At the close of another eventful year in Ireland.

I've reread all of the posts for this year and I'm struck by how well the year has passed.  Much of what I'd anticipated in my initial post of 2013 has come to pass.  After one reaches a certain age, and I'm well past that, there aren't many years in which you don't suffer a major loss.  A loved one passes, an illness or some other life changing event occurs that sets you on your heels and you have to regroup.  It is with a lot of gratitude and humility that I say 2013 was not one of those years.  I don't want to let that milestone pass without noting and celebrating that good fortune.  I know it's not the case for many of those close to us and I wish for them such a respite in the coming year.

As we planned when we made the decision to start our retirement in Ireland, we continued to travel throughout the past year and plan a similar schedule in the coming year. We will start the new year with a trip to Lisbon, scheduled for mid-January, then a week in Aruba with our friends Irene and Craig in February. We're scheduled a few days in Stockholm for my birthday in April.   In June we are planning a month in an Apartment in Amsterdam.  In July I'm going to do the set dance workshop at Willie Clancy week in Clare.  In September our friends from Virginia will return for another week in the West, this time in Ballyvaughn and there's a possibility that I will do another leg of the Camino de Santiago on the Portuguese Way earlier that month.

The one thing that has changed is work.  I was thinking that I would do a large research study for my former employer beginning early in the New Year and lasting at least through June.  This was going to involve at least three trips to the United States, including one in August to present the findings.  But, that project will not go forward.  I was surprised by that turn of events, but fortunately I didn't count on it and find that I'm not particularly disappointed.  It means that I will have more of an opportunity to volunteer here in Ireland and toward that end, I've accepted a position on the board of the American Women's Club.  I've also scheduled a meeting in January with a nonprofit organization that helps single parents, that would probably involve working on their fundraising database.  Also, maybe I'll get back to that book, a project that is easily pushed to the back burner.

Although I expect that we will spend the entire coming year in Ireland, it feels like we are coming closer to making the plan for our departure.  I really want to stay here, but Alan is concerned about not making and renewing the connections with family and friends in the USA that we will need when we are more frail. While we are both hoping that we have at least another 20 years of good health, we both have had experiences with our parents that make it clear that one needs a good network in the later years.  If you don't work on that, you don't have it.  Our situation is compounded since we don't have any children.  There's no one obligated to take care of us and help us make decisions when the time comes.  Coming off such a good year, you'd think we could just let that slide for a while, but I think we are both realists. So, something really radical would have to happen for us to plan to stay here another 5-10 years, an outcome that would suit me fine. From the beginning, I felt more settled here but Alan still feels the tug of home.    

Still, we end 2013 with a lot of gratitude and anticipation, and I hope the same for everyone that reads this.Thank you for doing so.

Time flies!  I haven't posted for over a month, but there was a good reason until now.  For most of November we didn't do very much, just pursuing our normal life after a busy fall. It was good to get back into set dancing and bridge lessons. Alan was happy to resume his Monday writers' group, although he has been very consistently writing throughout our time here. We also found a nearby pool and have started a water aerobics class on Wednesday mornings.

Things picked up by the end of November, when we took a trip to Berlin, where we spent Thanksgiving and Alan's 65th birthday the following day.  It was a good trip, but both Alan and I were struck by an unsettling feeling of being in an old, old city with an almost exclusively modern built environment.  It was creepy.  We did a lot of walking and viturally every time we saw an older building, there was a poster nearby describing its prewar function and history.  Almost all of the posters called out the bullet holes in the facade.

We stayed in a newly built Marriott hotel in the former East Berlin, pretty much right on the wall.  On the east side of the wall was a "no man's land" while in the west they built right up to the wall, so almost everything around where we stayed was built after 1990.  There continues to be a lot of building in Berlin and we could see that Germany's economy is flourishing, unlike most of the rest of Europe we've visited since coming here. The weather was cold and gray, conditions which really affect Alan but as long as it's not raining, I don't mind.

We bought a three day museum pass and spent a lot of time visiting a variety of museums.  There are lots of them in Berlin, at one I was told there are over 200.  We started with the Pergamon, one of the National Museums, housing their antiquity collection.  The Gates of Babylon were amazing and the Pergamon Altar was quite impressive.  The latter was the motivation for visiting because when we were in Turkey one of the places we visited during the morning of the Ephesus tour was the ancient city from which the altar was taken. The guide noted that the Germans did a lot of excavating in the early 20th century and there was some interest in modern Turkey in getting back some of the loot they took.  This seems unlikely since the Pergamon Museum was purpose build to hold that altar.  Anyone going to Berlin should not miss this museum.

The following day we visited the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg collection of Surrealist art and Brohan Museum, a collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco works. I really enjoyed both of them. I was particularly taken by the way the Brohan displayed the collections and how they juxtaposed Art Nouveau and Art Deco. We saw some really beautiful things that day.

On Sunday, we went to a concert at the National Concert Hall.  I've never been to a concert in such a formal setting in the morning (11 a.m.) but I really enjoyed it.  Mozart's overture for the opera Lucio Silla and his Haffner Symphony as well as CPE Bach's Concert for Flute were performed.  We followed that by lunch in a traditional German restaurant where both of us ate too much.  A post prandial walk through several Christmas Markets and a turn on a Ferris Wheel rounded out an active day.  I was particularly delighted to get Alan on the ride. His last experience was on the London Eye with our old friends Louisa and Roger 10 years ago. I reminded him that he was OK on that because, like this one, it was an enclosed car. He grudgingly agreed to go, but it was no London Eye.

On our last full day, we went to Checkpoint Charlie, a private museum at the gate where Americans were permitted to cross into the East and the site of the serious cold war tensions in 1961. I remembered that well because my oldest brother was in the Air Force stationed in Berlin then.  My mother was beside herself with worry, and after reading about it at the museum, I see that the world was very close to war then.  The Checkpoint Charlie Museum could definitely use some curatorial help.  It seems like a collection that has just grown like Topsy.  There are really only so many Volkswagen car trunk, suitcase, air conditioning unit, tunnels, and all around derring do escapes from East Berlin that a person can absorb.  At the end, Alan and I agreed that only small people could leave East Berlin, the big ones had to stay behind.  In addition to documenting every escape, they have expanded the collection to include lots of information on non-violent peace initiatives, which I wholeheartedly support, but here again, Ghandi's flip flops were just over the top.

We returned to Dublin on Tuesday and have resumed our normal activities.  I've put in a proposal for a lot of survey work in the coming year and should hear about that in the coming days.  If the project happens it is likely that I will be in the USA several times in the winter and spring and definitely in August to present the results at the association of associations' convention in Nashville.

We have been cured of any further desire to cruise.  Our 12-day Black Sea cruise on the Celebrity Constellation was a mixed bag.  We were really interested in the Black Sea, loved Istanbul and Ephesus (Kusadasi) in Turkey, Sevastipol, Yalta, and Odessa in Ukraine and Burgas in Bulgaria, found the two sites in Greece (Athens and Mykonos) a little daunting with a number of angry people and really disliked most of the time on the ship.

