May Bank Holiday Weekend...

That's three times today that I meant to type the word 'unit' and I actually typed 'until' or some such varient with an 'l' ...so strange. Yes, brain is fried...it's Friday, it's really warm, I'm tired, it's been a long week and I can't wait to have a 3 day weekend... Unfortunately for me, they're driving 1000 tonnes of equipment from a closed sugar beet factory in Carlow down to Mallow, at 4km/h, over the next few days. That means the Dublin to Cork road is going to have major detours, some of which will probably be onto my route home, via Athy or Carlow, and Kilkenny. It's too warm a day to spend 3½ hours on a bus home, let alone 5 because of tail-backs...

The parental units are driving us back to Dublin, hopefully, on Monday, so at least there'll only be one bad bus journey home.

And I learned this today - there is a prophecy, widely dismissed by scholars as a hoax, and attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop recognized by members of the Church for his ability to read the future, that says that Benedict fits the description of the second-to-last pope before the Last Judgement, when the bible says God separates the wicked from the righteous at the end of time. According to Yahoo News, "St. Malachy was said to have had a vision during a trip to Rome around 1139 of the remaining 112 Popes. The new pope would be number 111 on that list, and is described in a text attributed to St. Malachy as the "Glory of the Olive."

To connect Benedict, a pale, bookish German, to anything olive takes some imagination. But Malachy-watchers point to the choice of the name Benedict -- an allusion to the Order of Saint Benedict, a branch of which is known as the Olivetans." Very interesting!

Over-time Tuesday 2

And again I'm doing over-time...this time, I'm just too tired...I want to go home!!! Working 13 hours in a row is not as much fun as it could be... and then tomorrow is Mary's retirement party and presentation...I guess I should find something vaguely formal to wear! Oh decisions! And I must remember to bring in my camera. I'm definitely taking an hour off tomorrow morning and sleeping in!!! Boing!

Last monday in April 2005

Monday 25th of April, 2005 will never, ever happen again. Isn't that weird?

Well...I've been busy the past few days. On saturday I discovered that Fluffy was decaying at an alarming rate (Fluffy, fyi, is the dead rat sitting outside the garage door)...he has turned a grey/white colour and the maggots were joining him in a major food fest. I went into town to meet Dee and we grabbed lunch (gorgeous Teriyaki Chicken sandwich - yes, I realise that I am addicted to teriyaki sauce)and then pottered down to HMV. Not much of interest in there, although I did pick up two new dvds, and we had to leave rapidly because someone decided to foul up the air with the lovely fresh fragrance of rotten egg/methane. So then we pottered further down the street to Hodges Figgis. HF is the greatest bookshop...EVER! You could spend days in there, and your entire salary for the year, without so much as batting an eyelid. Much book-buying later (I got a funny grammer book [yes, they do exist] and 2 "The Da Vinci Code" parodies), and we pottered down to the cinema for a chick flick, and then in next door for some dinner. Such a relaxing day!!! And, I found an Italian food shop, which reeked of cheese, that sells Pocket Coffees and Baci sweets!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!! Except, of course, when I got home I was told by Val that they burned Fluffy coz he was riddled with maggots!!! Damn! My poor little dead pet. He still has that rat shape but he's a distinctly different colour now.

Then on sunday I again woke up at 9.20am (as what happened on saturday) and I fell back asleep til late. By 2pm the sun had come out and Dee and I had an arrangement in case of sunny weather to go to Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow. So I rang her twice, and texted half a million times and eventualy she rang at 3pm...she had only just woken up. I was already en-route into town so we arranged to meet at 4pm in Dundrum. At 4.20pm we hooked up and she drove down to Enniskerry. And...we didn't get lost! It was too late for Powerscourt Gardens so we decided to head up to Powerscourt Waterfall, the highest waterfall in Ireland, apparently. It was just so beautiful up there. And I managed to skin my left knee! So that's both knees injured this year... I'm planning on getting elbow pads in case they're next! And I took loads of pics...and some video on my digital camera.



When we got back to Dublin, we grabbed take-away in Stillorgan (Dee got Indian, I got Chinese) and ate it in my house. Dee's pilaf rice looked freakily like the maggots outside in Fluffy...ugh!

Relaxing evening and then it was time to clean the kitchen. Why is it that no matter how hard I scrub the lino, it still looks filthy? Our house needs to be renovated so badly!!!

And then today...not too hectic. Got one part of the Presentation gift for Mary's retirement party on wednesday. And somehow volunteered to work tomorrow night til 10pm...I'll be exhausted on wednesday, but it means 10 more hours, time-in-lieu...I'm crazy!!! Just over 4 weeks til the hols...woohoo...

That friday feeling...

Fáilte.

Is de hAoine é...agus táim sásta mar sin. Specifically, it's friday and it's after 6pm and I should be gone from work, but I'm here updating my blog.

It was a good week. My sister got a clean bill of health, my brother got a job in IBM, here in Dublin and my accommodation in Dubrovnik is all sorted out. Woohoo.

And...I got to see the very sweet, funny, realistic German movie, The Edukators, on wednesday. A movie about socialist ideals, kidnapping, lessons learned, lessons ignored, a love triangle and the very gorgeous German countryside, this is a movie worth getting your hands on. It's quite long, but very engaging. Recommended.

Agus sin é. Anois, táim ag dul go dtí an tsiopa chun bia a cheannach. Slán!

Tell me why...I don't like Mondays...

