They’ve televised the run for over 30 years, yes. I watched it on TVEI, the international version of Spanish public TV.
Flats on the run sell very high because you can rent balcony spots for easily 1K€ a piece. A flat with two balconies over Estafeta could be completely run down and you might still get enough to have it fixed with one year’s worth of non-taxable balcony space rental.
Morning. Looks like it’s going to be hot this weekend. I guess having a long day at work today and tomorrow isn’t so bad.
SCL, I’ll keep your friend in my prayers.
MagicEyes, at my last job, we had dogs regularly wander into the store.
Nava, thanks for the play by play. I forgot it was running time.
Nice sportscast, Nava. It would be really interesting to be in Pamplona for San Fermin sometime. Hope no one is seriously injured this year.
Groundhogs! Aliens! Everyone else works in interesting offices. :: pouts ::
I’m up, making a list of everything I need to do before Local Best Friend’s parents are visited upon me. (And things her Dad might like to do for me…)
Off to caffeinate further and ingest breakfast…
GT
Good Mornin’ Y’all! All caffienated here.
Snakes your friend is in my thoughts and prayers.
Rebo how’d those N.O.T. wedges turn out? I answered your PM but like I said, I assume by now you’ve cooked 'em. 
Nava I’ve seen the running of the bulls on tv before. I bet it is sump’n to see in persin!
Ok, off to clean up. Today is sloth, gluttony and general over all uselessness day.
Later Y’all!
I went to college and took lots of logic and philosophy classes, and it was all downhill from there. Now I’m the only liberal in a family of fundamentalist conservatives (my brothers are a little bit libertarian, too, just to make things more interesting). I keep hoping my mom will get a little bit less fundamentalist as she gets older, but she seems to be going the other direction. Best of luck to you and meli.
Hi, H&R! I’ve been around for a while, but I quit my job with easy internet access, so I haven’t been posting as much lately.
Nava, thanks for the report on the bull running. It’s very interesting. I don’t know why people want to get so close to big animals with sharp pointy things on their heads, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.
I got up way too early for a Saturday. It wasn’t even 7 when I woke up. Which might not be so bad, but I went to bed at 2. Then I couldn’t find my Cake Bible, but I finally found it, so now I can go bake a chocolate cake with peppermint buttercream frosting.
gt, it’s just non-stop excitement at my job! I can’t wait to see what happens next week. At my other job, one of my co-workers had to bring her dog in to work for a few weeks after she (the dog) broke her leg. I told her if she got to bring her dog in, I should be able to bring my bunnies in to work. That’s fair, right?
dogbutler, did you by any chance work at a pet store? Or a butcher shop?
I worked at a drug store. “Your dog wants Prozac”
Howdy, y’all! Boy is it HOT!!! Okay, prolly taters is hotter what with the heat wave out west but still…
boofae, at least the poor little kitty knew human kindness before the end.
scl, I am so sorry for your friend. My best vibes headed her way.
ali, I do hope you were able to respond to your mother’s stance. Even if she didn’t act like she heard your point of view, she’ll still think on it and, hopefully, come to terms. Possibly a friend or another person she respects will help her find a path to acceptance. Don’t let it get you down. You can’t live your life trying to fit the standards of people who are unhappy with themselves.
I am officially vacationing since Weds but the highlight starts tomorrow when I head over to the beach to spend a few days with BarbeeDoll[sup]TM[/sup]. So I will be computerless until Thursday so don’t get too far ahead of me.
Have a good weekend!
Tupug
Oooh, that sounds like fun, Puggy. We’ll try hard to give you less than 10 pages to read on Thursday! 
Are you still up for Monday, rigsy?
Bunnies at work would be fun! They’re quiet and fluffy and would cheer me up, anyway.
Yeah, college is a great institution to blame. Maybe we shoulda skipped school altogether, cuz anything meant to develop your mind is probably a BAD THING. :rolleyes:
I have a humongo list of things to do. Anyone wanna help?
GT
Hey, you ought to make it out there today - I’m headed there with Wife. And it BEST be a better game than either of those two yesterday.