On the plus side, all of the locations in Ukraine and Burgas were so, so interesting and places that are pretty much unspoiled by tourism.  They were also places that we would have been unlikely to have seen otherwise.

I particularly loved Sevastipol, a place where most of the people we encountered were surprised to see anyone that alighted from a ship!  Except for a trip long ago to the island of Lanai in Hawaii when there were just 11 hotel rooms on an island otherwise filled with pineapple fields, I've never experienced a place so untouched by western ideas of tourism.  I think a lot of Russians may go there to vacation but their expectations must be quite different from ours because there were no hawkers of touristy stuff, no traveler specials, nothing suggesting that tourism is an economic driver.  It was really nice.  All we did was walk around the city, visit a park commemorating the Seige of Sevastipol during the Crimean War and had a very nice lunch, but it was just enchanting.  Too bad we had to get back on the ship! The second stop in Ukraine was Yalta.  A city just chock a block full of interesting history, including the meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during which they made the decisions about carving up the spoils of WWII.  The third, and final, stop there was Odessa; a much bigger city and very used to tourists from the countries in the former Soviet Union, but still exotic and interesting.

We had one stop in Bulgaria, Burgas, a seaside city similar to what Mykonos may have been like before every cruise ship in the Mediterranian stopped there and attracted hawkers and overpriced, mostly useless tchotchkes frequently made in China or India instead of the country visited.

In general, the Ukranian and Bulgarian people we encountered were generally curious and interested in us. Although few spoke English, there was a nice spirit of trying to get along.

Greece was a little less nice.  In Athens we encountered a number of angry people, likely owing to their dashed hoped about what affiliating with the European Union was going to mean for them.  We kinda expected it because there has been a lot in the Irish press about the difficulties they have encountered, what with the Euro Zone expecting them to pay taxes and all.  That has to be annoying.  But seriously, their economy is in very bad shape and that seems to have affected how they feel about tourists, particularly from Europe or America.  Mykonos was just a huge tourist trap, although I did visit the island of Delos, just off Mykonos, the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis, which was very interesting.

Turkey was great, we started and ended in Istanbul, a city to which Alan and I agreed to return.  On the first day there we toured the Topkapi Palace and bought a rug (which I hope we don't regret) and on the second, just before boarding the ship, we visited the Grand Bazaar.  On our return we had another day there and did the hop-on/hop-off bus to get a sense of the city in advance of a trip we are hoping to take back to Turkey before we return to America. Ephesus, the place where "mother Mary" spent her last days, was very interesting, very much outside the large port city of Kusadasi where the boat docked.  So much antiquity all around, it was just amazing, particularly in light of our earlier trip to Connemara in Ireland where we spend so much time looking at Bronze Age stones in remote fields.  These were whole, amazing cities, so well preserved.  I would definitely recommend a trip to Ephesus to anyone interested in early civilization.

By far, the worst was the time we spent on the ship.  We expected an all-inclusive, fun filled adventure, with lots of people who were open to meeting new people and having new experiences.  What we got was constant up-selling of "extras"  (who knew water was in extra), constant sanitizing of all surfaces "for your safety", amid hundreds of already formed cliques all operating in their own little sphere jockying for any desirable space in common areas and "saving" huge swaths of it for the exclusive use of their posse, whether the others were there or not.  The prices were staggering, $80 for a bottle of gin (and you can't bring it back with you from the shore, they check); $30 for a bottle of the cheapest wine or a corkage fee of $25; $200 for a massage; $3 for a half litre of water that goes for 50 cents a litre when you disembark; $3 for a coke and close to $100 per person for a shore excursion that you can arrange for half that privately once on shore.  We were so disappointed.  The only good thing was that our table at dinner was great.  Our group consisted of a nice couple from New Jersey and a single woman from Sydney, Australia.  We all agreed to keep in touch and I hope that we do.  If it were for them, we would have had nothing good to say about our time on the Celebrity Constellation.

All in all a lesson that we are not cruise people.  I wouldn't do it again if it were free. That said, the experiences we had on shore in Turkey, Ukraine and Romania were just great and we are grateful to have had to chance to see them at this stage of development.  We are happy to be back to normal.

The day before leaving for Istanbul. My last post was just a brief rumination during our trip in Connemara.  This will be a longer post, mostly in order since the last one.

I begin with a recap of the walk on the Way of St. James, The Campostela de Santiago, "The Camino," for short.  I took this trip with a group of 11 other people, all of whom I've met in Ireland.  The trip was suggested by my good friend Mary last winter, which I suggested to my other good friend here, Deirdre. Alan stayed home.

To quickly recap, we walked 6 days of the weeklong journey starting September 12 ending on the anniversary of the day Alan and I met on September 19th (also Alan's mother's birthday, when she would have been 98 years old). Alan prepared a great dinner to celebrate our 37 years together when I returned home.  It was so nice to see him and to celebrate both our meeting and his great mother, who we both miss very much.

Walking The Way 

The walk was a good one.  The first and second days were the most difficult.  We walked 'the French Way' (the way of St. Frances, not walking in France) beginning in Sarria in Galicia Spain, all of the walk was in Spain.  Sarria to Santiago is the minimum one can do to get a certificate from the church at the end, It's 110 kilometers (about 65 miles) in total.  When one signs up for the walk you get a 'passport' which you get stamped as you stop along the way. For pilgrims starting from Ireland, you can get two stamps in Dublin at the St. James Gate of the Guiness storehouse and also at the Church of St. James, around the corner from the Guinness storehouse.  During one of our preparatory walks, Mary, Deirdre and several others stopped in to get those stamps before we departed Dublin. We did the stamps all along the way and all of us got the certificate too! Mine is now framed and sitting in the window well in our guest room.

We landed in Santiago and were met by an organizer and bussed to Sarria for the first evening.  We began the walk the following day.  The trip organizer that we used arranged for hotels, meals (breakfast and dinner) and transporting our luggage from hotel to hotel.  The hotels were 3 star establishments.  All were nice, all had restaurants attached, none were luxurious but more along the Holiday Inn or Marriott Courtyard quality. In general all good and clean with in-room bathrooms, several had bathtubs but most were just shower rooms.  The food was good in all of them.  Generally we were so tired and hungry at the end of a the day of walking it was all wonderful, particularly the three hotels with bathtubs, where a good hot soak at the end of the day did wonders.

The first two days were the most difficult, 20 and 22 kilometers respectively.  All days had up and down walking but the first day was the most challenging.  I re-discovered that I am much stronger on the up than on the down. This was something I learned in 2008 when Alan and I did the Bright Angel Trail to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  The down on the first day of the Grand Canyon walk was much harder than the up on the second, even though I was well and truly exhausted on day two.

