Prague, Czech Republic

A few photos from T and I's long weekend in Praha... Most Leggy...

Obrigada Portugal

From Lagos, Portugal

Better late than never... Tommyboy and I spent an idyllic week in Portugal in August and I never got around to posting the pics... well, until now. Click the pic above for a bunch of photos that make me long for the sun... and don't forget to check out my fancy, four euro, absolutely, enormous sunglasses. I'm a fashion magnet, what can I say. ;) (The ones I brought lasted about a day before I broke them.)

36 Hours in Riga...

From Riga, Latvia

...but we did so much it felt like 36 days. My work colleague and I went over to Latvia this week for a marathon meeting to discuss a hotel / spa related project. The meeting alone was enough to fill the day but in addition to a 6 hour meeting, we managed to fit in, 2 nights of drinking mojitos, a business lunch, a business dinner (yum), a walking tour of Riga complete with a stop at the coolest Moroccan teahouse ever to drink sweet, minty, Moroccan tea, a record release party for a Russian teen singer wearing the tightest leather pants I've ever seen and a Nascar race (ok, it wasn't a Nascar race, it was a taxi ride from the airport, but it might as well have been a Nascar race!) Our guide for the walking tour was our client and a native Rigan who speaks five languages (Latvian, Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese) and was very knowledgeable about his city (not to mention super generous with his time). He showed us all the most beautiful Art Nouveau architecture, the medieval old town, Swedish and Dutch influenced neighborhoods, a few choice bits of Soviet blockitecture, hidden statues on the tops of buildings (a boy reading, cats with arched backs, wolves, faces etc...), a canal and park bursting with brightly coloured flowerbeds, and a great Cuban bar where my workmate and I ended up drinking mojitos, listening to a great Samba DJ till 3am, and ogling the adorable and probably gay bar-staff (well, maybe that was just me...haha). Considering how little time we had in Riga, we definitely made the most of it... perhaps a bit too much as we nearly missed our flight home, since someone (who shall remain nameless and wasn't me) was hungover as a donkey and slept in... Next stop: Uzbekistan, I've heard great things from my new Latvian friend ande tour guide, Who's up for it?!

A Side Order of Eco-Fries with your Upside-Down-Poke?

Just when I thought I could no longer be surprised by Irish-isms, that I could answer the dog, ride the joer and wind my neck in, with ease... I was, of course, wrong. The world of Irish slang is apparently an inexhaustable resource...

I was out the other night in Belfast for Tommy-boy's birthday with a few of our favo(u)rite northies. We were in a newly-opened-restaurant-bar called, "Made in Belfast" which seems to epitomise the latest trend in Irish-eating-drinking establishments. Enter, the eco-friendly, "recycled" bar. The premise of eco-dining is that instead of kitting out your new business with fresh-from-the-factory furniture top-of-the-line faux-marble table tops and brand-new hipster scandinavian light fixtures, the place is decked out in an eclectic hodge-podge of granny-chic, straight from the latest second-hand auction or car-boot sale. The result is part 70's rec room, part college coffee-house and part dusty-vacation-house (with maybe a little bit of southeast asian brothel thrown in for good measure.) And marketing-ploy or not, I like it (although it's only a matter of time until McDonald's co-opts it and opens a McGreener-than-thous.) Dublin's version of the eco-bar opened last week and was absolutely packed to the rafters last friday when I hit it up - and serving a damn fine mojito if I do say so myself.

Anyway, so here we all were, comfortably perched on Thai-rice-sack pillows and faux-fur animal-print cushions digesting a tasty dinner (served in a random selection of plates and dishes of course.) It was Tommy-boy's birthday and so it was time to loosen the belt and squeeze in dessert. The waiter quickly read out the choices, apple crumble, berry pannacota and an upside down poke... what? excuse me? Sexual adventurous-ness not withstanding, an upside down poke doesn't sound like something that should be done in a crowded restaurant on a Saturday evening... Instead of slapping the waiter (or dragging him into the kitchen for a better explanation ;)) I waited until he was gone and looked at my table-mates for clarification (hopefully without diagrams...haha.) Apparently a "poke" (now, don't be dirty) is simply an icecream cone, something your Granny would make for you when you visited her on a Sunday afternoon, "Would you like a nice, poke dear?" (Oh, god, the possibilities are really endless.) An upside-down poke is the hipster-bar's attempts to bring you back to your childhood-idyll - basically vanilla icecream in a little bowl with a cone sticking out the top. Care for a lick?!

A little bit of Summer

Click the pic to check out some photos from my recent trip to Boston.

