in one place for beer and shenanigans. He keeps a pretty random assortment of people as friends, so it makes for some fun times. We spent a sunny Saturday at Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade. Which is part small town parade, and part half assed Burning Man. I liked it, because unlike the big parades in the city, it still feels like a regular people parade, with old time cars and the random motorcyle gang getting in on the parade action along with the freaks on the floats.