U2 from the Outside

Hey all,

Just a quick post as I'm getting ready to leave work. It's been a whirlwind of a week and there are a bunch of things I want to write about but in the interest of time, I'll have to just tell you about the loveliness that was U2 the other night. And no, I didn't suddenly get tickets to the sold out shows. That would have been amazing... but Katie, Abbie and I decided to walk over to Croke Park (which is in my neighborhood) on the night of the show. We managed to get past the guards by pretending to be with another group of ticketholding people and made our way right to the edge of the park where we were able to hear (with pretty, damn good clarity) the whole concert from outside. A ton of other people had the same idea we did so it was almost like being in the stadium...people clapping and lighting lighters and making out...haha...just like the people in Croke were probably doing. A big black sheet had been draped over the entrance to try and block out our view of the screen but it was a windy night and when the sheet would blow up, everyone would start cheering, as we got a glimpse of Bono and The Edge on stage. The Irish love their U2 and it was just a high-energy night. Good fun.

More later. Gotta go catch the train.

D.

Three cheers (or more) for Cleavage

Hey all,

I've just finished my day of training at the Digital Hub. I thought the topic was Project Management today but it was actually Presentation Skills and I had to come up with a 10 minute presentation on a topic of my choosing. Most people did presentations relating to their jobs but seeing as I am only in my fourth week of Spoiltchild Design-dom, I decided to pitch, "Why you should visit Boston." Cuz it's wicked pissa of course. When you really start writing down all the Boston-ness that it Boston, it's quite the list...entertainment, history, nature (or should I say natuh.) Must say, am very proud of my hometown...Go sox...or something.

Katie and Abby have been shopaholics...good thing they came ecquipped with the cash cuz this place is not cheap (as I have, of course, mentioned a million times.) I'm actually getting used to the expense and have found good bargain stores and other ways around getting absolutely stroked living here. It probably helps that I've stopped converting everything into dollars in my head. It's too disturbing. Best not to think about it.

On Katie and Abby's first day, actually first hours in Dublin, they were thrown into the melee that is my neighborhood when a GAA game is on at Croke Park. It was a semi-final game (Dublin vs. Wexford) so of course the Dubs where out in force...and they were certainly appreciating Katie and Abby or at least, Abby's "rack," as someone so eloquently put it. I was slightly disturbed to be honest, especially as we were walking up the main road by this questionable bar and got some sort of a communal howl from literally 50-100 guys. It was deafening. The lads like the ladies in these parts and are apparently not afraid to show it. Katie and Abby loved it, I think. Thankfully. I would have felt bad if they were freaked by all the attention. They pointed out that Ireland has more hottie guys per square inch than anywhere else they've ever been. Well-dressed hottie guys at that...Drunk, well-dressed hottie guys when the GAA is on...who like to howl.

Abby has discovered Bulmers Cider and hasn't stopped discovering it since she got here...haha. (Averi - She would make you proud. Her love affair with the "apple juice," might rival yours...) Took them to a couple of pubs in our 'hood over the past few nights and introduced them to the beautiful thing that is the late night, greasy paper bag of chips with salt and vinegar....mmmmmm.

Have had a pretty interesting week workwise between the training today and the opening of our clients new office building on Monday. Hopefully will not have to go visit this client often though as the nearest train station looks like it's been abandonned for 100 years. No station or station keeper to speak of which is always a bad sign. Everything portable including the benches had been ripped out and carted off. Plenty of steel fencing and a giant padlock to lock the place up (at night I presume...) I felt like I was getting off into south central. There was absolutely no one around except for a few grubby looking little boys watching some dude try to get his pick up truck up an embankment of some sort. So me and my business casual linen skirted self figured out that I had to cross over a garbage filled foot bridge and walk down a weed and garbage choked path to get to the office park. On said path, I found that I had the company of a very large and very alive rat...nice. Strangely, once you get off that path, you're in a giant poshish office park. Lots of modern glass office buildings of all varieties and sizes although for such a large office park, it was surprisingly empty. There was one glass building that was entirely empty of any furniture or people and you could see the sky on the other side right through the building. It was an odd place. Flat expanses of concrete and giant abstract sculptures and empty but attractive office space. I guess given my rat companion at the (practically) burnt out train station, it's not such a surprise that people aren't lining up to move in.

