The last destination on our whistle stop tour of Spain was Madrid. Barcelona was big. Granada was cute. Seville was medieval. And Madrid was hip and sexy. It immediately had a different feel from the other cities. There were also rainbow flags ev-er-y-where. I dunno if it was just the neighborhood we were in, but it seemed like every bit of the city that we saw was the same. There was even a sex club next to our fancy hotel. We got brave one night and went in to check it out. It seemed like the more raunchy activities were all downstairs and we could just sit upstairs, fully clothed, in the tiki lounge and just have a drink. But the guy at the door didn't speak English and we couldn't really ask and then we got scared and ran away.

The first night we had reservations at the oldest continuously operational restaurant in the world, Botin. We got a set down in the basement which seemed more desirable than sitting upstairs. Daniel had eaten there many years ago and wanted to see if the grilled prawns were still the best thing ever, but after we ordered they came back and said no prawns tonight. Boo. So we both got the suckling pig that I read online was the most famous dish. And it was really good. As we were leaving the host guy said, "Did you see the wine cellar?" And we said no and he said oh you can't leave without seeing it. So back downstairs we went, and then down another level into a dark cramped brick covered tunnel filled with dusty wine bottles. And he kind of gestured, "Over here, there's more." And as he did he rubbed his hand on my crotch, and I thought, oh no! Don't acknowledge it, he'll get embarrassed! It's so cramped in here! And then it happened again. And again. And again. And then he put his hand on the small of my back and then ran his hands down and grabbed my butt. Haha. At that point, I looked at him and said, "Ohohokay, buddy. I think that's enough." I was SO excited to tell Daniel that I got groped. As we walked up the stairs from the cellar, I turned back to him and we both said at the same time, 'I just got molested!" This dude was doing it to him too! Like WHAT did he think was going to happen, best case scenario in a crowded tourist trap restaurant. So funny. We've both STILL GOT IT!

We did yet another tour in Madrid and our tour guide was awesome. He's even written books on Spain and gave us each a copy I look really forward to reading. We learned a bit more about the flip side of Spanish history after the Moors with the Spanish monarchy. This one is of note because they inbred SO fucking much that the later sovereigns were like deformed and sterile and it was a whole thing. We went through the Prado and our guide knew just about everything there was to know about just about every painting in there. It was really impressive and we had a wonderful day of learning. My fav.

The next dinner was at a Michelin star restaurant. We weren't sure we'd be up for it after so many nights of eating out in a row, but it ended up being a great idea. My dick didn't get groped, but my palate did get challenged. So many dishes I had ZERO idea what it even was that I was eating. And we paired it with a bottle of Krug, a nasty little habit we've developed, so that made it even more fun.

The Reina Sofia museum is full of modern art. It was sorta more inspiring than the Prado because I felt like I could do all of it. In fact, I might try. Instead of finding art for our house, what if I just made forgeries of existing pieces. It would be fun to try anyway. Our final dinner of the trip we just could not stomach more tapas, so we made a few aperol spritzes in the "red level" lounge at the hotel, then walked over to Popeye's and had a very disappointing chicken sandwich. The day we didn't fly home until 4pm, which was kind of sweet. Slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, took our time getting to the airport, and when we finally got home it was already time for bed. Win win win. All in all a great trip!

Our driver took us about an hour and a half directly to our Seville hotel. We did the Hotel Colon Check in, and then headed out a little, but again we were a little limited by the temperatures. Just so damn hot in the middle of the day. And the Spanish don't really subscribe to the religion of air conditioning. Our room was just slightly air conditioned. We actually spent the first night sleeping with no covers. But then we cranked the air down to 60 and left it running with the curtains closed nonstop the remainder of our stay and got it down to serviceable temperatures. I'm sure the maids were absolutely horrified at the waste, but the building just wasn't built to withstand such high temperatures ... and neither was I.

