We had roughly 30 to 40 people over last night for the Midtown Christmas party. We’ve never hosted before, and it was a lot of fun. It was quite a lot of work in preparation. Mostly because our backyard was not finished and we wanted that finished before the event.
The day after I return from ireland, Noah traveled down from Seattle to spend a few days with us. I haven’t seen him since Abraham’s wedding when he visited with us down in Mexico for a week.
It was great to spend time with him although he did spend most of his time with friends that he has here in town. Given how busy I’ve been that worked out really well.
Immediately following a nice Thanksgiving meal at Matt and Dana’s house, I left for some solo camping with Berlin for a few days down in elgin.
It was a refreshing break which is what I was hoping for. I slept 12 hours the first night and a few hours later took a three and a half hour nap. So glorious.
Since Yun is not a huge fan of camping, this has turned into a solo trip which I hope to do with much more regularity.
I went skeet shooting with Colin and Waleed last Sunday. It was a lot of fun but after about 60 shells my shoulder was black and blue. This would be a fun hobby going forward once I have some spare time in life..
We returned home from Ireland last Thursday and I’m still transitioning to our time zone. It didn’t help that we had a time change that doesn’t apply to Arizona. Noah arrived Friday afternoon to stay with us until Tuesday of next week.
Ireland was a great trip. It’s unfortunate that Charles had serious migraines that led to sickness for most of the trip. Even still, we had a lot of fun. For me the highlight was visiting the coast and exploring the beaches there. I would definitely go back to that.
The journey back was long and felt much longer than the journey out. We had more layovers coming home than we did going on so that obviously didn’t help I do get a lot of work done on the flights and that brings me a lot of peace as I transition back into total madness with my work schedule. I’d go back but probably not anytime too soon.
We stopped at some fairly random places, the above photo being one of them. It’s a long pedestrian tunnel that serves what purpose i’m not sure. But we walk through it and enjoy our walk. For the most part we had wonderful weather.
We toured three different breweries and the Tealing distillery. That was all so much fun. We had some spectacular whiskey on this trip and brought some home as well.
Matt did a phenomenal job driving this trip. We rented a 5 speed manual transmission that is on the wrong side of the car and where you drive on the wrong side of the road. I was so very grateful to have no part of that.
Charles, Matt, and I traveled to Dublin for a guys’ week. The journey was a long one as we had a re-route and had to go through LA first before heading on to JFK and then on to Dublin. The Chase lounge in JFK was phenomenal.
Our seats on the plane were awful. I immediately changed that for our return flight though.
I slept surprisingly well on the plane – those guys not so much, so they were mostly dead when we arrived on Friday (11/1/2024). We went for some pub eats and refreshments, and then returned for a nap (I made some book recordings for a bit before crashing). We later toured around familiar sites and sounds. The pubs and music are much fun.
It has been over 30 years since I last stepped foot on Mayn Island. But really it’s been closer to 40 years since I spent any considerable amount of time on the island. However a month or so ago we did a little reunion with Cousins and sister and partners and stayed on the island for a few days. It was a memorable experience to be sure. What’s odd is how distorted things get in the memory and I was surprised to find that much of my recollection was off as it related to where things were located et cetera.
We stayed at the Mayn Inn which is the hotel right down the street from where my grandparents used to live. It was burnt down when I was younger and therefore not in operation. Not long ago had been restored and is now fully functional. And I might not ridiculously overpriced.
I really like Donna and Allison’s partners. Donna is married to Paul and Allison is with Matt. Both are very different and a lot of fun to hang out with.
Yun was on the news recently being interviewed. We did a spectacular job and we were all very proud.
Last weekend was our second attempt to use the camper this year. Our third attempt in total. Fortunately the weather dipped into the low 40s overnight and was 70s during the day. About the best we could ask for. We still have a hard time getting there early on Friday night. Still, we found a spectacular place and got set up pretty quickly.
I bought a little ramp for my mini bike so loading into the back of the truck is so much easier. The campers mostly packed up now so we only have to bring this stuff we’re going to use like food and clothes. So the setup and takedown goes much quicker now. On this trip we had all of the appliances working and running water certainly makes a nice difference. The electrical is great because we upgraded the inverter and now seems we have plenty of electricity. I did order some ryobi battery Chargers so I can use my ryobi batteries to charge laptops and phones. I brought three laptops in hopes that I would have plenty of battery life along with 5 small battery Chargers, but still it was insufficient. I did get a lot of work done over the weekend which was always a bonus.
I’m hoping to go back sooner than later and maximizing the use of the camper this year. We were waiting to go to this weekend so unfortunately that’s not going to happen and then I leave for Dublin on Thursday with the guys. Maybe when we get back.
I love the isolation. We have thousands of acres of BLM land for our own use. This is a plus with the dogs.
