Burns Baby Burns

Freed from my academic duties, I was able to focus on the house today. David and I visited a warehouse in Coleraine, where we selected a granite countertop. We looked at lights at three stores and bought six lights. Two to go. We also looked at flooring options at B&Q, the equivalent of HomeDepot. We had hoped to keep the original wood floor in the living room, but Ian has strongly recommended we pull it up and put down a synthetic floor. The ground floor sits on joists that are two feet above dirt, and the skirt around the floor is vented. He said it will be cold in the winter if we don't remove the wood boards and put down a solid floor with insulation.

After we went home for a breather, we headed back into the city for a Burns dinner. Dinners are held to celebrate the life of poet Robert Burns, and our church held quite a feast. We had a vegetarian version of haggis and I had bread and hummus instead of salmon. The great part was the entertainment--bag pipers, singers, readers of poetry, and mace twirlers. A mace is a long, ornate staff that can be twirled overhead and tossed to one's partner, if one is so inclined. My favorite was the guy who read Burns' poetry in the Scots dialect. He read Tam o'Shanter and another long poem. I couldn't follow everything, but he was very expressive and animated and it was great to hear the poem read as intended.
1-24