We are officially in 2014.

We passed the New Year, as we usually do, quietly.  Except for a walk in the City Center (Centre), during which we saw a pretty good street band and a parade, we didn't do much on New Years Eve.  In fact, we went to bed at 11:40 so really only rang in the turn of the year when we got up this morning.  That was fine with me because we had a pretty eventful holiday season overall.

On Christmas we went to our friends, Mary and Tom, for dinner.  This was our first Christmas in an Irish home so that was very nice.  It's very like an American Christmas, except the trees are very small and the decoration is minimal.  I really appreciate that about Ireland, they don't go over the top everywhere with Santa and sleighs and Jingle Bells everywhere you go.  On Christmas Eve we went to a mass at St. Frances Xavier church in Dublin 1.  This is a little bit of a rough area, as rough areas go in Dublin (which is not much, compared to DC) but the church was just beautiful and filled to the rafters.  There was a pretty good choir, but I was disappointed that they didn't encourage singing.  The people were pretty focused on hearing the choir alone.  The mass was very nice, including a nice celebration of Pope Frances, a fellow Jesuit in a Jesuit church.  This new Pope is just great, and I'm glad he made Time's Man of the Year for 2013.

On December 28th, we had our first party in Ireland.  We really like to have parties.  I think this one was OK, but there are a number of things I would have done differently in the post mortum.  One thing for sure, is that I wouldn't have provided so much seating.  I think it's pretty unusual in Ireland to invite a disparate group of people into one's home.  People from Alan's writer's group didn't socialize with our old family friends, who didn't socialize with our new friends from walking and dancing.  The guests arrived and stayed planted where they landed.  If we do another party, I'm only going to provide minimal seating so they have to move around.  The big success of the party was the food.  I made about 9 different canapes, all finger foods, and they were very well received.  On the invitation I called the refreshments "heavy hors d'oeuvres" which was hysterical to the Irish guests, another cultural difference.  "Heavy" in reference to food is a very bad thing.  Anyway, we had just over 20 guests and they all stayed to the end, so that was good.  We might consider another party in the summer....maybe.

I realized this morning that I haven't had a bout with depression a single time since we arrived in Ireland. This is a record for me in my adulthood to not have a bout with the black mood for almost two years.  A big 'knock on wood' and another of my reasons for humility and gratitude going into 2014.