Greetings,

Well, we are on the upswing as far as daylight goes, finally.  It is certainly worse than Seattle, but non horribly so.  And now, at the end of the day, (as locals are so fond of saying) the end of the day will be coming later.  Yippee!!!

OK, before I embark on the travelogue, it is time for a bit of political and social commentary, regarding events on your side of the pond.

Firstly, regarding a certain baseball player.  On the Mariner website on the day of the "announcement", the management reported their comments regarding Alex's signing with Texas.  I was disgusted with what they had to say, and made a mental note that I would comment on it in this, my weekly column.  I went back the next day to get the Mariner's exact quotation, but lo and behold, it was gone, and they again were posting recipes for Arthur Rhodes' Butter Nut Crunch Cookies.  So from memory, "…We are sorry about the decision Alex made.  After our December 7 meeting with Alex, we thought things were going well…"  The man has Scott Boras for an agent.  The man signs the biggest contract in sports history with a rival team, in your own division no less, and YOU THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING WELL??????!!!!!!

Last week the country of Ireland celebrated in the third, and possibly final, Bill Clinton love fest.  We thought the country was mad for Sonia during the Olympics, but last week, she had nothing on Bill.  Hours and hours and hours of coverage devoted to Bill.  All day radio talk about Bill.  Column inch after column inch of newsprint about Bill.  And among all that I only ran across one column that was less than favorable.  I think the people of Ireland eagerly await the election of She Who Wears the Black Pantsuit to the US Presidency, so Bill can once again have some influence in these parts.  Oh yeah, congratulations George.  Glad the good ol' boy network did it's job for you.  Democracy in action.  Not.  {The Irish reaction to the process that lead to Shrub's "election" was one of bemused tolerance.  They understand that some things are not meant to be understood.}

Enough of the commentary.  We had a nice week last week, and things are busy this week, which is why it's taken me so long to get this letter out.  I finally finished my sheep painting.  And I am quite pleased, if I do say so myself.  I look forward to painting some Washington scenery when I return.  I'm just delighted to have had the opportunity to learn a new skill.

Tuesday we had a great IWO lunch for someone who has moved back to England.  Even at that lunch I got some marvelous recommendations of places to see when we go to England.  I can't wait.  Later in the week IWO also had a Christmas cookie exchange.   Among others we had Swiss and Canadian cookies.  And the Roddy family made sure none of the cookies had the remotest chance of getting stale.

This last weekend was a 2-castle weekend.  It is official.  Garth is ancient.  He turned 11 on Sunday, so Saturday night we went to a medieval banquet to celebrate.  Bunratty  Castle holds banquets in the great hall.  You enter a reception room, drink a little mulled wine, listen to the world famous Bunratty Singers, hear the harp and violin.  They describe a bit about what life was like when the castle was in its heyday.  "The earl of the castle is still out hunting the wild boar," we are told.  Shortly the singers find a member of the group to be the Earl.  While, the men are invited downstairs for the banquet the women are directed to a chamber up above for 3 hours of needlework.  "Wait!" says the Earl.  "The women can join us."  Big cheer!  So it's downstairs for the entire group for a traditional meal.

Our first remove was a lovely vegetable soup and bread.  However, in the Earl's heyday there was little use of cutlery so you drink your soup from the bowl.  Next remove was lovely pork ribs (they certainly got the Earl's lovely boar butchered quickly, didn't they?) with fingers and daggers for utensils.  Our next remove was chicken and potatoes and carrots, again with the fingers and daggers.  All washed down, of course, with copious quantities of mead and wine.   Our last remove was a sponge cake dipped in sweet wine with sweetened cream and fruits of the forest.  We did get a spoon for the last, so our host the generous Earl was not faced with a crowd of guests licking sticky cream off their fingers.  Finally, we were offered a bit of snuff.  All the rage these days, you know.  Quite fashionable.  Mead, snuff, we're seeing all of this country!

The second installment of the 2-castle weekend was a bit closer to home.  Limerick is home to King John's Castle (for all you Disney's Robin Hood fans, it’s the "good for nothing John.").  We had yet to see it, partly because it's so close we can go anytime, partly also because there is not much left of the original castle.  Still Santa was visiting the castle this weekend, so we did too.  The kids were able to make their last minute requests to the big guy (by the way, check out our web-site, we've got a link to a cool Santa e-mail service) and we got to roam around the towers a bit.  It was a good way to get to see the castle.