Good thoughts headed your way SCL, that’s tough news but your friend’s got a real good friend in you.
I’m wavering - go to the gym and workout, or stay here and cut the grass and wash the car…
I think the gym. The grass looks like SOME of it could use cuttin’, but a lot of it not so much. I’ll give it til tomorrow later in the afternoon, or Monday perhaps.
But…maybe the grass/car, because it’s nice and sunny out.
Decisions, decisions…
Oh.
My.
GAWD!
You don’t read your personal emails for two days and look what happens!
I was just on the phone with Mom. She usually skypes me on Saturday morning, but today I’d decided I wanted to go out (tentatively to Geneva), so I left after the bullrun. I knew she wouldn’t get worried. I ended up in a gorgeous little town called Avenches, have pics but haven’t uploaded them yet. Lunch was good.
After getting back, I called Mom and she told me:
a) that Littlebro was worried because I hadn’t answered emails from late Wednesday and she’d told him “with the weird hours she’s working, that’s nothing to worry about.”
b) that she was in Barcelona.
c) that tomorrow Middlebro is going to pick her and the Oldsters up. They’re moving in with her “temporarily.” Temporarily my Mediterranean ass; Mom is already pointing out that they should visit her sister now and then don’t cha think (or she’s going to end up in the hospital - Mom, not Auntie).
So I just wrote to these guys in Barcelona who wanted to interview me to perhaps start in September saying “can’t start in September or I’ll need bodyguards to protect me from the hordes of relatives.” On the other hand, moving in December to the Oldsters’ house and calling an electrician looks doable… oi!
I’d say I need to cut on the caffeine but I’m not having any except whatever is contained in one or two squares of 65% cocoa chocolate, and that’s theobromine mainly. Did I say oi? Oi!
Having run with cows and calves, my reason was to see if I could. I often do things for that reason, but once I’ve seen whether I can or not, I don’t give it another try. Other people, they try it the first time to see if they can and return for the adrenaline rush - which I get just watching, this morning my stomach was doing butterflies like I was back in college and having finals 
YES-I am on for Monday (twill be a very boring MMP-I have no cute story/moral/romantic intrigue/devastating personal news to share)
I am off to get Simon (the cat), and then to drive the husband to his office. Then the sons need haircuts.
And then school work beckons. Nothing but glamour and excitement here…
Nava–O! :eek: (you choose: it’s either for the bulls or your family stuff)
I think I need a map. Or a “Complex Family for Dummies” book. Or something. Because I cannot make heads (with or without horns) nor tails of this. :o
But whatever it is exactly, I hear your “Oi!” and I raise you a “Vey!!”
Sounds like fun! 
Nava, your family is so complicated! Good luck with the job interview in Barcelona–I hope everything works out with the family and the job and the house and everything.
They’re cute, until they start chewing on the power cords. Then you can’t get much work done.
puggy, have a great time at the beach! Don’t get a sunburn!
Yep. Thinking for yourself is dangerous! It’s hard to keep the peasants in line when they stop following the herd and start thinking for themselves. I’m sure my mom would be happier if I thought more like she does, but I’m glad I got the education I did.
The cake is done and cooling. The kitchen is a mess–I had a little incident with the cocoa powder. :smack: I think I’m the messiest cook ever.
I can’t even watch the running ahead of the big, angry creatures with sharp horns. Although, to be fair, about all we ever see on Amurrican TV is if someone has an up close and personal encounter with said sharp horns, so we miss out on all the scary anticipation. But I’ve never quite understood what it is with the Spanish and bulls, anyway. Call me an ignernt Amurrican, but I prefer my entertainment in forms where people don’t have the possibility of quite so much damage, especially of the bloody kind. Like hockey. 
