Tom the Viking

Here, with a nod toward the Burtons who trace their lineage to Normandy and the Vikings, is me in my Teutonic raiment.

This morning I've reached the 21-day mark on my count-down to retirement. Twenty-one days! It's almost impossible to grasp the enormity of it. After twenty-five years of state government, and over forty some odd years of showing up somewhere every morning at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., I'll have nowhere I must be every day. I'll actually be able to read the morning paper in the morning! What a concept.

Plans for the trip to the UK continue unabated though Delta playfully continues to tinker with our flight numbers and, at times, intermediate stops. I think the only area of the country they don't have us stopping is Alaska, which I'm sure they've at least considered.

Yesterday I emailed the rental agent for the mini we're going to be driving asking that he send me a .jpg of the car so I can post it here. I hoping for a red one so everyone can avoid me when I make traffic mistakes. They drive on the "wrong" side of the road, you know. In 1973 when I lived on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean for several months I found that everyone drove on the left side. I actually made the switch rather easily. We were riding motorbikes most of the time, but I even successfully drove a big Ford station wagon on malta's tiny roads without incident.

This week I made another incursion into heretofore avoided areas of technology and loaded up a gift IPod with several hundred jazz, classical, and folk tunes to listen to on the airplane should their in-house music prove wanting. On our recent trip to Florida, the airliner's canned music was awful. The IPod doesn't take up much room and I was taking the "noise-cancelling" headphones anyway.

Right now I'm listening to Celtic music, which reminds me of a book I recently finished. It's called Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.It's available through Amazon for as little as $8.50. The book is a great read if you're interested in learning about your British ancestors. The author, Bryan Sykes, uses DNA testing to determine just what impact various immigrants and invaders have had on British genetic makeup. When I had the National Geographic genetic test done, I learned that my ancestors spent the last big ice age holed up in Spain. Sykes says that later, a coastal contingent of these Spaniards sailed north to the British Isles and became what we consider to be the Celts. The most surprising thing I learned from Saxons, Vikings, and Celts was the relatively small impact the various late-comers -- the Vikings, the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Normans -- have had on the genetic makeup of the islands. I won't spoil it for you. You'll have to read the book, something I heartily recommend.