why i don't write as much

I just want to apologize.

It's not easy to write like it used to be.

Time isn't what it once was and now I am faced with the fact that I just don't have the dedication that I once had.

I am not stopping.

I am just being honest that we just might not see me here as much these days.

I hope to rekindle what what was someday.

I am just not saying when though.

So please don't stop coming, just be patient till the day comes when I return.

in sickness

Sometimes life gets busy and one doesn't write so much on their blog. Other times one gets sick and lays in bed for several weeks and when they get better they have so much stuff to do that they don't find time to write.

For me it is the latter. With some of the former. Minus the weeks and make it the days.

Three days I spent in misery. Everything aching. One minute cold the next hot. Dry eyes. Itchy nose. And thirsy, ever so thirsty. At one point I couldn't even keep water down. And how I longed to drink and drink and drink somemore. But I couldn't. I was contrained to a sip every couple minutes. Or sucking on crushed ice. (the preferred option) Nights were nearly the worst. They dragged on and on. Never seeming to pass. I would wake, though I hadn't really lost conciousness, and see that 45 minutes had gone by. Drenched in sweat. Another 35 minutes would go by and this time I would be shivering. On and on it went. Till at last 3.30 arrived and the night was half over. Oh the misery. I lay on the floors just because they were cool. I would have semi delirous dreams of downing gallons of ice cold water and eating wild fruit. One forgets the misery of being sick when they are whole and healthy. Such is life.

This morning arrived and with it a new lease on life. I stand without becoming dizzy. My lips are less chapped and dry. And I can stay in one position for more than two minutes without becoming uncomfortable. Its really the small blessings in life that make it grand.

Here's to not having to pass through that ordeal again in this life...

explaining the below

My team, Barcelona (aka Barca) won the European Championship last night. It's a big deal. The two vids are of people celebrating in a fountain near where I live. It lasted into the morning...

Puyols and Ronaldihno celebrating the European Championship!! 

My team 

confession

I felt I should announce that I spike my hair somewhat in the front. That way if you happen to see me sometime from the other side of the street but you don't think its me because what you see is someone who looks like me but has hair sticking up in the front, you can then know that yes it probably is me as I now wear my hair standing up. And the other thing you should know is that I have been wearing it like so for a good while now. I am sorry I haven't told you before, its just that a lot has been going on and it all happened so suddenly. Just so you know...

faith

can't remem if i already posted this or not...

_______________________


sometimes it all comes together
like formulas and puzzles
sorted out against dark
randomness and chaos

and sometimes it all falls apart
leaving empty spaces at night
pondering unanswerable moments
to be left till ends of time

and in those days
one must decide
how weary souls will choose to climb
the steepening path of their design

coffee buzz

As I posted the last post I reread the subtitle for my blog and was provoked to add the following thoughts about coffee.

I drink a lot and would feel justified in saying that without it my person suffers. That is to say that I teach more that just the first english class after lunch with drooping eyelids and drifting thoughts... I guess I could summarize by simply saying that I NEED it.

However I have also noticed another phenomemon connected with my coffee consumption. Twenty minutes after I have drank a cup of the stuff I feel my heart rate jump significantly. And for the subsequent 45 minutes it tends to stay at the accelerated level of beating. Feelings of jumpiness, a steady shake, and occasionaly shortness of breath top it off. It's not something I particularly enjoy.

So I am left with no where to go. And like a broken man, I always end up back with the drink. Jumpy with an accelerating heartbeat is a small price to pay for the momentary satisfaction of tasting the smooth black liquid go down and make all drowsiness disappear...

But sometimes I wonder if I am becoming just another hypochondriac like the rest of them...

May's here now.

I just felt I should acknowledge that fact. That and how I have slacked. I feel like my life had a two month lull followed by two months of chaos. I noticed that during the two month lull I wrote more stuff, thought a bit more, and generally was more active on this. Then during the two following months I did close to very little. O mejor dicho, jacksquat.

But grace is free and abundant to all and so maybe it can cover my lack of written communication.

I am reading Isaiah at the moment and just wanted to say that I found chapters 36 and 37 particularly good. Other than that I haven't been reading much. Not even CS Lewis.

My novel (like I can even say my novel) is still in its first stages. Unfortunately those stages haven't progressed since the time I announced it's beginnings. I would like to think that maybe once lazy summer days hit I will try and move it along a bit. Which year those lazy summer days happen to happen in is another thing in itself.

I have even written less emails. But then you know that already don't you? However music listening has not decreased on the whole. I have rediscovered a band called Athlete from England and my Spanish guitar cd. Not to mention a guy from Mexico called Alex Campos and an old favorite David Gray. Quality stuff.

