The Short And Dirty: Back In…Grey?

Well, when I started this blog the intention was to keep everyone apprised of what was going on in our lives without having to send individually crafted emails to everyone I know (yes, I am lazy like that). And, at the start…when I had no job, that was working relatively (I was only behind for a week or so there for a while) well. But now, despite Mariah’s strong efforts, the blog has been lagging behind on feature length stories, so I think I will amend the blog to include this semi-regular possibly-but-not-likely-weekly update which will give you the short and dirty (not too dirty though…this is a family blog) version in summary of what we are doing. I know this will require some restraint on my part, since I have the tendency to prattle on about everything to an extent that loyal readers wake up drooling over their keyboards with some lovely square indentions on their faces, but I will do my best. Here goes:

Unfortunately I can’t remember where my blog life left off in order to find a starting point, so I will just summarize a lot… We both have jobs and are enjoying them relatively well – especially in regard to the great people we are working with (this I know both of us have touched on). For me the work wasn’t fully what I was hoping for, but at least the environment is good and I getting to work on a massive project with some good experience. The weather here this summer has been excruciatingly miserable, even for someone who is no stranger to seeing rain in the middle of summer. There have been no real sunny days aside from the month of April. I am beginning to think that April was summer and we moved straight into fall… When a random sunny day does occur we often try to get ourselves to the beach, but those are few and far between at this point. I have high hopes for August and September, but I won’t be holding my breath (because I would definitely die…).

I did manage to post about our trip to Brussels last May, but you can start looking forward to a few new holiday stories because we have just returned back from a ten day whirlwind road trip from Paris to Barcelona with a stop in…London (don’t ask – we’ll fill you in eventually). I say a few new stories because it will take multiple posts to get through all of the things we saw. We again had US traveling companions with us, our friends Mike and Tauna, but this time we weren’t crashing anyone’s honeymoon.

The short and dirty version: We flew into London for two nights, then on to Paris on the Chunnel for two nights, then we rented the car and drove up through Normandy stopping in Caen for a night, down past Mont St. Michal to Bordeaux for a night, then across the border into Spain for three nights on the beaches of San Sebastian, and finally down to Barcelona for two nights and our flight back to Ireland. We saw a little of a lot in a fairly short amount of time. It was a great adventure, although a bit more stress than I would normally like to take my holidays. In any case I now know for sure that I’m not really a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of guy (I knew this already, but now I have experiential proof). All in all, though, everything worked out well and it was a really great experience. No one died, either by accident or by strangulation brought on by long hours in a car together, which is always a bonus. Beyond sore and battered feet from walking, no one was injured either. I learned a lot about strategies for road trips, but that you will have to find in a later post.

So, now we are back from our jaunt through lush villages, sunny beaches, and aired deserts to…patches of sun, swallowed whole by overwhelming grayness and gouts of torrential rain…