NEWS FLASH! ...again…finally…

So…I’m sorry that it has been so long since I have posted, but a lot has been going on. I’ll try to be better about posting more regularly. In any case, for this post you only get the short version with a more elaborate, more interesting version to follow…soon…hopefully…

Mariah is here! More on this later…

To start with, I got all of my final paperwork sorted out, so I am officially living, working, banking, and so forth here in Ireland. (For those of you who missed my added comment: my "Green Card" is not green, nor is it a card... It's a sheet of letterhead, partially a letter, with the bottom third laminated over all of the important information.) It was all pretty smooth, I must say, though some things take longer than they should. Things at work are also getting fully settled and I am really enjoying the work environment there. The work at the moment is a bit tedious, but the people are just wonderful.

Mariah arrived in real life on a plane at the airport in…Ireland! If you didn’t know, now you know. If you did know…you are bored right now…

I missed something though… A few weeks back I started looking for apartments for us – nothing terribly aggressive – mostly I just wanted to get the feel of what was available (significantly lower my expectations – more on this later) and learn about the areas where we might want to live and, more importantly, not live. The Friday before Mariah arrived I went to look at a flat in a very popular neighborhood called Ranelagh. Flats tend to be apartments refitted into old row-houses. I expected something much too small, but it was in a good location, so I wanted to take a look. I planned on just looking… Instead, I really liked it. It was very small, but comfortable for two people, clean, and the remodel was fairly new. I worked out the details with the landlord on Saturday and then moved in on Sunday. Done and done! More on the place later (I have the camera now, so pictures as well), but by some miracle I had managed to get a place for us to live sorted before Mariah even arrived (fairly surprising considering at one point I wasn’t expecting to seem my Green Card until that very same Friday).

Again, she here with me! Yay! The short version is: life is better. We got her paperwork taken care of right away (very smooth), so she is a legal resident as well, and then we commenced spending all of my hard earned money fitting out the new place. We had some big plans for doing exciting things over the weekend and then just ended up relaxing and soaking up each other’s company, which was inevitably the better alternative.

Now I am back to work and Mariah is in the process of looking for the perfect firm. No big rush on that, but it shouldn’t take too long for her to find something. The trick will be finding something she is excited about, which shouldn’t be a stretch either.

That pretty much sums it up. Again, I apologize and hope to make posting a much more frequent event. In the mean time, hopefully this will satiate reading desires for a bit.

Until next time…blah blah…blah…

Yippie!