October marked our first full month in Ireland and it’s been lovely to call Dublin home. Neither of us expected it to be this easy to acclimatize, but it’s felt seamless and reaffirmed the work we put in to make the move happen. As much as we enjoy the city, we plan to settle somewhere more rural by early next year. In the meantime we’re trying to soak up city life and explore (like the Dublin Zoo, which is great!).
Phoenix Park is far enough from home to be an inconvenient daily running route, but I eventually found a peaceful path that parallels the River Dodder. After a great experience at the Crater Lake half marathon in August, I felt ambitious and signed up for the Lap of the Gap marathon. We’ll see how much 800m uphill destroys me!
The weather has been far better than we expected, though the apartment did sway in the wind when Storm Amy came through. We did not expect the sunrises that happen when the clouds hit just right. That’s been a beautiful surprise.
Since it took a month for our belongings to arrive, we made multiple trips to Books Upstairs. It represents everything an independent bookstore should be: broad selection, used books, winding rooms, and a cafe upstairs.
I impulse bought The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club based purely on the premise: the story of medieval manuscripts told through 12 figures from history. It’s nerdy, hyper-detailed, and the type of book I appreciate. In it you meet Frederic Madden, the Keeper of Manuscripts for the British Museum in the late-19th century. A quirk of his: he kept a daily journal for 54 years that totals 18,000 pages and over 4 million words! Brings perspective to my 2-week streak.
Strange News from Another Planet is a delightful set of short Hermann Hesse stories. If you asked me to bring one author’s work to a desert island it’d be Hesse. There’s an aspect of his writing that hits a deep layer of my brain and his books are like a retreat for my mind.
In a world of what can feel like increasingly complex software, I’ve found joy in simple tools. NetNewsWire, iA Writer, and Nova have become my happy place of software usage. Bike is a new addition that’s transformed how I take notes and keep tasks organized. The corners of these apps are crafted with care. Simple, purposeful tools have brought fun back into my corner of the digital realm.
That got me back into tinkering on the web. It can be beautifully simple and I have a newfound appreciation for it after going back to clean PHP, HTML, and CSS. The old ways work!