Tomorrow am off to Belfast where Tommy is having a little party at his parents house. I wish you could all beam yourselves there! Not sure what I'll do on Sat. for my birthday yet...I'm sure it will involve eating and drinking but other than that who knows? Tommy gave me an early birthday present of the first season of Six Feet Under (which as you all know is my favorite show ever) so tonight I'm gonna take it easy and maybe watch a few. The crew (being Tom, Katie and Abby) have jetted off to Belfast. He's going to show them the northern coast (which is gorgeous) tomorrow so it should be a good time for them.

I'm off. Hope you're all well.

Just a Quickie

Hey All,

Just wanted to write a quick update since Katie and Abby are here! They arrived this morning and seem to be dealing with the jetlag in the way only people under twenty can. A shower and a sandwich and they were ready to shop....wahooo. Am looking forward to having company.

On other fronts, had a pretty mellow weekend, Walked up to Clontarf last night (which is about 20 minutes from my house and right on the Dublin Bay) and had dinner in a cute bistro with Tom. Shared a bottle of wine and pizza (which was actually good) and just relaxed. I really like that neighborhood as it's got a great promenade where the Tolka river meets the bay. And it always has that salty ocean smell which I love and reminds me of home. It's kind of got an industrial edge to it, lots of fishing boats and commercial barges and cranes in view but I can get into that. Anything ocean and I'm all for it. I love that I can walk there.

Have been commuting my ass off except for Thurs. when I had an Adobe training in the morning in Dublin at a posh hotel, then had lunch (with a book) in a really fabulous and on the cheap vegetarian restaurant and then went to Meath to do a photoshoot for a blues singer's website. The shoot was at her house which is a 200 year old farmhouse on the water. Very pretty and it was actually a warm and sunny day. Listened to her play a few songs and shot some film and then had tea in the garden. This tea idea rocks. Have been drinking mad amounts of it. I will probably have yellow teeth and a heart attack by the end of the year, but I'm into it nonetheless.

Have been wandering around my neighborhood just kind of seeing what's there. The strangest thing of note so far is the video store/tanning salon. Talk about an odd combination. The tanning is charged by the minute too so you could conceivably get 4 minutes of tanning and Lord of the Rings III in no time at all... Talk about one-stop shopping. There are plenty of orange tinted people walking around too so tanning of some sort must be pretty popular. The tan in a can seems very big...lots of people with positively tangerine elbows and knees in the house. Looks even better when paired with peroxide hair and pearlescent lipstick. Overall the Dubs are super fashion conscious but not always in a good way. Plenty of 'Kylie Minogues gone wrong,' walking the streets.

Have decided that I should start taking pictures of all the defaced signs around Dublin. Hopefully will have some pics to post soon (If Smart Telecom ever comes through with my internet connection.) My favorite sign so far is on a fence outside of some ominous looking factory. Someone messed with the letters so that it says: No Smoking Naked...haha. Just in case you were having a jones for a naked smoke or as they say here, a fag in yer birt'day suit.

Well am off to take Katie and Abbie to their first legal pint in Baile Atha Cliath. (that's Dublin FYI.) Dublin just won a big GAA game against Wexford so I'm sure there will be liveliness in our local.

Hope you're all well.

My Life of Walking

Hey All,

So I still don't have internet access at home but found this little hole in the wall internet place 'round the corner from my abode so for 2 euros an hour, I get to surf away. Tom is home (hopefully) painting some shelves that a previous occupant painted a hideous shade of bright blue.

Finished my second week of commuting to Drogheda and it is definitely improving. Still not a long term solution but I am not hating it as much. Got to work on some cool projects this week and am getting to know my boss and his wife a bit better. Have a couple of events/trainings in the next few weeks that are in Dublin and will mean that I don't have to trek to Drogheda on those days...wahooo. I've decided to do this little Business Management for Design Cert. which consists of 8 one-day workshops focusing on various aspects of running a design company. My boss told me about them and offered me the time off to do it so why not? The courses are heavily funded by the Irish government so they're cheap and as an added bonus, they're in Dublin so it will mean two more days a month in the city instead of the 'burbs. Should be interesting and I'm always up for learning new things. It's in this building called the Digital Hub which sounds like it should look like a spacestation (but is in reality, probably an old warehouse.) The first one is in a few weeks so we'll see how it goes.

