Not dead.

I'm still not dead. I'm alive and kicking. Or should I say I'm alive but not kicking? Yesterday, I went to the Partnering Olimpia, a sporting event for various companies and besides the sunburn I got, I also got very sore muscles. Thus, no kicking for a while.

This was my second sunburn for the year because the week before 10 of us from the RA went to an animal shelter to help out. We did half a day of cleaning (yes, that does mean picking dog shit and dead rats) and half a day of painting. I knew it was going to be good because I love dogs but it was surprisingly relaxing as well: while raking the ground, none of that shit related to candidates, clients, positions and targets came to mind. My mind was completely empty. The whole area was covered in the white flowers that fell from the Japanese locust trees, so what I thought while raking was something like this: flowers-flowers-flowers-stick-flowers-dog shit-flowers-flowers-dog shit-flowers-dog-so cuuuuute-flowers-let's make a little heap of the flowers-stick-flowers-etc. It was also a great team building event. Klára and I paired up to clean some of the dog-kennels and I was the one to find the first dead rat. I'm not really scared of mice and rats and stuff, but seeing a dead rat with a horrifying facial expression did get to me and I have to admit I did scream a little. "What is it?", Klára asked, and when I told her she also screamed a little, even though she had not even seen the rat. We agreed that we should leave the rat where it is, rake around it and then ask one of the people who worked there to remove the rat. Then, I got closer and realized there was another rat lying a little further, although this one seemed to be at peace at least. The guy who worked there told us that we can remove the rats ourselves (thanks!) so we agreed that Klára was going to hold the shovel and I was going toroll the rats onto the shovel using a rake. But every time Klára felt that the rat was touching the shovel, she froze and screamed and in the end it was her idea that saved our mission. She buried the rats under a small heap of flowers, and even though the tails were still visible, the whole experience was more pleasant and she coped with the bodies of the dead rats quite well. Long live ostrich policy!

Other than these lively little episodes, my life is dominated by work and seeing friends in the evenings. For example, Dávid is back from Utrecht and from his round the world travel, so I saw him recently (I also found him a nice job), I met Will who was my housemate in Wales, Agnes from the bar in Utrecht, Emese, a girl from my year at high school and the current girlfriend of my very first boyfriend, guys I worked with at The Client, and Irma, even though I can't reach her now.