Day one walking on The Camino was was long and moderately strenuous until the very, very end when there was a challenging downhill followed by a long, high bridge over a big gorge, ending with a medieval gate consisting of about 100 steps to the top and into the town.  Coming over that last bridge and seeing those stairs was about the most demoralizing sight I've seen since the end of the Grand Canyon walk when I saw the rope bridge swaying in the wind over the raging Colorado River to our campsite.  My feet really hurt and I noticed a little irritation on my toe, but I thought a good night's rest would make it all OK.

Day two was a little longer than the first day but a little less challenging, again, until the very end when my toe really flared up.  I just couldn't believe how much it hurt.  I was so annoyed.  I have always felt I had good feet.  As a Taurus (earth sign) I really feel rooted and my feet have never given me problems.  I thought my hip would be the problem, since I have a hip replacement, but it was hardly noticeable, except during those times when everything hurt.  The last 2 kilometers I could hardly move, I really felt like I was walking like Frankenstein at the end.  It was so pathetic.  Still, I was optimistic that a good rest was all I needed.  Before I left I'd paid big bucks for a custom made orthotic (300 Euros!!!!) but decided I needed to take them out for the walk on day three because the extra space they took up in the shoe was part of the problem.

Day three dawned, a 16 kilometer walk was in the offing and my toe really hurt, but I did it.  When we got to our hotel, in the largest city on our journey, I was delighted to find a bathtub in the room.  I was rooming with Mary, a great companion all around, she left for lunch with the others and I took a hot bath including the sachet of juniper salts I'd brought along "just in case."  Oh, it was so wonderful.  After the bath, a good nap and I felt much better.  Still the toe hurt but not so much.

Day four was 18 kilometers ending in a much more rural location.  There was a bath there as well but after that soak I sensed that my toe issue was beginning to change.  Just after the bath, I discovered to my amazement, that you can get a blister under the toenail.  The blister burst and my nail turned a purpleish color, which continues to today, almost three weeks later.  I think it means I will untimately lose the nail.  Still the relief was palpable and the following days were much improved.

Days five and six were much shorter, 14 and 16 kilometers each.  They were punctuated with nice, shady walks and good conversations with a variety of my companions.  Since I wasn't so distracted with foot pain, I really felt much better.  However, it was during this time that I noticed that I wasn't feeling very spiritual, a sensation that others had assured me would happen while walking "The Way."  I mostly felt satisfied that I would be able to make it to the end.  Which I did; but mostly it felt like a long, hard walk.

The city of Santiago is very nice and we had most of late afternoon and evening and the following morning to explore.  We also went to the mass in the cathedral there at 11 a.m. on our last day.  Except for tons of people who seemed not to understand "no flash photography" and others who seemed to think that the mass was a performance and applauded at the end, it was a very nice culmination.

When I returned I learned that during a lengthy interview while I was away the new Pope (Frances) said he thought the focus on abortion and gay marriage was distracting and shouldn't be the only thing on the agenda for Catholics. I really feld the spirit then.  Maybe the walk really contributed to a change.  Certainly I felt more close to my Catholicism than any time in the last 30 or so years.  It was a good way to end.  I don't know that I'd do it again, but it was worth doing.  In addition to feeling closer to my Catholic roots, I also cemented my friendships with both Mary and Deirdre and know I will know and value them both going forward.

I had two days home before our friends Linda and Bob arrived with Linda's brother and sister-in-law for two days in Dublin followed by a week in a house in Connemara.  This was the subject of my last post (below).  It was so great to see Linda and Bob and to meet Tom and Charlotte.  Both Alan and I were delighted to renew our old friendship.  We had a lot of fun exploring the many antiquities found in the west of Ireland.  We would never have done such an adventurous trip were it not for their interest in discovering the very oldest remnants of civilization in Ireland.  Up hill and down dale we went in places where there were no other tourists.  Several times we had to knock on farmhouse doors to get permission to walk their land to see the stones, ring forts and burial sites.  I also had a chance to do a little set dancing during a side trip to Innishboufin, on of the smaller Aran Islands that we visited for a day trip midweek.  The house we rented in Clifden was a great home base and for all but one evening, each couple made the evening meal after a long day of exploring.

Linda and Bob returned with us to Dublin on Tuesday and left on the Irish Sea ferry to London on Wednesday.  Tom and Charlotte went on to Cork where they were booked into a house in Kinsale for one week followed by another week in a remote location outside Dingle in Kerry.  We parted company with them in Galway.  In addition to catching up on laundry and putting our place back in order after visitors, we have been busy packing for our next adventure.

Tomorrow (Saturday), just four days after our return from Connemara, Alan and I leave for Istanbul.  We will spend Sunday there and begin a Black Sea cruise on Monday.  We are both heady with anticipation.  In addition to what I hope is an exciting day in Istanbul, including a booking to see the whirling dervishes in the temple there, we will stop in several ports that have facinated me since childhood.  Just the names:  Sevastipol, Odessa, Yalta, Ephesus, Athens are exciting.  I hope I haven't built it up too much in my mind.  My only worry right now is seasickness.  I will get pills for that.

Hopefully I will post again by the end of the month, soon after our return.

Today is day 6 in Clifden in Connemara.  A beautiful area in the west of Ireland.  We have rented a big house with two other couples, visitors from the USA.  I was here for an overnight tour earlier this summer but Alan didn't come along on that trip so it's a first for him.  Its been a series of really great day trips in a car that we rented in Dublin. It's a much better way than day tours by bus, we have had a lot of freedom to explore.  The first day we went to Leenane, a town I visited earlier and remembered a map of the many nearby Bronze Age antiquities on the visitors' center wall. Our guests were interested in that aspect of the area.  It turned out there was a printed map that I bought.  We have been using it to identify the location of our tour.  Yesterday we went to Innishbofin, one of the Aran Islands, also a new experience for me. Today is the next to last day we return to Dublin on Tuesday.

Wow, I haven't been keeping up my blog!  It's been a busy summer but I have to get back to the discipline I'd had earlier.  This is my second post today, the other one is a summary of our first trip back to the States July 29 through August 19.  One of the things I did when I was in the USA was meet with a possible publisher for a book on the experience living in Ireland.  She was encouraging and asked for a proposal.  I still haven't done that, but keeping the blog up, at least for the purpose of using it as a reference for that, is a renewed goal.  The other thing I did while there was lay the groundwork for a lot more research work.  If that goes forward, I'll be visiting the US several times in the upcoming year.  Also, while we were there we made the decision to remain in Ireland for yet another year.  We won't leave here until 2015 now, although we are now saying "indefinitely".

Right now I'm anticipating several really fun things.  First is a trip to The Camino de Santiago, a walk on The Way of St. James, a pilgrimage path in France and Spain.  The group assembled for this walk will only be doing "the last bit," a 110K walk over 7 days just in the Spain portion.  Some people may remember some news about The Camino earlier in the summer when a train headed there derailed.  It was a very bad accident caused by the train engineer approaching a curve at twice the recommended speed.  I expect that has cast a pall on the subsequent walkers this year and in the terminus city of Campostela.  Our group, 11 really great Irish women and one man (not Alan) will leave Dublin on September 12 and return September 19.

