Luck o' the Irish

My family is Irish.  In fact, I like to tout that I'm 3rd generation off the boat (my grandpa's parents immigrated here in the early 1900's).  So, like any good Irish family, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day with family, boiled meat, potatoes, bread and snakes.

Snakes?

Yep, snakes.  Maybe I should start at the beginning.  We had a delicious meal of corned beef (the good quality stuff), colcannon, and my personal favorite, Leprechaun Pie (my entire family waits 364 (365 this year!) days just to savor a few bites of this Dolan family tradition).  We retired to the downstairs of my sister's (formally my parents) house for a few minutes after the meal was finished.  As we were down there, R went to pet Smokey, a normally outgoing and friendly cat.  As R reached to pet his head, Smokey jumped about 4' off the ground.  Clearly, he was spooked by something, but we didn't really give it a second thought. After R and I had been sitting there for a few moments, R asked if I heard a repeating "fssssss" sound coming from the furnace room, and if so, was that normal (I had lived in that house for several years)?  I couldn't recall anything, but who knows what it could be.  So as the rest of my family made their way down to join us, R asked everyone else if they heard the noise.  Sure enough, everyone thought it was a little strange, but we all concluded it was probably the hot water heater giving off some steam.  Well, my mom, having lived in the house a number of years, brazenly opens the door to the furnace room to check it out.   She immediately freaks out and shuts the door.  We all stare at her expectantly and demand to know what she saw.  "What is it? A bobcat?" we jokingly inquire.  She finally manages to hiss out, "it's a rattle snake!"  Well, that's when the chaos broke out.  My sister was trying to herd the animals out of the downstairs, Brian and my dad (Patrick) went to get the infamous "snake pole", and R and I were left with a slight bit of curiosity and a rather scared Calvin, who could sense the excitement of the rest of us.

I'll save you from the boring details and suffice it to say that the rattle snake is no longer with us.  But he left us with a rather eventful and memorable St. Patrick's Day.

Yes, I realize that the legend of St. Patrick and the snakes does not really refer to real snakes.  But nonetheless, it makes for a good story:  The St. Patrick's Day where Patrick (and Brian) drove the snake out of the house.

Something happened on the way to my degree...

Yep, something happened on the way to my degree:  I lost the ability to sit around and do nothing.  Maybe it's just my personality, maybe there just isn't anything good to sit around and do nothing about.  But I think it's because I'm an overworked grad student.  Sure, I can procrastinate with the best of them.  Gotta turn in a poster tomorrow?  Sure, I've got a few hours to watch mindless TV.  Need to run some simulations?  What better time to iChat!

But here I am, with nothing to do, and I can't sit still.  I feel like I need to do something.  I was just playing SuperBounceOut.  It just doesn't have the same addiction and appeal that it does when I'm playing because I'm avoiding work. 

Usually I turn to the TV for my "do nothing" time.  R never wants to watch as much TV as I do--which is good, because it keeps my TV watching in check. On the other hand, there is nothing good on TV these days.  Tivo has 155 suggestions and nothing sounds interesting.  Seinfeld?  Seen it.  Friends?  Seen it. Super Monster Truck Rally?  What the...??? It seems like my favorite shows haven't had new episodes in weeks, and Battlestar Galactica won't be new until April.

Sure, there are plenty of things that I could or should be doing.  Working?  Yes, there is part of me that thinks I should be working.  That part of me also thinks that every waking moment should be spent working on my dissertation so that I can just be done with it.  And the other part of me thinks that I put in a long day, got a lot of things accomplished, and the same will be true tomorrow (hopefully). So why not relax?  How about cleaning up my iTunes library?  No way, that would take way to long and way too much thought.  Clean up the basement?  Don't get me started.  Send out long overdue emails to friends and family?  Well, yah...Take out the trash? Yep, that's a 5 minute project.  Play games online?  Been there, done that.

Maybe I'll just blog.