In no particular order

Anecdotes from the travels, like the travel pictures below, are somewhat disordered. Just like me.

-Great kindness of strangers moment: we missed the bus to the airport in Dublin--ran to catch it, but it left. A few minutes later, a woman in a car pulled up and said she'd seen us miss the bus and it was so awful that they didn't stop; would we like a ride to the airport? We were initially tremendously skeptical, but ended up taking her up on it. She was extremely nice and took us to the airport--turned out she lived near it and had been dropping her daughter at a friend's house. She lamented the growing "rudness" of Dubliners and certainly left us with a sense of Irish hospitality.

-Dinosaurs! We went to the Museum of Natural History, which is a beatiful building:
...and they had an awesome dinosaur exhibit! We had to drag ourselves away, though, because the museum was closing (we'd already been to the British Museum and the V&A that day, not to mention Harrod's), and because we were going out to dinner at the Orrery, a really nice restaurant. The dinner was a birthday gift from my parents, and it was extremely nice. Salmon, tomatoes, pastry, and a wine that reminded me why I like wine.

-Oh, I signed a lease today for an apartment in Indiana! Yay! I think it'll be good.

-I'm officially in Birmingham for about 50 hours between the Andy trip and the family trip. We're going to London, Rome and Berlin. I'm very excited, but I'm still quite tired from this last trip, and with all the rain and the cold weather, I have a bit of a cold. So I'm giving myself something of a break work-wise. I'd planned to come back and get some solid working in before heading out again, but I think I'll do some solid R&R instead... and maybe a bit of work tomorrow.

That's all for the tidbits for the moment.