8k and Running

Much to my shock and surprise, I found myself standing at the starting line of the Dublin Docklands, "Fun Run," the other day, with a number strapped to my back and 8 kilometers of pavement between me and the finish line. When I talked to my family a few days before the run and told them I had signed up to do it, they actually laughed and then pointed out that short legs run in the family. That's support for ya! Needless to say, I had never attempted any kind of public race before, and have always considered distance running to be a torture only marginally above hanging upside down from one's toenails...

To be fair, I do cycle to work everyday and I regularly run a few k at the gym several times a week but the treadmill is a far cry from hitting the pavement with 2,000 other people (and 4 very fit co-workers.) My expectation was that I would run half and walk half and hopefully manage to make it over the finish line before dark...haha.

Amazingly, I managed to jog the entire 8k. I had decided that I would make it to 3k and then walk but when I saw 3k, I decided to push for 4k and then 5k and then 6k... by the time I hit 6k, it seemed easier to just keep going. (forward momentum don'tcha know...) I managed to finish in 55 minutes which may seem ridiculously slow to all you sporty types but for me was a good 15 minutes under my time on the treadmill.

I'll not be running any marathons anytime soon. (My legs are still sore from the run two days later) but it was great to prove to myself that it was actually possible. I have to say though, that the best part of the whole experience was after the race, stripping off my sweaty clothes, taking a really hot shower and eating a big bowl of icecream in my pajamas... mmmmm, the real taste of victory. :)

Roma

Better late than never... Here are a whole buncha photos from my recent trip to Rome with Tommy-boy, LoloFerrari and JD. Good stuff. We managed to cram most of the major sites into three days while regularly stuffing our faces with pizza and gelato. It was defo a whirlwind tour but lovely nonetheless. :)

KleptoGarden

Oh, the saga of gardening... I've never before lived in an apartment that involved much in the way a outdoor upkeep - or if I did, I always had a nameless, faceless landlord who didn't much care if the garden looked like little house on the prairie.

These days though, I have a full-on proper back yard (which was pretty overgrown when we moved in 3 years ago.) While, it was pretty to look out the back and see ivy and honeysuckle and various bits of flora, it was becoming increasingly unusable - more Jungle Book than The Secret Garden. Every time Tommyboy and I looked out the back - we felt more and more guilty about the state of it... So, one fine non-rainy Saturday, we attacked it with all the tools we could pilfer from Tom's parents. We cut back everything we could get our hands on in the front and back of the house. Strangely, it would appear that our Garden has arms as how else to explain all the unlikely things we found when we gave it a haircut...

I was in the midst, of cutting back the enormous and half-dead bush in the front of the house when I noticed a black clump hidden in its middle. After more chopping and closer inspection, I pulled out a small black ipod nano in a leather case - previously owned by Tommy boy and mysteriously disappeared 6 months earlier.

A few hours later, when Tom emerged from the tangle of vines that was our back garden, he came out clutching the long-gone and long forgotten remote control for the living room stereo.

Apparently, our garden likes electronics. How it managed to snare them for itself is a mystery... that the ipod, after a little scrubbing and a recharge, still works, is a miracle.

Budapest

London A to Zed

Click the pic for a few photos from my recent trip to London.

The New Year cannot be denied

So, okay, like everyone else, I've been procrastinating... After spending ten days, socialising, stuffing my face, drinking wine, walking the city and generally trying to squeeze all my favorite things about life in Boston into a week and half, I was pretty wrecked. Jet-lag was wicked - lots of late nights and painfully early mornings getting back into the routine of work. Only now that we're easily halfway through January, am I fully back into the swing.

I joined the gym this winter to try and stave off the lethargy of life in the far northern hemisphere - The sun has only really fully woken up around 9am these days and it's back in hiding by 4:30pm at it's lowest point... I think there is definitely a tendency for hibernation written into my genes - I just want to sleep and eat biscuits (that's cookies for all u yanks ;) ) and lie on the couch with the remote. While I have been hitting the treadmill (and the climbing wall and the pool), I've still managed to get entirely sucked into the void of the couch and the telly on a few occasions. In keeping with the Irish tendencies toward overindulgence followed by repentance - January TV has made the shift from Dessert Porn (soft focus and close-up on the chocolate fudge cake) to documentaries about tummy tucks and industrial food production. Those of you who know how riveted I was reading 'Fast Food Nation' (and how I tortured you all with "fun" facts about meat production for months after) will know that I am powerless to resist a show about battery chickens or chemicals in the food supply. It's like a car crash. I just can't look away. And it wasn't just one documentary - it must have been industrial food week on Channel 4 because I watched a three-part series on free range chicken, a 'Dispatches' expose on ready meals and a screening of the film 'Super Size Me' all in the course of 4 days. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me - I missed Jamie Oliver's exploration into chicken parts and their many uses... To add insult to injury, I was also reading 'The Omnivore's Dilmena' a book about the evolution of food chains and the environmental consequences of industrial agriculture... Bring it on! The fact that I'm not a raw-food vegan (or even a proper vegetarian) at this point, is a minor miracle. Just don't ask me to eat any chicken nuggets okay?!

Well, viva la new year... 'onwards and upwards' I guess. 'Start as you mean to go on' and all the rest of it. Only 11 months until everyone's pouring booze down their necks and sucking down battery chickens and sticky-toffee-pudding by the bucket-load. Untill then, maybe it's time for an organic, sustainably-farmed, locally grown fair-trade salad with your guilt?!

And to all a Good Night

Hello all,
I'm departing from Mickeyland tomorrow a.m. for the Christmas holiday (but not before going out on the lash with the coworkers for our annual Christmas do. I'm going to be sensible though, really. ;))

No matter which side of the pond you happen to reside on, have a lovely Christmas (or Chanukah / Solstice / Kwanza etc...). Here's to lots of relaxation, reading, eating, and other coziness for the next two weeks. I am defo set to turn my brain to off. Can't wait.

Check out the link for angelic goodness:
www.dcoy.ie

Glamo(u)rama

Had our work Christmas Do (for the clients - our own staff do is still to come. ;) ). My boss invited his sister, who's a make-up artist to come in and do all of our faces for the party. (Well, all the women, we couldn't convince the guys to get into the eyeliner...). It was great fun. Most of us don't bother with make-up on a daily basis - no point in putting it on to sit in front of a computer all day - so it was fun to see everyone all dolled up.

As I always do, I went out with the best of intentions, it was a Wednesday night afterall and I was wearing heels... Alas, at 3:30am, after dancing my face off and drinking free G&Ts all night, I was still sitting in the pub. So much for sensible. It is the Christmas season after all.

As usual, I am making really stupid faces in all the photos - some things never change!

Tis the Season...

Party season has begun. I look forward to the elongated Christmas celebrations in Ireland with a mixture of anticipation and horror. On one hand, it's all great fun: mulled wine and Christmas decorations, and a bit of banter and general good-will. There's a real 'kids on Christmas Eve' vibe to everything. People are a bit giddy and well up for anything and there's always some event to look forward to.

On the other hand, it's absolute drunken-ness on the streets of Dublin, playing dodge the puke during your Sunday Christmas shopping "adventures", pants that have suddenly become two sizes too small and best of all: waking up in the middle of the night with a mouth that tastes like an ashtray, a pounding headache and the vague feeling that you've said or done something wholly innappropriate which can then be replayed in yer head through the wee hours of the morning until it becomes an elephant sized disaster and you think that perhaps it would be best to pack yer bags and jump on the next plane to a new life. (but maybe that's just me. ;) )

In the States in general and New England in particular, we have two things that moderate all of this good fun/complete excess: Thanksgiving and Puritans. Without Thanksgiving to mediate, Ireland moves from fairly muted Halloween fesitivities into two months of full-on, hard-core Christmas debauchery on Nov. 1st. The Christmas decorations go up, Marks and Spencer start showing dessert porn on TV (super-close up shots of sticky-toffee pudding, dripping with creme anglais and some husky voiced female in the background: "Not just Sticky-toffee-pudding, M&S Stiiiiccccckkkkyyyy-toffffeeeee-puddddding"), and best/worst of all, the partys begin. In addition to the easing into the Christmas season that Thanksgiving provides, we New Englanders have a history of Puritanical self-denial. Sure we try to fight it, we're cosmopolitan, modern folk after all... ;) but there's a little man in a pilgrim hat somewhere inside of us that says, "perhaps you shouldn't have that fifth pink cocktail with a strawberry on top, you disgraceful, excessive slob, you should in fact, go off and whip yerself with tree branches instead while running on a treadmill and eating brocolli..." (well, maybe that's just me again... ;) ) Generally though, I think we New Englanders are a bit more reserved than yer average Dub and all this messy whiskey-induced emotion, absolute indulgence and carry-on of the holiday season is both absolutely compelling and a little bit overwhelming at the same time. Either way, there's no denying it's here.

More than enough food for thought

I've been thinking alot lately about how people fnd meaning and purpose in their lives. Maybe because I've been reading alot - about a lot of horrible things really, honour killings, alcoholism, and global warming to name just a few. And whenever I read another article about poverty in Africa or sex trafficking or, insert social ill here, I'm upset/worried/pissed-off. And then I put down the article and go to bed and wake up in the morning and go to work and forget. I spend my days drawing little pictures and laying out type and giving careful consideration to kerning and clean lines and the relative merits of helvetica. ;) And for the most part, I enjoy this but it all seems rather insignificant when faced with all the broken things in the world that desperately need attention. Sure, I ride my bicycle and recycle and vote and try to work on projects that contribute to the greater good, like public gardens and literacy schemes but it seems like small potatoes in relation the worlds big woes... I was reading a collection of quotes today (for use in a book we are putting together at work) and I came across a couple that seemed really appropriate to my frame of mind these days... Maybe they just make me feel better about working at the "frivolous" job of art instead of working to end world hunger but they moved me and it's nice to find a little piece of inspiration now and again...

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours."
Noam Chomsky

"What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

html-mnop

I've recently rediscovered the joys of html... After my horrendous first job in Ireland, I had serious web PTSD. ;) But I'm coming back to it... slowly. I'm building myself a personal website and having a bit of fun customizing the blog... Don't worry. I won't leave it all neon pink forever... but I'm craving a bit of colour after spending my day designing a corporate identity for a Human Resources Company.

Kingdom Come

Took a trip to Co. Kerry last weekend aka "The Kingdom." It's a haul from Dublin (just getting out of Dublin during rush hour on the main roads would make ya cry.) When you get to Limerick, yer still only half way there... but finally, 6.5 hours later, Tommy-boy and I rolled into Dingle. We rented a house for the weekend with some friends and the place was completely sweet - with gorgeous views out the windows of mountain peaks and pastureland. Our first night in Dingle, we ended up in a pub which was also a hardware store called Foxxy Johns (I'm sure there's a story there...) It seems a lot of the pubs in Dingle lead a double life... not surprising considering there are 50 pubs in a village of a few thousand at most... Viva la tourism. Anyway, the pub-slash-hardware-store had a bar on one side and a counter on the other with a haphazard array of nails, screws and tools... The next night, after a day of sightseeing on the rugged coast and a big seafood feed, we again found ourselves in another local pub - but this time the pub doubled as a welly-shop. Boxes of wellys lined one of the walls along with pillows, raingear, mattress covers and a scale (for weighing the wellys?!). There was a big group of us as it was a birthday night out so we all plonked ourselves behind the welly counter on a long bench and got comfortable. :)

If any of you find yerselves on the remote southwestern shores of Irlanda, Defo stop in Dingle. I spent a few mornings wandering the village and in addition to the 50 pubs and the grocery store, the town is choc-a-bloc with galleries and craft shops and little cafes and bakeries and restaurants. (I certainly did my part to support the local economy. ;))

It was great to get out of Dublin for the weekend but the highpoint for me was surfing. It sounds a bit odd to be surfing in late October but if you have a good wetsuit, it's like wearing a seal, and probably just about as warm. ;) A fabulous friend (who organised the whole weekend and was a great tourguide) lent me her board and gave me my first surfing lesson. Despite the fact that I couldn't feel my feet after I left the water (it doesn't feel cold until you get out!), it was great times. I definitely want to give it another go...perhaps in the summertime though!

Local Colour

By my New England standards, Ireland is completely lacking in proper seasons... I'm used to sweltering in a bathing suit in July and freezing in a snowsuit in February... Ireland could have you wearing jeans in July and well, jeans in January. And February. And April. There are really only two discernable seasons in Ireland: light and dark. In the summer it's light out until nearly midnight and in the winter it only gets light at 9am and stays light for a few anemic hours before the sun disappears again for 15 hours.

And so, with the closing of the summer (that never really happened weather-wise), I am trying to suck every last little bit of juice out of the remaining light and sun of the year. Autumnal light is arguably the most beautiful light of the year in any part of the northern hemisphere and is particularly lovely here. I took a late afternoon stroll through the neighborhood where I work, (which is called Ringsend) enjoying the warmth and sun. Ringsend is quinessential, old skool, docklands, Dublin but it's also undergoing a bit of revitalization / gentrification (depending on who you ask) with lots of new construction mixing with the old. Click on the pic above to see my hood in all it's gritty, glory.

Oh, but it is...

It may not look like a wedding photo but click the pic above for photos of my lovely friends' wedding. The wedding was on Cape Cod on probably the most beautiful day of the summer. Go Jess and Shawn. :)

Wedding Season

I went to two fabulous weddings this month, for a total of five this year and two more to go before Christmas. Is there somethin' in the water?! Click the pic above for my fabulous cousin's wedding. Unfortunately, there are fewer photos than I would have liked but perhaps I shouldn't have trusted the kodaking of the moment to a 9 year old... Oh well. ;)