No room

This is how the cats think the bed should be every night: full of them with just a bit of room for me. Sorry, Kent, no room for you.

Yes, of course there's room for Kent. He just shoves them out of the way and they huff off for a bit before they come back and try their land grabbing ways again. 

Snippets from Ireland

Our cabbie from the airport pretty much took us on the scenic aka expensive route (we figured that out when the trip back to the airport took less than half the time). But he also told us about places we should check out that we hadn't put on our list. And he told us about hurling, one of the national sports in Ireland. So I think of him as a paid tour guide.

I always find people watching to be quite good while traveling and this trip was no different. On the outbound flight, the couple sitting across the aisle from us made for interesting viewing. First, they hung all over each other in the gate area. Keep in mind, when I say hanging on, I don't mean an arm draped around each other. I mean full body contact in the gate house. Plus they changed into pajamas for the trip before take off. I could see that on other, longer international trips but by the time dinner gets served and cleared away, you've only got a couple more hours until you land. Changing into PJs in the tiny airplane bathroom and then back again into street clothes just isn't worth the effort to me. Obviously they thought otherwise.

While clearing immigration, we noticed a young, maybe early 20s couple from the U.S. one of whom wore a cheesy "Kiss me, I might be Irish" tee shirt, and the other wore something similar although the slogan (thankfully) escapes me now. Why, why, why would you wear a tee shirt like that? Even while walking the dog??

As we checked into our hotel (which Kent handles because he's the one with the loyalty program there), I stood back for a bit and then moved up by him. The woman at the desk immediately quit making any eye contact with him and only spoke to me the rest of the time. I wondered if it were a cultural thing; she was either from China or Korea. I couldn't entirely place her accent and couldn't read that part of her name badge that said where she's from.

Our server at dinner Friday made Kent's night when she introduced him to an Old Fashion with a different sort of twist. He gets frustrated with the way Old Fashions are made here in the U.S. because they'll often be made with water or soda water, and that's not a true Old Fashion. Hers was a proper one but with a bit of maraschino cherry juice and a cherry in it. And the cherry wasn't one of those gross, unnaturally red ones either. In fact, we will need to find a good source going forward because Kent really enjoyed that drink.

We were milling around in the gate house Sunday waiting for our plane from Atlanta back to Kansas City, I got in one of those small flyby conversations with another passenger who was boarding the plane at the gate before ours. He was an older gentleman and when he found out we'd just spent the weekend in Ireland, he got so excited. He kept telling his wife, "Hey! We can do that too! I've always wanted to go to Ireland!"

I hope he gets there.

Dublin

What fun – and in an unusual twist for us, we had absolutely amazing weather. In fact, Dublin experienced a tiny heat wave while we were there. It was so sunny that even I got a bit of sunburn. I never expected to get sunburned in Ireland.

So here’s my travelogue run down:

Friday:

• Hop On/Hop Off (HOHO) bus passes: cheaper if you buy in advance and we had, and the passes are good for two days. You get narration about the sites you pass, either by the bus driver or by tape (we far preferred the bus driver narration) . 
• James Joyce’s house: Walked there and didn’t feel at all interested in going inside. 
• The Writers Museum: Well worth seeing and it covered James Joyce too. It’s in one of the Jamison’s former houses (I forget which one and the museum website doesn’t say) and although I majored in English as an undergraduate, I had either forgotten or never realized how many famous authors came from Ireland. In the first room, there’s a description that says something about the country being very small and not heavily populated yet it’s over-represented with such important, influential authors.
• O’Neil’s Bar: We had lunch there, just sandwiches and potato salad, which was probably the best potato salad I've ever had in my life. 
• Killmainham Gaol: If you ever go to Dublin, make this site a priority. We learned so much about the Irish struggle for independence and also a lot about ordinary living during the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s well worth the time and money. 

Water in our room;
the name amused me

Beautiful stairway at The Writers Museum

Happy Kent at lunch

Saturday:

• Jamison Distillery tour (I'd link it but it will make you enter your birthday to show you're of age; you can Google it if you're interested in more information): We opted not to tour Guinness but figured we should at least do this one. Although no distillery operates there any more, they do a good job with the exhibits and information about how the distilling takes place. Bonus for me, I got selected to be one of the “tasters” at the end (the only woman I might add), which was a lot of fun.
• The Bank: We didn’t have much time to grab lunch so we took the recommendation from our hotel and stopped here. The building is beautiful inside, which you can see on the website. As a side bonus, our bartender learned from us that what the Irish call rocket is what we call arugula. He was glad to know that because he said he gets asked all the time. 
• Historic Walking Tour of Dublin: Oh my goodness, this was amazing. The tour filled in any gaps over what we’d learned at Killmainham. Our tour guide, Donal, is a PhD student at National University of Ireland (1930s Dublin, I asked) and was clearly passionate about the history and about sharing it. Our tour lasted half an hour longer than the website said it would and no one grumbled. 
• Temple Bar: Well to be honest, we avoided Temple Bar on the advice of our first cabbie and the historical tour guide – except Donal did say on the one end of Temple Bar, we could find bars that weren’t tourist traps. So we had dinner at Porterhouse and I don’t think we saw any American tourists. 

