Weeknotes: 2022, week 7
[14–20 Feb]
We don't believe in Valentine's Day here. But just in case, on the 14th I bought a Häagen-Dazs, “Belgian chocolate” flavour. Think Pascal's wager! It lasted a few days (we love chocolate, but we never eat a lot of anything like that).
On Tuesday evening I rode my motorbike to Avenida de la Ilustración to meet someone who stumbled upon my post about “Mein Kampf” and had the kindness to write me an e-mail. He's D., a fellow admirer of many of my own intellectual heroes (Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Haidt, Christopher Hitchens, etc). We had a coffee/tea, got to know each other a little bit, and found a lot of common interests. I think we were both excited to discover another human being who had listened to the same podcast interviews, watched the same debates on YouTube, read the same blog posts, and fallen in love with the same ideas, in Spain. Later I introduced him (virtually) to my rationalist and EA circles in Madrid. So, a new friend. In that way, this new old blog has served some purpose already!
By the way, my bike had a hard time starting; it had been parked idly for a few weeks, and in those circumstances the battery always dries out (even when it's quite new, like now).
We lent Miss Entropy's Carnival costume from last year to our neighbour friend C., and bought some cheap clothes at the Chinese store nearby to make up our own costume for this year. It was more shabby than last year's, but also more cute — and we all had fun adapting the clothes and designing some accessories. I went to the store with the two kids (stroller plus standing platform), and later thought that I'm lucky to have two kids who behave so well (in general) that I can take them both to a mundane errand and back, often with little or no drama.
On Friday, at the greengrocer's, I spotted a basket full of what looked to me like quaint tiny oranges and a funny label: