Once again, a long time since my last post.  My posting is getting less and less frequent and I'm finding it hard to sustain the blog.  Yet, we continue to do a lot of travel and have new adventures.  I don't know why I have such reluctance to post.

Anyway, since our trip to Lisbon, we spent a week in Aruba at our timeshare there with friends from the States. We enjoyed the week but it was a long way for such a short time. Still, coming off weeks of very heavy rain here and flooding throughout Ireland that I know made the news worldwide, it was nice to have some sun. Ironically it rained two mornings on that desert island. We're bringing rain with us!  Still, the rain is better than the snow which seemed to close the eastern US during that same time. In fact, our friends were worried that they would not get home without significant delays. Fortunately the airport closings stopped the day before our departure so I think they were OK getting home.

We travelled via Amsterdam on a scheduled airline that had previously been a charter service, ArkeFly.  Operating only in Holland. We picked that so that we would have direct service from Europe, but re-learned that "direct" and "nonstop" are different things in airline jargon. Ater a 10-hour flight, during which we were crammed against 4 other travelers in a cabin that was reconfigured from two-three-two across seating to two-four-two we stopped for two hours in Curacao before rebording for the 20 minute flight to Aruba. After that ordeal we paid the extra 95 Euros to get "premium" service, which gave us 2 more inches in the seat. What a difference! It was by no means luxury, but boy oh boy, those inches made a world of difference.

Because the service was through Amsterdam, we had a chance to do an overnight there and were able to check out the location of the apartment that we've rented there for the month of June. We weren't able to see the apartment and hope the pictures do it justice, but the location is just perfect. We couldn't have hoped for better on that score. For those of you that know the city, even a little bit, the place is at the Western Market, very close to the Anne Frank House.  We were very, very happy with that.  We also had a few hours on our return and had a nice lunch in Amsterdam before completing our journey to Ireland the same afternoon.

In other news, I've taken the momentus step of applying for Social Security, that will start in April. There is some question about working in a foreign country while on SSA so for the moment, I'm assuming that I will not work for pay anytime in 2014. I've started volunteering for an organization here called OneFamily which helps single parent families here in Ireland. I will work on their database and data collection processes. I really like the woman in charge of that and also the Exec there, so I'm hoping it will be a better experience than my last volunteer activity here during which I just felt I was taken advantage of, with little return. Given my experience working for associations, I really expect organizations that use volunteers to have some understanding of volunteer management and recognition. When they don't, it's a pretty hollow experience. Anyway, I feel my skills are being put to good use so far. It's a pleasure working with a good database.

We don't have any travel plans for the month of March and will use this month to see how cheaply we can live here. We are still in negotiations as to how long we will stay and this test will help to get better clarity on that score, I think.

I will try to do better with the posting this month, though I expect it will be pretty boring....