Telemarketers are driving me bonkers!

Yesterday I posted a link to a web site that helps you find your lost cell phone, that is if you live in the USA. As I'm writing this, I've just been phoned by one of those insistent and persistent telemarketers. How many times and how many ways can you say 'I'm not interested. I'm eating. I'm sleeping, etc. etc.' No, we don't have that no-call list either yet. Any of you who've been harrassed by such phone calls at the most inconvenient times surely understand my despair, and don't you think 10 p.m. is a bit late to be selling? Okay, I'll be the first to admit it's probably the time when most people are awake. It's also dinner time for a lot of people. For some reason (maybe they take a long weekend) these people usually leave me in peace on Mondays. Today, Wednesday, while I've been at home I've received at least three calls. One call was from 00000000000000. Now that's an easy number to remember if only you can remember how many 0's. I can't wait until that no-call list comes to Spain. Until then I might just have to take some lessons from Tom Mabe (see vid on my page). Anybody have any other suggestions?

Oh, almost forgot. I won on the Australian lottery, which I didn't enter. I don't know how much as I haven't and won't open the e-mail. Maybe I won enough on that lottery to get a private telephone number and to buy everything that's being sold by telephone. While I'm at it, I'll help that poor Nigerian minister get all that money out of the country after I've confirmed all my bank details, including my passwords. LOL

Here's something useful

I've just been over to stumbleupon and somebody has reviewed this site. It's a site that helps you find your lost cell phone! That's right. Too bad, for the moment anyway, it's only for the USA. Well, as of last week (and this is something I'll probably blog about one day), even if I lose one phone I have another. Anyway, my phone is usually in the bottom of my bag, and I do mean the bottom, especially when somebody calls. Hope you never have to use this, but just in case:

                                   http://www.wheresmycellphone.com

Today is 23-F

Not too long ago I was reading about a man from Wisconsin, I believe it was, who given a date could tell you what happened on that day. Sometimes it would be an event from his own life, for example, he would remember on a certain date having Kentucky Fried Chicken. I don't claim to have a memory like this person or anyone else like him. If you ask me the last time I've had chocolate, I can truthfully answer about a minute ago, but ask me what I had for lunch last Saturday or 10 years ago, and I can't tell you. However, I, like most people I hope, remember dates that are very important to us. Today is such a date.

I'm going back in time to this exact hour (6 p.m. my time 12 p.m. New York time) on 23rd of February 1981. I'm in class and in this particular class I have a student who was absolutely, positively odious. Not too long into the class, there's a knock on my door and probably on other doors as well. Parents have come to the institute to pick up their children. We're told,although we don't believe it, that there has been a golpe de estado (military coup). By the end of the class, out of the 10 kids I started with, I'm left with nasty Carlos - probably his father, if he wasn't part of the coup, was out in the street  jumping for joy. Please note  that Spain  was still under the influence of it's dead 'caudillo,'  the dictator  Francisco Franco. It was also a time when there was  lots of activity and  numerous murders  carried out by the Basque TERRORIST group  E.T.A., which is always referred to in English news sources as the Basque SEPARATIST group. Anyway, by the time I got home that evening all communication was cut off. I tried to telephone my family to let them know that I was okay but there was a total blackout that is until the King, dressed in his military finest, finally denounced the takeover at about 1 a.m. I think it was. Then I knew that it was safe to go to bed.

Yes, I went to bed and slept because I had to be at work at 8 the next morning. Here's where the story gets funny. I lived, and still live, very near where I used to work until the institute closed in 2004. Guess how many people showed up for work the morning after the failed coup? Three! A boy who worked in the office, another teacher who had to take a bus and then the underground to get to work and myself - no students and no bosses. One of the bosses had even left Madrid and was heading for Valencia where there were tanks in the streets (the tanks never actually invaded Madrid). The three of us were there because we knew the big boss would expect us to. Well, about 10 a.m. we decided to close the institute and go to a bar to celebrate Jose Antonio's birthday (the office boy). By that time, the people who were still being held captive in the Parliament were being released - a lot of them jumping out the windows. The three of us were laughing until our stomachs hurt, not out of relief that the coup was over so much as the fact that the broadcaster who was reporting the scene was a famous sportscaster and the way he was reporting what was happening was exactly the same way that he reported the football matches. As a matter of fact, we were expecting to hear goooool! Goal, goal, goal!

Now everyone knows why I admire the King of Spain so much and why I support the Royal Family. He could have fled the country and left the Spanish people to their luck. If you understand Spanish, there's a good video on You Tube (where else?) that was uploaded by someone called 'Multitudes'. Search for 'El 23-F según TVE, TVE which is Spanish TV. And if you're ever in Madrid when the Parliament is open to the public, do go and see the bullet holes in its ceiling - a  constant reminder of what could have been.

No Polar Clouds And No Lunar Eclipse

Today we didn't have any rain. Still it was cloudy most of the day. Finally there were some breaks in the clouds, with just sky showing through but nothing that looked like the photo that I posted yesterday. And when there is a complete eclipse tonight, in the wee hours of the night around 4.30 a.m., I plan on being in dreamland. Oh well, I'm sure someone will post some photos or I can watch the eclipse on the news tomorrow. Hope some of you get to see the show.

A Touching Secret from Post Secret

This is an example of why I like PS so much. I hope the person referred to reads this, don't you?

Grammar Lesson

  Here's some practice sentences that I've written with the English tenses. My teacher told me to write about the same subject but not always use the same verb. She says that words have synonyms and said that meant they have similar meanings. I don't know if these verbs are synonyms (that's a difficult word to spell. Thank goodness for the spell checker), but they all begin with the same letter.

1   I sometimes blog.   (Simple Present)
2   I'm bagging at the moment.   (Present Continuous)
3   If I have time, I'll bilge.   (Simple Future)
4   I bogged last week.   (Simple Past)
5   I was bugging when the telephone rang.   (Past Continuous)
6   I haven't blog-ged this week.   (Present Perfect)
7   I'd already blog ged two pages when the lights went off.   (Past Perfect)
8   By this time next year, I'll have boggled on here for over a year.   (Future Perfect)
 
BLOG- BLOGGING-BLOGGED. I'll drive the spell checker crazy another day. Have a good week all.

I Needed This Laugh

This made me giggle. However, it's worth a try, don't you think?

Fighting grime: The Tang-y toilet
 You may not want to put it in your body, but it turns out that Tang is a great toilet-bowl cleaner-its sugary combination of citric acid and gritty powder works well when combating rust stains. Simply sprinkle the orange delight into your toilet bowl and let sit; after an hour or so, a normal amount of scrubbing should remove the rust. And Tang is non-toxic to boot! [Insert joke about how the Space Shuttle must have extra-clean toilets here.] *

* copied from readymademag.com

Sunday Bloody Sunday

'Sunday, Bloody Sunday' is the title of a film starring Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch, and, yes, it's a film from 30-some years ago. Like in the film, I mean that yesterday (Sunday) was a horrible day. There was no red liquid so nobody got beat up, stabbed or shot - at least not in my building to my knowledge. I'm blogging today to pound out my frustration. We had our annual meeting of flat owners in my building yesterday while most of you were looking forward to the Super Bowl. For the past 5 years, I've served either as the president or vice-president of the board or whatever it's called in English. Guess what? After lots of screaming and shouting, we got voted in again as everybody so innocently insists we do a bang-up job. Okay, I finally agreed because there are important matters that will probably have to be taken before the judge, but next year I'm going to find a t-shirt that reads something like: 'Hell, No! I won't serve again'. I'm open to suggestions. I have a life. I work (many of them don't) and I don't need the extra burdens! Thanks for listening. Have a good week all.

BTW, I had to see 'Sunday, Bloody Sunday' twice, I believe it was, to understand the last thing Peter Finch said: 'He's my other half'. Ah, the English language!
 

Ash Wednesday and Lent

Silvia has recently blogged about a very interesting tradition in Germany revolving around carnival time. I'm sure she won't mind me advertising her blog entitled 'Snip, Snip' about a pair of scissors. Go to her page and read it if you're like me and interested in other cultures We have some very strange traditions in Spain at carnival time too. One of the things I like about living in a big city like Madrid is having friends of other nationalities. I also like that about Multiply. It has a more international flavour than Y360.

I'm not going to copy her blog and write about 'los carnavales' but about a different sort of celebration called 'Pancake Day'. Maybe it's celebrated in countries like Australia and Canada because of the British influence, but I've put it on my calendar as being a holiday celebrated by our friends across the English Channel. Lots of things have changed since I was at school. I doubt that my niece who goes to my old high school (though it's a different building) has fish for lunch every Friday. 'Pancake Day', according to what I've read on the BBC web page, started as the last opportunity to have eggs and fat before Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and, of course, to use these ingredients up before Lent. A difference between these pancakes and the ones we would eat in the US is the British don't put baking powder or any type of leavening in theirs. I could go on about pancakes and how the recipe can be found in cookbooks dating back to 1439, but I've made myself hungry and we're not having pancakes until Thursday night. Time to see what's for dinner tonight. Have a good night all.