A cúpla things

Last Friday we went to a concert at St. Peter's Church of Ireland. Swedish soprano Miah Persson was singing Mozart, Schubert and Haydn. She was accompanied by British classical pianist Joseph Middleton. It was a nice evening out, booked at the last minute. Several days earlier, it was our seventh wedding anniversary, apparently called the wool anniversary. Wool ... I should knit something nice this autumn ;)

From a cúpla things that are irritating or just plain weird:

Blogspot really pisses me off. For several days now my blog reading list (on the left) hasn't been updating, and apparently the problem is somewhere in the system, which means there's nothing I can do about it. As Google employees get on with fixing more profitable stuff, they seem to have little time for people who can still read and write longer texts. Very frustrating.

Another thing is flight ticket prices. I finally booked a Ryanair flight to Warsaw, it was ridiculously overpriced, but I wanted to get rid of the everyday worry about the trip I have planned (I bought a return ticket from Wrocław a while ago). In the second half of October we'll visit my husband's siblings and then I'll travel on my own to a different part of the country to stay with my parents for several days (Fred has to go back home to work). Our lovely neighbour has already promised to take care of our cats. I love autumn and I can’t wait for the perks of being an only child again :]

In the meantime the house next to us stays empty. Most of the maintenance work in the area has been finished, but the person who was interested in moving in still hasn’t done so. There was already some conflict between the would-be neighbour and the neighbour on the other side of the empty house. Of course, I’d be afraid to move in myself if there were some weird crowd around, but in this case the whole situation is mostly in people’s heads. Very interesting.

Update

How was it possible I didn't post anything throughout the entire months of May and June? Let me catch up on a few things. My last post in April finished with a dramatic cliffhanger. It was about Old Anna, our neighbour. She had been away for so long that we almost forgot about her. And then came the message about her departure from this world. We visited her grave some time later, a very picturesque graveyard with a view. 

On 14/04 died Frania, another of my parents' cats. Young, black, lovely. Fuck you, feline leukemia! And one more death in the middle of June -- stinky Max is no more :(

Both our girls were spayed at the end of April. It was a stressful time, but we got through it. By now the bald patches on their sides have almost disappeared.

One weekend in May we headed up to Dublin for Melissa Hamilton’s Ballet Star Gala at the Bord Gáis Theatre. It was a very nice experience, we also made good use of our time before the concert -- we stopped in at Flower & Bean on Cork St.

In the meantime we bought tickets to spend some time in July at my family home. We also bought a new fridge -- tiny in comparison with the trendy ones, a little black midget. We'd love to have a fridge without a freezer but it's not so easy to find a suitable one. It was necessary to buy it now, as during our holidays we'll have a pet sitter looking after the house.

Since the last post, I've finished reading ca. fifteen books, one of the best of them was Zyta Rudzka's Krótka wymiana ognia. So far only one book by Rudzka has been translated into English, Dr Josef's Little Beauty (I have it as an audiobook and plan to listen to it after our holidays).

June was taken over by builders. Several contractors are working on our little house. The heating system was modernized (we use a heat pump now), the windows and front door were replaced and they are still working on the insulation. Most of the time it's been a nightmare, they have already destroyed parts of our garden, and some eejits cut down the lavender that was growing close to the walls (I complained officially).

Anything else? ... Stay tuned ...

A windy Wednesday

For the past week or so, the days have seemed to repeat themselves: we work, we dine, we walk our cats. Around the weekend, the weather improved a little, though not by much; it was cold today. At night, when I have my socks on and can cuddle up against my husband’s warm back, I feel rich and successful.

It was a good day.

And then someone dies.

Grand in small ways

Not everything goes the way I’d love it to go. This morning, I helped my husband deal with Social Welfare. Seems that because of my promotion, we’re too wealthy now by some standard, and Fred’s having issues with his DA.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that the little one, the kitten booked by someone else on Sunday, is gone for good. I also reckon the one I asked about yesterday, an eight-month-old, has been taken too. The people on the other end of social media are acting like I never messaged them. Ah well. Feck them.

