Monday, August 29

Well, our household shipment arrived on Saturday. Imagine cramming the contents of a 3/2 house with garage into a 2/1 apartment with a small kitchen and what used to be a coal storage room for a garage. That's our life now. The furniture we bought over the years is oversized for this place and the boxes are creating a maze to navigate every morning. If the sparseness seemed improvrished before (I had saved a couple of boxes from my first shipment to use as "furniture" and we had a couple of lawn chairs), it now seems like a warehouse with floor to ceiling content.

The motherboard on my desktop blew, and the power supply on my laptop now pulses like a heart monitor. That partially explains the fact that I haven't posted in weeks. It at least explains why my camera's memory is still full. I blame the low quality of power here. Am researching a UPS and/or power scrubber.

Before our stuff arrived, Sierra had been really looking forward to getting started with her sewing projects. He has been dreaming up fashions for weeks, but lately her drawing has shifted to cartoons and portraits. Her style has taken on a very mature edge to it. She's experimenting with almost impressionistic exaggerations of features. I'll try to scan one and add it here.

This weekend was Dun Laoghaire's Festival of World Cultures We went to the crafts show and the outdoor concert of Ojo de Brujo. Carol was overwhelmed by the variety of nationalities here. On Sunday, Sierra got her face painted at People's Park.



Today was Sierra's first day at school - Domican Convent Primary School She had a great day and is really looking forward to the school year. She said she was the only non-Irish kid in her class.

Because her school is a Catholic school, she has to get baptised soon. We had to schedule an appointment to meet with Father Mangan, who is also the priest and on the board of directors of the school.

The night we visited him, he kept offering to refill our (his and my) glasses with brandy. In the end, I got drunk drinking brandy on a week night with the Irish priest who's going to baptise my daughter. For the record, Dan, it was Hennessey, because he had just come back from France. And for the record, I'll take Irish Catholic brandy-drinking priests over your hatred spewing Kool-Aid drinking Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News any day.