In other recent news I have regressed to my Christmas shaving routine. That is to say, whenever the heck I feel like it and no other time.

As for physical activity I continue to have longings to get on the football pitch but still lack a platform to do so. I play basketball maybe once a week so I am hopefully not dimishing in that area. I jog about once a month. All in all I can't seem to put on any weight as much as I would like to. This does not bode well, because as I am due to come back and do concrete for a couple months it certainly means that I won't put any on then!

During the past two weeks I have found myself teaching english while daydreaming about other places and times... That is to say that I have reached the point I can do it subconciously. O mejor dicho, without being mentally present. This can only mean that I teach too much english. Some classes just after lunch I try to do half asleep as well as mentally not present. I think at that point though, the quality actually starts to suffer. Don't tell the parents.

I preached last Sunday in Spanish for the first time. I think it went well and of course it was a small but momentous occasion for me in my quest to learn this language.

Well I have to go by bread now. Hopefully it will be hot and soft. If it is I will tear a bit off and eat it as I walk back home. Till next time.

my three morrocan friends whose story will be told one day 

running on fumes

So I was coming back from Merida, a small city about 40 minutes away, last Saturday night. I was driving a car that had a dysfunctional gas gauge. It permanently stated that the tank was empty. According to its owner, there was a good 10 euros worth of petroleum in the tank. Easily enough to get to Merida and probably back.

Well getting there was no problem. And we were well on our way back when suddenly I felt a bit of power drain out from under my foot. We were off the main highway a good 10 miles, dropping someone off in their little pueblo. And the sun was rapidly setting.

Another 25 seconds went by and the power dropped a little more. Along with my stomach. And so on for a few minutes until I was going 50 kilometers per hour. At that point, no joke, I decided to ask God to put a bit of gas in the car to cover my stupidity.

The car continued to run, increasily slower, for until we got back to the main road. However we were still a ways from a gas station. Still I continued to nurse the gas petal, pleading for every last foot of road it was willing to cover.

I continued to do that until the car finally died. Some 20 minutes after I first felt the car drop in power. Some 15 kilometers further down the road. And as the car settled to a halt, I looked across the road, on this empty and barren highway and saw a gas station, some 20 feet away.

I guess my thought is that cars don't take 18 minutes to slowly run out of gas.

new look, new start

And all is well again. Sidebar has been placed back on the side where it belongs. Nothing quite like having a sidebar down below. Then it would have to be called a footnote. Anyways, it was nothing more than simply deleting a line that was too long on "50th" post.

Blog has a new look. It came about in the overhaul to do with the rouge sidebar. I think it was time for a change and stuff is simple again. Alas no more message board or World Cup poll, but what can you do? Besides, the message board made a stupid pop-up pop up, and really most people who read this aren't too interested in the World Cup. And yes, I did manage to say pop up twice and still maintain my grammatical correctness. Some days I am just good.

Another thing that I realized I am good at recently: slicing things in half equally. Particularly baguettes if I have a large knife.

Well just finished a week off here. They take a good 10 days off for Easter. It's definately a good idea, if anyone wants to ask me. I stayed busy though, as I was organizing a team that had come over for the week from England. So don't think I am lazy. Or if you do, don't let it be for that reason.

I think I want to make a renewed effort to write on here a bit more. These last weeks of few posts have been a direct result my sidebar that was causing fustration. Now that it has come into submission I hope to visit more regularly.

there it is.

SIDEBAR HAS BEEN DISCOVERED!!! It has been hiding down below, at the bottom of the page. Now, how the heck do I move it back up top. Any experts out there...?

This could be a big step in returning to writing on Blog. Cheers Becca for the heads up.

not pleased

im upset with my blog right now. the sidepost bit has not appeared for the last two weeks. thus i have been giving it the silent treatment.

has anyone seen the sidebar bit? you know, with all the extra information that is found on the side? if you have, could you please let me know. i don't know what to do, and without it, i don't feel its the same blog.

so until we get this remedied, i don't know if i can seriously consider writing serious posts. maybe it had something to do with that message box i put in. there must have been a virus which used the comment box to infiltrate everything, and then stole the sidebar. evil.

well im going to not write anymore as protest.

for the time being.

50th

This is my 50th post for those who count. Or better said, those who are counting, because if you can read this, I assume you can count.

I kicked this site off somewhere around the 3rd of December if the records are correct. So that makes it just a shade under four months. Perhaps on April 3rd we shall host a party here, to wish the site a happy fourth month. If you think of it, and are into that kind of thing, drop a comment in the comment box that day. Let's make it special.

