The Weatherman

That is the weather here is Seattle.  Extremely clear…and wow, what a wonderful full moon.  It traversed the overnight sky like a summer sun.  At around 3am our area was lit up like it was noon.  This morning the moon lit up the Puget Sound like a setting sun – it was amazing.

And yes, it’s cold.  Lows of 25 at our house and highs only getting into the upper 30s.  Cold enough so that any water on the streets and sidewalks is not melting during the day.

BTW, my trip back from Dublin was uneventful – both flights were on time.  It was great seeing Steph, Zach, and Nate.  Zach was a little apprehensive about giving me hug though – probably a little pissed I left for so long.

We finally had some time yesterday to tour around Dublin (or Dooblin as the locals call it).  Here is a run down of some of the things we saw:

St Stephens Green – a park with an arch.

National Museum – this was broken up into two locations.  One location had displays on viking and midieval Ireland and the other is called Collins Barracks.  Yep, you guessed it – these are barracks.  The barracks had a very good exhibit on the military history of Ireland.

National Gallery – I had to go check out the Spanish art.  They had a good main gallery and a special exhibit of watercolors.

Book of Kells – an excellent exhibit explaining and showing off these books (books of the 4 gospels written in latin dating back to 800AD).  The location, at Trinity College, has a room called the Long Room with 200,000 of the oldest books owned by the college.  Sounds boring but it was quite amazing!

Walk down O Connell Street – widest street in Ireland.

Lunch at Romano Ristorante – homemade noodles.

We walked up to Kilmainham Gaol (a prison) but it had already closed.

Today we plan to visit St Patricks Cathedral, Christ Church, and Dublin Castle – all very close to where we are staying.

We also visited The Stag’s Head pub – old Irish pub with a respectable writeup in our guide books.  They had live Irish music.  We also stopped off at The Temple Bar – big tourist bar but kind have to go there.  They do not play traditional Irish music – rather they were playing pop 80s music.  Not the most enjoyable place.

The other night we went out with some work friends to Nash’s Pub located near the office.  A decent place – low key – just the way I like it.

I’m definitely ready to leave though…miss the family!  We tried to move our flight in a day from Sunday to Saturday, but our  airfare required a Saturday night stay otherwise we would have to pay over $1100 (which is more than our fare now).  Whatever!

So we actually worked until 7pm tonight.  Not too shabby for a couple of managers.  We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and then headed down towards Christ Church.  I took my camera tonight and took lots of shots (thank you for the new lens hun with image stabilization).

We then cruised by City Hall and Dublin Castle.  We walked into the North of Liffey area to Cobblestone.  This was recommended by t he woman on the plane as a bar with traditional Irish music.  And that it had.  We enjoyed a Jameson and some music.  We then walked around the Jameson Distillery and finally back to the south side to Brazen Head.

They had live traditional Irish music.  I had a Jameson followed by 3 pints of Paulaner – Steph would love this beer – a German wheat beer.  We listened to some excellent traditional music and watched the people sing and dance.  What a fun night.

We didn’t eat there though – had enough at lunch.  We came back toward the hotel and found a kebab place and I had the chicken kebab plate.  Of course now I’m worried about getting sick.  No one was in there when we arrived but 2 groups arrived while we were eating.

Today was showery but the evening was nice so I got lots of pictures.  I won’t be able to post until I get home however.  That’s all for now.

Brazen Head is the oldest pub in Ireland.  It’s even in the Guinness book of world records for this.  I was built in the 11th or 12th century (can’t recall which).  It’s definitely a unique place.

Most of the pubs have a carvery setup where you get carved ham or roast beef with potatoes, cabbage and other veggies.  I had roast beef with stuffing, mashed potatoes and roasted potatoes.  Yes, two different kinds of potatoes – the server just threw them on the plate – I didn’t even ask for 2 types of potatoes.  Oh, and the plates are huge.  I didn’t even finish my meal.

Plus I had a pint of Guinness with the lunch.  Damn, that’s a good beer here!

