Ireland

A few more from Ireland.

Top two taken during the drive around the Ring of Kerry.

Took a ride in the jaunting cart in Kilarney. The view is looking out over the top of Susie. The horses are a cross between an Irish draft horse and a Belgian draft horse making for a medium sized horse of more than adequate strength an endurance for pulling the carts around. The back of the carts seat six people. I sat up front with the driver, John, who seemed to be quite the character - knew his horses, though. Said he'd been doing this for 43 years.

Bottom three photos are from the Blarney Castle. With the warmer than usual temperatures they'd been having, lots of flowers and trees were in bloom.

Bottom photo is looking up at where the Blarney Stone is located. I just assumed prior to going to the castle there was a big stone you walked up to and gave it a smooch. Nope, not at all. You have to go up 130 steps to the top of the castle, lay on your back and then reach out to kiss the stone while some big burly Irishman holds on to you. One more thing I can put on my resume now, or more likely at this stage of the game, my obituary.

Speaking of resumes, I start a new job today. General maintenance/handyman position. When I retired from the high school nearly seven years ago I applied for a job with this outfit. I never heard back from them and I went to work at the college. I received a call from the owner of the company a couple of weeks ago and went in and interviewed. I'll be working a couple of days per week and I can change the days around according to my needs. I'll still be working at the college for eight weeks, so I'll be busy for a while but the place is only a few minutes from the shack and if he'll work with me on my traveling schedule, we should get along just fine.

The weather has been cold again. It was below zero Monday morning and only got up to about 12 during the day. According to the Chicago weatherman, broke the old record for the lowest daytime temperature on that day that was set in 1890. Too cold to work in the shop but the bushings for the slip roll came in while I was gone and I bought the pipe for the rolls and got those cut to length. It's supposed to warm up a bit over the weekend, so maybe I can get back on that project. Need to get back to work on things.