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.