ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR...

Sorry about the silence of late. As you might have guessed, we've been caught up in frenzied shopping, packing, shopping, packing and more shopping... It feels like Christmas (the part that I don't like) all over again, except that no one's buying us anything! I suppose we're as ready as we can be.... Short of the fact that I'm still trying to fit everything into the suitcase and we've got to leave for the airport in a couple of hours... Grr... Where's my mum when I need her most?? She's amazing... She can get stuff that came out of two suitcases into one, and proceed to fit more stuff in... Its a mystery how she does it - and gets away with it checking in!! Speaking of checking in, we're also keeping fingers/toes/eyes crossed that we haven't busted weight allowances for the internal UK/Ireland flights... It is something ridiculous like 15kg or something (which is about the weight of the winter wear alone...). So if you hear a story about some crazy Indian woman at Dublin airport desperately giving away packets of curry powder to lighten her load, you'll know why... Needless to say, we're both getting really excited at the prospect of sitting in a REAL Irish bar drinking REAL Guinness in 24 hours... Pete's got Dublin all planned out as well... on the agenda: a catch up session with at least half of the Camembert Quartet (http://www.camembertquartet.com/) (ps: Congratulations Paddy and Jen!!), visiting the u2 hotel, sipping on several Bushmills by a fireplace before hitting Cork for family, fishing (yes, even in this weather) and buckets of fun .... I can't wait. According to the fine people at the Irish weather service, things are actually looking up... Briefly: "Thursday, Dublin: Dry and cooler today with sunny spells. A southerly wind strengthening to 15-30 kph later in the day. High 8C (46F). From midnight to 6 a.m., very windy with rain returning." Not sure what to even make of that... In Cork, things don't look as "good". Cork Forecast Thursday: SHOWERS 6 to 10 °C Friday: SHOWERS 5 to 7 °C Saturday: INTERMITTENT CLOUDS 4 to 7 °C Sunday: INTERMITTENT CLOUDS 5 to 8 °C Monday : INTERMITTENT CLOUDS 3 to 7 °C Sheesh.. and that's not even taking into consideration the wind chill factor... In any case, I've gotta get back to packing but we'll try and blog while we're away and put up some pictures, but if we don't, forgive us, we'd probably have had too much of the good stuff.... Slainte, Art