Only woman and only American!

Loin of Bacon (Kent's dinner)

We ran out of time and weren’t able to see The Book of Kells (although we saw two reproductions, one at The Writers Museum and one at The Bank where we had lunch) and we couldn’t really tour all of Trinity as we’d hoped to. But we saw a lot and had a really wonderful time.

Kiss me, I'm Irish

OK, I'm not Irish. But I am going to Ireland tonight.

Kent and I are heading out for another one of our Crazy Trips™. We're going to Dublin for the weekend. Got a packed couple of days with all the sights we want to see but the best part is I get Kent all to myself for the next four days.

If you're curious how we pick our Crazy Trip™ destinations, we need to be able to get there with only one plane change. That's about the only criteria. 

Eyes, part 2

Remember the allergic reaction I had about six-seven weeks ago? With the zombie-like swelling and fiery red inner lids?

Well my eyes flared slightly over the weekend. Thankfully, they didn't swell up this time, but my inner lower lids turned fiery red in spots again. I tossed the offending products, got new products for sensitive eyes and hoped for the best.

And they are better. Yesterday I showed Kent how much they had improved. He was horrified, but not by the red parts. No, he was alarmed by the pale parts on the inner lids.You see, he's a red head who doesn't tan and his inner lids are always pretty red looking. So to him, my eyes looked kind of normal, except where they actually were normal . . .

He and I have such different coloring -- he's pink and I'm yellow. In fact, he's so pink he makes me look jaundiced. But this is the first time our color differences led him to think I actually had an infection.

Room with a view

Kent's rented some lenses for our trip this Thursday. He likes to rent before he buys, and given how expensive camera lenses can be, I heartily approve. For this trip, he's got a wide angle among others and he's been running around taking lots of pictures with it.

Normally I'm not all that fond of wide angle lens photos but I like this one and thought it showed how open our living room is.

Click the photo for a bigger version.

We'll never put curtains on the windows flanking the fireplace. That view is just too beautiful even when the trees have no leaves.

I have a theory

I don't think I have asthma. There, I said it.

I think my lung issues over the last couple of years are a result of previous lung—well, let's say damage for lack of a better word. You see, I was exposed to second hand smoke as a small child (thankfully all parents quit by the time I was eight or so) and then again as a young adult while serving in the Army. That Army exposure was particularly pervasive and extreme. Plus I also had a lot of childhood illnesses like bronchitis.

I think that I inadvertently kept my lungs strong by playing wind instruments, especially the oboe, being a vocalist and running for so many years. I think that conditioning continued even after my music career was over because I kept running.That lung strength is why I never had any problems until the last three years.

After the first flood, almost four years ago, I was still running but I was also getting exposed to a whole lot of construction debris. Drywall dust was everywhere and that stuff will clog even the best lungs. Then just a couple of months after the flood but before all the reconstruction was done, I got a job in New Hampshire which meant I no longer had the time to run because of my incredibly long commute. Coincidentally, I had my first round of compromised breathing that year.

When we had more water damage from the frozen pipe that burst, the second round of reconstruction was not as extreme as the first but still all our floors had to be replaced, along with some drywall in our bedroom. That's when I had my second round of compromised breathing.

And finally after the third pipe leak and reconstruction, I left the state and visited my sister during reconstruction. I dodged that bullet only to move to Kansas City for my current job . . . in a building undergoing renovations while we work in the building. Last summer was particularly bad as my work environment was filled with new carpet fibers, drywall dust and concrete dust. Things got pretty bad with my breathing that third time.

The particulate matter in the building mostly settled down by around November/December and I've had a chance to reflect on my symptoms and experiences. See, I didn't ever wheeze. I only coughed (unproductively I might add) and felt like I couldn't get enough air.

So I made a couple of changes – I haven't used a maintenance inhaler or a fast acting inhaler since the end of March. And I'm running regularly again, three times a week for about a mile and a half. My ultimate goal is a two and a half mile route, mostly because I get really bored if I run more than that, and also I don't have enough time to run further in the mornings.

I've seen progress already. At first, I was horribly winded and it would be more accurate to call what I was doing a walk with some trotting in it. Now I'm reliably running the whole thing, including the long hill in the second half (70 foot elevation gain in less than half a mile). Best of all, I recover quickly and I'm not coughing at the end.

Next step for me is to talk with my PCP about getting that diagnosis removed from my records. I think I have a good case for it -- even at my worst just over a year ago, the lung function tests at a Boston hospital showed just in the normal range. Low, yes, but still normal. If I need to go through another round of those tests again, I will. In fact, I'd almost welcome it just to be able to say (truthfully) that I don't have asthma.

Happy trails!