Tuesday and Wednesday, 31-Dec-2024 and 01-Jan-2025
I don’t have any pictures for the blog from New Year’s Eve.
I’m very okay with that.
It wasn’t really an evening that lent itself to photography – Andrea and I hosted a small New Years Eve shindig at my apartment; a small shindig with a few friends and our only neighbors in attendance. A few classmates joined in for the beginning, before heading out onto the town for a bit of clubbing, but by the end it was just three couples – Ourselves, our neighbors, and two friends from the executive side of the MBA program.
We took it easy and enjoyed ourselves and the pleasant company – Good sparkling wine was had (not Champagne, but a variant that was easily as good while avoiding the price tag), stories were shared, and fireworks were watched from the windows of our 7th floor nest.
We did a cursory photoshoot with Anduril, just for fun, though I’ll leave those photos in the inboxes of the friends who modeled for them – They came out well, but it feels a bit strange publishing photos of other people in the context of a silly night in together.
It was a simple evening, and a lovely evening. A celebration of a life being built across the pond, in a new world.
Continuing on with my exploration of Dublin – I made a point to keep wandering, and keep poking around, as the MBA kicked off and our classes started getting more intense. My friend Brian came to visit, we explored, and I went out with friends from the class! We toured the Teeling distillery, and had a glorious grand old time.
I even got an invite to a pretty cool comedy event in town called “ADHD&D”, a very off-the-wall live D&D game, which was basically a live recording of a dungeons and dragons podcast, where the audience got to participate and help write the story. It was fun, and a grand opportunity to meet up with people both from class, and some friends from outside of class, and just get a good bit of exposure to “Dublin Craic”, just general good times.
Weekend of Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 through Sunday, 11-Feb-2024
My friend Dave is getting a promotion!
Well… technically, he’s already gotten the promotion, and this was just the ceremony to officially instate him at his new rank. It’s the Army, I’m not going to worry over-much about the minutia of how it all works… though I’ll admit that I’m pretty jealous of the simplicity and clarity of how their system works. There’s clear requirements, transparent timelines, and a whole system dedicated to keeping it all moving smoothly. Kind of wish the private sector would listen in on that…
Anyways, ranting aside, I flew to Oklahoma!
It was lovely – One advantage of having a work laptop, and being able to work remotely, is that I could save aside a few of my projects onto my harddrive and then boot the beast up on the flight to get some analysis done and summaries written. It didn’t go beautifully smoothly, unfortunately, since “the beast” is an apt term for my laptop’s power consumption, it turns out… I wasn’t aware, but seatback power is limited to 75W… and the 180W power brick keeping that laptop running SUPER overloaded that circuit. No fires caught, of course, it just simply didn’t work.
Thankfully batteries are a thing, so progress was made and a book was read after the laptop died.
Once in Oklahoma, we had a combination of whirlwind adventures and quiet relaxation.
The ceremony itself, along with the time leading up to it, was chaotic and busy by nature. The morning before, and the days following, were beautifully quiet. It was lovely – a good ceremony, great cake, and good speeches. And, of course, excellent celebratory scotch afterward – regardless of glassware choice.
The rest of the time was gloriously relaxing. Catching up with friends, hearing stories and learning new little details about what life’s been like. We took a few nature walks, visited an excellent diner, and had an excellent evening full of pizza, whiskey, and even a few hands of poker! First time as an adult I’ve played Texas Hold’em, and I didn’t do too badly… didn’t do great, of course, but had a good time and didn’t get wiped out too early. Also, I learned not to bet against Dave because he doesn’t bluff. He had the luck of a recent promotion, and didn’t need to bluff.
Jerk.
We poked around the on-base museum (and saw a super cool WWII-era Morse-code transmitter), I took an artsy photo of a bike… I mean, it was a chance to visit with friends and see the life they’ve been building in the middle of the country. It was worth every minute.
