Soooooo. Who do ya think won the first presidential debate?
Don’t answer that.
I mean REALLY don’t answer that because I really don’t want to know. There are plenty of political blogs out there for folks to fling feces back and forth; delighting in anonymous confrontations over which presidential candidate they believe has solutions to all our problems. What I might be interested in knowing is how many people actually changed their mind about a candidate after watching the debate. I suspect that number to be, oh, roughly zero.
I had fully intended to wrap up our tour of Ireland for you here on the blog with some more pictures and commentary but when we boarded the plane in Dublin for our journey home, I was sick as the lyrics in a punk rock song. That’s no reflection on the Emerald Isle itself, our visit was nothing short of spectacular, but somehow on our last night there, the mother of all colds decided to come a callin’. I wasn’t the only one either because there was so much coughing and hacking among the passengers that it sounded like a TB ward throughout the cabin during our entire 8 1/2 hour flight back to the U.S.A. I’m just now feeling back up to snuff, thanks in part to Linda’s TLC (as outlined in our marriage vows) along with copious amounts of codeine cough syrup.
Oh, alright, here are a few more photos from that fabulous tour:
Kilkenny Castle was built in 1195. James Butler bought the place in 1391 and remained in the Butler family as a residence until 1935. It was finally handed over to the city for a museum in 1967. No photos allowed inside.
Downtown Kilkenny
Our group. What a fun bunch!
Terrific Traditional Tunes in nearly every pub.
- Smack! She did it.!
Della, another lady on our tour, was equally determined to kiss the Blarney Stone. But as she was leaning back to do so, her wig fell 120 feet to the ground below. She rose up embarassed but laughing. Her husband gave her his cap to wear and the wig was waiting when they descended. I mention this only because Della is a breast cancer survivor who underwent a double mastectomy several years ago..only to have it recently return..necessitating more chemo and all its nasty side effects. She was deternmined to make this trip and none of us whould have known she was ill had the wig incident not occured. Because it did, though, Della felt free to talk about her cancer and receive the love and support from all her new found friends aboard a bus in a foreign land.