We got our Christmas tree on Saturday.  My friend Cathy called and said she found tree stands at a tree lot downtown, so she picked up one for us.  It is 2 metal rings connected in sort of a cone arrangement.  No water reservoir, but simple enough to slip a dish underneath.  However, unlike the stands we are used to with 3 screws to hold the tree, set in sort of a Mercedes-Benz logo arrangement, this only has one screw, so when you get your tree into the stand, it is no longer quite centered in the stand and has a serious tendency to tip.  I did eventually find wire, not quite as thick as I needed to make ornaments, but it did serve to attach the tree to an anchor on the baseboard.

{As our contribution, Emm and I took it upon ourselves to go in search of little bits of wood.  These we planned to use to fill in the gap between the base of the tree trunk and the screw and ring arrangement.  At home this would mean a trip to the basement.   Here it means a trip to the nearest construction site.  They are everywhere around the country as the Irish economy is in running at about 5000 rpm, very near the redline….   We made our way to a good, big and muddy one.  We found all of the pieces we needed in about five minutes but stayed on to tromp around a bit.  There's something about a construction site.  The half-finished house, open to your inspection, the scads of cool discarded stuff, boxes, wire, pipe, tile, and the huge hills of mud!   Six months ago it was cow pasture and now it's scraped up into mounds ten feet tall, tracked with tractor tracks, and filled with small lakes and ponds of muddy water.  There are plenty of sticks for boats and rocks are everywhere for the bombardment that must follow the launching.  We got very muddy!

Following this, we got back into the car and drove off into the unknown.  This is pretty easy to do in Ireland, for us at least.  There are plenty of small roads that go off into the hinterlands along winding routes that were surely established by shaggy cattle long ago.  The locals all know these roads from front to back but for us they are still a mystery.  We got onto one of these and just drove for a while.  Most of these roads are very small, not much more than a single lane really and so you go pretty slowly around the corners.  As we made our way through one of these we came upon a pheasant!  Emm, of course, was out of the car in a hurry and set off over the bank and across the field before I had to call her back.  We set off again and drove off in the general direction of Lough Gur, a lake with many neolithic improvements.  We never quite found it but ended up instead in Hospital.  That's a village.  Just outside Hospital, in the waiting room I guess, there is the obligatory ancient Irish church / ruins with graveyard.  We explored for a bit and then headed back to the homestead where we made good use of the bits of wood we had collected.  The tree is now secure.}

As far as getting a tree, we decided to go with the GAA benefit trees at the Monaleen Spar Store, much as we delighted in the charming demeanor of the urchin tree sellers on the Dublin Road.  We got a lovely Noble Fir.  But we had little way to get it home in the car, and hoped to tie it to the roof.  When we asked for a bit of string or some such to tie it to the top, our man looked at us rather quizzically.  "Most people just put it in the boot," he said.  However, with one look at our boot, it was clear no tree was going to fit in the Punto.  So he managed to dig up a length of rope, but asked us to return it.  As the store is only about 3/4 of a mile from our house it was no great hardship, but I was glad we had not driven the 45 miles or so that we are used to driving in Seattle to get a tree!  I miss our ornaments but we have been quite creative with popcorn and construction paper and salt dough and it is a festive centerpiece for our holiday celebration.

It's now Thursday, and Christmas is rapidly approaching.  Grace and Josh, friends from Seattle, arrived in Limerick Tuesday evening for a three day visit.  Our kids skipped school yesterday and we took our company out to see some local sights - Cahir Castle and the Rock of Cashel.  It was a nice day.  Grace and Josh went to Blarney today and will leave in the morning.  I'll be able to throw the sheets in the wash and head off to the airport to get Tori and Ben and Joe who will be with us through New Year's day.  It will be fun to share an Irish Christmas.

I'm feeling a bit like Cinderella at 11:30 these days.  Today was my last day working in the classroom, as my teacher will have 2 helpers for the few weeks we will be here after Christmas  break.  It's getting hard to say goodbye.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.  I hope the New Year brings peace to all in our two homelands.

Slan,

Mary and Mark