Hey, wanna see the lovely photos Jan and I took at our Lend Me a Tenor post-performance celebratory bar-b-q?

Till The Sun Goes Down

I know I still haven’t posted the photos from the show itself, or even written a single word on how the show went! I will. I promise. But the crew has been bugging me to get these photos up as soon as possible so… here they are.

Ed offered his place to host the shindig and he, Basia, and Natalie were wonderfully welcoming. We all chipped in by bringing enough food and drink to feed an entire theater company. Drink flowed merrily. The rain came and went. And came. And went. The Americans diligently manned the bar-b-q. Much basketball was played. The Persians could not defeat the coalition of the willing. The profits from the production were distributed!! People were thrown in the not-so-warm-at-all pool. Speeches were made. Good times were had. I brought my camera. Here are the results:
**Fancy-shmancy full-screen slideshow**

Most three-year-olds come out with a plethora of poignant one-liners everyday. A plethora? Oh yes, a plethora. After experiencing one, I usually laugh, smile with pride, make a mental note of what was said so I can later blog about it, and then I promptly forget what was said. This happens all the time. Here are a few from today that stuck.

In the morning rush to get ready for school, the bathroom door is sometimes mistakenly left open. Sebastian’s finely-tuned radar immediately kicks in and he makes a bee-line for either the medicine cabinet or the toilet. Today it was the medicine cabinet. It was only a matter of seconds before the crash of Jan’s mascara bottle shattering against the floor was heard. Jan left Emily to clean the bathroom floor but it wasn’t long before Emily appeared at the bathroom door with mop in hand eagerly saying, “Mummy, shall I pom it?” Ah, our darling little dyslexic.

I Draw The Line Here

After school, we went to the park. We did the whole slide thing and took a few turns on the swings before Emily ran over to a bench and started taking off her sandals. I asked her why she was taking off her sandals and she replied, “Because I want to.” This is her answer for most things nowadays. So she hands me her sandals and starts walking along the row of benches when she freezes in her tracks, cautiously inspects the bench beneath her feet, and quietly asks me, “Is there spit on the bench?” There was not, and I have yet to learn the back story to her inquiry. Odd.

Cheeky Tree Elf

Dinner tonight consisted of a lovely rice dish with a few cherry tomatoes on the side. Emily and I have this inside joke where, every time we place a cherry tomato in our mouths and bite down, we have to make a face like there was a huge explosion. It’s very funny, really. Once the tomato juice settled, Emily declared, “I like tomatoes!” But she said ‘tomahtoes’ like here mum would pronounce it. So I offered in the usual sing-song way, “I say ‘tomato’, you say ‘tomahto.'” Always on her toes, Emily quickly improvised (in the correct sing-song fashion), “You say ‘avocado’, I say… ‘fokatto!!'” I have no idea where she comes up with these. I don’t think I want to know.

OK, I’m still easing back into this whole blogging thing. So before I start writing all those backlogged intellectual entries that are clogging my addled mind, here’s another one of those cute videos you kids seems to enjoy so much. This is the first time she had seen this video since Christmas. You can kinda tell from the sloppy choreography.

I’ve been all wound-up recently, with my life revolving solely around the stress of the theater. Though life has been a veritable whirlwind, things have finally taken a turn for the better. My crazy kids have put a lovely spin on my life, stopping the madness from spiraling out of control.

I was working at my desk today at HP when I received a message from one of the Product Managers in the worldwide marketing division asking me if I was busy. I said I could spare a few minutes and he said that was good because there were some people who wanted to talk to me… I apologized in advance and insisted that anything that they might have heard was a dirty lie.

The manager explained that he was with a group of HP employees from the US who were here in Barcelona for a couple of weeks for a training session and they wanted to meet me. Why? Because they had seen one of the marketing videos that I made for HP and when they heard that the actor from the video also worked on site, they simply had to meet me. So I agreed to met them.

At first, I wasn’t sure if they were making fun of me or not. They all introduced themselves to me and wanted to shake my hand. I’ll admit that the video in question was not my best piece of work, but it wasn’t that bad either. It turns out that they really did like the video a lot, as did everyone from their home office back in San Diego. One guy even asked to take a picture with me. That was kinda weird.

I appeared in three different videos for this specific product introduction: a marketing video (sell sell sell), a how-to video (instructional), and a competitive video (why we’re the best). I’m afraid I can’t show you the one that they went crazy over – the competitive video – because is was for internal use only, but it was very funny. We’re allowed to spice things up if they’re not intended for the general public. I can show you the others, though. This marketing video is much more serious, and you don’t get to see too much of me. It’s mostly narration.

The how-to video can be found alongside this one at the bottom of the HP web page that is dedicated to the HP Designjet L25500 Printer. It’s a lot longer and pretty dry, but I’m on screen more often. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Both videos are also on the HP Graphic Arts YouTube channel. That L25500 marketing video is actually the most viewed video on the channel!

I spent a very happy couple of years mining technical specifications for Hewlet Packard’s large-format printers before someone in the marketing department found out I was an actor. Since then, I’ve done a whole bunch of other videos for HP that have featured on their web site and been sent around the company for training purposes. I’m doing another one next week.

