It’s going to be the rehearsal for the big day in about a month’s time. And I really hope it’s not going to rain tomorrow as it did today. I hope it’s going to be a nice, smooth ‘run’ throughout the Phoenix Park and surrounds tomorrow.

The idea was to get there well-rested. Go to bed early. – Instead, it has been a very long day and it hasn’t finished yet! Something amazing happened this morning.

I drove up to Galway for an 8 o’clock meeting in a large software company who are interested in some of the work I’m doing. (Really, since when do people start working in Ireland at 8 o’clock?) To my surprise, the conference table was packed, about a dozen people in the room, and another half a dozen people joining via video conference. The meeting went well – until we thought it would be nice to do what the European Commission calls a ‘tour d’table’ to get a brief introduction to the people who had joined the meeting.

It turned out that one of the participants had taught Pádraig Irish in the Conradh na Gaeilge and had followed, as he told me at the end of the meeting when I went over to talk to him, his journey from Cape Cod to Hamburg.

Pádraig spent close to two hours today on the roof terrace in glorious sunshine (though staying in the shade). He is starting to eat again, slowly and little, after the break of last week following the bleed in his arm. He had a few quiet therapy sessions today, enough to bring some distraction, but relaxed and not too exhausting.

We are making good progress with An Saol and we are getting a much better understanding of what it will offer and how it will be financed. What will be decided sometime soon is whether it will be a new, stand-alone initiative, or whether we will team up with one of the existing organisations. Once we have a decision on that, we can go full steam ahead with the implementation of our plans for An Saol.

Life’s not a rehearsal, it’s happening as you live it, it’s An Saol.

Time to have some dinner and go to bed:) – Good night!

Oh – Hospi-tales made it into the Finalist list in two categories and into the best blog post of the Irish Blog Awards. Who would have thought…!?

Oh, oh – just in case you feel like reading about how bicycle accidents involving cars are dealt with in the USA, check out this article from yesterday’s New York Times to which a very good friend in Boston sent me a link.