I slept later than planned this morning, but Her Majesty and I were so comfortably cuddled up, and the Idiots were off at the beach with Papa Tigs and whiterabbit. They got a tennis ball thrower so (a) Papa Tigs can throw without hurting his neck – at least all the muscle spasms are in his right arm and he’s left-handed – and (b) so whiterabbit and I, who both have noodles for arms, can throw the tennis ball far enough out to make it challenging for Isaac. Rusty doesn’t care; he’s usually too busy running up and down the beach with other dogs, anyway. But anyway, by the time I got up, they were all home, and we now have two damp, happy, and exhausted puppies who will presumably snore the day away. Which is the goal of the whole exercise, obviously.
I’m just going to putter today – a bit of transcript, a bit of housework, a bit of laundry, a bit of knitting – and see what happens. This lace shawl I’m working on with real lace-weight yarn is turning out beyooootifully, if I do say so myself! And it’s coming along faster than I’d feared. I finished up the Moonight Madness shawl yesterday, which is in desperate need of blocking, but whiterabbit and I between us pulled it out a bit to see what it’s going to look like and were both thrilled with it. I do good work, if I do say so myself!
Don’t have too much fun today, everybody!
They came out fine, and thank you to whoever found my old post for me. I pasted it to a text file on my desktop for the next time I have a brain fart.
{{{SCL and friend}}}
Off to run errands…
Good morning everyone.
Cellodude, I’m sorry your parents are giving you such a rough time. However, the main thing is yours and Meli’s happiness. I’m glad you can see that too.
Snakes, I’m sorry about your friend. I’ll keep you all in my thoughts.
I was fairly busy yesterday with errands and such. For dinner we had JD mesquite marinated steaks, baked taters, and corn on the cob. It was good.
I’ll have to get ready to head out for some boating fun soon. Other than that, not much exciting going on.
Magi this is my last weekend as an out of work bum so I’m makin’ the best of it.
We had some really good grilled ham and cheese sammiches for lunch. There’s just sump’n bout grilled sourdough bread. YUM!
Glad the N.O.T. wedges turned out good Rebo.
Ok, goin’ out to the pool now. Later Y’all!
Nava, 1k Euros per balcony spot? Man, if I had a flat there I would be doing my best to get them to run the event more than once a year.
In the ongoing drama of my life, my father just stopped by for a visit, provided you define ‘visit’ as ‘half hour lecture on why I am a horrible person for turning my back on everything that I was brought up to believe’. The gist of it was that unless I change my ways I am no longer welcome in my parents house, they cannot accept me because of this, etc etc etc. Let us just say that he ended up being quite cruel to both myself and to Meli and after being talked to like that I will not be talking to him for sometime regardless of whether or not he (snerk) changes his mind. I am reminded of a line that Richard Dawkins has a fondness for which goes something like “Within and without religion you find good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things, but it takes religion to make good people do evil things”.
So I have officially moved from being the black sheep of the family to being the complete pariah of the family. I do have a feeling though that once Meli moves out for the school year things will get patched up temporarily at least.
On the bright side, the drama is over for now, right, Ali? More hugs headed your and meli’s way.
I’ve decided to plant my curb lawn some, so I’ve acquired some plants at Lowe’s (so I don’t get upset if someone/something steps on them or they don’t survive. They’ve got good deals and good-quality plants and it’ll look lots better than the combination of weeds and grass currently growing there. Eventually, I’ll probably restore some of the lawn, but I like the thought of a perennial border along the curb.
Need to run to the nursery that’s a few blocks away and look for two or three more perennials and then I’m gonna get planting and mulching as it should be all shady in front by then. It’s allegedly 87 degrees Amurrkin out today. It’s not terribly humid, but it sure doesn’t feel comfy.
Also acquired some drawers that will fit under the bed, under the dresser and possibly on the closet floor so that I can re-locate shoes. I don’t like where they live right now.
We’ll see how productive I can actually be.
Back after a while…
GT
The weather is way too hot to be productive.
I am waiting for a friend to call. She said she’d meet me for coffee today, but I haven’t heard from her yet. I need to go up north anyway today; a friend is having a housewarming party. So until then I am sitting on my couch and being pissed off at my brother for not doing the dishes or making any serious effort to find a job. Dear God grant me patience.