Success!

With only some minor miscalculations in the number of plates, forks, and, ahem, chairs... we pulled it off! Turkey, mashsed potatoes, gravy, special spinach, pumpkin soup (only half store-bought and a quarter splattered on the wall), bread, 8? bottles of wine, and two different kinds of dessert for twelve. Besides, I won't be able to get away with serving ice cream in coffee mugs when I'm a real adult, so why not enjoy it now?

picture, clockwise: KC, Roger, Jaume, Núria, Eric, Xavi, Oriol, Patrick, Sori, Antonio, Guillermo. And you can probably recognize me.

Draw me a tree

During one particularly interesting class this week, in which I was concerned that my student's sleep deprivation was causing some strange behavior (read: kangaroo impression), he delivered one of my new favorite quotes:

"One time, someone asked me to draw a tree, so I spend three hours carefully drawing the trunk, the leaves, all the branches... and then they told me it was for a psychology test."

Keep that in mind next time you have three hours to kill and someone gives you vague, illustration-related instructions.


( In case you're curious, this is a test used especially with children to determine their attitudes and perceptions, but it can be used with adults too. Basically, you're asked to draw a tree (or in other cases a face or a house), and what you draw says a lot about what you're thinking and feeling at the time. Everything, from the season of the tree to whether it has holes, roots, flowers, animals, or a swing, says something about you. Here's a link to something similar if you want to play along a home:

http://drawing.feedbucket.com/start.php )