NorthDownMuse

To do

I leave tomorrow morning for the U.S. to help my mom post-hip surgery. The surgery went well and she is in inpatient rehab. Hopefully she will move home while I'm there and I can help her get situated in the house. I have a list of 16

Housing update

Busy day today (I'm two weeks into having a busy day every day and I'm really tired of it). I took one of David's co-workers out to lunch for her birthday. Then I collected the report on the house we are trying to buy.

Giant's Causeway

Yesterday (Saturday), we took Susan, Michael and Maisie up the Antrim Coast, which looks like this at the beginning: Then lunch in Cushendun, where we visited a cove. Then White Park Bay. Then Giant's Causeway. I saw seven people from All Souls Church and/or visitors from the

Titanic Museum

David's sister, her husband, and their daughter Maisie came to visit for the weekend. Yesterday, we went to the Titanic Museum [http://www.titanicbelfast.com/], which is at the dockworks where the ship was built. I'm not a huge fan of the modern museum because it&

Red vs. Blue in Ireland

In an earlier post, I questioned how Connaught could appear so prosperous, despite the seeming lack of industry outside of tourism. When I was on murder mile yesterday (so called because it was where the poorest Catholic and Protestant communities abut each other, resulting in Ulster's highest murder

On the front lines

The minister of my new church, Rev. Chris Hudson, is very active in the peace process in Northern Ireland, having sat toe to toe with Protestant paramilitary leaders and IRA members over the past decade. As befits his Dublin roots, he is an amazing story teller. I spent part of

Driving Ms. Casey crazy

Today I tried to get a provisional driver's license. It's only slightly less fun than the visa process. I filled out the two-page form (including questions covering 30 health issues) and then went in to Belfast to meet with a former high school classmate. He signed

Weathering change

Yesterday was cold, windy, rainy, miserable. I stayed in my PJs and read all day. Today was beautiful, sunny, warm, slight breeze, T-shirt weather. Bizarre. The good news is today I moved from Holywood back to the townhouse in Crawfordsburn. Four station wagon loads of stuff, including dog, two cats,

Hip joint and unhip joint

So my mom had hip surgery today and it went well. Thanks be. The doctor who did her knee in September also did her hip, so I'm hoping he got the job finished this time. She worked so hard in rehab to recover from the knee replacement but

Festival feast

Today we went to Belfast Mela, a four-stage event celebrating singers, dancers, and music from Pakistan, Bulgaria, Mexico, Africa--you name it. This is the Bollywood Brass Band: "Four funky drummers and six hot horns play massive hits from Indian films, all driven by the huge beat of the dhol

Vacillating Vegetarian

I am nominally a vegetarian. I've rejected meat partly because of the misery of animals confined to unnatural conditions--highly concentrated in feeding factories, fed grain--not the grass they were engineered for--and pumped full of chemicals to counteract the stress of their misery. Then there are the chemically laced

Cruising

One of the fun things about being on the esplanade is watching the traffic in Belfast Lough. The most common site are the ferries running to Scotland and England. But Belfast will also host 62 cruise ships this year--I saw one this morning. Curious what passengers will do when they

Walk on the wild side

When I am on a busy street filled with pedestrians, my instinct is to pass on the right. Here, I find I am in people's way when I try to do this. People pass on the left here. I assume that has something to do with driving on

The play's the thing

(Photos from the west coast trip are in posts "Cliffs of Moher" going back to "Get the Frack out of Ireland.") Last weekend we went to see Punk Rock at The Lyric in Belfast. It was an intense drama about teenagers cramming for their A levels

Tuesday trifecta

(Photos from our recent west coast trip are in posts beginning "Cliffs of Moher" and ending "Get the Frack out of Ireland.") Three big things were set in motion today. They may not all reach their destination, but here's hoping they do. 1. I

South vs. North

Before the west coast trip becomes a distant memory, I want to get down my thoughts on how the south and north are different. It used to be the south appeared distinctly more impoverished than the north. In the 1970s, I would describe the north as a gritty industrial place

Whitman and Williams

(Photos from our recent west coast trip are in posts beginning "Cliffs of Moher" and ending "Get the Frack out of Ireland.") I have been active in Unitarian Universalist churches since I discovered them in 1985. The Northern Ireland equivalent of a UU church is the

Holy ground

(Photos from our recent west coast trip are in posts beginning "Cliffs of Moher" and ending "Get the Frack out of Ireland.") So we are staying in Holywood, home of Rory McIlroy. I've run past the Holywood Golf Course twice now. It's

Reading list

Since leaving Vanguard at the end of March, I have read nine books, most of them more than 600 pages each. I'm a slow reader, so this is a big deal for me. The last one was Cutting for Stone, recommended by my friend Judy Wilson. It was

Back in the saddle

I went to see a house today. I tried not to think about real estate while we were on vacation. I really like today's house. It's further from downtown than the houses we've been looking at, but it's in a quieter part

Settling in

After a week on the road, it's been good to settle into someplace where we will stay more than one night. We are right on the esplanade--the more urban version of the coastal path we enjoyed in Crawfordsburn. I'm a bit burnt out from uploading photos

Obama Plaza

Today we drove east to Ennis, then south to Limerick, then to Dublin, then north to Belfast. On the way, we just had to stop at Barack Obama Plaza in Moneygall. WTF? The first couple visited the president's mother's ancestral home in 2011 and what better

Cliffs of Moher

The last time I saw the cliffs, I was 18 and hitching around Ireland. I had lucked into a ride with a German family in a VW van. My plan was to take the ferry out to the Aran Islands after seeing the cliffs. However, it was pouring rain and

Hanging with the Coole people

We cycled the long curving promenade that surrounds Salt Hill and Galway Bay, visiting a famine memorial that pays tribute to the captains and crew that delivered Ireland's emigrants safely to America, Australia, and other ports. It listed a sampling of 100 ships that left from Galway in

Wild Atlantic Way

The Irish Tourist Board has cleverly rebranded the west coast of Ireland as the Wild Atlantic Way and helpfully posted signs with two blue W's--which look like a long ocean wave--all along the route. You don't need a map to do this trip, which makes it