Caption Contest Winner

Runner up in the caption contest 1:

Stephanie from Florida wrote:
"Does this buggy make my book look big?"

Nice job, nice use of buggy.

The winner of Caption Contest 1 though is Jim with:

"The book said there was a grocery store here??"

As promised, we offer you something like, but not necessarily, one of these:



Stephanie, if you want your runner-up award, leave me a comment and we'll work something out.

The last few days have been full. We listened to the weekly music session down at the pub two nights ago, where we unknowingly took some regulars' seats but they were nice to us anyway.
Yesterday a couple of positives stand out for me. The first was noticing how my dad buys, not just a cookie or bit of chocolate every day, but an entire pie. Wherever we are, he mozies away from us at some point to find a local bakery and walks out with a boxed pie.
Another stand-out yesterday was our Czech server at dinner finding out I am/was an ESL teacher and asking me lots of questions about grammar every time she passed by. She had this cute, very Slavic, way of asking things like "How do you separate the word sightseeing and why isn't there some general rule?" Talking to her brought back to mind what I like so much about that part of the world and also how much I miss teaching. It was fun to have a "light bulb moment" with a 'student' right there in a restaurant with Richard Marx and Journey playing in the background.

The last moment from yesterday was getting to hop the fence to view a national archeological monument. We'd driven all around Sligo Town to find the Carrowmore Graves (at least six thousand years old, and we Americans really dig poking about old stuff...well, not literally poking, but getting up close).

Our guidebook said it was open until 6:00 pm but when we arrived at 5:30, we weren't let in. The %&#@-er who was sitting at the door would barely give us a glance, not even when I went on my own, putting on my best sad face and sounding very pitiful, asking for "just five minutes" to see it closer (we could sort of see it across a fence).

As I was Charlie-Brown shuffling across the parking lot, head down dejectedly, a staff member meandered up to me and said quietly, "Don't mind him. I know why you're disappointed. No one's gonna stop you from jumping that fence right there in about twenty minutes when the door's locked and there's no cars in the carpark. But I didn't tell ya that, ok?"

As a result, we ended up having a really nice walk, with a couple of scrambles over the fence, and got some pictures, like here, where Ted truly gets born-again, Irish-style:


Lastly, we spent a good hour at Drumcliffe Abbey, the burial site of Yeats. Earlier in the day, we'd looked around the Sligo Town Museum, which has a lot of Yeats stuff (the technical term), including his Nobel Prize for literature. This is the best free museum I've ever been to. Plus, the lady working there was extremely friendly and knowledgeable and ended up giving me a really gorgeous poster about the Sligo area, all for free.

There I am in the Yeats graveyard, showing one of my hidden talents: a pensive, moody stare (which I have come to understand can be off-putting in social situations, making some think I am wallowing in misery...so I'm doing my best to work on improving my "American smile #5").
Good thing I'm married to someone with a wider range of facial expressions.

Until next time...