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. ;)

Where am I?

(Click the pic above for some pics of the Boston peeps.)

I'm back. My holidays are over and I'm sitting at my desk at my job in Dublin. There's a wee bit of sun peeking out but it's nothing compared to the glorious New England summer that I left behind in Boston.

I keep having dreams lately where people from my life in Dublin meet people from my life in Boston. The dreams dip in and out of time and place, with my college boyfriend (circa 1996) meeting up with my present-day self and my current boss in Ireland meeting my dad in the states. Sometimes the various people get on like a house-on-fire but mostly they can't relate and I start to stress when I realize they have nothing in common - I'm the only bridge that links them and I'm not enough. It's like a rugby fan trying to relate to a Roman history buff. They have no common ground on which to meet. It's all very disconcerting but really totally appropriate to my life right now - my head is in two places at once.

I struggle everytime I go "home," to Boston and then return to my "home" in Dublin adjusting to one place and then the other. I may be able to make it from my parents' house in Boston to my apartment in Dublin in the bones of a day but it takes much longer for my mind to catch up to my circumstance.

Right now, I'm almost there, trying to get back on the ride that is life in Dublin, but I am always aware of what I might be missing in the other place. No matter where I am, what country or continent, I am always thinking of someone who's not there.

Saunter On

I've been away on a lovely holiday to the U.S. and A. for weddings, beaches, lobstah', family time, BBQs with my ladies, Walden Pond (and an unfortunate case of poison ivy.) I've been back for nearly a week but between going back to work, tossing and turning all night (cuz of the jet lag) and trying not to scratch, I still haven't managed to post the latest photos... So while yer all waiting with baited breath for visions of blue skies and warm weather photos, here's a little youtube gem. It's a *homemade*, Derry City (in Northern Ireland) version of that "united states of whatever" song, (whatever it's called.) It's pretty rough and rugged so if yer easily offended by the use of illicit drugs, premarital sex, street fights or giant ballbags beware... ;) They've pretty much jammed every Norn Iron colloquialism they could find into this song but unless yer well versed in the complexities of Norn Iron speak and can understand a thick Northy accent, good luck trying to cop it all. ;) I'm well used to the northys and their crazy long vowel sounds and even I struggled the first time I heard this one.

In case yer totally lost, "Saunter," is a Derry phrase which basically means, "F*ck Off / Piss Off or another colourful Nornism, "Take yerself away to f*ck."

Misunderestimations...

Was in the office the other day and my work colleague was typing away, writing up something. He turned to the room and asked, "How do you spell Michael?" (The name Michael in Irish is pronounced: Mee-Hall.) Always wanting to be helpful, ;) I started spelling away: "Sure, it's M-E-A-T-B-A-L-L." After everyone in the room started laughing their asses off (except for one other colleague who also thought he was asking about how to spell meatball) I realized my mistake. Whoops. Mee-hall, meatball...same, same.

On the same mispronounciations and general word-mangling tip, I heard this story from a friend recently: She's a flight attendant on Aer Lingus and regularly works the Dublin to US destinations routes. She was standing in the airport in the states while the passengers filled out their flight boarding cards to board the plane to Ireland. An American woman approached her (Why are they always American?!) and pointed to a word on the boarding card. "I don't understand this," she said. "What don't you understand?" asked my friend. "This word," the passenger responded and pointed to the card, "Ser-nom-ie." After realizing that the woman was not talking about tidal waves in Southeast Asia, my friend realized that the word the passenger was pointing to was, "Surname." The correct pronounciation did nothing to help the clueless passenger who still didn't cop the fact that a surname is your last name.

In her travels, my flight attendant friend also ended up staying in the same hotel as a bunch of members of the SWAT team (who were at a SWAT team convention - who knew?). Apparently, their brawn is a whole lot bigger than their brains as a number of them thought that Belgium was in Ireland. Hello? Basic geography people. I told her that she should have asked them if Mexico was in the United States and see how they responded. ;)

Where do these people come from and why, why are they allowed to represent my homeland?!

Pushing up the Slieve

The Bank Holiday weekends always inspire me to do something beyond laundry and a walk round the city centre. That extra day off seems to motivate everyone to take advantage of it. And so, Tommy-boy myself and a few friends found ourselves up in the Mourne Mountains for a day-long hike. The Mourne Mountain range rises abrubtly out of the sea and to an elevation of about 2,700 feet. On the drive from Dublin to Belfast (a drive I know all too well) they come dramatically into view just across the border into Co. Down and I've always wanted to climb in them.

