Hostages in Ireland

My wife (we’ll call her LBJ to protect her anonymity) suggested today’s post.  Hostages you say?  That’s right.  Our wine glasses are being held hostage.

Perhaps some background information is in order.  LBJ bought these wine glasses in the spring.  We unpacked a few for daily use, and put some in the garage.  I put them up high (a shelf above my car) to protect them.  That was my fatal mistake.  I had one meeting on moving day, and I was in this meeting when the movers packed up the garage.  And … you guessed it, they didn’t see the wine glasses.  So I shipped them to my wife in care of her parents here in Dublin.  Alas, the Dublin customs people did not read the form to see my comment “shipping to self”, so they charged us 65 Euro in VAT charges.  The Irish postal service paid the VAT and billed us.  We, of course, don’t want to pay VAT on our own wine glasses.  So we (i.e. LBJ) are jumping through the hoops to try and get our stuff without paying the VAT.  We’ll see how that goes.

In other news, our older daughter (FABJ …) seemed to enjoy, or at least tolerate, her first day of school in Ireland.  It’s hard to tell – she’s already mastered the teenage quality of telling us essentially nothing about her school day.  For now, I’ll just say that this school goes until the end of June, and they were willing to let FABJ go for the month of June.  Assuming all goes well, she can start in the next grade in September.  If not, she’ll essentially repeat pre-K (called junior infants here).  Given that she was not exactly intellectually challenged this year (aside from being too lazy to read at times), we are optimistic about her chances for progressing to senior infants next year.

Last but not least, I am about to drink my first Guinness in Ireland.  Sadly, it’s been over a week.  We’ve been too busy unpacking and too tired at night to ask the grandparents to babysit for a trip to the pub.  When I discovered that Guinness was on sale (8 500ml cans for 10 euro), I went to the shops after FABJ went to bed.  I believe the beer is sufficiently chilled – Sláinte!