Categories
Video Games

Prophetic


Categories
Weird

This may come as a shock to you…

… but rock stars have a shorter expected life span due to [gasp] use of alcohol and drugs.

life span

If you have a choice in the matter, however, be a pop star in Europe… you’ll live longer.

You can read all the shocking details in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.  While on their site you can read other fascinating studies like “Drinking water makes you less thirsty” and “Playing in the street can cause injury”.

Categories
Weird

Great video, such as… watching are great

I’m going to need Babel Fish’s bimbo-to-English translator for this one.

Video: Miss Teen USA 2007

Categories
Life

And the fun keeps coming!

Okay, I’m starting to get my head back above water. 

Paula and I got back from Germany last Tuesday,  and Thursday our friend Max flew in from Colorado.  We went from ten days of touring Germany with my parents to five days of touring Ireland (well, Paula and Max did most of the touring… I dug through e-mail :)).

And now more fun news, our friend Christopher is going to come stay with us next week!  We’re both stoked to have yet another visitor from the states.  We really enjoy living in Ireland but do miss our friends tremendously.

Categories
Travel

A quick summary of our German trip

With work, out of town visitors and life all pouring heaps of activity into my life I fear I’m never going to have time to write a proper post about the trip we took to Germany with my parents so I’m just going to brain dump quickly so I can refer back to it later.

Here’s a quick summary of our German trip:

  1. Flew into Düsseldorf to visit our old house and haunts
  2. Drove to Ilsenburg in the Harz mountains to stay for a few days.  From Ilsenburg we took a day trip to Goslar (home to some of Paula’s ancestors) did some hiking and visited Wernigerode.
  3. Drove to Hamburg, toured the massive harbor and saw some of the town.
  4. Drove to Lübeck to stay a night and tour the old town
  5. Drove north to check out the Baltic Sea then south through Schwerin to stay in Berlin for a couple nights.

It was a fantastic trip and a great chance to spend some quality time with my parents.  About the only complaint we had was that there are no smoking restrictions in Germany, so no matter where you go you are going to be sucking in lots of second-hand smoke.  It’s not ideal, but you just gotta deal.

Oh, and Tami, you might be able to eat off the streets on weekdays but not on weekends.  They don’t sweep the streets on weekends.  When we were walking around Lübeck the local guide told us the streets were filthy because they don’t sweep on weekends (I just figured they were filthy because people couldn’t be bothered to use trash cans).

Categories
Travel

Germany… several days in

Paula and I have been having a great time in Germany over the past few days We flew into Duseldorf on Saturday morning and met my parents at our hotel.

When I was in elementary school (fourth, fifth and sixth grades) my family lived in Duseldorf for three years. It was fun to get a chance to revisit some of the places we used to frequent. We even went by our old house… it’s now an Italian restaurant. 🙂

After a brief time in Duseldorf we drove east into the Harz mountains to stay in Ilsenburg. From our hotel in Ilsenburg we took a short drive west to visit Goslar. Besides being a wonderfully preserved old German town, it’s also where Paula’s great-great grandfather lived and died (though we didn’t do any family history research this trip).

We just finished our second day in Hamburg and are off to Lubeck tomorrow. Here’s a quickie picture of the town hall in Hamburg (sorry for the cell-phone quality, better pictures when we’re back home).