Wanna see some of the other ones? Or have you had enough already?

It’s raining in Barcelona. Everything is wet. It’s been raining for two days. I wonder when it’ll stop.

What do the prognosticators have to say? Here’s the five-day forecast:

That doesn’t look good. Is there hope on the horizon? Let’s look at the extended forecast:

That doesn’t look good.

The worst part is that everyone else is just rubbing it in.

Everything is wet.

Hey, wanna see the lovely photos I took at this year’s premiere calçotada?

Calçot Specialist

Calçot is a variety of green onion. They are milder and less bulbous than onions. A calçot is roughly the shape of a small leek.

The most traditional way of eating calçots is in a calçotada, a popular gastronomical event held between the end of winter and March or April, where calçots are consumed massively. Calçots are then barbecued and dipped in salvitxada or romesco sauce, and accompanied by red wine or cava. Pieces of meat and bread slices are roasted in the charcoal after cooking the calçots.

The best part of a calçotada, besides the fact that they’re delicious, is that they’re sooo messy! You first have to slip the charcoal husk from the calçot, then you drench it in the sauce, tilt back your head, and lower the whole thing down your face. Wash it down with red wine and repeat!

A couple of months ago, we were invited out to the Catalan countryside to celebrate the birthday of one of Emily’s friends and to eat ridiculous amounts of calçots. Seriously, ridiculous. I brought my camera. Here are the results:
**Fancy-shmancy full-screen slideshow**

I woke Emily up this morning (as I do every morning) and she quickly hid under her covers to avoid the morning sun (as she does most mornings). So I followed her under the covers and, in an effort to wake her up, said, “Wow! Look at this cave! Is this your cave? Is there a party going on down here? Is it a cave party? Can I come? Will there be dancing at the cave party? Do you wanna dance now?” Sleepy half-asleep Emily just looked at me blankly and used her first words of the day to say, “You look like Winnie The Pooh.” I LOL’ed.

So who should show up next but our friendly neighborhood Sebastian. He climbs up on the bed with us and starts jumping. You know, because it’s morning. He’s jumping a little too close to the edge of the bed so Emily lunges for him and grabs his ankle. She tells me, “I stopped him from falling off the bed.” So I said, “Wow, you must really love him a lot.” And Emily informs me, “Yeah. We’re gonna get married. Not now because we’re little. So we can only get married like pretend. But when I’m bigger and Sebastian is bigger, then we’re gonna get married for real.” Very cute.

And speaking of cute…

It’s all happening too fast! Sebastian is already a year and two months. And he’s big. But we’ve known for a long time that he’d be a big boy, like when you see a little puppy with unusually large paws. Sebastian has unusually large feet and hands. Do you know how hard it is to find extra-wide baby shoes? In Spain?!

Laundry Day

Here are a few “what’s new” kinda things you can share with your friends:

• Sebastian started walking by nine months and hasn’t slowed down since. He can now run fairly quickly and, after getting bored with horizontal motion, has moved on to climbing. He enjoys climbing up to beds, the couch, Emily’s chairs, stairs of every shape and size, and even the step stool in the bathroom. Getting down is usually a trivial task, but not 100% of the time. Sebastian is definitely out-pacing Emily in the bumps and bruises department.
• Manual dexterity has seen a marked boon lo these past few months. Instead of simply hurling his building blocks across the room as was par for the course, Sebastian now occasionally opts to build towers with them. Sometimes reaching as high as five or six stories. He also seems to understand that the trains go on the tracks and that the shapes go in the box. He still puts everything in his mouth, though.
• I’m ashamed to admit that, as physically adept as our boy is, he has yet to utter his first real word. I’m not counting all the noises that might sound like mummy, daddy, yeah, and uh-oh. He has yet to prove to me that he’s got a firm grasp on their meaning. The clock is ticking on this one.
• He may not be speaking, but Sebastian is finally starting to understand what the heck we’re talking about. For example, he’ll usually oblige if I ask him to hold my hand. We can finally start teaching him tricks!!
• Trick #1: jump. This one started a couple of weeks ago. Sebastian loves jumping. He just doesn’t actually leave the ground yet. But if you ask him to jump, he’ll give you a huge smile, bend his knees, hold that position for just a little too long, and then quickly straighten his legs and back. And then he’ll laugh. Jumping is fun.
• Trick #2: spin. This one only started yesterday. If you ask him to spin, he’ll give you a huge smile, lower his chin to his chest, and then meticulously spin round and round until he eventually either falls down or bumps into something. And then he’ll laugh.
• Sebastian can eat any type of food he likes; we’re finished worrying about these silly childhood food allergies. He will happily eat eggs, milk, peanut butter, fish, bread, and soy – all without swelling up or changing color in the slightest.
• He’s not sleeping all the way through the night yet, but we’re almost there. Sebastian now only wakes up once, maybe twice during the night. I can usually rock him back to sleep but, if he decides that he’s hungry, there is nothing that will stand between him and his mummy.
• He’s such a nice guy.

Has it been three months since I’ve posted a video of my kids? That’s not cool!