My life on the Train

Hi all,

Well, it's been a busy week, good, bad and all the rest as things usually are around here. Am settling into my new place...it's amazingly spacious compared to my two room apartment in Central Sq. Someone went a little crazy with the paintbrush (yellow kitchen, blue bathroom, something approaching what Tom calls, "terracotta" walls in the bedroom...) but the living room is huge and has a beautiful victorian era fireplace and there's a sliding door out to a pretty little patio/yard type thing and there are nice wood floors upstairs and a skylight so I can't really complain. The strange thing about apartments coming furnished here in Dublin is the problem of where to put things that you don't want...I was able to find a hiding place for the ceramic ducks (in the closet under the stairs) but am going to have to tie up a couple of big, flowery rugs and hoist them into the attic space to get rid of them...haha. I found a good discount store and am starting to make the place my own...with some accessories in nice, neutral colors to offset whatever lunatic with a paintbrush lived here before...haha.

Have been attempting to become a real, legit, resident of this country. Got my green card last week after several hours in the National Immigration Bureau which was very exciting and surprisingly easy. Have not had such an easy time getting the Irish equivalent of a SSN (a PPS number). First off, the offices are only open during shortened business hours (10-4 with an hour break at lunch!) and you can only get the number in the neighborhood where you live or where you work. Anyway, made it down to the Drogheda Social Welfare Office this morning and showed them ID and a job offer letter only to find out that I need to present them with a utility bill in my name to prove my address. The chicken and egginess of this requirement is that I don't have any utility bills in my name because I don't have an Irish Bank account and the utilities here require either direct debiting or huge deposits...and I don't have an Irish bank account because I can't get a bank account without a PPS number...Oh the joy of ass-backward beaurocracy. At least in the states, I know exactly what type of assbackwardness to expect. Anyway, managed to find a work around if I get a letter from my landlord and present a utility bill in someone else's name at my address but this will push things back yet again and meanwhile, I can't get paid...Thank god for my Tommy, aka, sugar-daddy or I would be on the streets.

Also working on getting broadband and a land line in the house so I can stay in better contact with all y'all but this is also proving convoluded and time-consuming. Called up Eircom (the big-daddy telecommunications co.) to inquire about broadband and was told that I needed to have a phone number/landline to get broadband as the cust. service rep. told me that broadband goes through the phoneline...hello?! Not DSL mind you, but broadband...since when? Anyway, to get a phone-line one has to "rent," a line from who else but, Eircom for 27 euros a month. This is not phone service per se, just a charge for having a line and does not include any calls...Both local and international calls are charged per minute and at rates that would make any spoiled American cry. Anyway, to get broadband and or phone service, one needs to get this line rental from Eircom and until they mail us an account number, we can't sign up with any of the phone/cable companies...Ah, the strange, strange, world of telecommunications where you need a phone number so that they can tell you if you can get broadband which apparently goes through the phone line is an endless mystery to me...How would they explain my broadband connection and NO phoneline that was the setup in Cambridge?!!!

Alas, I don't mean to be a complainer but this stuff is all kind of funny (as is my ineptitude at navigating all of this infrastructure.) Everything I attempt to do really does take twice as long as I expect it will. I just have to laugh about so as not to rip my hair out.

Started my new job in Drogheda and so far the work has been fairly interesting. Went to a Dublin Institute of Technology Design Degree show tonight with my new boss which was pretty cool. The guy I'm working with seems fairly decent although working in someone's house with one other person who owns the company is definitely giving me bad Katie flashbacks....(shudder). The commute (while a scenically beautiful, coastal train ride) is extremely long and includes a 20 minute walk through the ghettos of north Dublin to the train station, nearly an hour on the train and then a 15 minute walk through a housing development in Drogheda. Work is definitely better than no work though so I will suck it up for now and either find another job or get a car and attempt to drive on the lefthand side of the road, the 28 miles to Drogheda. I really have a hard time thinking about shifting with my left hand but it will probably be better than walking through junkieville in the winter when it gets dark out early.

On a more positive note, It stays light here until almost 11pm every night which rocks and we've had some amount of bright sunshine everyday for the past week. Gotta love those long days...Have also found a most lovely restaurant on the north side which Tom and I and his parents went to last week and was absolute deliciousness. Got an invite to a dinner party this Saturday night which should be good fun and had a good night out last weekend with Tom and his coworkers which ended in 2am pizza in Dublin city centre. (Just like hifi...sigh...gotta love late night greasy eats mixed with copious amounts of scotch and soda...haha.) Figured out the hot water system in our new house - you have to flip a switch and heat the water before you shower - which ended my three day stretch of cold showers and did much for my overall mood.

So that's all the biz for now...Hope all is well out there with all of you. Am happily anticipating the American invasion in July...gotta use that spanky, new, spare room.

Back in Black

Hi All,

I apologize for my long silence but things have been incredibly crazy this month. To summarize, that job that I was offered at the Architecture firm fell through when they realized that they wouldn't be able to get me a visa. Serious let down...and Tom and I started discussing other options. I had another interview the day after I got the bad news about the architecture firm. This job was a small design studio out in the 'burbs (Drogheda). Bad commute but I really liked the studio's work so I decided to apply. Two days after the interview, I was back in Drogheda and was offered the job...yahooo. I looked into the visa situation and found out that for a company here to get me a work permit, they would have to prove that there was no one else in the EU that could do my job as well as I could...a pretty impossible task for a graphic designer when we are a dime a dozen...and So...I made the leap that I have been too scared to make for the last 5 years...and decided to get hitched. Changed my flight, finished up my freelance work at Snap Printing, took on another freelance job that I completed from Boston, went to a couple of networking meetings, packed, drank some scotch at the Barge and jumped on a plane for home...lovely, lovely, home.

When I arrived at Logan, Lolo, Marina and Brian were waiting to pick me up. Went home and saw my parents and ate yummy mom-food (manicotti and salad from the garden and other tasty Perry Street type foods.) It was so good to be home. Really, so good. Spent two weeks simultaneously catching up with all my peeps and trying to plan a barbecue wedding in my backyard. Needless to say, my feet hardly hit the ground. Tom flew in the following week and the craziness of planning this thing continued.

I have to say, the "wedding," went so much better than I could have even imagined. It didn't rain, the justice of the peace turned out to be amazing, found a hot but not too weddingy dress, Tom's parents were able to come and Tom's mom made me an incredible bouquet at the very last minute, the wine flowed freely and best of all, you all came, my lovelies. Who knew that such a flawless event could be planned in two weeks? Fabulous. Of course, everything couldn't be done in such a short time and we ended up using cheapy rings that we bought at the last minute. (Tom bought his about two hours before the ceremony...haha.)

Anyway, that's the last three weeks in a nutshell. For all of you who weren't at said backyard wedding, I'm going to be planning a bigger, more formal event for next year...but I can't even think about that just yet. Am back in Dublin now in my new place, starting my new job tomorrow with my newly acquired green card, navigating the strange and exhorbitant world of telecommunications and hot water (of which there is not much at the moment.) I have to say that it was hard to leave Boston after two weeks of such a lovefest, much harder than I expected it would be to come back. At least, it's sunny and warm today and I'm beginning to recover from my jetlag. I think it will take a while to adjust to all of these changes in my life...but here goes.

Vegan Anarchist Feminists and the World According to Women with Pointy Shoes

Hi All,
Well it's been a crazy eventful couple of days. First things first, insert clouds lifting and well placed sunbeams illuminating the sky and a little choral Aaaaaaahhhhhh in the background. Yes, it's true. I have a job offer. Just as I was starting to lose faith. Anyway, will start at the beginning. A friend of Tom's cousin's husband has been helping me to meet people and network and all that fun stuff so he invited me to this Chamber of Commerce business schmoozing event which of course, I was absolutely dreading. It was much as expected, lots of peeps in suits and woman in clip-clop pointy shoes (which are an epidemic in these parts) and lots of free wine which I attempted not to drink so as not to stumble around in front of potential employers. Luckily, Gerard (Tom's cousin's husband's friend) didn't abandon me and I wasn't that American girl without a suit on eating bruschetta by the bucketful. Met a couple of "useful" people and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I escaped out onto the Dublin streets and back towards my apartment. So I went from being a corporate whore (good god girl, Where are your pointy shoes?!) to a world where they eat pointy-shoe girls for breakfast a few hours later. Tom and I went up to North Dublin to this bar down an alleyway (called a laneway here) where Jane's friends were having a party celebrating Ladyfest, this big cultural event that they recently put on. It was like walking into Mod 100 at Ye Olde Hampshire college circa 1995. It's amazing how crusties look absolutely the same no matter what continent they live on...dyed hair, raggedy band t-shirts, jeans that could walk by themselves, and patches, patches and more patches. The bars are the same too: cheap beers in slightly dirty glasses and a pool table that's seen better days...haha There's something comforting about that. Just like home if everyone still looked like Megh in college. Anyway, plunked myself in front of the vegan friendly spread....mmmmm guacomole and chatted with a few cute girls who were actually, fairly friendly. (That's the thing about hipsters...they don't always tend to be the most friendly, inclusive bunch.)

