Monthly Archives: September 2025

A Christmas Tree

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Sunday, 01-Dec-2024


With Thanksgiving complete, Christmas was right around the corner.

One of the many qualities about Andrea that I appreciate is her revelry and joy around holidays – with a special place of honor reserved for Christmas. She’d spent the preceding weeks focused on Thanksgiving… but with a notable earmark that Christmas preparation would begin pretty much immediately after Thanksgiving cleanup was finished.

Well, Saturday was cleanup and recovery.

Sunday, then, was Christmas.


It started with a trip to Dunnes, to buy ourselves the various accoutrements needed to dress the tree – we had our first ornament, bought a few weeks prior from the Guinness Storehouse, but needed the lights and extra ornaments needed to truly transform the tree from a simple trunk and leaves into a Christmas Tree.

From there, we ventured up and down Meath Street, the lovely marketplace near the apartment that tends to somehow have both everything you’re looking for, but nothing that’s quite exactly what you need. Thankfully, the market came through with flying colors this time, and an absolutely perfect tree was purchased, and carried home with us.

I don’t need to say how excited we both were. The photos do far better justice than I ever could.

The tree dressed, the lights clicked on. A new beacon was lit at the apartment, one that would shine out to beckon us home for nearly two months, out from the kitchen window.

Thanksgiving in the Liberties!

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Friday, 28-Nov-2024


Thanksgiving!

So many people in my MBA class are from the United States – out of 39 people, I believe 12 of them are from the USA. All 12 of whom, I believe, were staying in Dublin for Thanksgiving…

We couldn’t let it go un-celebrated, especially with so many of our classmates having never had the opportunity to celebrate this glorious and ridiculous festival of eating a simply incredible amount of food.

Polls were taken, people counted, and dishes prepped. I special ordered turkey from a nearby butcher, bought all the bits to make a brine, and reserved “The Parlour” – a special spot in my apartment intended for hosting larger dinner parties. We did a prep-dinner a few weeks prior, had plans, and confidence that everything would go well.

Which, I’m very thankful to report, occurred. I’m very proud to say that this Thanksgiving was one of the highlights (at least for me) of the social scene of the MBA – we had almost everyone attend (easily filling the room far past capacity), and had so much food that I was eating leftovers for literal months afterward. Wine flowed, Whiskey was poured, and bottles were emptied. Yours truly did a rather stellar job with the turkey, I’m very proud to report, and heartily look forward to recreating it sometime in the future.


Ahh, what else…? Good times were had, friendships cemented, and great food consumed. It’s something I’ve been endlessly thankful to my class for – They’re all simply amazing, and I greatly enjoy all of our big get togethers like this – I couldn’t have asked for a better cohort, and I’m confident that my decision to join this MBA program will go down as one of the best choices of my life.