New Weird

[Dina]

Yes 
As the forum has people all around the world, we liked to greet with "Good maen" (morning, afternoon, evening, night). That soon became just "maen".

I hope you enjoyed your food and book.

As I promised, I want to tell you about my week. I think i told you I am in the board (jury?) for the position of teacher assistant for students. Brief reminder of how things work at my university. Each class, like "Genetics" of the career has a professor (or two) who explains the theory. Basically lectures. Then we have practical classes, which include laboratory, excercises in the traditional pen and paper way and practices in computers with special softwares. Those classes have 3 categories of teachers (but if some classes have few students, it may be less teachers). Those categories are: Jefe de Trabajos Prácticos (Chief of practices), Ayudante de Primera y Ayudante de Segunda (Assistant First Class, and Assistant Second Class). The Chief almost always is a Ph. D. The Assistant First Class is a graduate, that may be a ph. D. (like me) or not. The Assistant Second Class is always a student, normally one who is close to graduation.
Well, all those teaching positions are obtained by "concurso" which I know I told you before. It is like a competition, where all those who apply are judged  based in their résumé (curriculum) and in a mock class (where the appliant needs to explain something as if they were teaching for an imaginary class).
Well, this time I am among those who qualified the students that want to be Assistant Second Class. We heard 14 of those classes today and we still have two more days of the same. But it is still good because originally we had 59 candidates. Finally only 36 will be trying.
I am mentally tired...

[Regenbogen]

Hi, Dina.
Are the trials still going?

Maen all! 

We've had some very hot days which always causes me headaches.
Our little lakes are still not good for bathing because there is too much e. coli and other unhealthy stuff from the floodings. The river still has too much water and running too fast, so the only option for cooling off is the public bath, which is stuffed with people so you could not even turn around without bumping into someone. So I don't go.

This week, I am going to harvest the plums. They are ripe early this year. Usually they are ripe in the middle of August.
This year, there are so many plums, that some of the branches are so heavy, they are hanging down to the ground. We've never needed to support the branches of the plum tree.
I think this will bring so many plums, I'll have to give half of them away, because we won't have the space to keep them all.

Then I want to take the girls hunting for a new sofa. 

[Dina]

Hi Regen!
No, thanks God it is over. We will have meetings next week for evaluating the résumés, but this week we decided to focus on our normal works. Well, more or less in my case, as my cousin is married on Wednesday and will be having offering a lunch in a restaurant.

I love that bathing in river and lakes is an option for you  (even when not right now). Sorry about your headache and I hope it is over now. And great news about the plums. Do you do jams or something with them? I am sure people will enjoy them. When I was a teenager we lived in a house that had a plum tree and sometimes it gave a lot of fruit so we used to give it to our neighbors too. They were quite sweet. We never did anything with them. My family has not a tradition of crafting confitures or things like that.

[Regenbogen]

Sometimes I make confitures. Usually I make one cake with fresh plums. But this will be approximately 30-35 kg. A normal harvest will bring about 20 kg. So most of it will be frozen to use later. Some of it we put in jars with rum. Delicious. We'll see.

DaVinci's paws smell of gasoline. It has happened twice now. We have looked under cars in the neighbourhood, but none of them leaks. I am thinking of the garage nearby. They sell and repair Opel cars. Maybe this is also the place where they feed him. We tried to wash his paws, which he didn't like. I tried to clean him so that he won't digest the gasoline, but he fled outside and hid under my car. But at least his paws got full of water and shampoo. I put some water into the bathtub and put him inside, so that only his feet got wet. Guess he doesn't enjoy it. 

[Dina]

Oh! I hope Da Vinci is ok. I remember one day (when I was a teenager) one of our cats came home dripping some sort of grease. It was  awful and took long to clean and dry him. I feel your struggle, dealing with a cat refusing to be washed is very difficult.

Yep, it seems that you will have lots of plum 

[Regenbogen]

Maen

We were in the cinema today with my mother. We watched Despicable Me 4 in 3D.
It was very funny.
Before that, we ate at an Italian restaurant. I had pizza with salmon, very delicious.

Da Vinci is clean again. It rained and he was outside a lot.

The river has less water now. Tomorrow we are planning to go there. I found a place to go down.

[Dina]

Maen!
I am glad you and your mom had fun at the movies, and of course pizza.  I do not eat fish but hubby loves salmon. I do not think he ever had it in pizza though.
Good to hear about Da Vinci 
Hopefully you will enjoy the river and be cool and happy.

Wednesday was the celebration of the marriage of my cousin. It was a lot of fun and also we had delicious food. The first reception with canape and other amouse-bouches including pizza and small empanadas was excellent. And the main course were pastas. Several kinds of them. Very tasty. Also, the wedding cake and several other desserts. Of course, there were also drinks. It was a lot of fun. The bride has a white dress with a cloak that reminded me a lot of Princess Leia in the medal ceremony. She has beautiful. My cousin played a song in the piano for her, and later they danced a tango (besides the usual vals and then normal party music. They were also lucky it was a sunny day (Tuesday and Thursday were foggy and/or cloudy). This was a cold week but Wednesday and Friday were nice sunny days.
They are honey mooning in Machu Picchu now. I am very happy for them 

And we have 3 modest medals in the Olympic Games. I like that we have one of each color 

[Dina]

Good maen!
How is everybody doing? I am still busy with the analysis of the résumés, but we may finish it today. Crossing fingers.

[Regenbogen]

Maen.
We are packing for our trip to Austria tomorrow.
My mother will feed the cats while we are gone. I've just downloaded some movies for Micro, that she can watch during the drive.

[Dina]

Enjoy! 
*old person rant ahead* --> When I was young, there were not movies to see in the car. You could watch the landscape, sleep or learn to entertain yourself with some game or, later on, with a book.
In all truth, I have no problems with kids watching movies now  As long as they are not awful ones.

[Regenbogen]

Enjoy! 
*old person rant ahead* --> When I was young, there were not movies to see in the car. You could watch the landscape, sleep or learn to entertain yourself with some game or, later on, with a book.
In all truth, I have no problems with kids watching movies now  As long as they are not awful ones.

LOL, before I had Micro, when Mini was still young, I always kind of looked down on people who had fancy equipment for entertainment. Guess it was envy, lol. Now I have my tablet, usually for choir only. All our songs are there in the Google drive. That's great, because we have about 1000 songs and we always either had to plan ahead what to sing, or couldn't sing something spontaneously , because most didn't have the notes. So sometimes we brought everything. Meaning two big and heavy folders minus the folder with Christmas songs. Around Advent time we had 3 folders. And books.

Now everything is on the Drive and I bought a bigger tablet so that I can see it on one page.

And there is free WLAN at the church and the buildings belonging to it. Yay. So no downloads needed,  only when we sing elsewhere.

This tablet can save a lot of data. And now I download movies or series to not have to endure the constant complaints of a bored child

[Dina]

Yes, tablets are awesome! So very useful.
Enjoy your trip 

[Regenbogen]

Maen. I hope you are all well.

We are back home.
It was a fun trip. Though there was no time to go swimming in the lake. But we managed to paint our own plates and bowls. Mine has some music notes and colourful cats playing with them on the outside. And when I was almost finished, I decided to put an octopus inside at the bottom. This way when you empty the bowl, the octopus will greet you, lol. I am very excited how they will look when finished. They will burn the ceramics and then send them to us. It will take 3-4 weeks.

And we met with some relatives. One at the pottery market and my husband's stepmother and his aunt and uncle at their home. They live about 10 minutes away from the lake on foot, but as it is all mountains, you have a beautiful view over the lake and the little castle that's there from their terrace.

We were staying in a nice appartment a bit removed from the lake with three double beds. Very cool and not too expensive in comparison to some others. Next year the kids want to stay in our usual apartment on the 7th floor again, because it has an elevator, lol. I will need to book early then.


Today in the morning, cat Lisa woke me up, because she was hunting something in my bed. It was a dark round shadow of about 2 cm. At least that's what I saw without my glasses. I was actually glad, I didn't have my glasses, that way I could almost convince myself that it sure was only a big fly or some piece of fur.
I got up to give her the space to deal with it, so I'll never have to see what it actually was. But when I came back with my glasses and the light turned on, she hadn't dealt with it, and I saw the remnants of a big spider in my bed. I am glad it was already dead.
And she must have gotten it from inside the house. Yay.

It is good, that the cats take care of the insects inside, but please don't bring them into my bed, thank you, Lisa. 

[Dina]

Welcome back! I am glad you and your family enjoyed it.
I loved the idea of the octopus. The idea of creating the plates is so original and exciting, please let us know how they turn out.
I laughed while reading that the selling point for your children was the elevator. As someone born and raised in an apartment, I can't imagine the mindset.
The story about Lisa and the spider is the stuff of nightmares for me. I have an aracnophobia, which is not extreme or debilitating but it is not so weak either. With age I became more used to it, I think my fear peaked around my teenager years. I am glad Lisa took care of the spider and of course I hope she stops doing things like that in your bed. Also, sorry, I need to say this, it is my job. Spiders are not insects. In any case, I suspect with 3 cats in the house, insects and spiders are in trouble in your home, which is always good news for the human persuasion 

[Regenbogen]

Also, sorry, I need to say this, it is my job. Spiders are not insects.

LOL. The biologist is speaking. Of course, you are correct, I forgot about this.
I am arachnophobic, too, though similarly to your experience, it has become less as I aged. I also learned in my childhood not to show my fear if possible, especially not around the boys, because they would put spiders into your backpack or in your clothes just to hear you scream.
I also can't explain and don't really know what it is that causes my fear. I used to watch different sorts of spiders to find out how it is triggered. And why I feel instant panic at certain spiders and just some shudder at others. I think it is a combination of how their legs look and how they move. Also how big they are and if they are sporty or chilled, lol.

I had another spidery incident at work yesterday. Some 2 cm spider walked toward me while sitting on the toilet. I had to blow on it to make it turn around. Then I jumped over it. Great. And poor spider.  I hope someone finds it and puts it outside. Sometimes the poor things are in the hospital's basement. A long way back to freedom.