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.