Oh What a Beautiful Morning . . . !

Hello!

I had a great weekend! I got well-deserved quality sleep Friday night. Saturday I woke up and set up the blog and sent a few emails. Then Douglass and I headed out. (Douglass being the small frog figurine that I sometimes take with me. Gail present. Long story.) I went up to City Centre to catch a Dublin Bus tour at 2pm. It was a tour that ran north of the city and ran up to Malahide Castle and back down the coast. It was a beautiful day and I got good pictures, some of which made it to the Flickr account. Malahide is an old castle that has been around since the 1700s, I think. I clearly didn't pay attention well enough during the tour. The castle's style has changed over the years and the overall effect is that every room is a different century from the last. Picture a time travel novel written by Martha Stewart. Lovely place. The tour continued and I got to see part of Ireland's eastern coast. After we ended in City Centre ( I have to break out of the habit of saying "downtown") I had fish and chips at the famous and oft-recommended Bashoff's on O'Connell Street.

I had planned to see another Fringe show that night, but because the weather was so nice, I took the 46a south to Dun Loaghaire (pronounced "dunn leery") and walked along the pier there. It was absolutely beautiful. I pulled off to the edge and read a bit more of The Dubliners. I wanted to find a pub to watch the end of the Leinster-Dragons rugby game. I passed up two fancy-schmancy looking pubs and ten minutes later stumbled upon a great place called Mark McKennas . . . I think. I only caught the end of what appeared to be a blow-out game. The moral of the story is not to settle for the first or second choice, but to keep looking until you get what you want.

Sunday was GORGEOUS, which apparently doesn't happen much in Ireland this time of year. I went on a walk with Martin and the guys again. Ab-so-lute-ly beau-ti-ful. Plenty of pictures on the Flickr site, because describing it would be silly. We walked up and around Glendalough, a medieval village with remnants. Again, pictures are better than my sloppy wordsmanship. What I didn't take pictures of were my sore legs, because while I was hiking up and running down beautiful mountains I didn't think about how I was hiking up and running down beautiful mountains until this morning when getting out of bed became a longer ordeal than I would have thought.

That evening after te walk Marjorie and Paul's adorable grandchildren came over with their mother, who works in educational technology. I loved talking with her and hope to see her again. I got my Little Acorns training to use when I played with the kiddies while the adults talked. We played mostly mouse-and-lions, where one was the mouse and two were the lions. Very complicated game. Lots of fun!

And now I am here. It is Monday. It is 7pm. School let out four hours ago. I am finishing work so I can go to sleep prepared and up-to-date.

God bless that coffee machine.

Summary: Go to my Flickr account.

Post-Script: You'll notice that a mojority of my pronouns are "I." While I am having a great time over here, I miss you all very much. I often think "Man, Max would love this," or "Gail would've enjoyed meeting her," or "Mom would love this story," so know that you are in my thoughts while I am here.