Otherwise, been working all day.  I went next door to the bank to get some Euros…they wouldn’t exchange $100 bills – they are  too big.  Oy!  What a pain.  I had some $20 bills.  The exchange rate sucks for us – 1.51 dollars to the Euro.  Rubbish!

Last night I slept from 9pm to 3am.  I couldn’t sleep after that so I watched tv, read email, called Steph and read my Dublin book.  I finally fell asleep at 6am only to be awoken at 8:30am when my boss called!  Oooops.

Made it to Dublin, Ireland.  Our office is across the street from the Guinness Brewery.  In fact the office is in a former bottling factory for Guinness.

For lunch we walked over to the Guinness Storehouse for lunch where I had my first Guinness from the source.  WOW!!!  It was good.  Much better than a Guinness in the states.  They pour the beer differently here.  They filled the glass slowly until it’s 3/4 full then they set the beer aside for about 3 to 4 minutes for the head to settle down.  Next they top it off for the perfect Guinness pour. I had Beef and Guinness Stew at the brewery – not too shabby.

We flew all night and arrived in Dublin at 9:30am with only 90 minutes of sleep.  So we were pretty tired.  We left work at 4pm, returned to the hotel and then went touring around town.  We walked around Dublin for over 2 hours looking at such sites as Trinity College, Grafton Street, Temple Bar, and the River Liffey.

Yes, pubs exist everywhere.  Finding the right place is difficult.  Ultimately, we ended up at The Duke just off Grafton Street.  We had our second pint of Guinness there.  On the back we decided we were hungry for dinner so we stopped at a store for water, snickers, chips, and sandwich.  Yeah, we are pretty sad.

Now I need to catch up on some sleep.  Tomorrow will be a busy work day followed by some drinking and dinner!  You know, when in rome do as the romans do…

Not Dublin, California but Dublin, Ireland.  We have offices over there so I am heading over for a week to spend some time with a few of my employees and to work on some projects.

Leaving is the toughest part when you have 2 awesome kids at home.  I’ll miss them a ton.  Hopefully they are good for mommy for the week.  I’ll try and add some blog entries while I’m over there.

So I had gift cards for REI that I got for Christmas thanks to my sister (& brother-in-law) and my in-laws.  I knew exactly what I wanted – a lite hiking shoe that could also double as a trail running shoe.

The Salomon XA Comp 3 GTX was the solution.  These shoes are not only light but have a good grip and they use GoreTex so they are also waterproof – something that is a must in the Northwest.

I’ve been wearing them around town and to work and they are very comfortable.  I took them on a 4.6 mile run the other day and they performed very well.  They have plenty of shock absorption so I didn’t any additional pounding and their weight was not noticeable during the run.

Ironically I meant to get the Salomon XA Pro 3D XCR but the shoes were mislabeled at REI and I didn’t realize the difference until afterwards.  No worries, I’m definitely happy with my choice.

Not much else going on.  The boys have been very good.   Zach is getting good with the alphabet and he loves playing with his Thomas the Train laptop (start them young).

I took a movie of the boys on the kitchen last night.  Zach was eating a lot (including stuff off the bottom of his foot) and Nate was chowing down on his fingers.

Boys in the Kitchen Video 

Nate has had a cold and a cough so he ended up in our bed for a few hours last night.  But it doesn’t end there, Zach had a nightmare so he ended up in our bed also.  Good thing we have a king sized bed.

My work is sending me to Dublin, Ireland during the week of January 14th.  So be nice to Steph that week.  Fortunately, it appears her mom will come up for a few days to help out while I’m out.

That’s what we did today…cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned.  Oh, and watched football (or ‘bootball’ as Zach would say).  We hung out with PEPS group last night for New Year’s Eve.  Steph was asleep by 11pm.  I made it to 12:30.  The Seattle fireworks were a dud – they didn’t work – some sort of computer malfunction.

Nate checking things out.

Not the sharpest photo but very cute.

Throwin rocks at the park.

Zach makes throwing rocks look like fireworks.  Look at those arms move.

Now it’s back to work    I was really enjoying the time off.