Went to see Sin City on Thurs. night with Tommy-boy. We decided to go to this cineplex thing away from the city and in our new carless life decided to walk there and Damn, we underestimated the distance big-time. Barely made it to the movie in time. Decided that it's a bad idea to walk multiple miles in Old Navy 3-dollar flip-flops. As for Sin City, visually beautiful but seriously disturbing on the gratuitous violence front. You get to see someone get all of their limbs amputated and then be eaten by a cannibalistic dog, as well as a person literally getting their head beaten to pulp and their male parts ripped off and thrown on the ground and that's just scratching the surface. No Joke. Not sure I would reccommend it unless you happen to be a cannibal or budding serial killer although I can't say it didn't hold my attention.

Had a pretty productive weekend. Went to a pretty, old downtown bar with some of Tom's co-workers on Friday night but managed to be up early the next day which was a surprisingly sunny and warm (ish) day. It's funny, the minute the temperature goes up above the mid-sixties here, people act like they're in the tropics. Lots of half-naked, pale Irish girls walking around getting absolutely fried and loving it. Went to the Temple Bar Farmer's market which was bunged with people as was Grafton Street and the entire downtown. Guess you've got to take advantage of the warm, sunny weather while it lasts...if the low to mid seventies can really be considered warm...haha. As usual, we went crazy buying stuff at the Farmer's market cuz it all looks so good. Got a ton of veggies and beautiful leafy greens, some fresh salmon, farm-raised meat, cheese, olives, pesto, brown bread, strawberries and a crepe with nutella and bananas...yum. Asked Bryce and Michelle over for dinner and I made broiled salmon with pepper and lemon, pesto, and a big salad with arrugula and really nice tomatoes along with some white wine. Good stuff. I love food. They brought chocolate fudge cake from Marks and Spencers (who make amazing desserts) and whipped cream. Nice.

We also managed to hit up the Irish version of home depot yesterday and bought paint and a bunch of herbs and plants although we didn't consider how we would get it all home untill after we left the store. There's that carless thing again. We managed to hail a taxi driver down who was on his way home from grocery shopping at the fortress that is the giant Tesco in that area. He was an interesting character telling us about the unreasonable price of orange juice, the golf balls he got on sale and picking up big-time Dublin gangsters in his taxi all in the same breath. Craziness. He also told us about the nephew of one of the big gangsters doing a, "runner," and stiffing him on a fare and how this guy ended up dead from a forced heroin overdose....hhhhmmmm...needless to say, we tipped him well...haha.

This morning, I woke up early, found the classical music radio station and planted all of the herbs that I bought yesterday in pots I found in the back garden. Felt like a cross between Lorraine and my mom. Maybe this means, I'll inherit their green thumbs and not actually kill these little plants which would certainly be a first. :) Went to the local Spar and bought milk and cereal and a the Sunday Times. It was the first truly, leisurely Sunday morning that I've had since I left Cambridge. Feels good to finally have a settled place to call my own. On that note, I'm antsy for visitors. Cannot wait. Tom is planning a "Stag Do," in July with his boys and one of Tom's female co-workers was saying we should plan a, "Hen Party." I thought it was really sweet that she offered to do that but thought to myself that anything wedding related without my peeps in Boston would just not do. Who would come to a party here...my imaginary friends?! Will have to have a bachellorette (sp?) party sometime in the future in Beantown or surrounds. Tommy can rock out all he likes in Amsterdam this July...My day will come as well, I'm sure ;) Do want to start planning some weekends away though regardless. Apparently, you can fly from Belfast to Prague for 21 pounds sterling. Not bad at all.

Well, alas, my hour is almost up. I'm off to supervise Tom's labor...haha. Make sure he's not lying down on the job. :) Hope you're all well and enjoying your hot weather. ( am comfortably wearing jeans right now which is awfully strange for mid June!)

Dubs from the Planet Meaghers

Hi all,

Well, it is a well appreciated "bank holiday," Monday here which means no work for me and for now, it is sunny out there (although I've learned that that can change at the drop of a hat). Tom unfortunately is working for the slave-driving corporate whores who employ him, so I have hit the streets of Dublin with a to-do list the size of Montana and am trying to appreciate my free time on my own and the sun while it lasts.

