A Nice Sunday

Sunday was a nice day. Sarah and I went to an airshow, which was enjoyable but not quite as amazing as I remember them being when my parents took me to airshows as a child. Then again perhaps I'm just remembering the shows from my childhood to be a lot better than they really were. Maybe they were actually over-greased and kinda soggy (metaphorically speaking), like those Chili's chicken fingers that 10-year-old Justin thought were the best on earth, even though they were over-greased and kinda soggy (literally speaking) the entire time.

Or maybe it was because the Festa al Cel didn't feature any Blue Angels¹ or Angeles Azules or Angels Blaus². However there were some stunt planes, a big commercial jet that did some cool stuff, and some squirrel suitters who we missed until they had deployed their parachutes. That was OK because I'm a squirrel suit snob who only likes them when they do extreme base jumping, not pussy-ass jumps out of a plane.

Once the airshow ended, we met up with our friends Axel and Gabby to join them for a ride to the top of Montjuic³, to watch Gabby practice archery.

Gabby is good enough at archery that there's a chance she might qualify for the 2016 Olympic team for her home country of Paraguay. This would obviously be incredible for her and just as incredible for me, as I could brag about personally knowing an Olympian, which corresponds nicely with my 2016 goal to have more friends interested in Paraguayan archers.

Watching Gabby practice was more enthralling than I anticipated. I was wowed by the sharp wooshing sound of every shot and the quick thud noise of each arrow hitting the target. I was also pleased that my first archery viewing experience was happening on the grounds of a mountain-top 17th century castle, allowing me to feel like royalty despite the fact that I watched from a cracked plastic lawn chair.

After Gabby finished practicing, she let Sarah and I hold the bow (sans arrow so we wouldn't maim anyone).  Pretend shooting was a lot harder than I imagined. I barely possessed the strength to hold the bow out fully extended and the string was much harder to pull back than on any bow I had won from Peter Piper Pizza. Even though my form was god awful, I made pitch-perfect wooshing and thud sounds (albeit with my mouth). After five imaginary arrows my back was already getting sore and I didn't want to push myself too hard on the first day. Because of that work ethic (and a myriad of other reasons), I probably won't be making the Paraguayan Olympic archery team.

Just a little archery humor, you guys.

Imaginary bullseye.

Imaginary arrows.

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(1) Ninny told me that he writes down preposterous "special requests" whenever he takes reservations for the restaurant he works at. He told me his best was a note reading, "Guest wants a Blue Angels flyover between the appetizer and main course."

(2) Note to any high-ranking Catalan government officials reading this: If you ever do get independence from Spain, your first order of business better developing some kind of Blue Angels or Angels Blaugranes stunt team — other wise what was the point of fighting for independence in the first place?

(3) That's medieval Catalan for "Jew Hill," an underrated fact about Barcelona in my opinion.

Homesickness

I'm kinda homesick. Recently I catch myself dazing off more frequently and dreaming about the good ol' US  of A. I realized just how homesick I was when I read this article, which begins with "a toddler decapitated, a 6-year-old stabbed in his sleep" and all I could do is look at the sidebar map of Camden, NJ and long for the Delaware River and I-95.

And that's not anywhere close to anywhere I once lived. It's just a river bordering a city I really like and a freeway that I once drove on with Tar while listening to Freeway. 

I can't even imagine how I'd feel if those unspeakably horrible tragedies happened within a sidebar map of the Rillito River. 

H/T to Seplosion for the NYT link.