Okay, enough of being stupid. By the way, stupid in spanish is stronger than stupid in english. So think twice before you call a Spanish person stupid. As I am writing this in english though, and using english definitions for words, I don't feel it is too strong to use in this context.

I also haven't touch my novel since my last post which coincidentally was the same day I started my novel. I have however opened the file and left it on my desktop to inspire myself to do some work.
____________________________________________

On another note, I had coffee today with a Romanian and a Bulgarian, who occasionally show up at church every few weeks. It was a very intriguing experience. They invited themselves for coffee with me, only of course if I had enough money... And did it with such tack that I quite happily invited them along, without feeling the least bit obliged.

Emilio has good spanish, speaks 8 languages (not sure how well), just spent several years (unjustly) in jail, hasn't talked to his family for at least that amount of time, and doesn't have any work besides teaching one class a week to American Jehovah's Witnesses who are keen to learn Romanian. Angel, the Romanian, doesn't have good Spanish, so he didn't talk as much. (He also had had several beers before the 12 oclock hour this morning.) If you did notice, yes, the Bulgurian named Emilio is the one teaching the Romanian.

They are two guys who are just a couple of the thousands of Eastern Europeans who have left country and family because they have no money and even less hope there. Spain hasn't offered them much, not even work for most of them, but somehow it is still better here than there.

Talking with people like them keep my life interesting, but even moreso, in perspective.

I am blessed.

this and that, but in the end only this.

I haven't had a good official catch up on life and thoughts posting in a while. So let's remedy the situation. I'll write, you catch up.

Today I started my first novel. Have you ever sat back in your chair and thought how hard it would be to write a novel? Well while sitting back in my chair today, I was thinking how hard it would be to write a novel. This is of course after I decided to write a novel today in a fit of inspiration. Or was it boredom? I think it was the first. It was only two paragraphs in that I found myself doing the leaning back and thinking bit.

Anyways, in case you care, I won't be sharing here what my novel is about because I recently heard that good novelists don't talk about what they are writing while they are writing it. If that's all it takes than I'm going to try and keep my mouth shut and wait till I ride the NY Times bestseller list all the way to the top.

Needless to say I sat up, pushed on, stopped thinking such thoughts and kept writing. And a while later found myself two pages into it. I felt it was a good days work. I figure a good first novel should be about 212 pages. It has a good feel to it. Anything less that the 2 century mark for a first novel gives the impression that you've not got milage as an author. Or you write children's literature. As I am not writing children's literature I need to break that mark. To continue past the 250s gives the impression you are a rambler. As I am not rambling I decided 212 pages to be the length of my first novel.

So if I did two pages of writing, and I factor in a good revising and editing, than I probably have a good page and a quarter of material. That means that 169.6 days from now I should reach my target of 212 pages. That is if I work everyday. If someone wants to figure out what day lies 169.6 days into the future, they would be welcome. With my strong point being english, I won't attempt math on that kind of level.

Two pages in I have also realized that I don't know exactly where this book is going. Or headed. Nor where it will finish. Not having written something of this caliber before I don't know if this is good or bad. Maybe if there are experienced authors reading this, they could give me some pointers. Until then I guess I'll see where it takes me.

Having written about the beginnings of my novel on here, I now realize that there is a certain amount of pressure not to let it fall to the roadside. People may ask me down the road how the novel is coming along, and I might have to say that I am four and three quarter pages into it. That would be a bit embarrasing and would maybe tempt me to lie and say my hard drive froze. However I prefer not to lie and so would probably just ignore the question. That is just if I have let it fall by the wayside.

I am not sure I am going to write about the rest of life right like I mentioned in paragraph one. I feel like the kickoff of my novel dominated my day, and it would be hard work thinking about what else is happening in life. When it comes back to me I may decide to do another post. Until then, enjoy the thought of sunshine.

comment box

for regular visitors (or visitor, im not sure which) you may notice the new addition to the sidebar. its a place where you can leave comments without making them specific to any one article or posting. its also a nice way of sharing information with me. like good quotes and birthday reminders. those of you who know me know that i am bad at remembering birthdays. some would say i just don't remember them period. so if you are a kind soul, and it is your birthday, or will soon be your birthday, you could let me know via the new comment box. or email.

that's what i'll call it, the comment box. it is also a place to talk some smack during the world cup. i may be hoping for too much here. if you want to let me know the weather in your area... well the comment box is for you.

or if you wish to leave a comment that i cannot censure, the comment box is the place to do it. all else can be censured!

well i think i'll leave the comment box at that for now. and remember, as my friend barney says, friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.