On September 22 we have friends from the US arriving. After a day here in Dublin we will all go to a house we've rented in Connemara for a week.  They are interested in antiquities so I expect we will do a lot of tours of old sites in that area where there are old stone forts, monasteries, castles and prehistoric stones galore.  I was in Connemara earlier this summer with another US visitor.  Then we did a daylong bus tour, so I'm looking forward to exploring that area on my own.  It will be great to see our friends, Linda and Bob, and Linda's brother and his wife, Charlotte and Tom (we haven't met them yet).  The four of them will be coming off a week long walk in Scotland so everyone but Alan will likely either be very tired of walking, or very fit and raring to go for more!

Next, in early October, we have a cruise in the Black Sea, stopping in Intanbul, Sevastipol, Odessa, Yalta, Ephesis and Athens.. I remember my grandfather singing a song about a trip to Sevastipol and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Yalta is the site of the meeting between FDR, Churchill and Stalin during WWII, and I'm hoping for some interesting history there.  The area has been one of the world's hot spots, but is now more or less peaceful, so I'm looking forward to seeing it.  This is our first sea cruise and both Alan and I are looking forward to seeing lots of stars in what we hope is a very black sky during the overinght sailing.

By mid-October I'm hoping to be back to a more normal schedule and I'm looking forward to restarting set dancing and bridge.  Also to getting back to more regular blogging.

The trip to America was a huge success.  It went like clockwork and there were only a few times in the 2900 miles that Alan and I drove together in the car that were tense.  The one thing we omitted was the two days in Hot Springs, Arkansas between Atlanta and St. Louis.  It was going to be out of our way and cause two 8+ hour days of additional driving.  Instead, we headed direct to St. Louis from Atlanta via Nashville.  The only other change like that occurred at the end as we were returning to Washington. I thought I could do a 10 hour driving day just to get back to DC from Bloomington, Indiana but I didn't count on having to cross the Appalachian Mountains throughout West Virginia and long into Virginia.   I don't know what makes me so optimistic when I think about driving.  The highways through these particular mountains are all fast, filled with trucks, windy and treacherous.  We stopped after 6 hours and completed the final 5 the following morning.  The car was the biggest issue for me going in and I'm happy to say that I believe I've found a way to get myself in a better place on these long drives.  So that was a big goal achieved.

The remainder of this post is going to be just a summary of the days we spent, roughtly in order of their occurrence.

We arrived a few hours last into JFK on Monday, July 29th (my childhoold friend Linda Eisemann's birthday).  It's morning flight and you gain 5 hours going east so we got to New York in mid morning.  After renting the car, we headed for our hotel in Long Island City.  LIC is the place where both my parents emmigrated to from Ireland and all of their early history is steeped in the area.  It is still so familiar to me, although the residents have changed from mostly Irish to mostly Hispanic, although there are still many Irish in the area and they seem to get along.

After getting settled in the hotel for our one night stay, we connected with my niece Monique and her husband Jack to confirm our plan to meet them in a restaurant in Hicksville, Long Island that was about half the distance for both of us.  It was called Mio Posto and I'd definitely recommend it.  We had such a nice time with them, as usual.  I really like to keep up with their doings and hope that they will be able to come visit us here in Dublin.  We parted company around 11 and Alan and I headed back to the hotel for a good night's sleep in order to face the drive to Washington as soon as rush hour in New York was over.

We left New York at about 10 on the 30th.  Traffic was pretty good all the way through although Alan hit some debris in the road and following that noticed that the gas guage didn't work.  We didn't know if the two were related or he didn't notice it before but it was something we definitely needed to have fixed and went to the Hertz place at National Airport to exhcange cars.   We arrived at our friends Mark and Judy's house around 3.  They had a nice dinner planned ad we spend our first evening catching up.

Three days in Washington, DC were spent mostly visiting our stuff in storage and buying more stuff.  Judy has a membership in Costco so we went there and really stocked up on stuff you can't get here (Q-Tips, tablet aspirin, and the like).  Our adventure there and elswhere is discount shopping land filled one of our extra suitcases.  The other was filled by stuff we took from storage.  We left those two suitcases at Mark & Judy's and headed for Atlanta on Friday after buying a new phone to use there.  This was important not only for the phone itself but now we have an American phone number as well.

Our first stop in Atlanta was a visit to Dorothy.  It was so, so good to see her and her parents.  I was also happy to see her nephew Nye.  Then we signed into the ASAE Annual Meeting convention and hotel downtown.  The Annual Meeting went very well for me and I saw lots of former colleagues.  Then on to Nashville, where we stayed for one night before moving on to Alan's family reunion in St. Louis. That was also great, three nights and two days of catching up.  What a pleasure.

Following St. Louis we went to Bloomington, Indiana, our new home in the United States.  There we signed a lease and did a few other things to establish residency there.  We also saw friends there and in Indianapolis.  I'm very happy with the idea of living again in Bloomington when we return, but it was there that we decided to remain in Ireland for yet another year.  Earlier this year we thought we'd leave here in June, 2014 but now it looks like it will be into 2015 at least, although now we're saying indefinitely.

After Bloomington we went back to Washington, with a stop overnight outside Charleston, WV.   We spend a nice three days with friends Irene & Craig.  Then departed again for New York and our final leg on the trip. We stayed at the same hotel in Long Island City and had dinner with a former colleague, Haisong, at The Grill Cafe in Bryant Park.  It was great to see Haisong doing so well!

Over the three weeks, we saw 50 or more friends and family and put 2900 miles on the rental car.  I only had two auto meltdowns and we made the big decision to stay another year in Ireland.  All in all a great trip.

I've been busy since my last post with both work and play. 

On the work side, I've finished a preliminary report based on a study in the meeting and convention industry and will see that presented during my visit to Atlanta for the ASAE Annual Meeting there, the business reason for our upcoming trip to the states starting on July 29.  I also completed all the preparation for a presentation I'm doing at that meeting on an earlier governance study.  All in all, quite productive on that front.  I feel quite ready for Atlanta.

I also feel pretty good about our other plans while we are in the USA, including seeing family in New York, lots of friends in Washington, a family reunion in St. Louis, initial reconnoitering in Bloomington, Indiana in preparation for our return and two nights in Hot Springs, AK for a mini break on our own.  It will be a busy trip but I'm quite optimistic that we've planned well and even the two days of 10-hour drives will be as much fun as driving can be, or at least not torture. 

In the last week, I went to the Willie Clancy Festival in Miltown Malbay, County Clare for a set dancing workshop.  There were classes each morning from 10 to 1 and lectures or cellis (dances with a live band) in the afternoons.  On three days, I danced a total of 6 hours with the instruction followed by a 3-hour dance at a celli, including one evening event featuring the Kilfenora Celi Band http://www.kilfenoraceiliband.ie/  They played almost straight through from 9:30 to 1 a.m., the time just sped by. 

