Pedraforca's hike with workmates!

Here are a few pics from the Pedraforca hike we did with some people from my lab, away from the current mess in Spain. Pedraforca is an iconic mountain the Pyrenees of Catalonia, even the most beautiful mountain in the world according to some Catalans! ;o) Somehow (?!), I forgot to take a picture of the general mountain, but you can find one here.

In any cases, this is a beautiful mountain, and we did a great and varied circuit... with some varied weather, including a tiny bit of hail! Many thanks to Xevi for the organization!!!

A proposal for a "boulette grading system"

As having a fair amount of experience and expertise on the subject, I have been advised a couple of time to create a grading system for "boulettes". I first should define what is a "boulette": a mistake that happens often to "boulets" (in the sense of scatter-brain people). It can be forgetting or loosing things of minor consequences, or more annoying things such as missing a flight. I would add it has to be laughable as well, but maybe that is only a personal interpretation. As such, it can encompass a large range of things, and a grading system should be a valuable one. Here is a first suggestion of scale: B-rating-cause/consequence. B is for Boulette, rating a number relative to the "quality" of the boulette, and cause/consequence is a letter indicating the natures of the cause and/or of the consequences:

i: for Inconvenience. That is when you forgot your work laptop at home, and have to bike 40 minutes to get it back.
m: for Money, i.e. when the boulette generates a loss of money. For example, when you buy new tickets because you missed your train.
o: when it deals with Others. These ones can reveal challenging to friendships!!!
l: for lost. This is often linked to Money and/or Inconvenience.
b: for broken. This is often linked Money and/or Inconvenience.
c: for Clumsiness. This can happen to everybody.

f: for Forgeting something you may need, such as a fixing kit for flat tyres.
r: for Repetition. This can add an extra grade to the global rating, please see the Annexe at the bottom of this post.

Many letters can be combined depending on the boulette. The global rating would look like this:

B0: No boulette. This is the grade when you were certain to forget something, but you didn't. In general, if you are a experienced boulet, you are quite proud of yourself when this happens.
B1: Minor boulettes, i.e. the ones you can solve easily by finding an alternative solution. For example, B1-if you forgot your spoon while camping in the mountain, and use a can top instead. These boulettes can even be seen as grateful, since they develop your ingenuity, or even your creativity. Boulettes can be good for you!
B2: These deals rarely with money or others, or for tiny things only. For example: B2-i could be when you forgot your mobile phone at work on Friday, and have to get it back in the evening because you need it for the weekend.
B3: Boulettes which can be slightly annoying. For example, B3-mi is for when you missed your train and have to buy new tickets at full price ("i" is because you will arrive delayed).
B4: Next level... Then it can be really annoying. They can deal with major Inconveniences, or a fair amount of Money, such as loosing your mobile phone with all numbers in it, B4-iml. Potential B5s can enter here, for example loosing your passport in the street of Otaki in New Zealand, but luckily brought back to the police by somebody a few days later.
B5: We enter now in the high level boulettes, and they are reserved to only a few persons who would still see the funny side of the boulette. Loosing your passport forbidding you to follow your girlfriend for holidays in Germany would enter that category at B5-ioml. (somebody should recognize himself there...). I know of one other good story of fishing-hook-deep-in-the-flesh-of-the-thumb which could have reached a solid grade B5, but maybe it was a too disagreeable experience to be enjoyable as a boulette?
B6: Here, we are the level of Boulet Bieth, Boulet-god for all of us. This can be achieved by himself only, and even only very rarely. The famous example is to quit his job&life in London in the aim of living with a girl who is living with her boyfriend, and hearing them making love all night long, through the walls... There, we have B6-im. Again, you have to take it well and laugh about it, otherwise it is a too disagreeable experience to be a boulette.

Considering the descroption of B6, I suggest the grading system should not be open-ended since anything worst would include really bad things I don't want to promote. B6 is very boarder-line already.


ANNEXE: about repetitive boulettes... Repetitive boulettes could get an extra mark if they are temporally not too spread out. The delay of prescription should be small for a B1, and very long (infinite?) for a B6... Maybe that would be the only way to reach a grade of B7? Repeating a grade B6 would be incredible, and would definitely add an extra dimension to a B6!