Overall, it was not a bad weekend. Have to say, I was more than overjoyed to have three days which did not involve a commute to Drogheda to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours in someone's living room...that in and of itself was enough to make me a very happy girl. Friday night, we had our first guests to our new abode. Tom's friend Leon and his girlfriend Esther came over and we just kicked it in our living and had a few drinks and, "a bit of a chat," as they say in these parts. Ended up going out for one to one of our locals called, Meaghers. Before I saw the sign, I thought we were going to a pub called, Mars, as that is pretty close to the way it's actually pronounced. On our way home, we hit up the chippie next door which Leon claims has the best smoked cod and chips in the city...the place looks like nothing but a hole in the wall, but I have to say, it was pretty good. Whenever I pass by, the same Chinese man and woman are in there working away, no matter the time of day, which is just another example to fly in the face of some of these xenophobic Dubs that the foreigners are not all here to suck off the social welfare system. I definitely had that on my mind when we hit up the chippie as Leon went on a little tangent in the bar about just that. I think many of the Dubs are having a really hard time adjusting to the influx of foreigners who have arrived en masse in the past 5 years or so and I can understand that it must be a bit of a shock for them but nonetheless it's hard to listen to people say the most assinine (sp?) things about the lazy foreigners taking all the benefits from the hard working people of Ireland. Another favorite is that all the foreigners are taking the jobs at Spar and Abrakebabra... (convenient store and crappy fast food joint.) Much like the states, alot of the foreign laborers seem to take the jobs that the Irish don't really want anyway and sometimes get exploited doing it... so all I can say is...cry me a river. Also notable is that whenever I witness someone going on an anti-foreigner rant, they are always like, Oh, but you know I don't mean you, it's those Nigerians or Asians or insert some such other non-white population... I'm sure Ireland and it's infrastructure will adjust and public policy will be created so that the locals don't feel as if the asylum seekers are taking all their money, but it may be a bit of a rocky road for now. From my point of view, all the diversity makes Dublin a more interesting place with much better food...haha.

Saturday, Tom and I hit the town to buy a bunch of exciting things including a toaster, a phone and sheets...wahooo. Am trying to make our house really feel like ours, progress is slow as I don't have time to do much during the week but we're definitely getting there. Saturday night, Tom and I walked through the Docklands to a neighborhood called Ringsend which is a very old skool kind of place with a real neighborhoody feel. Jane lives there and was having a dinner party. Her cottage looks out on the river which is full of giant barges and cranes. Cool view. The dinner party was very good fun. Delicious food and drink and good company. Met a couple who I really like. The woman kind of reminded me of the singer from the band, The Gossip if she was Irish and not from the South...haha. Very spunky and fun. The crowd was extremely fan-boy so at times the indie music conversation was way beyond me but they were very down to earth about it and not wanky pretentious as some indie types can be. And politically progressive so I didn't have to listen to any bullshit about the lazy Nigerians...haha. We had black bean (yes black bean!) nachos and grilled trout with these lovely side salads and Marks and Spencer's desserts which are amazingly good. Got a taxi home around 3am...one of those nights that just gets away from you. Good times.

Sunday, I went to my first G.A.A game at Croke Park (known as Croker to the locals.) G.A.A also known as Gailic Football or "Gaa," is kind of a mix of soccer, American Football and Rugby all played with no pads of any kind. It's super fast paced and actually pretty fun to watch as the players use both hands and feet to get either soccer type goals or football type kicks through those high-up poles that they have in American football. (No clue what those are actually called.) The game was Co. Dublin vs. Co. Meath which is just to the north-west of Dublin which is a a very Redsox/Yankees type rivalry and there were 65,000 people there to watch it. The Dubs all sit in this one section and look like a sea of blue with Dub shirts and flags and the like. The game was super close but the Dubs prevailed and you would have thought they just won the World Cup for all the celebrations. Super dramatic music was played at the end-something like the Irish version of, "We are the Champions," or something. It is a seriously rough game. 4 or 5 times, they had to stop play because someone was on the ground and not getting up. They just jump and grab and tackle...gives a whole new meaning to that football fouling term, "unnecessary roughness." Absolutely no such thing in G.A.A...haha. Afterwards, every pub in my neighborhood was packed with revelers (including Meaghers) as the park is close to our neighborhood but we ended up going into Town with Tom's coworkers Bryce and Michelle for some Asian-Fusion type dinner at this place called Mao (which is good but not as good as Brown Sugar...sniff) and had an early night of it.

So, alas, tomorrow starts another work week. Seems somewhat sad that I already dread working...Was I that person who said I could never not have a job?! Would absolutely love to just freelance and make my own hours...who knows, it could happen at some point, but for now I am Drogheda bound tomorrow. Going to make the most of today.

Hope you are all enjoying your extremely warm temperatures while I am comfortably wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt today. I'm jealous!

Be well.