This was my first celli experience and while some of the dancers were pretty experienced, most of them were OK with a relative newbie.  Sometimes they were pretty unhappy about having newcomers in their sets, but mostly it was fine.  Ironically, those who were not Irish (a lot of them either Americans or Germans) were the meanest about newcomers.  Coming from an Irish family in America, along with my experience working for Aer Lingus, I have frequently encountered Yanks that are more Irish than the Irish.  This is a source of great amusement among the people here, but they can be really annoying.  My set dance teacher in Dublin was attending one of the cellis I attended at the festival and he told me that one of them told him that he was doing a dance "wrong."  I was the only American in the group he told and all the others just laughed and exchanged knowing nods. 

These folks need to know how ridiculous they are, but they seem not to and worse, to expect that the Irish will be somehow grateful for their ignorant aping.  Apparently the editor of Set Dance News is an American and he's quite a source of amused annoyance.  "Amused annoyance" may seem like an oxymoron but this is one of the bigger cultural differences I've noticed.  When they are annoyed, most Irish will not under any circumstances make it clear, except to laugh it off.  I think this is why people around the world think that the Irish are a happy people.  They are no more happy or sad than others, but unlike the Dutch, they very, very seldom deal with a problem directly.  Anyway, back to the set dancing news guy.  He has a long, full beard but in all other respects has an Ichabod Crane appearance.  His dance is full of high jumps, loud battering (stamping), and in one set in which I danced with him, he actually ran into an adjoining set during an "advance-retire" movement.  He's in the foreground on the link for the Kilfenora Plain Set below. 

But enough of that, on to the really great aspects of the week.  I learned three new dances and figured out some of the finer details of two that I'd already experienced.  There are links to all of them below. I definitely did what I set out to do in Miltown Malbay as far as dancing was concerned.  I'm definitely a better dancer than I was. 
 
Moycullen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-lbIvQXQSs
Kilfenora Plain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkzTQF7CWKg
Clare Orange and Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XQ5fQldDk&list=PLqB7F2twvaSRLuOB4xIYIxmmAsqdnZ0Ht
Antrim Square https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnO2IdqvSEc
Mazurka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEhN3q2rGbY

I was less successful making new friends, but I think I made some critical errors in my planning.  First, I didn't rent a car. I thought I could just get around OK by bike.  Except for being the hottest week in all the time we have been here, with a day for Ireland's first ever "orange heat alert", that worked out OK during the day but it meant that I couldn't do anything after dark.  The roads were all dark, windy and narrow, it would have been madness to try.  Second was that I booked a place that was billed as 3km from Miltown, but was more like 3 miles out.  It was much too far from the action, meaning that I couldn't even reasonably walk to any of the events.  So, for the first three days, I spent the evenings reading.  The house I was in was nice, but the other problem is that I was completely alone there.  Even the owner was not present, so I just rattled around a huge "tiger built" house all on my own.  That was pretty depressing. 

By Wednesday afternoon, I abandoned the bike and met Geraldine, who had a car and agreed to take me to and from the celli that evening.  That was really the turning point and I'd wished I'd abandoned the bike after day one.  During that celli, I also met Fiona (said Fe-na, not Fi-own-a) and she invited me to spend the following evening at the house she was renting for the week with two other friends.  That was a really nice evening.  Unfortunately I left on Friday after the last workshop class at  one o'clock.  Still, I learned a lot, so all in all, it was OK. 

Just before I left for the Festival, Mary, Dierdre, Valerie and I did the Howth to Sutton Cliff Walk http://visitdublin.com/pdf/iWalk08.pdf which was very nice.  It was only 7km but there was a lot of climbing, maybe more than any of us thought, and it took quite a long time to get through it.  It was a beautiful day though, and we certainly learned a lot about what we need to do when we're walking The Camino on days where there is climbing.  First and foremost is to pack light.  One of our group had a heavy pack, filled with a lot more than she needed and it was tough for her.  Another is to be sure to carry lots of water, in complete opposition to achieving the first learning!  I did use electrolytes in my water bottle this time and that made a big, big difference.  We are planning another walk this Friday and I hope to get one more long one in on the 28th, the day before we leave for the USA. 

We invited my 4th cousin, Shaunna Flynn, the evening of the Howth to Sutton walk. I was late getting home because it took so much longer than we planned, but Alan saved the day and prepared a nice dinner.  I'd made a cake the day before and so it turned into a nice evening too.  Shaunna is just finished college and hoping for a job as a primary school teacher somewhere around Dublin, she's the grand daughter of Annie Burke, my mothers friend here in Ireland.  Annie just died several months ago. 

We are headed for a spa for an overnight tomorrow featuring massage and seaweed baths http://solasnamara.ie/ and then an evening in a farm B&B nearby http://www.gortnadihalodge.com/

Lots to report, I have to get back to posting more regularly. 

I just reread my last post and want to start with the outcome on the weekend long buzzing of the smoke detector.  It blasted continuously from Friday morning until 11 a.m. on Monday.  I called the management company first thing Monday morning and was told that the unit is let by the American Embassy but there is no one residing at the moment and neither the owner nor the management company felt that they could enter because of the embassy connection.  At 11 a.m. it went off and I went to our shared porch to await the person who turned it off.  It was "Frank," an embassy employee in charge of facilities.  He assured me that he didn't work on weekends and thus the problem, although he also assured me that it was the management company or the owner that was responsible "at the weekend," not him.  This response touches on the two most maddening aspects of Ireland:  first, "at the weekend" means nothing will get done, and second, if anyone can point to an unnamed entity, not associated with them, that's the culprit.  Any further discussion with the person with whom you are dealing about responsibility, or how to rectify the problem in the future is futile.  In short, "Frank" will deal with any problem like this if it happens during his work hours, otherwise it's not his problem.

But, on the much more pleasant things...

Mary and I met for a relatively short walk the following day and made plans for the much longer walk we took yesterday with 7 of our group of 14 that will be doing the Santiago de Compostella in September.  We met in Firhouse outside Dublin (at a pub of course).  To my dismay, since I took the once-an-hour bus to our meeting place, Firhouse consists only of this pub (Mortons) and it doesn't open until noon on Sunday.  I got there at 10:45 expecting a quaint little village and a leisurely breakfast while I awaited the rest of the group at noon.  It was a little chilly and gray so I intercepted a dog walker and found that there was a supermarket with a little cafe attached about a mile away.  I legged it there and had a coffee and breakfast, so I added another two miles to the 12 miles that were planned.