I know why I don't like Mondays...coz the weekend is over...again. Goddamn. And it wasn't a good start anyways...2 arguments with people, plus a meeting and a mountain of work to do. Oh well. C'est la vie. Let's get this week over with.

I was out on Howth Island on saturday with Breffni - it was overcast but the light was quite good. We got half way to the summit when it started getting dark, so we re-traced our steps. The reason we took so long was we had to grab food first of all, and then we both were taking loads of pics along the way. I'm sure people thought we were tourists. When we got down to the village, we walked along the East Pier and I got some nice shots of the sun breaking through the clouds. About 60 shots in all...Howth is very photogenic.

On sunday, it pissed rain - so I got soaked on my 40 minute walk to Blackrock shopping centre for food, and even more so on the 40 minute trek back, ladden down with 3 heavy bags. Quick change, even quicker food, and I was on my way into town to meet the girls for the cinema. We went to see Garden State, which was a lot of fun. I was slightly distracted by the weirdo who sat beside me. She was laughing at the ads at the start, had her knee up against my bottle of Pepsi Max during the movie, and then I think she was crying at the end. Very melodramatic. Some people are odd.

And in other news, Sergio in Dubrovnik booked a second room for us so I didn't have to go through the internet again. That's so cool. I really hope this all works out. I was so stressed last week when my card maxed out and I couldn't get the second room. But hopefully it's all sorted now. And we're getting collected from the airport, which will save all the hassle of dragging cases and reading maps once we land. Yay!!!

Teriyaki Friday...

I'm going to burst if I don't get Chicken Teriyaki tonight. For the past few weeks, I've been scanning the supermarket shelves for Teriyaki marinade but to no avail. It's driving me nuts. So tonight I'm going to splash out and get a take-away from the Asian cuisine restaurant down the road.

The good thing about today is that it's finally friday - even better is the fact that it's almost 6pm and I finished work at 5pm. I must go home, take some pics of my pet dead rat, Fluffy, out the back, and then get my Chicken Teriyaki. It's all good!!!

Today had that relaxed, good mood feel to it...we had a firedrill in work and our assembly point is in beautiful public (but hidden) gardens behind us. And it was sunny at 3pm, so we were all enjoying the sun, chatting...and when everyone went inside, we brought this general mood with us. Long may it last...

Over-time Tuesday...

I've worked 9 hours so far today (with one hour off for lunch) and I've another 3 to go...I am soooo tired. I don't get over-time in money, just in 'time off' at a later date, and in some ways that's better. It doesn't screw up my taxes and I get extra holidays. However, it makes for a very long day at work. Luckily, today has been pretty frantic. Lots to do yet not particularly stressful. I'll be leaving work at 10pm so I'll pretty much go to bed when I get home...ah, who am I trying to kid...I'll probably be still pottering around at 2am, wondering why I'm always tired...I need to get a night job!!!

Still haven't booked accommodation in Dubrovnik yet...but then, I actually don't have the funds to do so til the end of the month. I can't wait to just get out of the country for a few days...hopefully I'll see some sun, blue skies...and plenty of opportunities to take photos...

Catching up on a Monday in April...

It's been nearly 2 weeks since my last post. It's not that I was doing anything especially interesting and hence the delay...just that I got a bit lazy.

Actually, the world has been a pretty busy place these past few days. Pope John Paul II died on Saturday, 2nd of April and was buried the following friday. The day after the burial, Prince Charles of Britain married his long-term mistress (ugh!). Prince Rainier of Monaco died. All very high profile.

Plus, Tony Blair announced that the UK's general election will be on May 5th - Labour are ahead in the polls but only marginally. Do I give a crap? No, not really. But it'll be interesting to the see the backlash regarding the Gulf War Part Deux from the voting public.

On the 1st of April I fell. I was walking rapidly down a wet ramp when one leg shot out in front of me and I landed on my right knee. Que major swelling, bruising and a large area of missing skin. Even now, almost a week and a half later, it's bruised and the skin is slowly coming back on, but is cracked and dry. Even walking for a long period of time is very sore. The one thing that annoys me about injuring your knee, apart from the fact that you lose mobility, is the fact that no bandage will stay put. I tried sock bandages and normal bandages wrapped in figure eight formations...all keep falling down. So I'm walking about with no proper support. *sigh* E45 lotion helps with the dry skin and Arnica helps with the bruising. I can't do the 'rest' thing...I hate being tied down, especially on the weekend.

The other major news is that I booked our flights to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We're flying out on the 26th of May...I can't wait!!!! All accounts and photos paint Dubrovnik to be an absolutely stunning place. Hopefully the knee will have fully healed by then. Apparently there's LOTS of steps!!!

And I finally got my hands on Finding Neverland (such a gorgeous movie) and Shaolin Soccer (very, very funny movie). And I watched LOTR: Return of the King Extended Edition (plus the appendices), The Name of the Rose, and Lost in Translation.

Plus I found a dead rat near the garage door and I've named him Fluffy. I must take a few more photos...the flies have attacked him. Hopefully he's showing more signs of decay.

And my house has millions of spiders. That's 4 in the past week..plus the enormous one out front when I was putting stuff in the bin last night...ugh!

Sin é...I can't think of anything else to add...besides my restless nights...I keep hearing rustling. Could be the wind, could be the spiders coming to get me or apparently (according to some) it could be spirits. Well, either way, I'd better get a good night's sleep soon or I'm going to go crazy. Or maybe, that's the cunning plan...