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May. 29th, 2007 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prismakaosback in the exciting-but-not-overwhelmingly-so world of menlo park, california. today's travel adventure was the 1 hour walk to the post office to pick up my mail and the 1 hour walk back before sitting down to do precisely 3 hours of work. which was basically me looking through the giant giant piles of email that i had.
my inbox is empty again, so i can breathe.
I went to dublin for a week in order to work. this turned out to be relatively futile, given that the office in dublin is doing something completely different than we are and can't really put many of our best practices to bear on their workload. however, lots of good ideas were shared, many pints (and shots) of guinness (and baby guinness) were drunk. it is true that guinness gets better the closer you are to the brewery, although i didn't actually make it to the brewery to test the endpoint of that theory.
the friday, i had off, so me and my cousin jacob (my sibling-rival-analogy) wandered all around dublin. and i do mean all around, because we got lost nearly eight million times. it was sort of rainy, but not really, and we saw lots of churches, which neither one of us cared too much about. also, apparently graeme is the american spelling of graham, according to one irish gentleman who thought we were crazy for asking for anything with that name. whatever. i've picked up a semi-irrational dislike of the irish anyway.
so, cuz and i flew to riga, landed, met the bisters, went to the hotel, dropped off our bags, and went exploring with the bisters who took us all over riga and we walked and walked and walked, and did i mention that i had had a stressful week in dublin? what with all 6 hours of my training people that seemed to be relatively useless...so, yeah. then we did it again the following day, but with the outskirts of riga.
monday came and went in a blur, though there was a good 3 hours spent at the depressing soviet building housing the occupation museum and going through the even more depressing exhibit, where we learned kind of what my grandparents and aunt and uncle (mom wasn't born yet) faced on their flight from latvia to germany and then to the states. i swear, we live in sheltered times.
tuesday we went to estonia (4 hr car ride there, 4 hr car ride back, raining only in estonia - got to the latvian border and SUN!) and saw the medieval town. i like tallinn perhaps better than riga for some odd reason. and then i ate something with peanuts in it, and started hating estonia.
wednesday we went exploring places with daiga and her husband, which was... actually, no description i could write here could do it justice. she's...very proud of being an egoist, and has two small dogs and a husband. priority in that order. whatever. it was a trial, to say the least.
thursday, we planned to do many many things, including dinner with the bisters, but this was cut short as we remembered (well, okay, jacob's father remembered) that we were flying out that afternoon, so the morning was spent getting to the airport and finding black basalms for jacob to take back. if you've never had black basalm...i can only say it's an experience. also: "Was ist das? Das ist Kvass!"
yadda yadda yadda, 18 hours in dublin, 4 in copenhagen, then to ohio, where i got in late enough to say hi to the grandma, who was very crumpled and small looking before going to bed. but it was okay, because in the morning we got to go to the hospital! and drop grandma off, after sitting for 12 damn hours in the emergency room. low salt levels, dehydrated, and generally bleh, but she's okay now.
the next three days were me and jacob feeling useless, which sucked. but we weeded and mulched and put in the air conditioner and bought some groceries...
now i'm back and overwhelmed with stuff.
well, there you have it, folks, nothing much to see here.
my inbox is empty again, so i can breathe.
I went to dublin for a week in order to work. this turned out to be relatively futile, given that the office in dublin is doing something completely different than we are and can't really put many of our best practices to bear on their workload. however, lots of good ideas were shared, many pints (and shots) of guinness (and baby guinness) were drunk. it is true that guinness gets better the closer you are to the brewery, although i didn't actually make it to the brewery to test the endpoint of that theory.
the friday, i had off, so me and my cousin jacob (my sibling-rival-analogy) wandered all around dublin. and i do mean all around, because we got lost nearly eight million times. it was sort of rainy, but not really, and we saw lots of churches, which neither one of us cared too much about. also, apparently graeme is the american spelling of graham, according to one irish gentleman who thought we were crazy for asking for anything with that name. whatever. i've picked up a semi-irrational dislike of the irish anyway.
so, cuz and i flew to riga, landed, met the bisters, went to the hotel, dropped off our bags, and went exploring with the bisters who took us all over riga and we walked and walked and walked, and did i mention that i had had a stressful week in dublin? what with all 6 hours of my training people that seemed to be relatively useless...so, yeah. then we did it again the following day, but with the outskirts of riga.
monday came and went in a blur, though there was a good 3 hours spent at the depressing soviet building housing the occupation museum and going through the even more depressing exhibit, where we learned kind of what my grandparents and aunt and uncle (mom wasn't born yet) faced on their flight from latvia to germany and then to the states. i swear, we live in sheltered times.
tuesday we went to estonia (4 hr car ride there, 4 hr car ride back, raining only in estonia - got to the latvian border and SUN!) and saw the medieval town. i like tallinn perhaps better than riga for some odd reason. and then i ate something with peanuts in it, and started hating estonia.
wednesday we went exploring places with daiga and her husband, which was... actually, no description i could write here could do it justice. she's...very proud of being an egoist, and has two small dogs and a husband. priority in that order. whatever. it was a trial, to say the least.
thursday, we planned to do many many things, including dinner with the bisters, but this was cut short as we remembered (well, okay, jacob's father remembered) that we were flying out that afternoon, so the morning was spent getting to the airport and finding black basalms for jacob to take back. if you've never had black basalm...i can only say it's an experience. also: "Was ist das? Das ist Kvass!"
yadda yadda yadda, 18 hours in dublin, 4 in copenhagen, then to ohio, where i got in late enough to say hi to the grandma, who was very crumpled and small looking before going to bed. but it was okay, because in the morning we got to go to the hospital! and drop grandma off, after sitting for 12 damn hours in the emergency room. low salt levels, dehydrated, and generally bleh, but she's okay now.
the next three days were me and jacob feeling useless, which sucked. but we weeded and mulched and put in the air conditioner and bought some groceries...
now i'm back and overwhelmed with stuff.
well, there you have it, folks, nothing much to see here.
