The kids were happily playing, the mothers were chatting away, and I went for a nice run. I do that more often, but this time was a little different than usual. From a big skate park, I run a loop of about five kilometers through the neighborhood. It’s all mountain paths, with the occasional bit of asphalt. After about a kilometer, I came across a group of sheep. Just on the public road. There were about fifteen of them, I think, and five were little ones. Cute. I stopped for a moment and grabbed my phone to take a picture. One sheep walked up to me, and I thought, ‘Oh, how nice, I’ll pet him’.
Suddenly, I saw the sheep in much higher definition, and the rest of the surroundings blurred. I felt a very clear message resonate strongly in my entire body, ‘You need to get away now!‘. I could only see that one sheep, and it was quite clear is wasn’t a sheep, it was a ram and I especially noticed its two enormous horns. Oh. At the speed of light, I understood that he needed to defend his offspring (from me), that I could easily avoid a risk of bodily harm, and that I’d better keep running. I started jogging again, and the angry ram came after me. What?! I sped up, fueled by adrenaline, and the ram finally stopped chasing me.
So in the end, a boring running route still gave me a fun story, and a nice adrenaline boost every now and then must also be healthy.
My mother-in-law’s (MIL) apartment is being painted. Time to remove unwanted shelves and screws from the wall so the whole wall looks nice and smooth. Some new holes were also drilled in the wall to move things to a better spot. Ana/MIL also wanted two paintings on the wall in one of the bedrooms. These had once been brought from Madrid by my MIL and had been lying neatly and safely in the closet all this time. They were made by one of Ana’s aunts, and they were two paintings with Chinese text/symbols on them.
After my recent 
It does work. I had rushed the initial version of Mushroom Mayhem into the store, with quite a few bugs still in it and really only the bare minimum features needed to make it playable. I strongly suspected that doing this would prevent the project from stalling again and me not looking at it for years. And it worked. Even though there are only around 20 people that installed the game, I’m motivated, and many evenings I find myself improving and fine-tuning the app.
I also did some things myself and updated all the apps graphics, so everything looks a little bit cleaner, the app has a brand new icon and there are a number of bigger changes:
A simple costume can create a surprising amount of magic, especially when it’s worn by an incredibly charismatic and photogenic little character. Add a few finishing touches, and you’ve got pure spectacle.
I ran into my upstairs neighbor in the elevator. The usual small talk unfolded: he asked how I was doing, and I asked how he was doing. Normally you get the standard replies, ‘everything’s fine’ or ‘same old, same old’, the autopilot of everyday politeness.
Grandma Nel also came for a lovely visit. She had escaped the Dutch cold for a few weeks and arrived with a suitcase full of gifts, sausage, cheese, eel, and alcohol. She came to enjoy some time with the grandchildren and the Spanish sun. First, a week with friends in the south, where sunshine is guaranteed, and then a week with us, with pleasant temperatures but also the occasional shower.
I’ve shifted the work I do on MM to the evenings. Before going to sleep. Rather than enjoying part of a movie or an episode of a series I now spend the last hour of my day talking and experimenting with my programming assistant. Over the past few days, I’ve made some improvements, so you can now get the new version.