We're trying to shake off some anxiety. Yesterday, instead of heading straight home after my work, we went to Dún Dealgan, first for lunch in Lisdoo (nice, not many people around at that hour, just perfect), then we visited our friends, the Condrads, and had a chat while sipping teas and basking in the sun in their back garden. This evening we strolled down to the beach and back.

Our neighbour, Old Anna, is back from wherever she’d been -- most likely hospital or a rehab centre, I don’t quite remember. Good. We’d been thinking of her and had started to suspect she might not be coming back at all.

Left the work, found a bone

Discovered LibreOffice and played with it for a while (they use Liberation Serif as the default font, interesting stuff). Other than that, not the most productive day. Figured I'd leave the assessments for tomorrow or maybe until the last student gets her work in. Very good decision, gave me loads of time for reading ;)

Fred collected me just after three and we headed to Dún Dealgan, for a coffee and pancakes, what a surprise ;) We also took a quick spin out to Na Creagacha Dubha, just for a short walk along the promenade with the sundial. On the beach we found this:

A cuttlefish bone.

In the afternoon, I met two new cats in the neighbourhood, Ukrainian asylants, staying at Anne’s while they wait for their parents to find a new, cat-friendly place to buy. 

Out in the garden, Fred spotted a piece of broken, kind of bluish eggshell, most likely from starlings. We have young ones!

Some good news

Spent Thursday and this morning at work. I find Thursday shifts mentally much gratifying than my hours on Mondays. It seems I prefer working with men rather than women, men don't try so hard to prove they are indispensable (even if it means they fool themselves they are, doesn't matter, their confidence makes my life easier). Anyway, enough of that for a week!

Yesterday Anne surprised us with a lovely gift for minding her cat over the past three weeks – a voucher to our favourite Japanese restaurant in Dún Dealgan. It’s incredibly generous of her, although I can’t help but feel it’s a bit excessive. Well, won't argue, too late for that, today after my work we went with Fred to Atami in Dún Dealgan, and we savoured sushi for just €29. Money well spent, and we actually used only half of the voucher. After lunch we walked to 3rd Place for a coffee and pancakes.

Another good news is our independent councillor has announced we can expect a new speed ramp to be installed on the road where our Richard was killed over a year ago. The best of cats. We still miss him a lot.

I can't write anything definite about the weather, as it changes every few hours. After some improvements yesterday, the evening took a turn for the worse, leaving me feeling cold and shaky. This morning was windy and wet, early afternoon rainy, but we returned home following a lovely rainbow.

Below: Richard – the best of cats, Fred's unorthodox approach to sushi, and my pancakes in our favourite coffee shop.

Nice affairs

Finally, after years of contemplating this move, I joined the local library in Droichead Átha. It's a temporary online account, but I plan to validate my membership by visiting the premises in person. In the meantime, I already borrowed one audiobook, Foster by Claire Keegan. How come it took me so long to do the right thing? :E

There were more uplifting events in the last few days. Anne, our neighbour, was so generous to give us a present, opening night tickets for Der fliegende Holländer. Wagner, of course; and it's not like he's my favourite composer, but live music is a different level of fun. 

Another enjoyable cirmustance was an unexpected support from one of my managers. It seems like he really wants me to succeed in the job interview that would give me a serious promotion. I'm sceptical, doubt if the amount of potential new duties is something I will be comfortable with, but decided to follow this route and check where it will lead me. 

Well ... and today, Fred and I, we found a new lovely gastro spot, it's called Duende. They serve very nice steaks there. The whole adventure of looking for a new place to eat out was related with our search for a new office chair for Fred. The old one (which is actually not so old), started to rock back and forth rather dangerously. Now we have two almost identical office chairs in our kitchen, mine is black, Fred's is brown.

Below: spectacular Duende experience.