This has been a quiet week, just getting ourselves organized in our new place.  Now that I look back over the last 25 days (we arrived on April 3) we have really settled in.  Yesterday we made an appointment to select a family doctor and soon I will pick a dentist.  Alan's already picked a barber and I just have to get a stylist and we will have all of the life maintenance things done.   Then on the the business of learning about Dublin, Ireland and exploring Europe.  So far, we have a trip planned to Liverpool for a conference in mid-July and I will also meet a friend in Provence early July.  We are also considering a walking tour in Majorca in October. 

Next week is my birthday and we have scheduled a walking tour of Dublin focusing on the Easter Uprising and taking of the Post Office.  This is an exciting time to be in Ireland because 2012 is the beginning of celebrations and remembrances having to do with the War of Independence and the ensuing Civil War.  I continue to be amazed at how these events had such an impact on my own family, something we really never discussed at home to my great disappointment now.  My father was born in 1912, so May 20th he would have been 100.  Of course he died a relatively young man so didn't get close, but to think of all the turmoil he was born into is really surprising.  It's odd, I know so much more about my mother's family and it's so much easier to find things out about the Gallaghers' from Donegal than the Dignams' from Westmeath.  The reason it surprises me is that Gallagher is such a common name, although much more common in Donegal than Dublin, but Dignam is well recognized as Irish (no one spells it wrong) but much less common.  I'm learning that the Dignams', as they were in my family, are a much more secretive lot.  The only thing I know for sure past my father's parents' generation is that my father's grandfather (hopefully in the Dignam side) was killed in the Boer War.  Fortunately, I also know that my father's mother was called Henson, another relatively uncommon name.  So if and when I get around to it, I will have that to start with.

The Irish have a real sense of their own past and about current events.  Most people are well informed about the issues and are quite willing to discuss them, which is a real treat for both Alan and me.  Even in Washington, it was not unusual to encounter people who didn't keep up with American political life.  That is a big difference here, even the youngest people seem to know what's going on. 

I'm looking forward to planning excursions and adventures next week and hope to have more to blog about then.  It was hard to follow through on my commitment to Friday blogging today because there's so little to report.  I read a book once in which the main character was wont to say "life is maintenance" and that was what we did this past week -- maintain.

What a difference a week makes!

Things that seemed so impossible last Friday, fitting that it was the 13th, are much resolved, or closer to resolution than I thought possible in a mere seven days. 

The biggest is that tomorrow we will sign a lease for our long-term let.  This is so important because the resolution of almost everything else rests upon having an address.  During our first week, we quickly discovered that we were way over our heads in trying to find an apartment on our own.  We didn't know the city well enough and spent a lot of time going from one end to the other trying to find properties listed in the online sites myhome.ie and daft.ie.  The name of the latter must be a little joke because we were certainly daft to think that we could read into the real meaning of "stunning" and "furnished to a high standard" and the other frequently used buzzwords describing the properties listed.  The few places that we looked at in our first days of searching were spread wide apart and not nearly as depicted in the photographs that accompanied the listing.  The last one we saw was "stunning" alright, and not in a good way.  It's hard to believe that anyone would offer up properties in such poor shape.

After two days of shambling around we discovered the services of a relocation agent.  We were given a referral from a very kind woman in one of the letting offices after I described our experience in trying to do it on our own.  We called Claire on Thursday just before the long Easter break and made the arrangement to meet her on the following Tuesday when things opened up again.  We were initially shocked at the expense (500 Euro) for her services for the day, but it turned out to be money more than well spent.  Claire really listened to our requirements and arrived on Tuesday morning with appointments to see 12 different options throughout the city.  We got to see many neighborhoods and all of the properties she showed us were in the realm of possibility, clean, well managed and safe.  All met our must-have requirements.  We could have lived in any of them.  In addition to the convenience of having someone who knows the city drive us around to the various properties, Claire more than earned her fee by giving us a tip we would never have known.  In renting in Dublin, the rental price is negotiable.  We would never have dickered with the landlord on the rental price without Claire's advice and we saved more than twice her fee by doing it.  She helped right through the process and tomorrow at 2:45 we sign the lease.

Our place is in Sandymount, two blocks from the sea and on one of the few beaches in this seaside city.  It's also just a short walk to the village and easy public transit by commuter train or bus to the city center.  During a trip to Ireland in the 80's Alan and I stayed in this area over Christmas.  It was lovely then and remains so.  The community figures prominently in the work of James Joyce and we are looking forward to discovering its charms during our stay here. 

The three-bedroom apartment is on the top floor of a building constructed during the Celtic Tiger on the campus of the Anglican Church.  Right now, it seems perfect and surely fulfills our initial requirements.  I expect there will be things we wish were different once we move in, but right now, it seems just short of perfect.  I'm not happy with the sofas, but have already scouted a few places for slipcovers to mask the most egregious aspect, their faded pink upholstery. 

In addition to its charms, having an address goes a long way in solving the banking problems we have been having on both sides of the pond.  We can't get our bank in the US to wire funds without giving them an address for the Bank of Ireland (BOI) account and we can't get access to our funds in the BOI, except when the bank is open because we don't have checks.  When we arrived we did have a BOI ATM card they sent to the states after we set up the account, but when Alan visited the bank and noted that his last name was spelled wrong, they took the card away and wouldn't reissue until they could send it to us.  In retrospect he should have lived as Mr. Bakeman for a few weeks, but who knew? 

We will officially move in on Saturday.  Today, Friday, we have an appointment at the American Embassy in the morning and the lease signing in the afternoon.  I'm sure it's going to be a busy day learning about cable and wifi and electricity and gas and water and filling the larder. 

