Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

So now that I know who I'm writing to, I have to think of something to say that I didn't say in the email to Ian I sent yesterday evening. Perhaps I should act as if his gmail account isn't working (and it might not, mine is certainly acting up) and repeat some stuff.

Yesterday evening my cousin Cara-who-lives-in-Delaware visited with her Irish boyfriend (a sound choice). Cara is actually my third cousin once removed; despite being a couple of years younger than me, she's actually the same generation as my mum. Cara's mum Patti is a day younger than my mum, and they went to school together for a year so they're very close despite being geographically quite far away. But Patti is actually my grandfather's first cousin, not my mum's. Very complicated.

Anyway, Cara visited with Kevin-from-Cork and we had a very lovely evening with long conversations on diverse topics. I've only met Cara two or three times ever but we had an awful lot to talk about.

For a start, she spent several months in Cuba so we talked about that.

And she is involved in political stuff (Democrats, thankfully) so we talked a lot about the presidential elections. Kevin has read up on this sort of stuff quite a lot so was able to help me compare the system to our own dear republic. Which led us on to talking about how funny little things can completely destroy someone's political career, like the 'Dean Scream' which everyone got terribly het up about, but people can do stuff like sexing up dodgy dossiersm, dear Tony, or accepting dodgy payments left right and centre like our own dear Bertie, or losing personal details of millions and millions of people in Britain, like Gordon, and survive just fine.

And we talked about Irish presidents and the Irish language and joining the army and all sorts of things.

Today hasn't been all that exciting, except that I have taken advantage of a verrry favourable exchange rate to exchange some money to sterling (go euro!) and have ordered a bank card with my name spelt correctly on it (I have been using the misspelt one in various guises for about ten years now).

Oh and I've been trying to do some work but not getting very far -- I can't help but feel that nobody should have to work over their holidays, but it means I'll have loads and loads to do at the weekend and on Monday.

So hi Ian, hope you're well.