We have been in Ireland almost a year now (yikes! My how time flies) and we had not yet been more than about an hour beyond Dublin. All of that changed last week when we spent 4 days and 3 nights in the West of Ireland, specifically at the Delphi Lodge and the surrounding attractions and outdoors. As soon as I saw a tiny article in a magazine on the lodge, I knew we had to stay there and as luck would have it, the stars aligned and they had space right away!

The lodge is in the middle of the wilderness and draws fishermen from all over the world. I really didn’t even know this until we were there, but I guess it is supposed to be world-class angling. The best part of the trip, beyond the amazing rural setting, were the group dinners. Every one sits down at 8 pm at one long table, after a nice cocktail hour in the “piano room”. The people were fascinating and the first two evenings we were up quite late chatting. In addition to the lovely company, the food was fabulous and they had at least 6 house dogs who would visit us at the breakfast table and at cocktail hour – heaven!

If you are coming to Ireland, I highly recommend staying here....

  The Delphi Lodge & the Lough just outside the front door.

Our room was located with the two windows just to the above-right of the front door.

  Cocktail just as we arrived on the front lawn.

  A few of the guests at one of the facinating dinners.

I'm first for cocktails!

....and of course, the doggies, including two precious new puppies born March 28!

Right now we are mid-trip in Redmond, WA and I thought it was as good of time as any to try and start to blog again.  We really have been having a nice trip so far. Well, I should re-phrase that a bit – I have been having fun and Reeves has been productive.  He attended the eMetrics conference in San Francisco and the MS Business Intelligence conference in Seattle.  While he has been working long days, I have had a fabulous time playing with my friends.  While staying in SF I was able to do a few things I haven’t done before.  Trina took me on a wonderfully guided tour of Chinatown including a yummy lunch of Dim Sum. She is now officially “Travel Trina” not just WebTrina anymore!  We also did an afternoon lunch at the remodeled Cliff House – what a clear and perfect day for a three hour lunch!

Now that we are in Seattle/Redmond I have been able to spend time with Leslie.  She came into Seattle and we did a little shopping and sat by the bay and had a lovely afternoon chat in the sun.  Reeves and I were able to spend Saturday wine tasting around Redmond/Woodinville (found a new wine I like – Red Sky) with Leslie and Jason and a really great dinner at the restaurant Purple Café and Wine Bar in Woodinville.  

Can’t wait till we are both officially on vacation starting on Wednesday night as well have many fun events planned with our friends in the week to come!

…Reeves and I had just walked in the door from him picking me up from the airport when the doorbell rang and a large padded envelope was delivered for me.  It was my diploma for my masters signed by all the appropriate officials, including the “Governor of California and President of Trustees”…. Arnold Swarzenegger.  It is still hard enough for me to reconcile he is the Governor, but signing my academic diploma is just too weird!

We have been going to and fro so much lately I just haven’t had the gusto to write much.  After we returned home from the Christmas holiday, visiting the Little family in Maryland, including the Terach’s new golden retriever puppy, Midas, Reeves left for a business trip two weeks later.  He returned home the day after I had left to Oxford to do a weekend workshop on Palaeography, meeting me with the car after I had finished the class on Sunday evening.  We then drove into London where we stayed at my favorite hotel, The Pelham in South Kensington, for 4 days.  While in London we went to the show Mary Poppins and enjoyed some really yummy cuisine at Bibendum.  En route back to Ireland we drove through Wales – what an enchanting countryside!  I absolutely LOVED the place we stayed near the town of Hay-on-Wye, The Felin Fach Griffin – it had modern and comfortable updates while still keeping all the authentic and traditional details which make up the soul of a home.  It is one of the few places I know I will visit again.  We drove about the countryside quite a bit and ended up visiting three of Edward I castle’s on the North and West coasts of Wales.  I also loved the car ferry experience – is was so much easier and relaxed compared to air travel, especially in this day and age.  In all, the trip was a wonderful time spent in our neighboring country!

I have also been busy trying to break into the archival world here in Ireland.  I have joined the 2 associations/societies and after attending the annual meeting of the Irish Society of Archives last week, the contacts paid off, I have a job!  Well, it is a volunteer position, but it is the first good step in the right direction. I will start at the National Archives of Ireland the day after I return from holiday.  I already know some of the collection on which I will be working, which is extremely exciting.  Even if I don’t get a paid position here, at least I will have the opportunity to work with some wonderful “old stuff”.   

I am now off to the States on Friday to stay with Amy for 10 days.  We are going to visit Boston for 4 days while I am there – some place I have never been and very excited to see all the history in which this town is steeped. 

We promised ourselves that if we moved to Dublin we would make the most of living so close to so many great countries, and we are starting the year off with a trip to the UK.  One of the things I personally am so excited about is living within an hour flight (and then only a 30 minute bus ride) to Oxford.  Ever since I did a summer course there in 2001 I have been hooked. Now, since we are within a reasonable distance, I can attend some classes. I am SO excited - in 2 weeks I am doing a 2-day workshop on palaeography! (yes, I am a big geek) I have dabbled in it a bit while doing my masters, but now I will actually have some formal training in it, and from a renowned institution.  For those of you who don’t off the top of your heads, palaeography is the study of old handwriting, specifically in this case late medieval handwriting of England. 

