new bed

midnight turned three sometime in the last week or so - hard to say the exact date since we didn't get her until september 2005 - we say her birthday is the 18th though. we've never done anything to 'celebrate' it since she's a dog and doesn't know it from any other day, but this year we bought her a new doggie bed. she ate the one we brought over with us from seattle. by ate i mean destroyed it by tearing it apart with her teeth, i'm not sure she actually ingested any of it, but saying she ate it sounds better ;)

dublin

a few months ago i requested to have this past friday off from work. andy and i hadn't decided at that point where we were going to go for our july holiday, but knew this would be a good weekend based on other social obligations we already had. we started thinking about amsterdam, dublin, somewhere is scotland, etc. looking for somewhere that would be a quick flight. then we expanded our possible area to poland, northern spain, etc. through a series of events we decided on cornwall, an area of the south-western part of england. i know, going somewhere in england seems crazy! so crazy that through another series of events, after booking tickets, looking up hotel/restaurants to book at etc, we went to dublin!


i'm pretty confident in saying that we made the right choice. our friend clay from college lives there and was kind enough to put us up for 2 nights with only a week or so of notice. hopefully he'll have a chance to come visit us so we can return the hospitality.

view of dublin from the guinness bar

we left friday morning, slightly delayed because the radar was out at the dublin airport - not exactly sure how that happens or how it goes on for 5 days! we ended up arriving only about an hour late, made our way to clay's place and filled each other in on what's been going on the last few years - andy and i hadn't seen him since our wedding (almost 6 years ago). after a bit of relaxing we made our way to the guinness building, they teach you all about the brewing process and part of your entrance fee is a 'free' pint of guinness in a bar at the top of the building with 360 degree views of dublin.

howth shore

afterwards we wandered around the city to a pub, then another pub, found an italian place for dinner then one more stop before grabbing a taxi home.

temple bar

saturday we took the train to howth, a trip recommended to me by my irish co-worker. it was a quick journey right outside of the city. a really lovely little town, we had lunch and wandered around trying to get to the top of the hill. because of the off and on rain we never made it, turned back after walking for what felt like hours (probably 30 minutes or something more in that ball park!) after making our way back into dublin we met up with some of clay's friends for dinner and drinks, and drinks after dinner.


sunday was pretty relaxing, mostly just brunch and a bit more walking around the city with our tour guide.

yes, andy is drinking a coors light - in dublin of all places!

great weekend, probably a little too boozy, but it was dublin after all...

Happy 4th of July!

I hope that everyone has a great day today and an amazing long weekend. If you're reading this know that you're in our thoughts today. And when I say that, I mean mostly in a bad way since we've both been working all day today! But the weekend is here, the sun is shining, and we'll be tipping back a glass (or two) for American Independence.

not the best weather...

to knit, but what the heck! a month or so ago i was taught to knit and i just finished my first scarf. i made it for andy, and he graciously modeled it for me last night, even though it was about 80 degrees outside (and inside for that matter).