After the group assembled at noon we walked along the Dodder River for almost all of those 12 miles, reaching the Grand Canal near the city center at about 4:30, including an hour long stop for lunch at about mile 7.  Then I walked another mile home from there, for a total of about 15 miles.  It was a glorious walk.  Three of the group were new to me, including Marguerite, a good friend of Mary's and the organizer of this outing.  She did a wonderful job as leader and had previously walked parts of the route over successive outings with her husband, Brendan.  Brendan will be coming along on the Compostella walk but wasn't present yesterday.  It was all women.  We only had little spatterings of rain, otherwise a beautiful day for walking, not too hot, not too cold.  The river was so thriving with wildlife, it was hard to believe that we were on the fringes of the city the whole time.  The group was great and we all had about the same walking pace.  For a first run of about our daily duration in Spain it couldn't have been better.  I will be able to do three more walks with parts of the group before leaving for the states on July 29th for our first visit there since taking up residence in Dublin. 

In other good news, Alan has had a story published in Flash Fiction, which is available in paper through Amazon in the States but only electronically here in Ireland.  Here's a link to his story, it's a very sweet one about the passing of his grandmother. 

http://www.flash-fiction-world.com/the-end1.html

He's about to submit a book-length of short stories to a competition here in Ireland with about 12 really good stories and the great poem he wrote about my brother, which I copied in this blog previously.  He's really happy with his writer's group and I have to say I'm impressed with his productivity since joining it.  

I'm preparing for my next adventure when I will travel to County Clare for a week long set dance workshop in Miltown Malbay starting on July 7: http://www.willieclancyfestival.com/ .  I'm doing this one on my own but I have confidence that the Irish will come through once again in their friendly and welcoming style and after the first day, I will have made at least one new friend.  The people, that's by far, the best thing about Ireland, so the little irritations about which I started this post are insignificant compared to the joys of living among them. 

I've been entertaining a relative of an American friend this week.  Dyana arrived on Wednesday and we started fast because she's only here for 5 nights.  I am just amazed at her pluck in coming all the way here from Washington state for such a short amount of time.  I've tried to help her pack in as much as possible in this short time.

We started right away with a tour of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin scheduled for 2 p.m. on the day she arrived.  After a short nap, she seemed ready to go.  I was disappointed in the tour because the guide was just awful, he spoke in a very soft voice and didn't really want to go into any of the history of the cathedral.  It was one that was taken from the Catholic church during the Cromwell period and given to the Church of Ireland, basically the Episcopals and a protestant satellite of the Church of England.  It was like he thought that he couldn't acknowledge the well known history.  It was ridiculous, several times he said "we won't go there" like it was a big secret.  But, we did get up into the bell tower, which is not on the regular tour of the church so that was nice.  I also learned that Strongbow was buried there. But I learned from this post now that he's not really there, a factoid the guide apparently didn't know:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_de_Clare,_2nd_Earl_of_Pembroke.  Anyway, it's a beautiful place, it's right in the center of town, it's got a lot of history surrounding it, including the earliest Viking village in Dublin so there was still a lot to see. I mistakenly thought that Johnathan Swift was buried there but he's at St. Patrick's Cathedral, another of the churches that was given to the Church of Ireland during the reformation. 

The following day, Thursday, we went on a rail/coach tour of Galway and Connemara.  After a train trip across the country we spent a nice afternoon and evening in Galway and then a bus trip the following day in Galway and Connemara.  It was very warm and the bus had very poor AC, very poor repair in general because there were some loose belts and anytime we were outside while it was running we could hear that distinctive screech of loose belts.  Also, the video didn't work.  The guide was not the best either, it was clear he'd done this tour daily for a looong time, he repeated himself a lot.  Still it was a beautiful ride and we saw a lot.  I also got some good ideas for our week in Connemara in September, including a must revisit to Lenane and to Kylemore Abbey.  There are lots of monoliths and stones nearby.  Dyana brought beautiful weather with her and it's been in the 80's since she arrived. She's also an excellent photographer and I will post some of her pictures as soon as I receive them from her.

On our return on Saturday, we discovered that the unit next to us, now vacant, had the smoke detector activated for the previous 12 hours.  It's now Sunday evening and after the battery ran out, it's now a constant signal that the battery needs replacing, so that's hard wired and won't stop until the owner arrives to replace the now dead battery.  This is the second time during our sojourn in Ireland where we have learned that NO ONE pays attention to alarms and if they go off in vacant units, cars, stores, whatever.  Everyone in the vicinity suffers until the owner or the management company comes to address the problem, and the WILL NOT do that on the weekend.  There must have been more stringent regulation on this in the USA because if there weren't some pretty strict rules there, the place we lived in DC would have had the same problem.  I called the management company "emergency" number last night and was told there wasn't much to be done because they weren't sure they had the owner's contact information "at the weekend".  From the start of our tenure here "at the weekend" is the kiss of death.  If anything happens "at the weekend" you are on your own till Monday and that's that.  The alarm still sounds, I'm doing my best to remain calm. 

We will have one more day in Dublin and then Dyana leaves on Tuesday morning.  I resume my long walks with Mary on Tuesday in preparation for our walk in September on the Santiago de Campostela. 

This is the weekend of the June "bank holiday." I know I've covered bank holidays in the past, but a recap for you Yanks.  In Ireland, the work days off are not in commemoration of anything, just called "bank holidays."  People really take them seriously and don't do anything on these days.  I know last week it was Memorial Day in the States and this kinda corresponds with that, although it's only about 50 degrees here today, so not exactly the beginning of summer.

We have had some good weather, 70's and sunny, this past week.  On Thursday, I walked for over 7 miles by the sea with my friend Mary.  We are "in training" for a 110 km walk we've planned in early September on the Santiago de Compostela in Spain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela .  That's about 66 miles we will do over 7 days.  In 2004 Alan and I walked across Holland (63 miles over 5 days), it was harder than I expected although just 10-15 miles a day, but the days got harder and harder as the time went on.  This time I'm working up to it.  One thing I've learned is that one day of 10 miles is not the same as 10 miles on successive days. 

Tuesday will be the final performance of "Dance Across Dublin," the dance performance I've been working on with a troupe of 26 oldsters.  We did one performance in the Hugh Lane Museum, another at the Axis Theatre, another at the Irish Film Institute and this final one in Meeting House Square, the only outdoor venue on the list, hopefully it won't rain.  It's been fun, but a lot of work and I'll be glad when it's over.

Our new digs in Ballsbridge are working out just fine.  It's much closer to the city center and I've been happy with all that we can walk to easily from here.  The biking is better too, plus we have a terrace and the outdoor space is nice.  We are trying to grow tomatoes and a little kitchen garden there, but the weather is really not cooperating.  We've had to take the tomatoes and basil inside.  We're both hoping for one tomato before we leave for the States on July 29th!  If that happens, we will have spent only about 20 Euro (about $25) for it!  Fortunately other investments have been doing better.

We have a visitor next week.  A friend that I worked with at ASAE was supposed to come with her niece but our friend had to cancel and the niece (Dyana) is coming on her own.  She and I will go to Galway the day after she arrives for a train/coach tour of Galway Bay, Connemara, The Burren and the Cliffs of Moher.  It will be a whirlwind tour for Dyana but it will be a great help to me in deciding on what to focus upon when we spend our week in September with friends in a house in Connemara.  Dyana is coming all the way from Oregon and only staying for 5 days!  I feel really responsible for helping her to pack in as much as she possibly can during this short visit.

