American in Spain

It’s really simple. I want my contacts organized in groups, just like any RSS client. When I open up my Twitter client, I want to go directly to my friends’ new tweets before reading my celebrity or news tweets. I care more about jagosaurus or sgazzetti are up to than what celebrities like Wil Wheaton or Penn Jillette or John Hodgman are doing. And I want an unread count for each group, like most RSS readers give. The total unread count should be shown in the dock icon.
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Now that I’ve grown accustomed to her, my infant daughter no longer looks very small to me. But everyone else that sees her can’t help but remark how minute and doll-like she is. It occurs (and was suggested) to me that, as she grows up, I will surely forget just how tiny she originally was. So I’ve tried to take some photos that will remind me, and surprise her, about just how small she really was at a few weeks old. Unless the economy goes really bad in the next few years, she will know what a US quarter looks like and be able to compare her body parts to one in the future.
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Nora, yesterday we received a package from your Rasmussen grandparents. In it were a few toys, some bedtime story books, a lovely blanket, and, at your three week birthday, your initiation into Apple Geekdom: an iPod Shuffle. I had never seen one of the new talking Shuffles, so I was rather perplexed by the earring-box-sized plastic box with an Apple logo on it. The card with it said, “Tell Daddy to load this with some good tunes.” Once again, I am awestruck by the sheer aesthetic beauty of Apple’s products. This thing, like it’s new owner, is absolutely adorable! It’s smaller than either of my two USB pen drives and weighs so little that you can’t tell at all when it’s clipped to your clothing.
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Recently I asked, just out of curiosity, my parents to scan and send some infant pictures of me. The results were astounding. Marga’s family and I looked at the photos and immediately said, “That’s Nora!” Also, Marga, who knows me best, says that she often recognizes gestures that Nora makes as being identical to mine. Apparently Nora and I spend a lot of time touching our faces.

The other day, while watching a fútbol match on television, with Nora in my arms, I was resting my elbow on the armrest and my chin on my closed fist. I glanced down to check on Nora and saw that she, in her sleep, was making the exact same fist-to-chin gesture. It’s like looking into a time mirror sometimes.
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This TED Talk by Renny Gleeson is called “Busted! The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users”, and it is so very, very true. It brings into focus the issue that I battle a lot, especially as a new father, which is, “Should I be living this moment to the fullest, or recording it to share with others and relive it myself in the future?” With the ubiquity of recording devices, so many people are experiencing so many important events in their life watching the LCD screen of their device as they record the event. The photo in the video from the Obama inauguration gala is one of the best representations of this I’ve seen.
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Nora spends a good bit of her waking time in a state of deep concentration, her brow lowered and her eyes fixed in the distance. So far I’ve narrowed down the probable sources of her profound preoccupation to:

• Solving the global economic crisis
• Performing multidimensional String Theory calculations
• Proving the Riemann hypothesis
• Pooping

It’s definitely some combination of the above activities.
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We like to say that Bath Time is Nora’s favorite time of day. But I think that’s just because it’s the only thing she only does once a day. The rest of her life follows no schedule whatsoever. My hands are always too full during bath time to take photos, but last week her Aunt Belén was visiting and took these photos for us. Genitalia has been blurred for internet modesty reasons…and because it might damage her political career.
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For some reason Nora is incapable of going more than 90 minutes between feedings at night, but during the day she can go for 3-4 hours at a time in peace. Needless to say this is rather frustrating. She weighs roughly 3 kg and eats about 90 mL every sitting, usually with a slight pause in the middle for burping. I weigh about 82 kg, so for me to eat the equivalent of her meal, I would have to drink 2.5 liters (2/3 of a gallon) of milk. Every 90 minutes!

That’s a lot of milk to chug down at one sitting. It’s amazing that she only barfs once every 10 meals or so.

Today is Good Friday. Before you read the rest of this post, I want you to hold the answers to two questions in your head: 1) What day of the week did Jesus die? and 2) What day of the week was his tomb found empty? Got the answers? Good.

Yesterday at lunch, I had more or less the following discussion with my in-laws:

Me: “Mmmm! These are good beans! Is that a bit of a meaty flavor?”
Wife: “No. We’re not having meat today, tomorrow, or the next day.”
Me: “Why not?”
Wife: “Because Jesus is dead.”
Me: “Jesus has been dead for a long time.”
Wife: “Because Jesus is symbolically dead.”

. . . some bean consumption . . .

Me: “But Jesus isn’t even symbolically dead yet. He symbolically dies tomorrow on Good Friday.”
Mom-in-law: “It’s like the saying goes, ‘Christ died on Thursday, was buried on Friday, on Saturday came the glory, and on Sunday he ascended.’” [that's loosely translated]
Me: “No, I’m pretty sure he died on Friday.”
Wife: [with a "drop it!" look on her face] “If the saying says it, it’s true for us!”
Me: “Okay.”

After lunch, I wandered over to the Good Friday wikipedia entry and saw that I had been correct. Christ died on Friday. Score one for me!
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Nora, the culture you have been born into has certain unfortunate traditions that place unfair expectations on its ovary-enabled citizens. These practices, such as leg waxing and high-heeled shoes, will cause you much pain and suffering, but your ancient tribal instinct will place such a high value on fitting in with your peers that you will inevitably perform these practices regularly. In Spain, they start early – lucky you! – so we have already mutilated your body without your consent to conform with society’s expectations.
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