I told Daniel there damn well better be some feliz compleaños balloon in the room when we arrived, because the next day was my 45th birthday. And he delivered! Haha. There were some balloons (most of them inflated), a little tart, and a bottle of Freixenet! I mean, I didn't drink it, but it was a nice decoration. Freixenet, freixenet, ooh lah lahhhhh.

Naturally we had another guide who showed us all the times the muslims built something and then the xristians took it over. The food in Seville was pretty legit. Our first night we had tapas (obvi) but they were like elevated and delicious. One was a shrimp toast that we couldn't stop talking about. Then my birthday dinner was a tasting menu overlooking the river and I think that was maybe the best meal of the entire trip.

The next day is what we call a "David Day." A David Day consists of absolutely nothing scheduled. It allows for a day of rest and doing absolutely nothing, maybe sleeping. Or it allows for more spontaneous plans to be pursued. This time, we saw a modern market building called Las Setas (the mushrooms) on our tour and saw that they had a "modern" Flamenco show and went online and got tickets. The setting certainly was modern with lots of projectors and color changing LEDs, but the Flamenco was just Flamenco. So I felt like the light show kind of detracted more than helped, but it was still really good. And our tickets came with a free drink - bonus!

Our train ride from Barcelona to Cordoba was honestly a little long. Like 6 hours, but probably exacerbated a tad by us drinking too much bottomless wine at the fancy dinner the night before. When we got to Cordoba it was seriously 43°C outside, just boiling hot. The driver was cool though, because he asked us if we'd eaten. It was past 4pm and we had not eaten. But since we were already pulling onto the highway the options were limited. Not that I need to defend myself, because we saw a sign for McDonald's and asked him to pull in. It was so good.

Then it was another like hour car ride out into the countryside to this place called Bobadilla. This beautiful resort with horses and pickleball courts, and a few giant pools surrounded by beds and umbrellas. The first full day there though we took a car ride over to Granada and met up with our tour guide. I really liked Granada. I think of all the cities we visited if I had to move to one I would choose Granada. It was a perfect mix of midsized cute city.

We also visited La Alhambra, the moorish fortress. It was really cool and a perfect introduction to Spanish history, which is entirely comprised of the Muslims built this, then the xristians took it over and built on top of it. There you go, you know the whole history of literally every city. My friend Lee had been to Alhambra and said it really struck him how beautiful and ornate the Muslim sections were and how drab and boring the cathlick sections were. And while I agree to some extent, after a while the moorish decorations just get exhausting. Like fellas, an ounce of restraint would really send this to another level. But it's just moor, moor, moor.

Then the next few days we just spent lazing around the resort, swimming, and eating at restaurants on the premises. One night was a casual dinner, the next was a communal BBQ, and the third was at the fancy restaurant. All very good and much needed rest and relaxation and from there it was on to Seville via car service.

I'm doing something I haven't really done before and that's cheating by blogging later about our trip. I had ambitions that maybe I could blog on my phone while we were traveling but yeah, no. So I'm gonna finish blogs about España and then backdate them so it comes up on my history in the correct order. Deal with it.

Barcelona was cool. It's got a very big European city feel to it. Once again I had a little DuoLingo hiccup since I spent the past months studying Spanish to find out they speak Catalan in Barcelona. Whatever. It was no problem, just a lot of signs and stuff didn't make sense.

Everyone in the family successfully made it! We arrived a day early which I think ended up being a good decision. There was some fiasco with the car service not being at the airport as scheduled and Daniel went into super travel agent mode to get it all resolved. We gave each of the kids an envelope with 20€ spending money. All they had to do was make it to 8pm to beat jetlag. Everyone did except Sam, but we gave him his money the next day anyway.

As you can imagine, rolling around town with 19 people makes things a little bit difficult. But Daniel planned one activity and then one dinner event each night and that worked perfectly. The first full day was Sunday and Daniel got us TICKETS to Sagrada Familia international mass. Apparently that was an even bigger deal than we realized. Several of the people we met said, "No, you can't get tickets. You just have to wait in line for hours." And we were like, nope, we had tickets bitch. So that was cool. Then we made everyone go on a walking tour of the Gothic quarter, which of course I loved, but I think it was wearing thin by the end for most people.

