• шесть вещей

    I’ve been tagged. These are the rules:

    1. Link to the person who tagged you (Richard).
    2. Post the rules on your blog
    3. Share six unimportant things/habits/quirks about yourself
    4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
    5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website

    First, I want to apologize for not following the last two rules. I still have the same lame excuses from last time. Otherwise I’m happy to play along, so here goes:

    1. I studied Russian in college because there were too many fluent Spanish/French speakers in the introductory Spanish/French classes. I alternate between seeing this as a shrewd academic move and cowardace. I would have studied German, the language of my ancestors (some of them anyway), but I’m intimidated by lots of letters strung together without spaces. For some reason the new alphabet didn’t bother me that much. My last Russian professor tried to talk me into accepting one of the slots to study in Moscow for a summer, but I turned him down. “It’d be a shame if you didn’t use your gift” he* told me.

    Bonus note: I had to look up the word for “things” for the title of this post.

    In my defense, Russian didn’t interest me THAT much. One of the things my father taught me was that it’s important to find a career that interests you. While I value the rounding that studying Russian (and other things in college) gave my little shoe-box of knowledge, I didn’t see it as a vehicle to a fulfilling career.

    I actually gutted out five hours of French 1 my sophomore year; a misguided, attempted homage to my future in-laws. Sometimes I’m a quick learner, but the only thing I learned in those five hours was I was going to fail that class (something I wasn’t used to).

    2. I couldn’t remember what “meme” meant until a few minutes ago.

    3. I may be a direct descendant of one of the passengers on the Mayflower.

    4. I ended up in the ER after trying to carry my girlfriend (now wife) on my shoulders. My neck has never been the same.

    5. A recent project at work has taught me to hate Microsoft Access, which seems to be almost completely useless for more than a dozen concurrent users.

    6. I’m uncomfortable with most dairy products. I’m not allergic, I’m just not a big fan. Don’t get me started on Parmesan cheese. It works better for me than ipecac. When someone puts it on their pasta I have to move to the other end of the table.

    * I had a hard time taking him seriously, given my struggles with the mother tongue.

  • Floridians redeem themselves

    Alright, let’s not get crazy here. We’ve got a long road to travel before we can unload all of our baggage. But… this gives me a little bit of hope.

    Poll: Giuliani slips to third in Florida – Miami Herald:

    Rudy Giuliani has hit the skids in a Florida freefall that could shatter his presidential campaign and leave a two-man Republican contest in the state between John McCain and Mitt Romney, a Miami Herald poll shows.

    Despite hovering over Florida voters for weeks, Giuliani is tied for third place with the scarcely visible Mike Huckabee in a statewide poll of 800 likely voters.

    Considering the Huck is campaigning like he’s trying to win some kind of strange bet, to see who can make the most bizarre/frightening statements in two weeks (and he made it with himself), he’s the last person Rudy want’s to be tied with. O.K., maybe that’s not true. Ron Paul is still in the race.

    Oh boy! I got my email from the Florida Democratic party reminding me it’s almost our turn (Jan 29th). Let me tell you, there’s no shortage of Florida Democrats who are steamed over the primary issue (having our delegates stripped by the national party). It kind of makes the 29th a little less exciting. Sure, there are still plenty of local matters on the ballot (vote no on amendment one), but it’s still discouraging to be told your vote in the Presidential primary is worthless (thanks to the Republican FL Legislature and the Democratic Party). With the way the races are turning out this time around (with little decided after the first several rounds), I fear it’s much less likely anything will be done to change the primary system before the next go around. Not that there was much chance of that anyway.

  • Hide the silverware!

    We’ve lived in our house for almost ten years. For all that time we’ve had locks on the drawers in our kitchen, socket covers on our electrical outlets, and cabinet locks on our… well… cabinets.

    Why so long? We moved into our house when Beth was one. When Beth got to an age when they could come off we decided to have another child, so we left them on thinking we’d just have to put them back on again (soon). Then the miscarriages came, and I think we might have left them on because taking them off would’ve meant we’d lost hope.

    Then Adam finally came along. For the last year or so, Adam has been taking the cabinet locks off to play with the pots and pans… and putting the lock back on when he’s done. (Does anyone else have a lot of ceramic tile in their house? Does anyone else have permanent tinnitus from the sound of stainless steel pots banging on their ceramic tile?)

    Maybe it’s time to finally take off the locks. We’d hate to inconvenience the little guy.