Love and the stock market I had a wonderful dinner Saturday night with a group of women friends from my church. Every one of their lives has not gone according to plan. Either through divorce or death, they are not enjoying the golden years of travel and adventure with their spouses as they had planned.
Another gift from running I'm back in the U.S., staying with my friend, Judy, at her lovely Chesterbrook townhouse. I ran this morning for a half hour on a paved path that lead through woods, along, and across a river. It was lovely. Today's realization is that the many
White glove inspection Today (Thursday) I spent an hour and a half going through the Queens Parade house with Luane, the woman from whom David rented our temporary quarters. She has been rehabbing and selling or renting properties for years, including a Victorian townhouse near ours. The verdict? Two thumbs up. The house
Whip it! One of the great things about life is how it can serve up the most exquisite joys in totally unexpected ways. The joy of the experience is compounded by the way it rounds a corner and whacks you up side the head. In a good way. This morning I was
Piketty's conclusion I want to finish my Piketty highlights so they are in proximity to each other. How wars start "If you have free trade and free circulation of capital and people but destroy the social state and all forms of progressive taxation, the temptations of defensive nationalism and identity politics
Beating the drum for Bangor One of the reasons we chose a townhouse on the marina in Bangor is it suits our lifestyle to a T. T. Bangor is a Fairtrade Town [http://www.fairtradebangor.co.uk/about.html]. Here's the mission statement: "Bangor Fair-Trade exists at a local level to support
Homeless no more Today I bid on a beautiful Victorian townhouse on the marina in Bangor. The owners accepted the bid, I hired an attorney and arranged an inspection for Thursday. A very productive morning. I spent the afternoon reviewing websites about the visa application process. It's pretty depressing. So many
Piketty on taxes Piketty examines the role of the state in the concentration of wealth because it is much greater than citizens realize. The eye-popping salaries of the super managers came about after the top marginal tax rate [http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/Labortaxes/taxableincome/taxableincome_attach.pdf] fell from the 70%
Piketty, abridged I recently finished a book on capitalism by French economist Thomas Piketty. It's attracting a lot of buzz because he has looked at more series of data over longer periods in more countries than anyone before him to reveal the underlying machinery of capitalism. In very very short
Day at the Museum I spent today at the Ulster Museum [http://www.nmni.com/um] with 16 primary school children (ages 10-11) and a high school friend, Cathy Arthur, who is the primary school principal. The kids were on a day trip from Derry, where I lived as a teenager. Cathy's
Not having fun anymore I've looked at 20 or 21 houses now (six today) and it isn't fun anymore. We bid on one when we got back from Portugal, 10% less than asking price, and the bid was rejected. I thought we would then be clear to bid on choice
Beefcake Last weekend crowds turned out to see beefcake on bikes. This week, it's the real thing. The Balmoral Show is an agricultural event drawing more than 10,000 people. I volunteered there today and I'm exhausted. I hope to never say again: "Would you like
Pinks and blues Well it's blue bell festival time. This is the English blue bell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) not the American bluebell (Mertensia virginica), which is an unwelcome invasive here. While we were in Portugal, the glen came to life as all the trees leafed out. Descending from Crawfordsburn down to the
House hunting headaches We made an offer last week on a house that a gay couple has owned for 20 years. It is in impeccable condition and would need no additional work. The price was very high for the neighborhood. We offered what we thought was fair (and affordable to us), and this
We found a house! Check out Mount Stewart [http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/mount-stewart/]: One hundred and fifty-two rooms of 18th Century neoclassical splendor. Which means we'll need a big staff. Check out the switchboard: The top boards list all the bedrooms, each named for a different European city, the bottom board
Another lighthouse + Giro Saturday we went to Whitehead, which is on the opposite coast from North Down, where we live. It looks like this: We hiked up a hill that took us to a lighthouse that once guided the ships coming and going through Belfast Lough: And then it was off to the
Giro! Giro! Giro! I think I mentioned Belfast has gone Giro mad. The lead rider gets to wear the Maglia Rosa-the pink jersey. So all of Belfast is decked out in sympathetic shades of pink. We went to city hall on Friday to see the teams cross the finish line after the first
Big Al I went into the equivalent of a Dollar Store yesterday in Bangor. A man in his 40s wearing an Eagles pullover was stocking the shelves. I told him I lived near Philly for 15 years and asked about his attire. He said that Channel 4 began showing American football in
A feast of festivals I've been so busy house hunting and gyming since I've been here that I've ignored the growing stack of colorful booklets and brochures promoting "What's On." Monday I sat down and read through the Festival of Fools brochure (comedy festival)
Bernard MacLaverty The first book I read when I got here was Ireland in Mind, a collection of essays and short stories either by writers who visited Ireland or by Irish ex-pats. Most are household names (Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Frank McCourt). Of the 32 featured, I circled four that spoke to
May Day! We live near Holywood, home to Rory McIlroy and to Ireland's only surviving maypole. From Wikipedia: "According to local folklore it dates from 1700, when a Dutch ship is said to have run aground on the shore nearby, and the crew erected the broken mast to show
Giro-mania Giro d'Italia is the lesser-known cousin of the Tour de France. Both have pre-race trials in other countries, I assume to generate interest in the big event. Giro is having its Big Start [http://www.girostart2014.com/] in Belfast this year. If you scroll through the photos on
Back to Belfast When I was a teenager, I spent summers in the U.S., mostly at the beach visiting my grandparents in New Jersey and Florida. When I flew back to Belfast every August, it was invariably rainy and gray. But the weather was fine when we arrived Saturday, easing my fears
Sagres: More than a beer When you send David grocery shopping, this is what you get: I'm not complaining, mind you. Note the Sagres beer on the left. It's the most common beer in Portugal and shares its name with a town on the southwest tip of the Algarve. If you
Down day We walked a lot every day so Thursday we decided was a good lounge-by-the-pool day. Here's a photo of David chillin and of one of the gardens at the villa. Most of our fellow guests at the villa were French or German. On the kayak trip, everyone was