The next day we went to Park Güell, Gaudi's little masterpiece. It was cool but it was sooo hot outside. I had to go to Zara to buy ankle socks because I figured I probably wouldn't wear shorts, but it was absolutely required to wear shorts. My poor white legs had never seen the sun. Then dinner that night was at a Flamenco show. Turns out I fucking love Flamenco. I liked it so much that I demanded we go to another show later in the trip.

The next day was a beach day and dinner was a paella cooking class. Then Sagrada Familia tour and a fancy tapas menu. Tapas are good ya'll, but by the end of the trip I was like I don't want anymore fucking tapas. I just want one big meal all of the same food and I want it all to myself. I most def breezed over some details of Barcelona but all in all it was a huge success. Daniel did an amazing job planning. And the next morning we hopped on a train headed for the middle of nowhere to relax and prepare for our own personal vacation without family.

Tomorrow we are heading to Spain. This is our big family vacation we do each year, so all 19 of us will converge in Barcelona for 5 nights. Daniel and I are going one night early so we can beat jetlag and be prepared to help everyone else on arrival day. Stephen went early with his family to London and Paris and will end in Barcelona. My parents will be in and out, and everyone else disperses at the end of the trip. Daniel and I head south to Seville, Grenada, Andalusia area, then up to Madrid then home.

I'm pretty excited. I've been trying to kick this stupid cough for like 4 weeks now. Originally I had a sore throat, cough, stuffy nose after traveling to California for Megan's graduation. And that went on so long that I finally went to a doctor who said I probably had the flu, but now it was like a pneumonia bacterial infection, so I did a round of antibiotics. I'm still not 100% better so I went back to the doctor and she said it was just post-infectious lingering cough. She gave me steroids to help kick it faster, so now I'm roid raging. Better than coughing on an airplane for 10 hours. I have cough drops, a cough suppressant pill, and a mask if that should become a problem, but I'm feeling better today finally.

I try not to make my blogs just a recounting of every medical malady I encounter. But that's pretty much the narrative now. While we are away I will be turning 45 years old. I am not bringing my book of secrets with me because it would be a little heavy, so I'll have to read my 1, 5, and 10 year predictions when we get home. The 10 year predictions have been pretty wildly inaccurate. I couldn't begin to predict what will be going on 10 years from now so I stopped trying. I filled the book and that will be the only volume in existence. It was a fun activity for a decade or so.

Okay, who knows, I might even take a picture when I'm in Spain and post it here. I try to take at least one picture per day when I'm traveling, that's my goal. I also said I was going to try to take a picture of as many obscure locations as possible for maximum views on Google Maps so maybe I'll remember to do that. Wish me luck and I'll czech you all on the flip side!

Guess who's back. Back again. It has been exactly 15 years since I last blogged on SideshoViD.com. I've been thinking about starting it up for a while now but decided to wait for this anniversary, because ... well, no real reason.

For the past 15 years, I've had some sort of "closed" message on the home page saying that what killed my blog was the rise (and subsequent fall) of social media. Blogs weren't in vogue and I wanted to be sharing on whatever social media platform du jour would get me the most likes and comments. It was fun! But now, social media has become a cesspool boomer misinformation highway. It's caustic and I really want no part of it anymore. But I was finding myself missing over sharing the minutia of my day. Hence, the rebirth of the blog.

