Category: Life

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

This town loves its bumper stickers – and there are many different sorts.

Firstly, there’s the Euro-tastic country-code stickers beloved of expats. So you’re Swiss, and you make sure you’ve got a CH sticker on your car, or a GB (most often seen on the back of Land Rovers), or SW (most often seen on the back of Volvos) or any number of other ones.

Here I must confess, we’re no different. There’s an IRL sticker waiting to go on the bumper of the CRV. When I worked in the Silicon Valley for an Irish company, my time on the commute down the 101 from San Francisco was spent watching all the Euro stickers go past. Given all the Irish folks in our company, people used the county stickers for extra granulation – so I knew it was Ronan’s black Civic coupe because it had the three towers of Dublin on the back.

The second main category are the political ones, from the mainstream Democratic Party ones, through the subtle anti-Bush ones (a W with a line through it), to the more outspoken ones:

‘Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot’

‘Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?’

‘I believe in the separation of Church and Hate’

Then there’s the range of spiritual/slightly hippy ones (often seen on the backs of ancient Subarus):

‘Visualize turn signals’

‘Visualize World Peace’

‘Visualize Whirrled Peas’

‘Dog is my co-pilot’

There’s plenty more out there, so when I see some good ones, I’ll stick in a comment. And you’re welcome to do the same.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

I’m back blogging again. Spent a chunk of the weekend rebuilding this site – I hope you like it.

There’s more to do (tweaking the header graphic, getting the XHTML to validate), but with luck it will prove a stable and happy home for a while to come.

You might notice a lot of dodgy comments still kicking around. When I imported the blog entries and articles from the old system to the new, it brought the comments along for the ride.

But don’t despair – the new comment entry system is much more spam-proof, so I’ve switched the commenting on for new entries – feel free to leave me a note.

And I’ll be pruning the old comment spam soon.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

So it’s cold here (and beautiful, now the sun’s come out), but it’s not as cold as some places.

My friend Dave Walsh, ardent adventurer that he is, will be spending the next month or so inside the Arctic Circle.

He’s working on a campaign for Greenpeace, protesting the logging in the Sami Reindeer Forests of Northern Lapland.

He’s writing the campaign’s blog, and I’m sure he’d appreciate a visit, especially as it’s St Patrick’s Day.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

I was down in Albuquerque on Saturday, and it was hot – mid 70s and sunny.

This was quite a change from the cold and snowy experience in England and Ireland. Crocuses and daffodils are peeping up here in Santa Fe, and I was warm when I was out on the bike over the weekend.

That’s all changed now.

I’ve never seen so much snow – around 18 inches in Santa Fe over the last couple of days. Up at the ski valley, there’s the best snow local skiers have ever seen.

And here’s the view of the table outside the house.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Well, not exactly dead. More like reborn.

Buendia and I are going on holiday to Dublin. This is a weird notion for someone who lived there for a dozen years, but we’ll see what happens.

At the end of my time there, I was coming to the conclusion that it was better to be a visitor there than a resident – the reverse of the situation when I first arrived in 1993.

Then, the craic was mighty, the Celtic Tiger was yet to be born, and no-one had much money.

People looked at me strangely when I told them I planned to stay after doing my Masters. Economically, things weren’t at their worst, but a lot of folks were still leaving to find work.

No big-name acts came to play, and we didn’t know about lattes or pannini.

By the time I left last year, it was all changed, and not entirely for the better.

But we’re not coming back for an analysis of the state of the country. More like to have a week of Sundays. We’re planning to do all the things we liked to do on weekends – some obvious (take the DART to Killiney and walk along the Vico Rd), some more unique to ourselves. I don’t imagine many visitors to Dublin would be going out of their way to pop into the Java Bay cafe on Manor St.

A lot of time will be spent catching up with old friends and old haunts. We’re staying in a hotel – another first for us in Dublin – and should have access to some kind of internet connection (especially if we can find a signal from those phone boxes Eircom have set up with free wireless access), so I’ll try sending a report from the front.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

I made an excellent discovery on my way to the new office this morning. A small coffee (with the cardboard sleeve so you can carry it) fits perfectly into the bottle cage on a bike.

This means I can call in at the Meridian cafe on the way to work (and get my 20% discount for arriving there by bike), and not have to walk the bike round to the office because I have to hold my coffee.

A small thing I know, but very pleasing. And no spills.

Here’s the coffee cage in action:

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.