Ireland day 0889. Tuesday 05 March 2024- Catching Up

Today’s summary	Bought the new car tax in the morning then went to the gym while Val pottered around in the flat.   In the afternoon, I worked on tax and had a catch up chat with a friend in Texas and Val drove to Drumcondra to get one of the strings on her violin fixed.   Portmarnock school for Spanish (Adam) and Pilates (Val) in the evening
Today’s weather	Rain in the morning but drier in the afternoon with a glimpse of sun.  Moderate south westerly wind.   Appx 10c
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)			Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only.   Last full blog was Day 0368).

Today we had a bit of down-time.   Not necessarily a bad thing because there were quite a few admin tasks that needed to be caught up on.

First up, for me, I had to renew the car tax.   This isn’t as straightforward a job as you might imagine, as the road tax people are supposed to send you a special PIN number shortly before the old tax is due to expire, and without which you cannot renew the tax.   For reasons that I don’t understand, I still hadn’t received the PIN this morning, even though the tax is due to expire.   So I had to go through another portal and enter endless amounts of information in order to get a replacement.   Eventually I managed it and after another lifetime spent filling in yet more details on the car licencing website, I eventually managed to get the tax renewed for another year.   Hooray!

To celebrate, I went off to the gym to spend a couple of hours rowing, cycling and cross training, followed by a 500m swim.   While I was out, Val pottered around in the flat and made a delicious lunch of pizza for when I got back.

The afternoon was a bit of a re-run of the morning.   I spent some time getting VAT records ready for our accountant to file my tax return.   Then I spoke to a friend in Houston for an hour, and while I was chatting, Val drove over to Drumcondra to get a string on her new violin fixed.

We rounded off the day with a trip to Portmarnock for another Spanish lesson (for me) and a Pilates session (for Val).   So a relatively quiet day, for once, but we seem to have managed to accomplish quite a lot.

(By the way the tulips in the banner picture at the top were given to us by the friends who stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.   They’re still going strong and look beautiful!)

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

Yacht heading oceanwards under power of its diesel engine	Tide’s out in the estuary today (well at least it was when I walked along the coast at about 2pm)
Val’s violin is coming on in leaps and bounds!

Interactive map

(No map today)

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