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...

Gosh, I've just re-read Alan's poem "No Wait" posted below.  I just can't get over how much he was able to pack in about my brother Frank in so short a piece.  Frank was everything like that, I've just been thinking and thinking about it this last week. 

We spent most of the last week in Holland.  We left on Tuesday and returned on Saturday evening.  It was a good trip, although quite cold.  In fact it was the coldest weather since we have been here.  On Thursday, we decided to take a train trip to Rotterdam. Initially we thought it would be a good day for it because it was cold and blustery when we started out in the morning.  Unfortunately, by the time we got off the train in Rotterdam, it was a full blown gale.  We walked around the block, had lunch and got back on the train for Amsterdam and a hot bath! 

Although we could not get tickets for the Beethoven concert at the Concertgabow on Valentine's Day, we did get tickets at the Musicgabow (I love Dutch names for stuff).  We heard two Mozart pieces, including his 40th symphony, which I'm listening to just now: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtoqE33iZg  So, so wonderful. 

I've just made plans for another trip with my friends here to walk part of "The Way" Santiago de Compostela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela in September.  This is my first foray traveling without Alan.  Initially we were going to do a walk in September with friends from the States in Scotland, but that was quite a bit more expensive than we initially thought and we pulled out of that before this opportunity arose.  September looks like it's shaping up to be as busy as last year in September because in addition to this walk, our US friends are going to come to Ireland following their Scotland walk and we're making plans to get a house in the west of Ireland for the following week.  Exciting stuff.

Looking forward to getting back to the normal stuff this week, work, dance, dance and bridge, bridge.  In addition to the two dance classes I've been doing for a while and the weekly bridge game on Friday mornings, I've just started taking bridge lessons on Thursday evenings.  It was strongly suggested that I do so by my bridge companions.  There's a lot to learn about bidding, that's for sure.  Before I knew how much I didn't know, I wasn't intimidated at all to play on Fridays, now, with just ONE lesson under my belt, I'm a wreak.  They tell me that will stop.  I have to believe it's so, because it's just the way I felt after my first set dancing lesson and now I'm passable at that.