Ireland (Part I: We're moving!)

On our plane ride home, I started writing what turned out to be a very long recap of some interesting points of the trip. Too long — even for me — to post all at once. So today I present to you, Part I: We're moving! I don't know how many days worth of posts this will turn out to be, but I'm planning on posting a days worth of pictures from the trip every day, so there should be quite a few days of pictures. We averaged around 100 pictures a day – mostly 150+, but some days were primarily travel so we didn't take too many. Today's set is available here.

You should check your mail. Go on, I'll wait. No, not your email, your snail mail. You know, the box out front with the charming little red flag on it. Inside, you should find a plane ticket and some instructions. Of course, there's no need to repeat those instructions here, but in brief they explain that we are moving to Ireland, and taking you with us. You have approximately two weeks — depedning on the speed of your local post — to pack your things and make arrangements to get to the airport. Sell your cars and houses, and anything you can't fit in a few suitcases and your carry-on. You can't, after all, take these things with you. Tell your employers that you are very sorry, but I have already made plans for your future. Ireland is a wonderful place, and after I've explained whyso, you'll be happy to make this pilgrimage. I am, of course, only Joshing you. If it weren't for you — friends and family, colleagues and a few strange people whom I've never met that for some reason continue to return in search of brilliance in blog form and regularly leave disappointed — then the no doubt probable and in fact existent thoughts of leaving the life we have come to know and love behind and move to Ireland would be much more agreeable. Fact is, if there were no you, and only us, it would be something we would seriously consider. Living a few states away from my nuclear family has been many things – pleasant, relaxing, and calming at first; distant, and droll, and eventually tiresome and sometimes a bit lonely. Like anything else, these emotions are cyclical. One week I miss Mom's Spaghetti, the next I can't stand her incessant emails. (Love you!) Living across the country is a thought that has crossed my mind; most recently when my brother visited family in California, and as much as I want to get away sometimes, I don't think I would much like being so far removed from my family. The same can be said for all of my friends and acquaintances acquired over the years. And as I've mentioned in the past, I do truly love my job, and so I'll be taking it and my colleagues with me as well. So pack your things and we'll meet you by baggage claim carousel 6 in Dublin.

Guest Post: Nothing!!

This weeks guest-posts are all brought to you courtesy of my Dad.

How often does a parent catch their kids doing something wrong but it's just so totally unexpected and so damn funny we can't bring ourselves to follow our own rules and allow the law of retribution be tossed aside? Not very often ? but it does happen. Adam was young, maybe in 1st or 2nd grade this particular time. It wasn't the first time or the last, but it was probably the one time I just couldn't stop laughing out loud. It wasn't very late at night but still well past the kids' bedtime. Kitty and I were sitting in the living room watching TV or talking (I don't remember that part). We heard something in the next room so I called out "who's in the kitchen?" Adam answered that it was just him. I could have said anything, like "go back to bed" but for some unexplained reason I asked what he was doing. His answer, "nothing" wasn't very reassuring. Why would Adam get up more than an hour after he had gone to bed and come into the kitchen to do "nothing?" I asked Adam to come into the living room but he didn't want to, instead saying he was just heading back to bed. Naturally I told him to wait and Kitty and I went into the kitchen to investigate. My son, who I love very much and always thought was an extremely smart kid, was standing there in his underwear looking almost panicky. It must also be noted for the record that Adam was wearing briefs and they were probably Thunder Cats, Voltron, or some other designer undies ? but that they weren't boxers. That's an important point. It took me a second to see how distressed he looked and I realized his underwear had a huge bulge in the front. We're taking about a bulge of enormous, massive proportion! And while some fathers might take pride in this and be thinking "that's my boy!", in this instance that wasn't exactly appropriate. Sticking out the top of his briefs was the top of several large chocolate chip cookies. They were also sticking out both sides, nearly as big around as his small legs. My son was packing something close to a dozen cookies in his shorts and wanted desperately to make a clean get-away. The cookie crumbs made the "clean" get-away impossible, and in good consciousness I couldn't let him just finish what he started. "What's in your pants?" "Nothing" "Nothing? Are you sure you don't have a bunch of cookies in there?" "Uhh, yeah." "What are you going to do with those cookies?" "Nothing" "Really! Weren't you planning to sneak them into your room and eat them?" "Uhh, yeah." At this point I'm trying hard not to laugh, but it was too late. The sight of Adam holding a dozen cookies (without using his hands) was too much. I think I asked Kitty to take over. I don't really remember the details after that. Adam didn't get to take the cookies back to his room, and I'm pretty sure they made it into the trash. At least I really, really hope that's where they ended up ? because I like chocolate chip cookies too.

Guest Post: Birth of a blogger

All of this weeks guest-posts are courtesy of my Dad.

Since you?re reading this website you know that Adam spends a lot of time with TuttleTree and several other sites. He does websites for a living and never seems to get tired of this. I remember being more like that when I was younger. I could work a 12 hour day and come home to see how many of my 10 downloads actually made it over my 2400 baud modem (upgraded from 300 baud ? but we didn?t download much at that speed). On a good day I could get more than half of my new programs so I?d have something to keep me occupied for several more hours and on weekends. It was exciting for me, and looking back I think it was exciting for Adam too. Adam was always interested in what I was doing on my computer and probably a little frustrated that he couldn?t be more active. I showed him what I was doing and let him bang away on the keyboard. I explained some of the programs I was writing and how I used them to track time I spent with client projects, keep notes of my activities and stuff like that. Adam knew I had to compile my programs and that it converted my instructions to machine language, and that was cool, but it wasn?t what he was mostly interested in. Thinking back, it?s possible he was mostly interested in tracking details on the computer. My computer came from the office so I could some work at home. Since I had something to work on it wasn?t a huge priority for me, but I did see that Adam and his brothers (mostly Adam) were very interested in learning. So the search began. I started surfing through catalogs (this was before the Internet, too) and choosing the parts we?d need to build our own computer. We were way past considering a Commodore or TRS-80. I wanted to be able to work with the kids on the computer so they needed something that ran MS Windows (version 2.11?). Luck prevailed and some upgrades at work resulted in me getting an old computer for the boys to share. The boys and I spent a couple of hours going through how to turn the computer on and off, how to run programs and what programs they needed to run to do stuff. There wasn?t much on the computer but Adam asked about typing stuff in the computer and I showed him how to use Notepad. Adam never looked back. Our next problem was that we had 1 computer and 3 boys that wanted to use it. The two younger boys didn?t yet know how to read and write so there wasn?t much they could do so Adam usually got the lion?s share of computer time (that?s fair ? right?). Adam kept a diary. I don?t know what he wrote because he never chose to share it. I don?t remember what happened to that old computer or whatever became of his earliest works. I really wish I had thought to keep them. It would be interesting to know what he spent all those hours plugging away on that old beat up computer. One other thing I did that always thought was cool. I added a sound bite of a Pink Floyd song as the start up WAV file. Whenever he turned the machine on it played him this little snippet: ?Welcome my son? to the machine?. At the time it was a way of saying ?welcome to using this computer?. In retrospect, I think the ?machine? ended up being a lot more than we ever imagined.