Power of Video Conference & Mum's House

I signed up to attend the Power of Video Conference while we were in Brugges, so Monday was a day for learning opportunities in Belfast City down at the Waterfront.  Stephani spent part of the day at Public Records of Northern Ireland and the rest with Uncle Norman and his Wife, Laurie.

The conference was interesting albeit slightly disorganized. Check in was to start at 9:00, but we waited outside till just before 10:00,  an hour for lunch was announced, but we sat in our seats for an hour past lunch waiting for speakers.  But the roster of speakers was good.  They had on one stage Mislav Moronovic (Red Bull Talent), Cian Twomey,  Mr. Ben Brown with girlfriend Nicole Eddy, Shonduras, Mr What's Inside, who showed us how to chop a golf ball in half.  Casey Neistat, YouTuber of the Year with over 3 million subscribers was there, and made two thrilling videos around the streets of Belfast while there.  Dispute the fact that Belfast is one giant no-fly zone, Casey sent a drone 100ft above the river Lagan, following groups of kids skateboarding, and also over City Hall.  I would never do such a thing for fear of getting it confiscated or prosecuted.  But that's the thing about Casey, his videos are amazing because he gets to break the rules sometimes, we should all try it a little.

After a full day at the Conference, I got home about 9:30, ate a ham n cheese and fell asleep, but got up early to go flying my DRONE off shore.   Things were going well until the DRONE lost signal with my controller.  After a short time I went to see if it had crashed, but could not see it.  So I ended up clambering over rocks, slipping and falling on green slime.  I got down to the beach, and noticed that the sand was a thick muddy mess.  I walked around in this stuff for 25 minutes trying to find the downed DRONE to no avail. So I gave up and walked back to my car.  When I got back to the car I could see the drone sitting in some bushes close to where I took off, so there must be some safety feature that is built into the craft that brings it back if there is a problem.  Even though I was covered in mud, I was happy to get the DRONE back once more, and it took some lovely clips.

This trip has been a bit of a comedy of errors for both of us.  When I got back from my DRONE misadventures, I had to hose off my clothes in the garden of our AirBnB, somehow during this process the car keys went missing... Stephani had run a load of laundry which was taking a while to finish, so when I couldn't find car keys I assumed they were in the washing machine. But it was still running, so we stopped it mid-stream took all of the clothes out all soapy, but we're still unable ton find our keys.  We were now about an hour late to meet Norman and Laurie at Mum's house. So I started poking around the area where I hosed off the jeans and found the car key dangling on a garden flower.  Phew.

So we went over to meet Norman and Laurie over at Mum's flat and began bagging up clothes and setting things aside. It took us most of the day. Then we went over to the bank to close her accounts.  Then we had to find a shop that sold packing materials so we could box up some of her personal affects for transport back to the United States. Mum's closest friend, Trevor stopped by to say hello. He is undergoing radical radiology treatment for cancer at the moment, and said he was feeling much stronger.  I got an opportunity to sincerely thank him for being such a good friend to my Mum and for taking such good care of her all of these years.

Tonight we will be having dinner with Norman and Laurie.  Tomorrow will be our last full day of vacation so we are planning on driving around Northern Ireland doing some basic run of the mill site seeing (with the DRONE in tow).  Hopefully I don't step in quicksand in some remote Irish bog looking for my DRONE.