After all that is done, I'm  looking forward to turning my attention to cultural and entertainment pursuits.  In coming posts I want to be writing about our travels around this city and other cities in Europe, meeting new people and making friends and hosting guest from the USA.  We have glimmerings of all these things now and once we are settled into our place will begin to devote our energies to these pursuits and away from the bureaucracies and logistics of setting up the household.

My plan now is to post on Fridays and, if nothing else, use this blog as my own diary of our time here.  I'm excited about the journey ahead. 

We packed up and sold our place in DC, closed on March 30 and spent several days getting the Newark Airport where we were scheduled to depart on our business-class, one-way flight the Dublin.  The business-class is important because it meant that we had almost double the baggage allowance of economy (3 70-pound bags each, rather than 2 50-pound bags).  That meant that during our three-day journey to Newark from Washington, we were crammed in a rented compact car with many of our prized possessions; more was prepared for a shipment to Ireland (once we had an address) and the rest was stored in anticipation of our eventual return to the USA in a year, maybe more.

During the preparation for this trip, a lot of people asked:  "Why are you doing this?" and early on we found the answer that summed it up pretty accurately:  "Because we can."  We told people our plan was to "spend at least a year, maybe more"  in Europe, maybe even going to Spain or elsewhere after this first year in Dublin.  After this first ten days, I hope that proves to be true. 

A summary of things I learned here over the past ten days will suffice to set up the challenges we face:

• I learned that in Ireland, Easter (indeed any Christian or "bank holiday") is a serious affair.  This year Easter fell on the 8th, but the holidays started on the 6th here and people pretty much stopped working on the afternoon of the 5th and didn't return until mid morning on the 10th.  We were able to get a phone the day after we arrived but otherwise, any business other than retail, was out of the question.
• I learned that you don't want to need a doctor anytime during a "bank holiday" period in Ireland because not only the doctors are not available but many of the hospitals are also closed!  A resurgence of shingles in a big way on Monday morning meant an emergency room was the only option for treatment.  I went to the only hospital in Dublin that would take my US insurance and discovered that the ER was closed.  Well, not 'closed' exactly, because I could get into the facility, and even saw the unlocked 'meds room' but there was no one there.  It was really closed!  That meant a taxi ride to the hospital that was open where I paid 300 Euro (about $400) to see a doc and get the meds I needed for the pain.  
• I learned that if you don't have a permanent address, even if you have an account in an Irish bank, you are not able to draw any money from your account unless you visit the bank personally -- and they don't call them "bank holidays" for nothing.
• I learned that it's not as easy as you think to draw money from your US bank to an "offshore bank" so getting more money from the USA is not going to be that easy.  Fortunately we opened an Irish bank account before we left, but only put in enough for the first month.  Now our US bank won't wire, unless one of us is personally in the US bank, and the Irish bank won't talk to the US bank on our behalf.  This could be our undoing, we may be back before the month is out.  We are in the loop with terrorists and drug dealers and it seems money laundering is the major concern.  Of course, those people already know how to get around this, but we are stuck.
• I learned that you can't get anything but a pay-as-you-go phone without a permanent address, so also learned about frequent "topping up" to stay in communication, and boy oh boy if you don't "top up" in a timely manner, the phone goes off, without notice or any indication that you needed to top up before it happens.
• I learned that it's going to be hard to get a permanent address because landlords are very, very suspicious if you even suggest that you also learned that it's going to be hard to get your US money into the country!
• I learned that the famed Irish pub musical experience is not at all what you would expect.  Musicians are indeed in pubs, but they play for themselves in a little corner with no sound system.  You may or may not even hear a single note over the din of the patrons quite a lot more interested in their pints than in "traditional Irish music".  
• I learned that I'm still the person I've always been and all these learnings are not going to prevent me from trying my hardest to persevere.
• and finally, I learned the definition of persevere from www.merriamwebster.com:  to persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement.

So that's the plan right now, to persevere... It's 5:13 a.m. I've been up for hours ruminating on my learnings, so I think I will take my pain meds and go to bed because I've learned that you are not going to get anything done in Ireland "at the weekend". 

First a little about the name "Black Jack Monologue."  Thirty years ago as a young married couple, Alan and I picked up and moved from Washington, DC to Wisconsin.  We didn't know anyone there but wanted to leave DC and searched the USA for the best spot for us.  We wanted to buy some land and be organic farmers, a prospect that was encouraged in several books and movies current the the eighties; 25 Acres and Self Sufficiency was one I remember, as well as a Diane Keaton movie in which she adopted a baby, moved from a high powered job in NYC to Vermont and became hugely successful.  Anyway, we did move to Wisconsin, bought a small farm outside Milwaukee, called it Black Jack after a beloved cat and the gamble we were taking, and began our 13 year sojourn down on the farm.  We never were self-sufficient or hugely successful but Black Jack Farm was a fun adventure.

We returned to DC in 2004 where I spent seven and a half years working for the association of associations and dreaming of moving to Ireland "someday."  Well, on April 3, 2012 that someday was here.  After a year of planning that we thought was iron clad we made the move.  Owing to my father's birth in Co. Westmeath in 1912, I was able to claim Irish citizenship so I thought the transition would be, well not easy but, easier.  Leaving full-time work before being Medicaid eligible in particular, since Ireland offers health benefits to citizens that are woefully lacking in the USA.  We were disabused of that early on.  Ireland figured out before we arrived that people might do just what we did and made it almost impossible to use their health care system, even if they do call people like me "citizen".  Still, my employment made it possible to pay heavily and keep health insurance until the time when Medicare will kick in.

Anyway, enough of the background.  We are in Ireland, it's Friday the Thirteenth and we have passed ten eventful, stressful, challenging, confusing and amazing days so far.  This blog will be about our adventure.