After sorting out all the major details, the group of us picked out a mountain in the range to climb called Slieve Binian. It looked like a reasonable hike of about 8 miles and isn't the highest peak in the range so we thought we could all do it no bother... But sometimes the best laid plans fail... We drove along the coast for miles looking for the beginning of the trail and finally found what we thought was the Slieve Binian carpark...

We jumped on to a half-assed trail and just started to climb. And then we lost the trail but continued to climb. Everyone kept looking round asking, "Is that the trail?" There were a few mirage trails: "That's the trail, I see it up ahead!" Fortunately, since there are few to no trees on these mountains it's near impossible to get lost in them. Yer either going up towards the summit or down towards the sea.

Finally we came upon some other hikers with a map who informed us that we were not climbing Slive Binian but were in fact climbing, Slieve Donard, the highest mountain in the range and in NI. The hikers pointed us back in the direction of the real and actual trail (saving our ankles from prickly gorse and mud slides) and away we went. It was a good climb, with the last peak being the steepest and hardest and if it wasn't for my pride, I might have given up but was so very glad I didn't when I saw the incredible views from the summit.

All in, we were up and down the mountain in six hours, slightly weatherbeaten, midge eaten and with sore feet but otherwise feeling aces. If anyone's up for a hike... I'm in.

Daisy is a Lady

From Jerry Springer to Fat-free Fro-Yo, there are many opportunities to shake my head and say, "Only in America," in that sad world-weary voice (also used for disappointing but slightly amusing children.) It's less often that I can say, "Only in Ireland," (unless we're talking about 43 straight days of rain). That is, untill now.

I came into work the other morning and my work-colleague was talking about a beauty pageant he'd been to the day before. Everyone was fussing over the contestants, dolling them up and getting them ready for show time. These little beauties were shiny-clean, and looking their very best, nails filed, lips painted, and perfectly groomed. You might be wondering what's so unusual about that, Beauty pageants happen every day all over the world, but the contestants in this affair, were not little Jon Benet Ramsays but were, in fact, Fresian Cows. It was an extravaganza of Bovine beauties... The cows were brushed and oiled (to show off their attractive black and white spots). They were placed in "decorative" pens complete with gingham drapes and milk jugs filled with wild flowers. They had their lips painted and their nose-hairs plucked and last but not least, these farmland hotties were fitted with special raised platforms to make them look taller. (No Joke!) After I stopped laughing and got back into my chair, I realised that I was actually disappointed to have missed it. Afterall, how often do you get the opportunity to go to a cow beauty pageant?! Seriously. Only in Ireland. ;)

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. :)

International Rules

Summer has finally truly arrived in Ireland with temperatures (drum-roll please) above the 70 degree mark. It was gorgeous on Saturday and one of my softball teamates suggested a picnic in the park. We ended up spending 5 hours there in flawless sunshine. Loveliness. I even played my first game of Cricket (with a couple of South African guys, an Ozzie, two Americans and a few of the local variety.) We even adopted a couple of Nigerian kids and added them to the game for a while. Practically a model UN! ;) We also had a throw-around with an American football but strangely I'm much better at Cricket than I am at football. I've never mastered the art of the spiral throw. All this sportiness was interspersed with bouts of eating...melting bits of cheese, strawberries and red wine handily disguised in plastic juice bottles.

Truly one of the best days I've had in a long time. The night ended (as they all do here) in the pub. It was great craic talking to people from all over the world about everything from the price of gold in Western Australia to the taste of springboc to Sex-Ed for 50-year-old Irish women to the best ways to get laid in Dallas if you happen to have an Australian accent (a long story...) And then there was the Lesbian Penis story (one for another day I promise. ;) ) Such good stuff. If only every day could be this warm and sunny and filled with good company and good beer.

Northy Goodness

Here are a few photos from a recent trip to Donegal. It was Tommy's friend's 30th birthday and nearly 40 people converged on a tiny town in Donegal to celebrate. The first night, we all went out for a meal and then to the pub (of course) which featured a "local" band whose oldest member couldn't have been older than 15. (Check out the pic!)

It was one of those weekends that was a perfect mix of debauchery and ruggedness. A night at the pub follwed by a day spent outdoors. It was the first good weather of the summer and I was actually able to go swimming (with a wet suit of course!) in the icy Atlantic. I also borrowed a body board and I can't tell you how amazing it was to be in the water again after 10 months on dry land. I was meant to live in the tropics I think. If there's anything better than surf and sun, (even if the sun is weak and the water is subzero) I don't know what it is. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of our swimming adventures or the pristine beach we were on. (Fortunately, there are not photos of me in my wet suit... ;) ) Swimming was followed by a pub lunch in my favorite Donegal local. (I had raw oysters and soup and brown bread and hot port...Irish food at it's simple best.) And then a trip to a nearby waterfall and an evening spent sitting by a roaring fire. When Ireland is bad, it's cold and wet and dark and dismal, but when the sun shines on this little island, there is really nothing like it, and Donegal is it's pinnacle.

