House-hunting in Sacramento

So I am really getting settled in Sacramento and into a routine. I drive up Monday and back on Friday, go to the gym pretty much every day, and have taken some time to get to know the area. I almost know my way around! Sometimes I mess up my routine by going out of town to Southern California, or on vacation to Ireland, but mostly, I'm in a routine. However, being away from Gordon and Aisling during the week is getting old, so I'm looking forward to them moving up here. So it's time to get serious about buying a house. It should be easy, right? There are lots of houses for sale, and we have very stringent requirements - must have a pool, and must be within certain school boundaries. Not so easy!

So since we're serious about buying a house, a couple of weeks ago, Gordon and Aisling came up to Sacramento to spend the weekend. We went out looking at houses on Saturday with our real estate guy, Charles. We looked at lots of homes. A couple of interesting points. First, some houses were just trashed by the people who got foreclosed on. We saw some that had been covered in graffiti, on the inside, in every room! We saw others that had paint poured on the carpets in every single room. We've also seen every glass surface and toilet in the house just smashed up with a hammer.

But we did see a house that we loved, and we put a bid in on it. That was two weeks ago. The other thing we learned is that when there's a bank involved, it doesn't move too fast. One would think that the banks would be anxious to move the properties, but they don't seem to be too worried about responding fast. Oh well. So we went and looked at more homes this weekend. We might have to make two or three offers before we get a home! Stay tuned.

Trip to Ireland and France summary

Aisling and Helen in Dublin

Last month, we had a great vacation to Dublin, Ireland to visit my family, with a side trip to a town called Carcassonne in France. The photos are posted, of course, on flickr and can be seen here. We had a great time meeting with old friends from college and of course spending a lot of time with family. We also did a little sightseeing in Ireland and a lot of sightseeing in France. As a special bonus, we saw Oasis in concert in France - quite an experience. More detail is posted in my daily blogs below.

Trip to Ireland and France - Final day, Wednesday February 25th

Wednesday was our last day. We headed to Dublin airport, and caught the direct flight to San Francisco. It was a very smooth trip. The plane was an airbus, so we could select our own movies, which was great, so I watched four movies on the way back since I couldn't sleep, the best of which was probably W, just because Josh Brolin was so good as George W. Bush. We arrived in SFO on time, and then headed home. Dara, Zach and Aidan came over to see us, which was good because we missed them so much, and then I showered, and headed on Bart over to Oakland International airport for a business trip to LA. Another uneventful trip. The weather in LA was just so different to the weather in Ireland and France. I calculated that by the time I got to my hotel in LA, I had been awake for 23 hours. I think that might actually have helped me get over my jet lag! I spent Thursday in LA, flew back to Sacramento and then took Amtrak back to the bay area on Friday evening. Given that I used the bus and light rail to get from my condo to work on Friday, I believe I used every mode of mass transit in this timeframe!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 13, Tuesday February 24th

Most of Tuesday was given over to packing for our flight home. However, Gordon and I went to lunch with a friend of mind, Lidia, with whom I worked when I lived in Germany. We drove into town and parked near the South Docks, which has changed so much over the years. In the past, it really wasn't that safe to be in that area, but now it has been heavily developed and is home to the Point, now renamed the O2, a major concert venue in Ireland. We enjoyed walking in that area to see some of the newer buildings. We had lunch with Lidia at Cafe En Seine, on Dawson Street. It's a lovely building. Neither Lidia nor I could remember what it was before we had the boom, when the economy could support restaurants like this! I must say, it had the best bathrooms in Dublin. Gordon wandered out and found an interesting Irish whiskey shop where I am pretty sure they let him taste many shots of whiskey. Lidia is now a PhD student at Trinity, an archaeologist working mostly on digs in Israel. In fact, she had just returned from Israel. She also told me a story about a mutual acquaintance, a German woman who worked with us for the US Army in Germany in the early 80s. Apparently 3 or 4 years after Lidia and I both left Germany, this woman was arrested as an East German spy! That combined with the harp-kidnapping guy would seem to show that I have met some interesting characters in my past!

That evening, we went over to visit even more college friends! It must have been the day for connecting with old friends. Also, all my sisters came over to my mother's house that evening to say goodbye. It was bedlam! There must have been 20 people in the house. But it was very good to see so many friends and family on the trip.

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 12, Monday February 23rd

Paula and Orla took Aisling out shopping and to a movie, so Gordon, Nan and I went to see some sights in Dublin. This is not Aisling's favorite activity, so it seemed like a good way to go. We decided to go see Dublin Castle. I don't remember ever going to see Dublin Castle when I lived in Ireland, although my Dad told me that he took me there when I was a little girl, I just don't remember. It is a functioning government building, however, and I do remember going here in the early 80s when I worked for IBM in Ireland to hand over a tax check that was due.

