Jan. 29

Jan. 29^th

I can’t believe we are almost to the end of Jan. The month has gone quickly, and February will be a busy time as well. We just found out that all the students will be gone from Tullycross for the first extended weekend (we were staying in TC for the first weekend and John/Casi for the second). So, we have an opportunity to do some traveling. Since it begins on Feb. 8^th, we will just plan a small trip to Northern Ireland. It should be more relaxing than trying to book flights, etc. And it will also fit in nicely as there seems to be a major shift in the political dynamics with Northern Ireland.

Elections will be held in the summer for the Republic. And Sinn Fein just accepted the dual control (??) of the Police. From what I can garner from the editorials, etc., there is some speculation that this could be the next step in unification. So, Bill Clinton, who was instrumental/critical in helping negotiate the Good Friday agreement in 1998, may yet go down in history for something other than Monica!!! (Mary Alice, please comment on all of this as I am in way over my head). But it is exciting.

We also booked our flights to Italy for spring break. We will fly into Venice, go to Florence for the majority of the time, and then fly out of Rome. We will get back to Dublin on Thursday, March 8^th and spend time in Dublin with Mike & Mary Alice as well as Zip & Tricia will be joining us from London. Mike & Mary Alice will then come back with us to TC for the majority of that following week. Many locals are looking forward to their arrival!!

Sunday we started out for a nice leisurely walk to the ocean. Gerard Coyne passed us by and invited us back to his house which he has just built (designed especially by him). He is a lover of history and antiques. And so many pieces have stories. Outside stones from an old abbey, beams from ships and old houses. He told about the staircase that he had. Someone called him up at 1 am in the morning and said that the next day this old house was going to be torn down. He literally had hours to scavenge whatever he could. So, he rounded up a few ‘lads” that happened to be in the pub, and off to Clifden they went to grab the staircase. It is also very environmentally designed. The downstairs is heated entirely through a geothermal unit – so their garden heats the main floor.

One of the best stories was about the very large old cast iron bathtub. He was stuck in traffic in Galway and saw this old man carting water by the buckets to his cattle. He watched and saw him pouring it into this great tub. He pulled over, asked to buy it. The man said f--- off (a commonly used term in Ireland). It took him quite some time to convince the man that he was not out of his head and wanted the tub. He went to the hardware, bought a big black plastic tub, hooked up a line directly to the tub from the water outlet, and asked the man to help him load the tub on his truck. It cost him 50 euros. He said when he had the enamel redone, the person offered him 1800! But it is just one of the special pieces he has – each with an incredible story.

So, by the time we continued on our walk, the great sunshine was gone, but we had a wonderful sidetrack.

I forgot to mention something that Ros Coyne asked me. We were talking about work, retirement, etc. She asked me why Americans works so hard – meaning so many days without holidays. I told her that it wasn’t unusual for someone starting a job to only get 2 weeks vacation/holiday. She couldn’t believe it. Maybe that is why we are having so many people retire as early as possible – we are all burned out!!

Final thought for the day. While we were gone on our trip, a local man died. He was sitting at the pub, ordered a second pint, and fell off his chair with a heart attack. It was certainly upsetting to many in the pub. But I talked to Patrick (the pub owner), and he was very philosophical about it. Not a bad way to go. The man’s wife had died 40 years ago, he was 75 years old.

Carpe Diem