Tag: The Peanut

Bill Gates once gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters.. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Bean was so glad to have his mummy back after her weekend as a lab rat that he made her a birthday cake. Note the subtle use of sprinkles as decorations.

Going for a walk

Sausage!!!!

And cake. He charmed the lady at Waitrose into giving him the one with the biggest flake in it.

The morning started on a less than stellar note, with the Bean whining about wanting to eat everything in sight. Things started to pick up a bit when Rafa showed up with the paella fire ring and gas bottle, but then realized he forgot the actual paella pan :-)

After a quick round trip, where some speed limits might have been bruised a bit, we were on our way cooking.  By then, everybody had arrived and the house was … chaos.

There were a few moments of the blind leading the blind while Rafa and I were doing the paella because I’d never cooked one so big and Rafa was working off of his dad’s emailed instructions. Still, in the end, it was a perfectly acceptable first try. My only criticisms would be that it probably needed a bit more salt and the rice was still a bit too wet. Like I said though, perfectly acceptable, and my tortillas were very well received. There was a cubic BUTTLOAD of food on the table, including an impressive amount of baked goods.

All in all, I think everybody ate their fill and had a good time. I’ll admit to having a better time than I expected to – I was really anxious about today – but I had a really nice time with everybody. The good news is that the bad weather held off for the afternoon so the kids were able to burn off their excess energy outside on the slide and swing.

So, good food, good friends, good weather and a happy bean. Thanks to everybody who came and helped make the day!