The Weekly Smile for the 6th of January, 2020 #weeklysmile

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weeklysmile2a

I’m a little late in posting this since it’s been a busy morning…  Anyway, I hope you all had a nice new year and that your 2020 is going well.  Funny thing about new year…

I’ll admit, I am a pretty boring person.  I don’t remember the last time I went out on New Year’s Eve.  Ages ago.  I do not want to drive! This year?

We had breakfast on Monday the 31st at an Irish restaurant that specializes in French Toast.  Makes sense, no?  We chatted with our waitress and she said we should go to an Irish pub for New year’s Eve.  They weren’t taking reservations any longer, but if we gave her our name and number she could get us in. Funny thing is that the pub is within walking distance of our house!  We hadn’t been there, so we decided to give it a try.

OK, I am still boring – we made reservations for 5:30 PM.  The good part is that we sat down right when the first band began to play.  We stayed for their entire set and left at around 9.  Early evening, but…

It was fun.  I don’t see live music as much as I should.  It was just pub food, but good.  This was also the first New Year’s Eve that I had done anything except for Chinese in ages. And I found a new place to go that is within walking distance to my house.

My smile this week was spending the early part of New Year’s Eve at an Irish pub.

What made you smile?

****

Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

And remember, the Smile can be anything, large or small.  Nothing, nothing at all is too small for a Smile!  Sometimes taking time to notice those small, every day smiles is more important than those once in a lifetime huge ones :)

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).   Next week I will compile all of the Smiles and do a separate post of them on Monday morning just before the smile.  (I will shoot for around 7 AM EST).

Try to use the hashtag #WeeklySmile when you use Twitter or other social media that uses hashtags. I searched Twitter and found that #weeklysmile had been used only a handful of times back in 2012 and 2013. It hasn’t been used since. So it’s ours! I also registered it on Twubs.

You can use the graphic at the top. It is the official graphic for the event.

Now go out there and find something to smile about! :)

37 thoughts on “The Weekly Smile for the 6th of January, 2020 #weeklysmile”

  1. Pingback: The Weekly Smile Recap 1/6/2020 – 1/12/2020 | Trent's World (the Blog)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      lol. I do have to admit that when I am in France, I pretty much live on ham and cheese sandwiches and lettuce & tomato salads… (I’m not in France often, but have been there 3 times). No French Toast in France, just baguettes and coffee for breakfast ;)

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  6. dprastka

    What a GREAT smile!! I just Love it, and the Irish pub is so close. I should get out more myself. I think as I age I’m turning into a stick in the mud!! 🤣 Your smile is encouraging!! ❤️ Happy 2020! 😃

    Liked by 1 person

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  7. dawnkinster

    A place within walking distance that has live music and good food. That’s a win and well worth a smile! We went to a neighbor’s house, played with their dog (Katie was jealous when we got back) and played a dice game and left shortly before midnight. We had fun. I figured it was midnight somewhere.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      A place within walking distance is a plus, and the live music is great. There is actually a place within walking distance to my house in NH with live music and I’ve only been once – I’ll have to remedy that situation ;)
      Quiet New Year’s Eves are often the best. And yes, I’m sure Katie could tell you were two timing her with another dog ;)

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  8. Ocean Bream

    I love this. This is an opportunist’s tale. If you hadn’t gone for the french toast you wouldn’t have known that the Irish pub on New Year’s Eve would have made you smile. I feel like french toast in America is on another level… or maybe I just have never been to any good restaurants in my short life here on earth and in the UK.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Good French Toast can be very good, but not every restaurant understands how to make it right. Some places it is soggy, making me think “raw egg”. Other places it is too dry no matter how much real maple syrup you use. But this little Irish breakfast place makes it just right….
      It is funny how one small choice leads to other things and you can end up in a completely different place… That is how this went.

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  9. cecilylalloo

    Can’t beat live music! Like you, Trent, I don’t go to as many places as I could, even locally. But I have music around me constantly. My smile? We had a houseful on Saturday – the After-Christmas-New-Year-Family-Gathering – we hadn’t seen them over the festive season. Amongst our guests were 7 children of varying ages. My 2-year old grandson and his cousin just 2 months older, kept us smiling! Made up their own races, kept each other occupied … running, carrying stools from one place to another and back again, carrying shopping bags, filling them up with paper, throwing the paper in the bin … who needs all those toys they were give for Christmas 😊😂😊 Thank you for the smiles!

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I have to always have music, but I don’t see very much live music of any type any more (besides what I play ;) ).
      Toys? They’re boring when you have an entire world, and another person, to play with! Sounds like a busy but fun time :)

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  10. Suzanne@PictureRetirement

    Walking distance, early night, pub atmosphere, sounds like a lot of smiles. Our NYE celebration with friends at their house, in our PJ’s made me smile, but the thing that made me really smile was getting a nice capture during a family photo session a couple of weeks back. As an amateur photographer, I am easily thrilled when that happens. You can see the photo here https://picture-retirement.com/2020/01/05/captured-moments-family-photo-sessions/ . It’s okay to SKIP the boring part and go straight to the photo ;-)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      It was a nice evening, and nicer for being pretty much unplanned. I always love getting a better than expected photo. Typically I take nature photos, so for me it’s things like an osprey coming out of the water with a fish or whatever, but hey are always special.

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            1. trentpmcd Post author

              Maybe I misstated it – the Irish restaurant with the French toast is a different place that I had visited several times before, but our waitress also works at the Irish pub (that I hadn’t visited before NYE), and so invited us to the pub during breakfast. Still, it seems funny to have on old Irish restaurant that specializes in French Toast!

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  13. tidalscribe

    We went round the corner, or two corners to be precise, for lovely leisurely lunch with friends, just six of us. It was dark when we went home, but not late! Watched the fireworks from London, then turned over to BBC Alba which is in Gaelic and had great folk music. Cyberspouse is Scottish, but doesn’t speak Gaelic, I just love the sound of it. So that was at least six smiles for New Year’s Eve and Day.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      It does sound like a lot of good smiles. At midnight Ireland time, the people at the table next to us were Facetiming relatives in Ireland, so we had a real international New Year celebration, though only a few people in the crowd were speaking the Irish variant of Gaelic ;)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Walking distance is very good if it is a pub and a pint or two of Guinness might be involved ;) It is also great to have somewhere to go that does not involve cars, even if I am burning electrons instead of fossil fuels….

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