As English history has been a passion of mine for over 20 years, this will be a great opportunity to enjoy a closer look at some original documents, as well as adding to my greater knowledge base. Since Reeves has to be in Redmond, WA for work up until the first day of the workshop for me, he will meet me in Oxford with the car at the end of the weekend (he is taking the car ferry over from Dublin to Wales) and we will go into London for 3 days, returning West to Wales to stop at Hay-on-Wye for a day so I can load up the car with old books and then drive north to visit some of the castles built by Edward II of England before we take the car ferry home again.  In all we will be gone a week.  I am so excited because I have not been to the UK since 2002 and I have been aching to return.

Trina put me up to the "what are 5 things people don't know about you" challenge...here is my response......  :)

1) I play the accordion and I have always wanted to learn to play the banjo.  I have played a multitude of instruments over my lifetime, mostly in the first 20 years or so, including the accordion which I took lessons for about 8 years and got pretty good. I haven’t picked it up in awhile, but it is here in Ireland with us and I do hope to dust it off again.  Other things I have played; the piano, the clarinet, various recorders, the organ, a very little bit of guitar, and the ukulele, which I wasn’t half bad. It is the banjo, however, that has always fascinated me and is something to which I aspire, but have a feeling I will never get around to doing.

2) I am the first one in my family to go to and graduate from college.  Neither my parents nor grandparents on either side of the family ever went beyond HS.  Both of my parents were from farming families in the mid-west (Iowa and Kansas) and came from farming families. It is a personal and family victory to have my undergraduate, much less my graduate degree, accomplished. 

3) I love to people-watch and pick out which women are carrying fake hand-bags.  It is a little guilty pleasure of mine.  I have a personal thing against “fake” designer bags.  The reason you buy a fake bag is to look like a real one, right? I have never understood this. Is it to impress? The problem with that is the people you are trying to impress (e.g. other women) who can afford the real thing are going to know it is a fake to begin with.  Is it because you just really like the style but cant’ afford it? Fine, that is understood, but then forgo the “designer” bag and find a wonderful unknown handbag designer with great talent and quality materials which is in your price range, or save up for the real thing.  I personally equate stealing a designer look by trying to identically copy a bag the same as someone trying to sell me a fake Van Gogh or Picasso – they are works of art designed by an artist who shouldn’t have their work facsimiled and talent diluted.  An art lover wouldn’t frame one of those cheesy Monet posters (you know the ones, you had them in your dorm room freshman year at college) and hang it over their mantel, why would a handbag lover use a crappy copy of the real thing when there are tons of great bags out there of better style and quality.  OK, rant over.

4) The longest relationship I had before Reeves lasted 3 months.  I think after 11 ½ years of marriage and 13 years of being together, this one is going to stick. :)

5) I used to have about 24 pet Gerbils. Yes, that is a lot, and frankly, too many gerbils for any one household. This was my first pet which I got in 5th grade and I thought it would be great idea to get a boy and a girl gerbil to see what happened. Well, 24 gerbils happened! After the first litter, we let them grow up in the same cage for awhile, but we A) didn’t know how short the reproduction cycle was and B) even when we separated them by wire partitions, those little hormones were strong enough for them to chew though some serious metal. This all happen within a couple months. Needless to say, I am not sure what my mom was thinking when see agree to this, and we quickly decided two girl gerbils was plenty.

I am supposed to tag 5 more bloggers, but I have to say my blog-o-shpere is pretty limited and all the people I know with blogs have already been taged, so if you are reading this and you haven't been, please feel free to add yourself to the list.

Just a really quick note to say I PASSED my final masters portfolio project!!  I found out the day before we went to Maryland for Christmas so I think that was my best Christmas gift ever!! I are a grad-u-ated! :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year's Eve.  Reeves and I just came home from the store with a few new DVDs and a fire log - the perfect even for us recovering from jet-lag and colds.

..and a Happy New Year's to all!

I knew stress did strange things to you but I have never had so many outwardly physical signs as the past few weeks.  [Warning, this is a bit of a whine-fest so stop reading here if you don't want to indugle me] To sum up, I have developed more pimples than I have had since college, haven’t slept a full night, frequently waking to get up and work, and now, just when I am getting close to the end, my body decides I really needed one more lovely reminder of this project: a gigantic cold sore on my face. 

It is just like ones you might get on your lip or on your gums, but instead, lucky me…. I get them on my cheek, a little to the side, between my nose and mouth.  I have had about 6 or 7 of these things in my life, any every time it is the same, they start with a tingle-itch and then, within a few hours it is a large throbbing pustule, about the size of a nickel.  These things are painful and last a couple weeks in total.

This may sound quite vain, but I hate leaving the house when this happens.  How ugly these things gets can be summed up by a little story from my retail days back when Reeves and I were first married.  As much as I wanted to hide at home, I had to work and while helping a women with something, she stopped, paused a moment to tilt her head and look at me exclaiming, “my GOD, what IS that thing on your face.”  That little exchange made quite an impression on me and I have to say made me even more paranoid about my face.  These episodes have also started to leave scars and although they are supposed to be less evident every time, again, lucky me, always the over-achiever, they seem to be the same or even worse…..geeze, I can’t wait till next week. 

Sigh…OK, whine-fest is officially over….