Age before Beauty?

Time is cruel, at least that's what they say... As my 31st birthday approaches, I think I'm beginning to understand the phrase in a whole new way... Lest you think I'm about to blabber on about the passage of time or something that actually matters, let me reassure you that what I'm really on about is cellulite and crow's feet.

So... there I was, wandering through the aisles of Penneys looking for a cheap pair of track suit bottoms (that's sweat pants for my North American peeps). I found a few pairs that weren't pink and didn't say baby or hot-stuff or jail-bait on them and off I went to the dressing rooms. Now dressing rooms are just cruel places... maybe light is the real problem and not time cuz that greenish flourescent light would make Cindy Crawford look like $hit. I have always been slightly horrified by all the lumps and bumps of my physique in front of a full length mirror under that unforgiving light but I have now graduated to looking back and forth from my ass to my face with equal horror.... cottage cheese leg...crow's foot....lumpy tummy...laugh lines....dimply ass...furrowed brow. It's enough to make a girl run out the door and straight to the botox clinic. (Okay, maybe I do still have a few principles left. I'm not yet desperate enough to inject poisons into my face... but give me a few years.)

It's great to look forward to huh? A lifetime (well, maybe half a lifetime at this point) of insecurities and slow downhill slide. I'll have to start slathering my face with oil of olay while running on a treadmill, eating handfuls of anti-oxidant vitamins, and listening to stress-reducing new-age music on my ipod except that that sounds pretty horrible. Ah well, fuck it, I'd rather eat a bowl of ice-cream and take a nap... Does icecream have any anti-aging properties?

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Life has gotten ridiculously busy as of late. The softball season has started. Work has been mental and I've been spending my weekends everywhere but in my house. For now, here's a few wedding weekend photos to keep things ticking over... Went to a black-tie wedding a few weeks ago and snapped everyone in their monkey suit best. As seems to happen after a few drinks, we were all a bit giddy and decided that we should all do our best impressions of mafia bosses and trophy wives. Good thing I had a camera to kodak the moment. ;)

I've decided to give flickr the boot since they have been bought by Yahoo and are hiding half my photos in an effort to make me pay them to host my images so here's the trial run of my new photo hosting peeps, picasa. Click on the pic and see if they're any good.

Cheers.

Ahead of myself, behind the game

I'm back on Irish soil and back into the routine and my to-do list is about five miles long (as it always is after you go away and neglect your everyday tasks for three weeks.) So... more Berlin updates and photos later, for now, here are a ridiculous amount of thailand photos for your viewing pleasure. Not sure how long the links will be valid but there are so many photos, I didn't want to clutter up my web photo archive, so kodak gallery it is... Happy viewing.
thailand 2007

From Bangkok to Berlin

As you can see, I'm having a bit of wanderlust lately. Maybe it's because I've seen off a few friends lately on round the world trips and I want to get in on the action or maybe Tommy-boy and I were a little over zealous with the credit card this winter when the dark, dreary Irish winter was making us want to run in any direction as long as it was away from TV watching and stodgy-food and routine... Long story short, here I am, one week after returning from Thailand, in scenic Berlin. To be honest, when we had to get up at 4am the other morning to catch the flight, the thought of going anywhere other than my bed was pretty exhausting, but now that we're here, we're having a really good time. As soon as we arrived and saw the amazing architecture, street upon street of trendy cafes and boutique shops and incredible museums, I immediately got my second wind. We went to a really interesting exhibition yesterday called 'art and propoganda' which explored the way that Germany, Italy, The Soviet Union, and the US used visual mediums to promote their agendas in the 1930s and 1940s. Incredible stuff. There was everything from the WPA photographers (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans etc...) and Norman Rockwell illustrations to Italian futurist portraits of Mussolini and El Lissitzky Russian Constructivist Posters... and of course plenty of disturbing Nazi propaganda. The whole exhibition was housed in an I.M Pei building (very modern, lots of geometry and glass) which is connected to the German History museum next door which is housed in a baroque German building with a central coutryard full of artists and designers peddling their wares. So far, Berlin has been full of great art, architecture and design interspersed with kick-ass cafe culture and a damn good pint o' German beer now and again. Not bad at all.