Set dancing classes on Tuesday have ceased for the summer hiatus, but I've signed up for the Willie Clancy Workshop week in Clare the first week in June.  I'm going on my own, the first time in years that I've traveled for pleasure alone.  I've arranged to stay in someone's house in Milltown Malbay, the place where the annual workshop is held.  Their slogan is "the home of traditional Irish music" http://www.visitmiltownmalbay.ie/ . 

This should be interesting.  All I know about the host is that they are 2 miles from the town and have a room available.  I got the connection from the organizer so I don't think there will be any ax murders happening, but still it will be an adventure.    This is going to be a pretty intense week with instruction from 9 to 1 every day. I'm very much looking forward to it.

So, all in all, a busy time.

Today would have been my father's 101st birthday.  He died so young (53) it's hard to believe. Like me, he was a Taurus.

This is the first day I've had with nothing on the calendar...actually three calendars, that I'm trying mightily to keep up!  Since I stopped working full time, I've switched back to a paper calendar.  I used to carry my iPhone everywhere and use the calendar for reminders of all that I had to do.  Now I have a mobile phone but it won't sync the calendar and the contacts.  I DO miss the ASAE tech guys, they were great.  Anyway, I now have a paper Filofax in my purse, a wall calendar in the kitchen and another one near my desk.  It's a mess, half the time I don't know what I've scheduled.  But, today, for sure, I'm free.

I've been involved in rehearsals since the beginning of April for a Bealtaine (May in Irish) dance festival.  There are 9 different dances in the program -- 11 if you count the two I'm not in -- and it's been a real challenge.  There have been times in this process when I've felt just hopeless.  I have good rhythm and balance but my memory for patterns and, particularly problematic, my difficulty with right and left have made this process very hard.  In addition to giving 'right' and 'left' directions, the choreographer is sometimes wont to instruct "anti-clockwise".  Forget that, I'm sometimes challenged with forward and back at this point!  I've done some reading up on what the problem might be and have determined that I have low spatial IQ, characterized by difficulty knowing where you are in relation to surroundings.  Anyway, it's been a challenge and really eye opening because previously I had this idea that with instruction, I'd be a good dancer.  Not so I'm afraid!


Set dancing on Tuesday nights will end at the end of this month and not start again until September.  I will miss it.  I'm going to try to get my dance partner to go to at least one set dance festival over the summer.  There are several, I hope she will agree.  Right now, we are focused on preparing for our walk on the Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which we are doing in September with a group of people she knows.  We have several 6-10 kilometer walks planned and expect to build up to 20 and hills over the summer.  We did our first "training session" last Thursday in Marley Park, we went twice around the park but that was only 7 kilometers.  Still it was enough for me to get a blister from my new walking shoes.  Next week we will do about the same distance but in more hilly terrain near Howth Head, a promontory in Dublin Bay. I think I worked out the rub in my new shoes, but we'll see.

Right now, I'm focused on remembering all the parts of the "Dance Across Dublin" the first performance is just 5 days away!

The trip to Lisbon for the Association Congress was a fun one and it rekindled my interest in association management.  I met some really nice and interesting people and reconnected with a friend from ASAE.  He and I had a lot of fun catching up, AND during a few hours in a casino in Estoril I won 150 Euro and Jakub prevailed on me to stop, so I did and therefore didn't lose it as I usually do!  My presentation there went well also and it was a good preparation for when I do it in August in Atlanta.  All in all a good trip.

I was back in Dublin just one day before we left again (on Friday) for Sligo and my memoir writing workshop.  I'm always so disappointed with those things.  It's always the same for me, I go with such high expectations and really think I'll learn so much more than I do.  The presenter was nice but I don't think that she, herself, has actually written a memoir so by the end, her credibility was pretty low for me.  There were six students including me, three men and three women, so the mix was good and they were all very nice and good writers I thought.  I did learn a few tips so hopefully I will apply those lessons to my next steps in getting a book proposal done.  We returned from Sligo yesterday and have been busy since trying to catch up. 

Today is my birthday and I have a lot planned, but most of it is stuff associated with things I've been doing for a while.  I'm off to CoisCeim dance rehearsal at two and then Alan will meet me downtown for dinner, then I'm off again to set dancing at eight.  I'm actually pretty happy with spending most of my day engaged in dancing.

Sligo is Yeats Country and there are a lot of references to both W.B (the poet) and his brother Jack B. (the painter).  W.B. is the more famous of the two but the Sligo people are warmer toward Jack because he actually lived in Sligo most of the time.  Anyway, W.B. did a poem that references dance, and a quote from it was on a wall in a really nice restaurant we visited there.  Also, on the train coming back we met a pretty well known fiddler, Maurice Lennon, AKA "The Legend of Leitrim" so the convergence of dancing and fiddling seems apt just now.  Here's "The Fiddler of Dooney"

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY     William Butler Yeats 

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave on the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet
My brother in Mocharabuiee.*

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer:
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like the wave on the sea.

Well, today is a sad day for us.  We learned this morning of the passing of my mother's dear friend Annie Burke of Inver, Donegal.  We are fortunate to have know Annie, she was a font of information about our family in Donegal, even though she herself wasn't a Gallagher or Sweeny.  She and her husband were great friends with my mother's Uncle Hugh and her daughter, Teresa Flynn, wrote Hugh's letters to America and elsewhere for many years.  We are fortunate to know Teresa and really feel for her loss now.  Annie lived a good life and will be buried in the same cemetery as my mother in Frosses, Donegal.  I hope they have already met in heaven.

I was thinking to go to Donegal this morning but Annie is being buried pretty quickly tomorrow morning at 11 and there's just no way to get there without making a two day trip.  We are planning a trip to Frosses at the end of the month, in conjunction with my memoir writing class in Sligo, so have sent flowers and will be sure to visit when we're there then.

In more mundane news, we have successfully moved to Ballsbridge and have pretty much settled into our new duplex.  There are still some small adjustments to be made but we are pretty settled in.  Although it's more expensive than the last place, it's a much more vibrant area, a bigger kitchen and we have some outdoor space, so that's all to the good.  Pictures here. 

Well, we have settled on the place in Ballsbridge and will move next weekend.  In my last post I described the two options.  Ballsbridge was the first to accept us, but only because it was earlier in the day, the people in the place in Terenure wanted to meet us first.  That was perfectly reasonable but once we were OKed in Ballsbridge we both were pretty relieved and realized that we both want closer to the city center and were willing to trade the bigger and nicer house for that convenience.

We're not looking forward to the actual move but there's not really that much to it, we have our personal belongings and a sofa and that's it, so one van's worth should get is in.  We have a bead on a man with a truck that I will call today so that we can hopefully arrange it quickly.

