A weekend well spent

I feel as though I went from Friday morning, with three whole days of freedom stretched ahead of me to Monday morning, in the blink of an eye. Strangely for me Monday morning wasn't looming with that usual sense of doom only a tiredness and reluctance to get out of bed. It was a combination of a weekend well spent and a job that interests me, mind you I had better things to say about the course before I struggled through an hour of financial maths. I literally had no idea what was going on and everyone else was nodding along as though the gobbledy gook the lecturer was spouting made some kind of senses. Then again I have gotten out of the habit of adding in my head (sure who needs to when my phone has a perfectly good calculator) so it's hardly shocking that quadratic equations might be a little out of my depth.

Back to the weekend, I found myself and Stephen settled into a routine as though I had always had weekends off to loll about the apartment. We lazed about for the morning and popped to Ardkeen stores to get food for lunch and then made plans for a trip to Carlow to see a castle of some description. That probably gives an idea of whose idea it was to go, I just wanted a day out be it in Ducketts Grove or some other scenic outdoor spot. It took longer than expected to drive to Carlow and track down the ruin that was our destination. So we arrive and I parked and it was good, looked nice and sunny outside the car. It probably would have been fine had we just stayed inside it. It would also have been incredibly boring as day trips go. So we got out of the car to take a walk around and despite the sun, it was absolutely baltic out. The wind was like a knife to the back of my neck, cutting through both scarves and I wished I had more layers and hats and gloves and I would happily have worn them all together. We took a walk around and took a few photos, a lot of mine weren't great because the gloves made my fingers clumsy and I was too cold to take them off. It's always nice to have a few scenic photos to share online as proof to my parents that I do occasionally get outdoors ( my dad likes to check from time to time). It must have been 20 minutes later or perhaps less that we headed back to the car, too cold to brave the outdoors any longer.

As we drove home I mentioned on a whim that we would be passing the exit to Kilkenny soon and we decided to take a really quick trip there just to the shopping centre. Any excuse to spend money I don't have. We left an hour later and I was clutching many essentials like a cardigan (for work ) and a dish rack ( to be fair the plastic thing in my kitchen was disgusting so it was a worthwhile purchase) and got home in time to relax for a bit before heading out to Garter lane.

Sunday we had another lazy sort of morning and I abandoned himself so I could do important things like write a new blog post and read a bit of my book while telling him I'd be ready to go buy food in 5 minutes ( I wasn't) So it was later than planned when we found ourselves heading to Waterford Castle for a walk. I have lived here long enough and only been vaguely aware of it's existence. The Castle/Hotel itself was closed for the month but it's not as though we would have been going in, we did take a few photos outside before heading off for a walk around the grounds. Now Stephen was fully confident that there were paths you could walk around the island the castle is based on but I didn't see any evidence of them. The only discernible roads were the ones to and from the ferry. We headed towards the clubhouse which seemed to lead onto the golf course and then ran quickly until we found a path. As far as I could tell we walked entirely on the golf course the whole way round which probably would have been frowned upon if anyone saw us. It was bitterly cold but almost cosy when compared to the wind we met in Carlow, I still managed to get a glow to my cheeks that made it look like I had gotten carried away with the blusher.

I got some terrible photos of deer ( they kept running away) and a nice walk so not bad for a Sunday. We got home in plenty of time for me to prepare for the week ahead. I typed some notes and packed a lunch, my brush with canteen food last week convinced me to bring my own food from now on. There are many more weekends like that ahead and I'm starting to think I could get used to this four day week.