A Rainy Autumn Evening

Autumn has officially arrived. The leaves are just starting to turn color and the drizzle/mist and chill wind has arrived.

It makes for a moody and yet lovely photograph, don’t you think?

Day trip to Malahide Beach

Back in the beginning of July, as I was walking the Everest Challenge, A, J, and I decided to head to the beach and have a nice afternoon walk.

The weather was overcast, as is typical here in Ireland, and the water was freezing. It didn’t stop us, however, from slipping off our shoes walking on the tidal flats

and then going for a bit of a wade into the salty water of Malahide beach.

Despite sinking quickly once I was out in the water, I did have to laugh when A decided to get up to a bit of mischief…

by splashing J (who, like me, was shocked at how cold the water is!) to help her get used to it. Taking off with a cackle, she promptly sped out of range, so she couldn’t get splashed back herself…

J took it with a fine sense of humor,

and very quickly, we were off to find the “perfect” bit of sand to dig our heels into – and leave our footprints behind.

It’s just a good thing it didn’t mess up our toenails!

On the way back, we passed 3 old ladies sitting on a wall, overlooking the beach. As we paused to brush the sand off our feet and then replace our shoes, they commented on not only what a lovely day it was – but also how well we 3 younger ladies seem to get along. The funny thing was that somehow, I could picture A, J, and me, in 40 years, sitting on the wall – and see a reflection of ourselves in them. Just goes to show – the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Olympic Decorations at work

Here where I work, we’re totally into the Olympics. Since it’s an international community and an international workplace, we try to generally avoid conflict because of cultures and cultural influences and find ways to bridge these differences. When the olympics comes around, however, things change. The Olympics are a huge source of nationalism (via sporting events), team work, and joy as we can all celebrate the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals with others of a particular nationality. All around the building, we constantly hear – Sure, my guy lost, but yours won – what a stunning finish/great match.. etc.!

In Honor of the Olympics, the events committee here at work has decided to challenge us on a floor by floor basis – to support charities, to decorate, and to show our cultural diversity while celebrating how well we can work together. On my floor, we have many varied nationalities – including French, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, American, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Indian, Canadian, Brazillian – and this is just the ones I know about!

The idea was were supposed to choose 1 color, but the floor decided to go for "ALL" the colors. I made paper chains for all the desks (I was up until 1:30 am) – and there were Olympic balloons for the end caps. There were also olympic balloon rings; and flags representing the countries of all our team mates on the floor.

We managed to get sports equipment & pictures of nearly every sport up on our columns, and then people participated in desk chair rowing, desk basketball, desk badminton, mini-football, and stick horse racing at the time of “judging”.