American in Spain » Games

The Clothes Pin Game

erik — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:46:06 +0000

One of Nora’s new favorite games involves clothes pins. In Spain, most people live in apartments and almost no one has a clothes drier, so everyone dries their clothes by hanging them from their balcony, which is often overlooking an internal courtyard of the building, not the street. As a result, every Spanish house has a bag or basket of clothes pins on their balcony. The game involves her mother placing her on a window ledge to the balcony where we keep our clothes pin basket. Nora proceeds to pull clothes pins out of the basket and throw them on the floor, expecting her mother to pick them up. They have a great time playing this game.

At least she picks them up at the end with her telekinesis.

My long term readers will be pleased to notice that the little nubbin of cactus we tore off the original has grown and is producing flowers for the first time this year.

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Modified Blanket Face

erik — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:03:11 +0000

The old favorite game of Blanket Face continues to be a success. It’s particularly more fun now that Nora knows how to remove the blanket or other cloth item from her face herself. The sheer relief of being able to see and breathe again delights her to no end.

Yes, this seems to have turned into a video blog lately. This is mainly because a certain someone won’t let me leave her alone for more than two seconds in the mornings these days. Oh well. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 24 frames-per-second video should be plenty, right?

Sorry about the shakiness. It’s hard to hold the camera and toss the pajamas at the same time. Rather than try to smooth it out, I decided to hone my title tracking skills a little more.

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Artefactos Navegables 2009

erik — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:48:36 +0000

Every year in the harbor of Colindres, they hold a Carrera de Artefactos Navegables, which translates to “Sailable Artifacts Race”. Basically they race handmade contraptions that float, very often involving plastic barrels normally used in the salting process of the town’s anchovy industry. Rowing is a big sport in northern Spain, dating back hundreds of years when fishermen rowed out to see to hunt whales. This race puts sort of a comical twist on the sport.

We saw the event the first year that we lived here, missed two years, and then went again this year. I’m always blown away by the creativity and detail of the designs, which are only meant to float and impress for about an hour. Prizes are awarded for creativity and originality as well as speed around the course, with various different categories, depending on the number of occupants the craft can hold. Below are some photos I took of the participants in 2009, and a high definition video that should give you an idea of the fun of watching the event.

This team just has some legless Heineken bar chairs nailed to some styrofoam.

These guys look good posing for pictures on solid land. As you’ll see in the video, things didn’t go so well once they hit the water.

A comically boxy police car.

Some sort of Egyptian (or Roman?) sea monster with throne.

A misshapen paper mache hot air balloon.

Looks like Shrek got hit with an ugly stick.

This Flintstones car was my favorite design.

I love the detail of the dashboard. It’s a Mercedes, apparently.

Fred prepares for the race.

A floating tank.

A biplane (Red Baron?) complete with machine gun turret.

The Flintstones out on the water.

A bathtub with shower curtain sail.

My second favorite was this bullring, complete with its occupants dressed as bullfighters, except one, who was wearing a bull suit.

The Egypto-Roman king and his court of bikini-clad subjects.

The police car never did finish the race because the wind got a hold of it and blew it to the other side of the harbor. There was nothing the two rowers inside could do.

Fred swam to shore on an important mission: to get beer.

Fred Flintstone downs a cold brewski.

The video is a little long, but I still find it entertaining. I think that next year I’m going to try a single wide angle timelapse shot of the event. That could be cool.

I never cease to be amazed at the quantity of planned activities that my small town manages to organize every year. People really put a lot of hard work into these events, and they brighten the lives of all the residents. Bravo, Colindres!

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What the close-up? #3

erik — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:10:51 +0000

Interesting. So #1 was too easy, and #2 proved too ambiguous and difficult. I agree that “grains of some powdery stuff” was about as close as anyone could reasonably get to the answer. Hopefully #3 will strike some balance between too trivial and too impossible.

Can you identify what this is?

Answer

It was pretty clear to our contestants that this was the bottom of a glass bottle. I am in Spain, however, so I’m surprised that no one correctly guessed that it was a wine bottle.

Ridges on the bottom of a wine bottle.

Due to, shall we say, family matters, this feature will be discontinued for an unspecified amount of time. Thank you to all who participated, especially Simon, who participated in every post.

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What the close-up? #2

erik — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:10:48 +0000

It’s time for another close-up identification competition. The answer and winners have been posted on the previous post. The name of the game is to see if you can identify what the picture below is a close-up of. This one’s a little harder.

Can you identify what this is?

Answer

Well, after starting with a pretty easy one, #2 has proved more difficult. Granted, it was pretty ambiguous. I’m afraid that there are no winners for WTCU #2. I suppose Simon was the closest. An honorable mention to killowatthour for “torn acoustic foam”. Very creative. The answer was:

Nescafe Instant Coffee!

Didn’t get it? Try WTCU #3!

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What the close-up? #1

erik — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:13:42 +0000

Today I’m going to try a little blogging experiment. For a while, I’ve been considering some kind of quiz format where I take a picture of something, crop to just a texture or shape, and have you, my readers, guess what the object might be. Frankly, I’m not sure how fun it will be, but I figured we should give it a shot. If you are in favor of this idea, the best way to show your support is to participate by guessing. If popularity drops to only one or two guesses, then the idea might have to be discontinued. Let the games begin!

I will post the answer and the winner one week after the original WTCU post, with the chance of a possible clue mid-week if no one is close.

The image has been desaturated to highlight only the texture. Can you guess what this is a photo of?

Disgusting hint: it’s not a part of my body.

Answer

Winner: Paul
Runner-Up: Simon

I agree with Simon that it’s pretty ambiguous as to which citrus fruit this is. It could very easily be a lemon or grapefruit. But Paul wins first prize for having the lemons to commit himself to just one type of fruit. The correct answer is, of course, an orange.

Hence the need to desaturate the image. With the color information it would have been too obvious.

Thanks for playing. Try What the close-up? #2.

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