Month: December 2006

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 

Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying “we have no new information on your bag”.  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we’d never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 

When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there… lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better… it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn’t leaked (which would have sucked big-time… Paula’s pillow was in the bag too).

Ahh… vacation is over, we can relax now. 😀

So, having tired of chain e-mail, the net has now switched to chain blog posts.

So, the game is apparently quite simple, give 5 things that few people know about you, then tag 5 friends to have them follow suit.  Omar has dragged me into this… So here goes:

1. I wanted to be an actor, a stuntman, a race driver and/or design cars… and no, that wasn’t when I was in 6th grade, it was when I was in college.  I chose UCSD because it was close to Hollywood (well, closer than Toledo, Ohio was) and had a good engineering program (which I thought would be good for designing race cars).  Partway through school I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer, I wanted to be a Psychologist.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t do any of those things.  I do, however, still want to be Paul Newman.
   
2. I’m related to Orson Welles, distantly. We have the same great-great-great grandfather… I’m not sure what that makes us.  Family lore also has it that James Hadfield is a distant relative, but that’s unsubstantiated (and probably nothing to brag about).
   
3. My feet are a wonder of nature.  I’m 5’9″ and my feet are size 13.  They are also on upside-down: the bottom of them are baby-soft and the tops of my toes have calluses.  Between the size and the extra hair you’d think I was an over-grown Hobbit.
   
4. I’m obsessed with solitaire on my cell phone.  It’s how I relax (and give myself carpal tunnel in my thumb).  The result is I’ve learned interesting things like:
   
   
   
   1. If you hold the joystick up it will automatically put cards up into the Ace piles.
      
   2. If you win a game and watch the cards bounce around, you’ll see there’s a bug, the cards count down from King down to Ace… then the King shows up again.
      
   3. While the end of game cards are bouncing around pressing “draw” will start stacking them back into the pile.
   
   
5. I hate dry wood in my mouth.  Chopsticks, popsicle sticks, anything.  Gives me the willies big time.  If you’re ever at a Chinese (Japanese, Thai, etc.) restaurant with me you’ll see the first thing I do is dump my chopsticks into my water glass and leave them there until I’m satisfied they’re good an soaked.

There you go, 5 things.  I figure that at some point down the road someone will have to start up a game of “Five more things people don’t know about me”… but until then I’ll have to pass the baton.  

• I started at ResNova to replace Rob (can you believe it’s been 12 years?), I’m sure he has a tale to tell. 
  
• Jason has taken on the awesome responsibility of caring for our good friend Leslie.  There was no application process so I’d like to learn more.
  
• For a long time Tami has been my blog “pen pal”.  Let’s hear five things from her (or her cat).
  
• Not everyone on the net lives in America… so let’s hear from Casper, a fellow Dublin resident.
  
• An last, but not least, to Steve Davis, because I’m sure he has something funny to say (or at least, frightening).

Last night was the Microsoft Christmas Party (less concern of being PC in a Catholic country) which kept us up a little later than usual.  After sleeping in we started the day feeling productive, having a light breakfast and making a list of things to do. 

The problem of the day, however, ended up being physics.  The pure mass of our couch proved to have entirely too much gravitational pull and we succumbed to the inevitable, curling up for a little TV and a light nap.

hard to resist

The day wasn’t, however, a complete waste.  We did something we’ve always wanted to do… figure out what the heck this “cricket” thing is all about… roughly.  I’ve studied the basic laws of cricket from the BBC web site and now think I could watch a little bit of the sport and kind of understand what’s happening.  I’m still not sure, however, if I could sit still for the full six hours of a professional test.

The Economist’s review of the world for 2005 has Ireland ranked as the best place to live in the world based on quality of life indicators.  The US failed to break the top ten but wasn’t far off at 13 in the survey of 111 countries.

You know the reason, right?

Via BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4020523.stm (thanks for the pointer Laurence!)

Update: A link to the full report thanks to Casper: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf