Taking off my Aran Jumper and throwing it on the ground and stomping on it...

Well. Finally. Just when I had given up and decided to slit my wrists, the sun appeared again. It was still lashing down last Friday afternoon when I set off with a big group of people to Co. Clare for the weekend. One of my softball friends turned 30 and she organised a big trip away with her friends from all over Ireland and everyone converged on the west coast on Friday night with rain gear and beer. After we'd all resigned ourselves to the fact that we were heading off camping in possibly the worst weather of the summer, we woke up on Saturday morning (in a hostel) to the most glorious day. This must be what people in drought feel like when it finally rains... It was absolutely divine. We took the ferry from a little town called Doolin over to Inis Oirr (pronounced Inishere), the smallest of the Aran Islands. On a bad day, I'd say a small island might be claustrophobic (nothin' to do but sit in the pub and get locked) but it was really, really, lovely on a hot sunny day. We spent the entire day outside, took walks, ate icecream, and generally soaked up the sun.

Since the weather was good, we decided to go fer it and camp. There's no campground on Inish Oirr so you just pitch your tent wherever suits. We found a sweet spot behind a dune on the beach and set down. Unfortunately one of the people who was supposed to bring a tent bailed and we found ourselves in the clown car situation of having 4 people trying to sleep in a 2 man tent... It's a good thing we stayed out until 3am at the pub - the less time spent in the tent, the better! In the end, there were only three of us in the tent but it was a serious tight squeeze! I really love camping, sleeping out in the air and waking up outside but I was a happy girl when I arrived home on Sunday night and snuggled into my lovely, warm, soft bed. And I only have to share it with one other person. ;)

I'd like to say that that streak of good weather continued... but that would clearly be too much to ask. I got actually drenched to the skin this morning as it poured buckets out of the sky during my entire 25 minute walk to work... It's lunchtime now and my jeans are still wet and my shoes are like two little lakes next to my desk. Monsoon season continues... Why exactly did I move to Ireland and not Tahiti?!

Click to pic above to see the exotic Irish sun making its brief appearance on Inis Oirr!

A Glasgow Kiss

For those of you who might not be familiar with Glasgow, a "Glasgow Kiss," isn't a peck on the cheek but is actually a headbutt to the nose...

Contrary to popular opinion, we found Glaswegians to be beyond nice. Our taxi driver was super chatty, a random punter on the street gave me his subway ticket with free fare on it and everyone we talked to was generally extremely friendly and helpful. The reputation of Glaswegians as a bit rough and tumble probably has more to do with the fact that it's home to the world's most contentious football rivalry (Celtic vs. Rangers) than the nature of the population at large. In fact, Glasgow is full of incredible architecture (both Arts and Crafts and Victorian), a ton of free museums, lots of indie cafes and ethnic grocery stores and an enormous park that's both beautiful and seemingly well used. It's also home to a lot of people whose accent is completely indecipherable. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and whispering under my breath, "What the f*ck is he saying?!" The wedding ceremony might as well have been in latin. ;) Fortunately, most of the other wedding guests who were from Belfast (only a short distance away and with it's own mental accent) also had no idea what any of the Glaswegians were saying so I didn't feel so bad about my cluelessness...

We managed to stay out at the wedding until the wee hours of Saturday and still get up and get a bit of sightseeing in on Sunday. Amazingly there was a bit of sun in Scotland on our last day there. After my last trip there a few years ago, I was expecting an arctic chill. Climate change must be in effect when Glasgow is sunny and warm and Dublin is drowning in it's own precipitation.

What's that on my face?!!!!

Well, it's certainly not sun. The running joke in these parts is that we wouldn't recognize the sun on our faces even if we saw it. Which we haven't. For, well, either 38 or 43 days according to various local radio stations. Sure, the sun's made a few brief appearances: one beautiful afternoon playing softball, a nice enough evening sitting at an outdoor cafe with my work-mates, but overall, it's been gray, gray, and more gray with rain that regularly lashes out of the sky making my umbrella into an inside out lollipop, totally useless for keeping me dry.

I think I'm going through the five stages of grieving now, and I certainly haven't gone anywhere near acceptance. I'm stuck somewhere between denial and anger. As I was having my daily whinge to Tom about another day of 'Fucking Rain,' he pointed out to me that when you grow up in Ireland, you just don't expect to have summer and that instead of summer, Ireland has beer. hhhhhmmmmm. Not a good enough trade as far as I'm concerned. As far as the weather goes, I've been drinking a lot more tea to cope than beer. My teeth are probably going to turn yellow and fall out. Either that or my poor over-caffienated heart is going to give out. Maybe I should switch to beer. Better a belly than heart palpatations... ;)

Yours in wet wellies,
D.

No. 31 has Arrived

Making up for lost time... my all intimidating, milestone of a 30th birthday went by with a bit of a whimper so I decided that my 31st should be a proper piss-up. Pizza and red wine and communist bars and disco dancing and fat frogs in full effect. Click on the pic for the full badness. ;)

Work on Display

Hey All,

After many months of work, the Dcoy website is up and running... If ya wanna see some recent work (some mine, some by our other sweet designers) have a look. The url is: www.dcoy.ie

Am off to Glasgow this weekend so photos of Scottish debauchery will be forthcoming. :)