Not So Deep Thoughts

carte de mémoire perdue/trouvée
scheda di memoria persa/trovata
tarjeta de memoria perdida/encontrada
cartão de memória perdido/encontrado

While on our honeymoon in Nice, France I lost a 4gb SD memory card for my camera.   It was in a black SanDisk case.  If anyone has found this card, I would be extremely grateful if you could please contact me.

-1 SanDisk Ultra II Compact Flash 15mg/s  4GB

-1 black SanDisk Pouch

My email is paulgladis at gmail (written this way to avoid SPAM.  at = @ and put .com after gmail.)

Thank you, Merci, Gracias, Grazie!

Vanesa and I are spending the month of August tucked away in the countryside of Ireland.  No car, no maps, no tourist destinations…  just be. Here’s part 1: the first few days of the trip.

Click photo to see a slideshow.

You have to have forgotten film in your camera not to come home from Gay Pride with some memorable pictures. Since every character roaming around Pride with a costume on is willing to pose at the hint of interest by someone holding something that looks like a camera, I tried to look for moments of tenderness and affection that make Gay Pride what it really is: that two people, be they of the same sex or different, can openly express their love for each other.

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** Click Photo for Slideshow (or here)

Vanesa and her family take me out to Faunia, a theme-park-ish zoo on the outskirts of Madrid. They don’t got bears or giraffes or all the other celebrity animals that one would see in a zoo, but they make up for it with the always fun experience of seeing an animal and saying, “What the hell is THAT?!?!”

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** Click Photo for Slideshow

If you want your friends to come see what you do for work everyday, invite them to come help you eat a 270 square foot model of a city (especially one as beautiful as Segovia) made entirely out of food.

Food specialist, Simon Cohen, shows us why hummus is far superior to foie gras when it comes to mini apartment block construction.

**warning** Picture of roasting suckling pig that’s bound to turn someone vegetarian.

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** Click Photo for Slideshow

There’s something very special about the San Isidro long weekend.  It’s May.  The weather is just right.  There was another long weekend just two weeks before (The Day of May) when most people took the opportunity to get the heck out of Dodge, and now they’re ready to hang ’round the homefront.  And just the word BBQ makes you salivate.  BBQ.  BbQ. bbQ.

So Vanesa and I marinated a batch of chicken wings, bought a few 6-packs of Bud and headed off to Jacki and Skyler’s lovely terrace for a day in the sun.  Here are some pics.

Spring has Sprung!

Vanesa and I went a little slap-happy at the local greenhouse and brought a little life to our little terrace.  Here are some of the cute little buggers that we’ve brought home… 

Take a gander at our little sanctuary and then go outside and walk barefoot in the morning dew soaked grass, or something equally tree-huggerish.

For my birthday, my friends Jacki and Kelly hooked me up with two tickets to see Andrew Bird in concert last Saturday.  As Vanesa was frolicking around Dublin that weekend, I hit up the concert with Kelly.

I gotta tell you guys, I was a fan of Andrew Bird with or with a concert, but after seeing the guy live, my appreciation for him has skyrocketed.

For those of you who haven’t heard his music yet, he’s a classically trained violinist, an accomplished composer, a verbose lyracist, a good singer and a damn fine whistler to boot.

With all he puts in to each song; wandering harmonic progressions, a varying mixture of random rhythmic structures, layering instruments, etc… that when I saw him amble out onto the stage with just a violin and a guitar on standby, I could only wonder how the hell he was going to pull off getting even half way through one of his songs.

But he showed us.  With the help of various looping pedals, he was able to record one voice at a time, piling voice upon voice, clicking them off and then back on as the song demanded such.  It was really impressive.  And really friggin’ good.

And when in just one concert, you’re reminded at times of the sound of Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright and Paul Simon, you know you’re dealing with someone special.

If you’ve never seen him, go see him.   If you haven’t heard of him, buy a CD and then go see him.  Hell, go check him out on YouTube and then go see him, whatever…  Enjoy good music, that’s all.

My friend Justin once said of me, “Paul may be slow, but he always manages to get there, even if it takes years.”  As a person who has seen me through most of my major relationships, my journeys from here to there, both emotional and quantifiable by physical distance, I think he’s pretty spot on.

Some people leap blindfolded into the future on the wings of a trust that all will inevitably turn out ok.  Others like to stare at their feet as they shuffle forward baby step by baby step, never risking a misstep that would send them tumbling into “unknown dangerous territory” (aka. New Jersey.)

I think I’ve always bordered on the over-analytical approach to scuttling my way down the yellow-brick road of life.  Often trying to wrap my mind around logic-defying situations (e.g. most relationships) until I eked out a grain of something resembling rationality, immobilized until I managed to do so.

For those who endured this futile praxis, I can assure you that I did it with the best of intentions.  And upon reflection, if any progress was made in forward directions, baby steps or trans-atlantic steps, I’d gamble that it was in spite of this habit not as a result of it.

Well, years have passed since Justin spoke those words, and I think (and hope) that I’ve managed to pick up the pace a bit.  Spending less time stopping to examine the map every time I feel lost (often holding it upside-down) and more time just letting life take me downstream and figuring it out as I go.

Some rather large baby steps have been taken lately and the results have been spectacular.  Vanesa and I are now living together, and we’re doing so swimmingly. Got me an office job and I’ll be finishing up my music studies soon. And after five long years I finally have residency and the card to prove it.

See!

Life is good. Period.

I still got some more grown up stuff to do, like things to do with bank accounts and bills and address changes… or things like updating my blog more often. But I say they can wait, I’m still in my 20s, I’m young and I got some more living to do! I’ll leave those responsibilities for when I’m 30.

Peace.

How you been?