There's a lot of history about Dublin Castle. There was a Viking settlement in Dublin and then a Norman settlement later, with the castle being built in 1204 by King John. It apparently burnt down in 1684 in a big fire and was rebuilt then. It was home to the Viceroys of Ireland who represented the monarchs of England until 1922, when we gained our independence. This includes Cornwallis who was made Viceroy of Ireland after he lost a major battle in the American Revolutionary war. I assume it was a demotion. The tour of the castle was excellent and we got to walk through the state apartments, which were used by the viceroys and visiting monarchs and are now used by the Irish government for some state affairs. The most notable event held in the castle now is the swearing-in of the president of Ireland. Some of the major items of interest include: the James Connolly room, where Irish rebel James Connolly was treated for a gunshot by the British (who had turned the castle into a hospital) so that he could be executed for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916; a mirror from Versailles, one of two that were stolen following the French Revolution (the other one's in Munich) and somehow ended up as the headboard on the bed of some wealthy Irish farmer, before being sold from his estate to a collector for the princely sum of 5 pounds; a huge throne built for the very large King George the IV when he was visiting and which had six inches of it's legs sawed off by the very petite Queen Victoria when she had to use it; some of the original Norman and Viking walls which were re-discovered in 1986 when the River Poddle flooded, leading to the destruction of a building on the site.

Before we went through the State Apartments, we had a little time to kill so we visited two smaller museums in the castle. One is a museum to Revenue Collectors, which I found to be hilarious. It included displays of contraband seized by revenue collectors, including knock-off Gucci bags and much drug paraphernalia. It also displayed a special toilet used by revenue collectors to help in the "collect evidence" from suspected drug mules. The second museum was a museum to the Irish police force, the Garda Siochana. I thought that was pretty boring, but it was in the remaining Norman Tower, the records tower, so it was worth going in to take a look at the tower itself.

We had lunch at a little restaurant called Gruel, and then headed down to Trinity College to see the Long Hall, Book of Kells and the oldest harp in Ireland, which is often connected erroneously with King Brian Boru, who died at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. However, the harp itself is "only" 500 or 600 years old, so it actually isn't Brian Boru's harp. The image of the harp is used in much of Ireland's official documents etc. and also on our currency. When we got home, my father reminded me that in the 1970s, it was stolen and held for ransom by the IRA, and that one of the ringleaders of this crime was my swimming teacher when I was a little girl!

That evening, we went to dinner at the home of some college friends of mine. They live in a lovely old late Victorian or Edwardian house on the South Circular Road. We had a nice time reminiscing about college. When we left, we had some excitement with the rental car. The clutch and transmission had apparently been treated pretty badly by renters, and it really had a hard time going into reverse. Getting out of our parking spot, we held up a couple of taxis while we got out of our parking spot!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 11, Sunday February 22nd

We spent Sunday out in Skerries, a village on the outskirts of Dublin where my sister Orla and her family live. I think almost the whole family was there, nearly 20 people! We ate lunch at Orla's, which was great, but mostly we wanted to see her house, which had been seriously renovated since we had last been home. It's very common in Ireland for people to buy homes and then add on to them over the years. Her extension resulted in a huge kitchen, with lots of space to cook, eat and gather, as the kitchen is the main gathering spot in Irish homes.

Skerries is right on the coast, so after lunch we all went out to walk on the beach. There is a stony beach to the north and a sandy beach to the south with the old village more or less in between the two (Orla and Joe live in a newer part of Skerries). It was cold, of course, but it was a very nice walk. There are several small islands off the coast, including one that my father tells me was briefly inhabited by hippies, who left because there were too many rats. But they wanted to go back, so they released 50 cats on the island to kill the rats, but when they came back several weeks later, there were only a dozen or so cats left. Yuck!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 10, Saturday February 21st

After the very busy week, we had a quiet day. We spent most of the day at home, although we took Aisling shopping (again) and to play football in a nearby field. That evening, Gordon and I went to the Laughter Lounge, a comedy club, with Paula, Hubert and Orla. There were four comedians plus the MC, and it was hilarious. We thought we might have to translate some jokes for Gordon, but there were just a couple of words that he wasn't familiar with. There were lots of jokes about the recession, Barack Obama (well, not so much Obama himself, more people's reactions to him), and of course, about getting drunk. After the show we went to a pub called MacTorcaills.

With our quiet day, we missed a big event in Dublin. Apparently over 100,000 people showed up for a protest march, expressing their displeasure with the current state of the economy and the government's handling of the situation, including what many people see as a fairly lax response to questionable or even likely criminal behavior by banks during the boom. The example most under discussion while we were there was Anglo Irish Bank, the details of which can be found in a Wall Street Journal article.