Earlier on Thurs. got an email from the guy I thought was messing me about asking me if I could come in for a trial day the next day, on Friday. By the time I made it home from the crustie convention, it was past midnight so I just crashed out and got up at the crack of dawn to go make my trial run. They certainly just tossed me into the fray...I got there at 9am and was working on a project by 9:05am. In fact, they had me running jobs, talking to clients, emailing out jobs and the whole lot pretty much as soon as I walked in. Some client called me and asked me if I had received the email she sent....I was thinking "Uhhhhh, do I have email?!!!" Luckily, they use the same email system as Chedd so I was able to rise to the occasion and play like I was competent and knew all about their protocol...when in fact, no one even told me where the bathroom was...The design work itself was actually quite easy if a little bit depressing. It reminded me of the design I used to do for Katie - fairly low-end and with the added fun of making things purposefully ugly as hell to account for people's bad taste...(yes, I'm a design snob...haha) Anyway, after a day of being the new girl and trying to figure out how everything works and smile at the people around me and not want to slit my wrists after making the world's most hideous stationery, I was exhausted and a little bit bummed thinking that I would have to take this job that seemed a little like torture.

Got out of work and had three messages from Lafferty Design, the Architecture Firm where I interviewed on Wednesday (http://www.laffertydesign.com). Called them back and (will miracles never cease...) they offered me a job! Yessssssss. Talk about getting thrown a life preserver after a day of designing citicorp invitations to an Elton John concert. Was quite relieved - but seriously jittery after 2 days of schmoozing with strangers of all kinds for business and pleasure and all the rest of it. I kept just wanting to pace around the room while obsessively tapping my feet and chewing on my fingernails...and Tom was working until almost 11pm so I had no one to go out with for a few hours. Let me tell you how I missed you all at that moment. I just wanted to be able to go to the B-side and drink Mojitos and party like it was 1999 and celebrate...

Well, after trying to watch Sense and Sensibility unsuccessfully, I finally met Tom at work and ate cold pizza from his office and jetted off to a local with some of Tom's coworkers. Tom's friend Helen came out which was nice and we ended up out in this old-skool Irish pub till after 3am. I am just not built for these late nights but it was a good time nonetheless. This whole round buying thing is like alcoholism waiting to happen as everyone feels obliged to buy everyone else a drink and will absolutely not take no for an answer. I left 2 untouched whiskey and sodas on the table when we left as people just kept buying them...and this was after drinking 5 of them... Had a fairly relaxing rest of the weekend. Went to a lovely farmers market in Temple Bar and bought lots of nice veggies and cheese and bread and the like. Went shopping for work-type clothes in the big shopping center. Went to Tom's friend Steven's party and sat around with a bunch of stoned dudes watching snooker and playing this game where everyone holds onto a metal handle and the last person to hit their button gets an electrick shock...don't ask. Went out with Bryce and Michelle (Tom's coworkers from Boston) on Sunday afternoon for a few glasses of wine in this gigantic french aristocracy themed bar and then tried too late to find a place to eat dinner. Ended up eating friench fries and onion rings in TGIFridays which, as you can imagine, was not exactly my first choice for grub (not even my last choice especially when a narsty TGIFridays burger rings in at a hefty 15 euros...) but I learned not to try to go out to eat at 10pm on the Sunday night before a bank holiday....

Well, that's all the news for now. Am meeting with the head of the architecture firm tomorrow and doing another half (trial) day at Snap Printing tomorrow afternoon. Wednesday have a 7-8:30am (yes, am) business networking thing that Gerard invited me too out in the 'burbs and then a job interview in the afternoon in Drogheda, a city north of Dublin. (Figured I would still go on the interview in Drogheda just in case anything falls through with the architecture firm or visa or anything like that.) Going to be a strangely busy week. Talk about contrast, Last week, I was ready to start counting the hairs on my own head for lack of anything more pressing to do.

Hope you're all well. See you in less than two weeks. Save the date: Sat. May 21 am going to have a graduation/early birthday BBQ...Cannot wait to see you all. Take Care.