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
Land of poets It isn't hard to see why Ireland produced so many great artists. It is a land of unspeakable beauty--and so the challenge of finding words to capture it is all the more consuming. I won't even try, hence the many photos in this post. We started
Under Ben Bulben We started the day with a bike ride up onto the ridge above Cromleagh Lodge, taking in sights you miss while driving. I didn't bring a camera, so I can't share these sights, however I recall one observation (I'm writing a week later due
Get the Frack out of Ireland We finished cleaning the townhouse (a tough job when two cats and a dog live there and the landlady has not been told of said dog and cats by the property manager--something I didn't know) then hit the road, driving west from Belfast to Enniskillen, the last large
Run around We leave tomorrow on vacay so today was a long list of errands and cleaning the townhouse. We also looked a second time at two of the townhouses in Belfast. One is being bid on by a guy who just sold his house in London. Meaning we will never outbid
Middle age musings I think about white water kayaking whenever I hear roaring water, as I did in the glen yesterday. The noise gives me a heightened level of anxiety that does not dissipate until quiet is restored. I kayaked for a while in my mid-40s but never mastered the combat roll (a
Fred, Joe, and Nolan If we walk Maysie after 7:30 a.m., we will encounter Fred, Joe, Nolan, and Finn, Nolan's aging black lab. Joe and Nolan carry dog treats (or "bickies" as Joe calls them--short for biscuits), so Maysie will sprint toward them as soon as they are
Fast food Tesco is the U.K. version of Target--except there's lots of photos of the Ulster farmers who raise the beef and veg Tesco sells. So a much better vibe. And they sell Indian dinner in a box. What is not to love about that?
Bidding wars I went into Belfast Friday to have a second look at a property we put a bid on. We are in a bidding war and David thought it was worth having a second look before raising our offer. Much to my surprise, I did not like it on second viewing.
Comments A long time ago I mentioned that David was looking into adding some code so that readers could leave comments on the blog. He created his own blog to do it and he found a few problems. Like you have to go through a weird registration process, which I wasn&
Willpower I don't consider myself a particularly avid shopper, but I think having 99.9% of my possessions in storage in Delaware is making me covetous of stuff. That and my fervent desire to buy a house and settle in with the right sort of decor. What else could