We met with the tax man last week as well.  I'm hopeful that all that will work out OK.  He was pleased that we got Irish social security numbers (called PPI here) and that we haven't been back to the States since we came because both of those things are signals that we are not just casual visitors and entitles us to a big exemption on income.  Thankfully, as well, we actually earned some income while living in Ireland in 2012, otherwise the exemption would be moot.  It will take a while to get it sorted but I think it will be good once it's done.  More on that later I'm sure.

I've also made a commitment to do Dance Across Dublin with my Wednesday dance group, CoisCeim Dance.  That will mean rehearsals three times a week until the mid May but I'm looking forward to it.  I will know on Wednesday if I will be accepted to do it.  I have a week's work in Lisbon at the end of April which would mean missing three rehearsals so it might not be OK with the choreographer, that would be the only thing preventing it.

All in all, there's a lot going on all here in Ireland.  Other than a Lisbon trip for me at the end of April, we don't have any more travel outside Ireland planned until September.  In mid-September I will go to San Juan de Compostela in Spain to walk the last part of The Way with my friends Mary and Deirdre and a group of people they know.  Alan has taken a pass on that.  Then the following week, we will spend a week in the West of Ireland (Connemara) in a seaside house with friends from the States.  Then in October we've signed up for a cruise on the Black Sea starting in Istanbul.  I'm looking forward to a summer exploring things close by and hopefully getting started on the memoir after my two-day workshop in Sligo when I get back from Lisbon.

I'm just finishing up a white paper on association governance that's been a thorn in my side for months now.  I spent Easter weekend getting all the parts in order and hope it will be done today or tomorrow.  Of course, I thought it was done last month till I got the feedback from ASAE.  There was some good criticism that made for an extensive rewrite.  I think, and hope, that it's a lot better now. 

The home quest continues.  After a week hiatus from the search with a trip to a cold and snowy Paris from the 12th to the 19th we returned with a resolve to redouble our efforts to find a place.  I returned from Paris with a head cold so the past several days have been challenging.  In addition to not feeling very well, the bad weather from Paris continues here, except the snow is rain.  It's just cold, wet and dreary and without a car, it's not fun at all to try and look at two or three different properties per day.

First a little about Paris.  I've been there twice before and Alan once.  We were excited to just be there in the small apartment we rented and imagine ourselves living there for a while.  This is something we both like to do and for a while we thought that after our time here in Dublin we'd spend some months as vagabonds in some of the European cities we've liked.  So far Palma in Mallorca, Madrid and Amsterdam have been considered in this context.  I could see Paris as well but the past week there was pretty miserable weather wise and that so affects the mood of a place.  We really like to walk and the cold, biting wind, with snow, sleet and freezing rain made that hard to do.  Still, I visited the Pompidou Centre http://www.centrepompidou.fr/en and saw two really good exhibits, actually one really good exhibit (Eileen Gray) and the other really crowded (Dali).  Eileen Gray was an Irish woman who practiced as a designer in Paris during her professional career. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Gray

Unfortunately, in addition to bad weather there, we missed our first St. Patrick's Day here.  When I booked this really cheap flight, I didn't take that into account.  We had dinner with our friends last night and they went to a party that they said was awesome and we could have gone!  So all in all not so good a choice for Paris.  But, in the spirit of St. Patrick, here's a funny story about his history done by the RTE http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10122521/

So, now to the hunt for a new home.  We've seen several properties since returning and have really liked two, that couldn't be more different.  One is in Ballsbridge, which meets the criteria of closer to the city center.  The other is in Terenure, which meets all the other criterion, including a much more Irish experience, an extra room in addition to a guest room, convenient access to public transit.  Both are the same price, the one in Terenure is huge and really, really well done, also just around the block from my dear friend Mary, the only problem is that its much further from the city center.  We've made an offer on both and will let the fates decide.  It's an interesting process here in Ireland, a let (or rental) is negotiated just like buying, in that the price is not really the price.  Anyway, it depends on the demand for both because sometimes people go up instead of down, so if someone offers more than us we won't get either.  Fortunately we still have time because I don't think this place is going to sell fast, still, I don't want to be part of that process for very long.

In a renewed effort to try and find something other than my traditional work, I've signed up for a memoir writing class in Sligo at the end of the month.  It's my 65th birthday present and the start of my new resolve to get a memoir about our time here published somewhere (see last post if you want more on that).  I'm looking forward to it.  I have a trip to Lisbon coming up where I will be presenting the results of some work I did for ASAE that's just wrapping up, but after that I'm really going to try and plunge into learning to write a "lively" account of this experience. 

Since I arrived here, I've been thinking about how I might write this experience in something in addition to the blog.  All along I've thought of it as a memoir.  But now, after getting a tiny bit of encouragement from a book editor, I am thinking a little differently, something more along the lines of a 'how to retire to Ireland' book. 

Before we came, I was searching for such a book and came acorss three, all of which are old and none that were really helpful since so many things have changed since the recession and the further establishment of the EU:

• Living & Working in Ireland, 3rd Edition (2009) by Joe Laredo http://www.amazon.com/Living-Working-Ireland-Survival-Handbook/dp/1905303718
• Living Abroad in Ireland, by Steenie Harvey (no date but must be the 1990s)  http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/living/livingabroadin/living_abroad_in_ireland.shtml
• Moving to Ireland, Brendan Connolly & Peter Steadman, 1998 http://books.google.ie/books/about/Moving_to_Ireland.html?id=VcYAAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

 AND NOW, I have a lead sentence: 

There aren’t a lot of street signs in Dublin so you kinda have to know where you are to get where you want to be.

I was further motivated this past weekend to go with this lead.  We've starting looking for a new place to live.  The current apartment is about to be put up for sale and I just don't want to go through all the disruption, especially when there's nothing in it for us to have to (a) keep the place clean all the time and (b) let complete strangers tromp through periodically.  It was hard enough doing it when we were selling our condo.  I just couldn't face it again, particularly since I really like to move anyway. Alan not so much, but he got convinced with the impending sale and is now looking forward to getting something closer to the city center.  Sandymount is nice but it's a suburb really and we both want more vibrancy.  If we could find Dublin's version of Chinatown, like our place in Washington, that would be perfect.  So far, Irishtown (which there really is one) is the closest we've come and that's a possibility since we are looking at a house there tomorrow.  I'm also hoping for some outdoor space, but find that a second bathroom is more important so I think there will have to be compromises.

Anyway, back to my lead sentence.  This weekend we looked at 5 or 6 places, riding through the city on our bikes.  The absence of street signs really made it hard.  Sometimes there would be a name on the map, sometimes not, so that was a challenge too.  The analogy works for so many things since we arrived:  the banking, the health system, the use of words and turn of phrase, the social mores, the metric system and so much more.  Can the book be far behind?  I've identified a need and have the sentence to begin.  That and follow through are all that's needed.  

So the book editor that's been a little encouraging, says my writing has to be 'lively' if it's to be published by her house.  That's my next quest, learning to write "lively." If you are a regular reader of this blog you might think that's a tall order.  

Next post will be about our upcoming trip to Paris...