While it is the same SideshoViD.com you always loved, there are a few key differences. First, I migrated to a WordPress CMS. I had been paying like $30/mo for decades to Earthlink just to host these few HTML files. I've learned a LOT about that kind of stuff since then and realized that was dumb and I could just be hosting it myself for like $3 instead. I was just going to copy and paste the files to a new server, but I also had ambitions of making a coffee table book out of all of my entries. You can do that with a database like WordPress, but not with the antiquated GreyMatter system I had installed in the early 2000s. It was also so old that there was no such thing as a migration path. So, I did what any reasonable person would do and started cutting and pasting one entry at a time, one comment at a time, adjusting the time stamp. It took about 3 years of inconsistent effort, but then it was done. I shut down Earthlink and reaped the savings.

Then I decided I wanted to shut down all of my social media accounts, but that WAS my blog for the years 2010-2023, so I didn't want to lose that history. So, I did what any reasonable person would would do and started cutting and pasting one entry at a time. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I got the whole shebang, here for your archival purposes. I'll play with the format, but for now you can read my newest most recent posts, but also enjoy a blast from the past with "This Day in History" just below.

Another change I made is to wipe all evidence of this site from Google search results. You see, I'm a bit of an SEO expert now which means I know all the ways to prevent being found. That should assuage some of your fears about these stories resurfacing. I've also implemented my own proprietary redaction capabilities and redacted all of your last names, or personally identifiable information. So, fear not, you should not be showing up on any Google searches and being denied new jobs because of the transgressions of your youth. If you see anything else you'd like redacted let me know. What's great is, I can still read it, but nobody else can.

So there you go. This blog is now more my own personal diary you can read if you feel like it instead of an attention whoring cry for help. Although, it would be wild, WILD, if anyone of you were still checking. I'm going to try to enable comments, and we'll just have to see if I get 15,000 spam comments in the first 7 seconds of publishing or not.

So let's do this. SideshoViD.com the next generation. Obviously we have much to cover in my life over the past 15 years, but we'll get to all that in time. Excelsior!

It's becoming apparent that my blog is dying. After almost 9 years of recorded history, the relevance is starting to wear thin. I'm trying to think of some fitting way to say goodbye, but for now it'll probably just sit and stagnate for a while since I still use the FTP associated with my account. Maybe I'll print out every blog and bind it in a big book that can be relived time and again. Maybe some day one of my ancestors will say, I wonder what David was like in college. And then read it and be like oh dear god I wish I'd never known. Then again, I won't have any ancestors, but y'know ... children of my nieces and nephews grandchildren. People like that.

So sorry if any of you are still checking. I think I might be checking out for realz this time, but you never know. If I change my mind you'll be the first to know.

It's been a while since I've updated. My apologies. I just returned from Las Vegas celebrating my brother Stephen's 30th birthday. It was a pretty big deal. The entire trip was kept a secret from him up until I took him and his wife to the airport. And then on top of that, it was another secret that me and my other brother, Michael, were on our way to the airport separately to meet and surprise him with our presence. It was pretty fun sneaking up behind him in the casino while he played video poker. After so many months of preparation, it was such a relief for the big reveal.

So we spent two days gambling, drinking, laying out by the pool, having some very fine high dollar meals, and seeing the Beatles LOVE show. Highly recommend. Also highly recommend Planet Hollywood. It's recently been redone and it is so nice. Nicer than the Bellagio, in my humble opinion. Crazy times.

His birthday was a little bigger deal than mine. I tried to keep the invite casual (I wanted to type "cas" as in short for "casual" there but I'm not sure how to spell it). I didn't even have a place for people to RSVP because I didn't want to get excited that anyone was coming. Daniel was kind of annoyed with me as we got ready to go out to the bar because he was hurrying me along and I was saying what's the point, no one's coming. He was like you always get this way on your birthday. So we got there, and DJ iMernex had reserved us a table. And then we sat. And sat. And sat. And no one came. Daniel was frantically texting people trying to get them to come to no avail. Finally before I called it quits I texted Keiff cause he had said he would try to make it after moving all day and he was on his way over. So hurray! Saved the day. Then we blew that hot dog stand and invited Lindsey over like we should have all along. Lesson learned. Next year, no party ... he said again.

My Harley riding coworker got in a really bad motorcycle accident this weekend. He has two broken ankles, a broken femur, broken ribs, and road rash. I think I need to go get some safety gear before I ride anymore. I'm paranoid now. Not that I wasn't before, but you get the point.

So good times, not much to report from the real world. Gearing up for Australia, dreading the 14 hour flight. But definitely excited. I'll keep you posted.

This pain is bordering on unbearable. I've already burned through my first prescription for painkillers and my attempts to ration the lone refill aren't going so well. I pretty much have to take one every 4 hours. I haven't been able to stay a full day at work yet because of the pain. My throat is so swollen that my tonsils are nearly touching. It's probably infected because it's so bright red. If you're thinking about having a uvulectomy, I suggest you plan ahead and take a week off of work. The only relief I get is after a pill kicks in and I sleep for a few hours. If I sleep much more than that, it's really painful when I wake up, so I'm going to try to spend the weekend doing nothing but healing and sleeping.

It hurts so much to eat, well, swallow. I am supposed to drink ice water in small sips to try and take the swelling down, but the cold hurts on top of swallowing. I eat a lot at each meal to try and space them out as much as possible. I have a huge, gaping open wound directly in the path of all food and liquids on their path to my stomach. Since I don't have an IV, I don't know much choice but to keep doing it, but I dread the thought.

My wishlist hasn't turned out exactly like I thought it would. It was intended to help me plan far in advance for the purchases I wanted to make. Instead, it's become a grocery list for the past few days. Whenever I'm hurting, I find that spending large sums of money always brings a smile to my face. Today I got a couple new pillows and all new pillowcases for every pillow I have. It's not enough to just put one pillowcase per pillow though, because then sometimes the case folds back and you can see the pillow. Unacceptable, so we put two on each pillow. Not exactly cheap when you're dealing with DaMask Stripe sheets, which also happens to be the product placement for today. These sheets are so comfy and stylish. Pick your favorite color and then pick yourself up a set. I have the chocolate brown to match my ceiling and wall stripes and then I got red for the pillows that I keep on the couch. Rawk!

Oh, Daniel and I will be in Washington D.C. August 8th through the 16th with an excursion up to NYC the 11th through the 14th. Yes, I'm returning to New York despite my vow to never do that. I have a feeling this trip will be exponentially better than the last. Anyway, if you reside in either of these cities, let's plan a get-together. Til then!

I've had this stupid nagging cough for almost two weeks now. It is really starting to get old. I lay awake at night hacking up a lung and I can't sleep and it's affecting the quality of my life. Before I went to Kaylyn's birthday party, I went to a doctor to make sure I wouldn't get her sick. He said my cough actually wasn't caused by disease but was just a bronchial irritation. I relayed this information to the guys at work and we decided that the sleep rules are actually to blame.

You see, I sleep at 65 degrees every night now. It feels great. But the other thing that cold air does is give up moisture easily. So effectively what I'm really doing is breathing in cold ass, dry ass air all night long and it eventually started to adversely affect me. So I did the only logical thing. I bought a humidifier. It's a really nice humidifier that can control to a set point. So now I'll be livin' at 50% humidity no matter what the temperature is in my apartment. I think it's really important to be totally in control anyway.

But that doesn't arrive until tomorrow. In the meantime I filled a couple of prescriptions that the doctor gave me. One's a pill to like get rid of the inflamation in my chest and the other is ... drum roll please ... cough syrup with codeine! YAY! Sippin' on some sizzurp! This is good news because my last bottle just expired. That should save me some money on alcohol this weekend.

Andy, the old roommate from back in Feb-Apr has been staying with me this week. I took him to my gym a couple of times since he is a personal trainer, fully willing to pay the ridiculous 20 dollar guest fee, but it turns out I get two free guest passes each month. So if anybody ever wants to go with me let me know. I work out 7 days a week now. Did you know that? It's true.

Well, I've just made some delicious chicken breast tacos so I might have to go indulge. Peace out, sluts.