Top 'O The Mornin' To Ya

Well, this weekend was a bit interesting. Liz's sister, Sarah, came down on Friday night from Mankato and spent the night at our place. Saturday morning, we took off bright and early for Noah's Ark and Liz's grandpa's 80th birthday party.

It was in the mid 50's when we left and it rained just about all the way there. Needless to say, the weather was not conducive to water rides. We braved out a few of them, but there wasn't much action on the water slides. On the good side, though, the lines were short. :-)

The party was fun - it was nice to see a lot of Liz's family again. We spent the night at a hotel in the Dells and, by the next morning, we were back on the road and headed back to Rochester.

We didn't do much on Sunday night - just chilled out at the McGlone household. I think Nate and I played some Unreal Tournament online for a while.

I played some basketball on Monday after work. We didn't have many people show, but there was enough for some 2 on 2 ball, so we still had fun. After that, Liz and I sat around at home looking for places to stay in Ireland. It's hard to believe our trip is less than a month away now. It seems to be coming up fast.

Anyway, we came up with a bunch of places we'd be interested in staying and I sent out a gob of e-mails to these places on Monday night to see if they had rooms available. So, over the last few days, I've been sending and receiving gobs of e-mails from Ireland and, each morning, I get on the phone and make a few phone calls over there to book rooms.

So far, we have 4 places booked (out of 6 cities). We have places to stay in Kilkenny, Ennis, Belfast, and Dublin. We still need to find places to stay in Cork and Galway. Personally, I'm really looking forward to getting to the place we're staying at in Kilkenny. The woman I spoke to (and probably the owner) is a woman named Yvonne (a good Irish name if ever I've heard one) and she seems awfully nice. I think I'm going to enjoy meeting her.

Anyway, if you're interested, here are some of the places we'll be staying:

Kilkenny - Butler Court
Ennis - Newpark House
Belfast - The Old Inn
Dublin - George Frederic Handel Hotel

They look like nice places to stay. Hopefully, they'll turn out well.

Anyway, Liz is going to be awfully busy for the next month or so. She just got word this morning that she needs to fly down to Austin, Texas this weekend. She'll be spending a week down there at the IBM lab. Feel free to send me food. ;-)

When she gets back, we'll have about a week to get ready for our trip to Ireland and then we're off for a couple more weeks.

As soon as we return from Ireland, Liz will be hopping on yet another plane and flying out to New York for work. She needs to give a presentation to a bunch of folks out there about the work she's been doing.

When all is said and done, I'm sure we'll just be happy to be home together again.

I suppose that's about all for me. Take it easy, folks.