[3–9 Oct]
Some days this week Miss Entropy took her brand new scooter to school.
On Monday I went alone to that other town to visit yet another flat for sale. I quite liked it, and took lots of pictures to show later to my wife (but she went herself to see it some days later and didn't like it as much as I did).
[26 Sep – 2 Oct]
This week we celebrated Miss Entropy's third birthday.
[19–25 Sep]
I will be moonlighting as a (part-time) lecturer! A few days ago I signed the contract with a university which has a few campuses in the Madrid metropolitan area. I am going to (remotely) teach a subject about markup languages. The course is part of a two-year-long vocational training degree about web application development, and the job should take only a few hours of my time each week. The pay isn't great; I said yes to them mainly out of curiosity, to step a little bit out of my comfort zone, to learn something myself in the process, and for fun.
On Wednesday we had a programmed power cut in the building (block? neighbourhood?). Miss Entropy (who is not yet eating at school this month) and I had lunch together at the kitchen table by the light of a candle (that was totally unnecessary, but it introduced some variety in our day, and I thought it was cute). (My wife was working from the office.)
[12–18 Sep]
On Monday evening, after work, I rode my motorbike to that other town to take a look at a three-bedroom flat for sale. I liked it quite a lot: it was roomy, almost new, with a lot of natural light, a big balcony, and inside a nice big estate with a swimming pool and green spaces to play and mingle. It was also bordering our budget. I told my wife about it and the next day we arranged with the estate agency for her to go see it with her own eyes. (Spoiler alert: a few days later, we made a formal offer to the homeowners and started doing our research about mortgages etc, we negotiated with them for a week [raising our price twice], we assumed it was a done thing, we sent all kinds of sensitive and intimate documents to a bunch of banks… and in the last minute the owners said “no”.)
My daughter has been attending school for four hours a day all week. So far, so good.
[5–11 Sep]
On Tuesday we all went to a certain town not far from home to visit a flat for sale (probably). We (surely) did not buy it. I also know for sure (by looking at my photos of the day) that after the (likely) visit we stopped with the kids at a playground that we know and stayed there for a while.
On Wednesday, Miss Entropy started school. Just one hour in class (and the same on Thursday and Friday)! She was OK and there was no drama — but then, attending for just one hour each day was easy.
[29 Aug – 4 Sep]
On Tuesday we drove back home from Granada to Madrid.
On Friday I attended a meeting for parents of prospective pupils at Miss Entropy's new (public) school, which, by the way, is less than ten minutes on foot from home. A bunch of fathers and mothers sat in the cute colourful classroom, and we met the teacher. We got to ask lots of questions. I was attentive and curious, interested in the details of logistics and paperwork, and a little moved by the beginning of this new chapter in our family life — but I noticed that some of the other parents were rather anxious.
In the evening we had a nice time sitting on the grass next to the swimming pool of our estate with neighbours and friends, with the usual flock of kids running and playing merrily around.
[22–28 Aug]
We spent the week at my parents' in Granada, where we also met my uncle and aunt. Our friends and neighbours in Madrid C. and her parents were in Granada in those days too, and so we invited them home one afternoon, and we enjoyed the sun and had coffee and pastries while the kids played in the swimming pool. That is the life!
[15–21 Aug]
This week we had an appointment to go and get the passports for both kids issued. That's in case we travel abroad somewhere soon. The Big Brother really has us under his thumb now.
[8–14 Aug]
On August the 8th we were on holidays, and that morning I went for a short ride with my motorbike; I did some nice roads I knew already, and also took the opportunity to take a look at a couple neighbourhoods in little towns near home where we have spotted flats of the kind we might buy some day:
[1–7 Aug]
We took a few days off work and joined our family out of Madrid: drowsy village life, barbecues and basking in the sun in my sister-in-law's garden, bathing in the reservoir, the kids running around in the nude, an industrial-grade refrigerator stuffed with drinks… all that is good, really.
This week I learnt about Tyre Extinguishers, a loose collective with the stated goal of “[making] it impossible to own a huge polluting 4x4 in the world’s urban areas” that encourages “deflating the tyres of these massive, unnecessary vehicles, causing inconvenience for their owners”. I immediately felt ambivalent about it, and mentioned that on Mastodon. The ensuing conversation with my followers pushed me a bit closer to the “that is wrong, man” point of view.