Book title, album title, song title, cafe name, satellite launch mission(!) title, blog title - lots of adventures and ventures sharing the same, lovely name.
For me, February brought me to SLC and back to Sitges again, to Barcelona and back to Sitges again, and to Vilanova and back to Sitges again. So many kilometers stuffed inside a short, little month.
Started the month with a week spent in SLC for an all-hands company meeting.
Highlight: finally meeting in-person every member of my team. Terrific individuals online and even more wonderful in real life.
Low-light: ordering delivery from my favorite pizza and wings place and the food never arriving because their system was down. Next trip!
Spent the week getting up, getting ready, going to an office, working and interacting, coming back to the hotel and repeating. Not terribly original to say at this point but it's still the truth that it's hard to come to grips with the idea that as tiring and unusual as it felt, this was normalcy for the overwhelming majority of my working life. Making the adjustment in real-time to a remote work culture was all encompassing and then it was just - normal - and living a vivid reminder of what used to be normal reinforced how adaptable we can be, how much we might forget (good and bad), how remembering can be good, and what feels right, wrong, normal, hard, unusual, etc. now might have been unimaginable in the past and very possibly might evolve or not be that way in the future. All we have is now.
Lost a weekend to lost luggage and jet lag on the return trip, both more an annoyance than a problem. The luggage arrived on the last flight that same day from Paris, and we were reunited after a very long wait in the Barcelona baggage claim area. I was delayed a couple of hours at CdG which gave me extra time to find a baguette sandwich and a pastry which I enjoyed tremendously.
The week after I returned, I had to go to Barcelona for a doctor's appointment. The lead to the story being I had to purchase private insurance as part of my visa application and now I am using it. I booked the appointment with the necessary specialist via an app in English, I selected one who spoke English, and upon arriving at the clinic I checked in on-line and received on-line directions to the examination room and went and waited without bothering anyone. Private indeed.
I also remembered once again that Barcelona is only 40 minutes away and I should go more often, and every time I go, I seem to walk by a different cafe or restaurant that looks like it could be the coolest cafe or restaurant I've been to yet. And the novelty will never wear off that one of Gaudi's iconic houses is the landmark for where to catch my return train. But it must be the right one because I went to the other one this time and there wasn't an option for a regional train headed south anywhere to be found.
So then this week roughly forty-five days have passed since I applied for my foreigner's ID card (TIE) and my lawyer let me know my "lote" had come up and she had secured an appointment for me to go back again and pick it up. Back on the train, six minutes south to Vilanova, fifteen minute walk to the station, five minute wait, two fingerprints, and now I have a Spanish ID card. I can stay. At least until October. Good enough for now. All we have is now.
