Month: January 2005

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Buendia and I have just scored some great office space downtown in Santa Fe.

This means we both have a place to go to work (as does Buendia’s first employee, starting in a couple of weeks).

It also frees up the room at home for its new role in the summer, and will keep our work lives separate from the home existence.

We’ll also be handy for drop-ins and lunch dates – quite a few friends work in the heart of town.

The space is in a cool 50s building on East Palace Ave – a high-falutin’ address in Santa Fe, and we’ll be moving in next week. My jobs will include setting up the wireless network, so there’s a need for a funky Airport Express yoke.

Maybe some pictures to follow of us in the new crib – which looks out onto a little grassy courtyard.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Back from a weekend ski trip to Red River – up there in northern New Mexico near the Colorado border.

We weren’t doing the yo-yo ski-ing, otherwise known as downhill. Instead we were going cross country, which means you can go up and along as well as down.

It’s no accident that you can get those nordic ski indoor trainer things, because it’s hard work – the perfect winter sport for masochistic cyclists.

But the real challenge is keeping under control on the way down.

Without metal edges, and on light narrow skis, it’s very hard to stop yourself or steer when gravity begins to take over. Especially if you’re not very good, like me.

Buendia’s been doing this for twelve years, so she made it all look as easy as falling off a log. My performance was more based around avoiding crashing into a tree.

But the lesson I took was a great help, and it was good to get out in the snowy woods under your own steam. Another couple of trips and maybe I’ll be able to stop when I want to.

Back to Santa Fe yesterday with sore muscles.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

The generous and wise Buendia bought me a Playstation2 for Christmas – partly to replace the one we had to leave behind in Ireland when we moved, and partly as a gentle suggestion that I had become a little too serious of late, and wasn’t giving myself permission to play.

Her plan may have been a little too successful. After many hours of playing FIFA Football, my left thumb is sore, but under my management Everton won the League, the League Cup and the FA Cup last season. I turned down a move to Inter Milan for the chance of playing in the Champions League. With luck I’ll get hired by Arsenal at the end of the season, and then there’ll be real fireworks.

The game is great, but now whenever I watch real football on TV, I want to move the players around.

Interestingly, too, the game is actually called FIFA Soccer over here, and all the players on the box cover are Spanish – no prizes for identifying the one ethnic community in the US (excluding Anglo-Irish expats like me) that might be interested in a footie game.