It looks like our free cruise was overbooked (who would have thought that many people would want to go on a free cruise?) so we are planning on driving around Spain and Portugal instead.  If you have any itinerary recommendations (and I really hope you do, I've never been beyond Barcelona) leave them in my guestbook.

I'm afraid that some of the hatred and disgust that I feel towards my ex-husband has applied itself to someone in my Spanish class.  He is part of a married couple, both of whom are taking the class.  She looks to be eastern European and she wears athletic shoes with knee highs.  He is dumpy and slow.  I have made up a background story for them in my mind, and I really feel sorry for her.  I imagine that she had a rough adolescence (the other kids probably made fun of her knee highs) and Dumpy was probably the first person to really make her feel special. 

Which is sad, because he is so slow that one of these days I will leap out of my chair and strangle him and then she'll be a widow.  I really don't know why he just irritates me so much.  He does stuff like, when we are reading a paragraph in Spanish, he'll struggle and struggle for a word but not see the English translation in parentheses right next to it.  He proudly announced to the class last night that, on their honeymoon in Mexico, he couldn't understand people so he would just hold out his wallet and let them take however much was due.

There's something about his slowness that reminds me of Michael (and, therefore, makes me want to strangle him).  At least Michael had the excuse of drug use to account for the gaping holes in his intellect, this guy appears to be au natural.  It could be the dumpiness too, I guess.  He doesn't look like Michael though.  He's certainly not as tall as Michael.  I really don't know what it is, but I just can't stand him.

Actually, maybe it's because he is married and someone has to put up with him.  And they are probably quite happy.  It is just so strange that his very existence has triggered very strong feelings of hatred and repulsion in me.  I do think that if the class didn't go until 10 pm on the dot I would have a little more patience with this guy.  Its just that I normally go to sleep at 9, so being out and about an hour past my bedtime really makes me cranky. 

Holy crap, I sound old.  And speaking of old, I found out last night that my "friends" in the class are all 18 (we learned to say "yo tengo dieciocho a�os" last night....and I got to announce that I have "veintinueve a�os"....to their credit, no one gasped or anything).  I wanted to turn around and tell them that I could be their early developing, loose and skanky mother.   But I didn't.