Reflecting again

This weekend I went through the entire blog! I started it Friday night and just finished. Granted, we did other things in between, but now every post is labeled. :) I know I reflect often enough, but by reading from beginning to end, I remembered some experiences that I had forgotten about.

Reading the blog made me laugh and tear up a bit at times. It also made me realize just how much we have done in the last two years. Our lives are a lot more active and I think more interesting than they were at home. I have far more misadventures. I think I have more adventures as well. These are some of my favorite things from the past couple years:

• J living here and going to the Porterhouse with her
• Barcelona
• Venice
• Giant's Causeway
• learning to knit
• getting lost all over Dublin
• losing my keys in the Liffy
• getting a personal tour in Germany

Wait and change

Change is scary. Change, by definition, causes insecurity. However, change is also exciting. And I keep reminding myself of that. There is a lot of change in my world right now. Well, actually it is the preparation for change that has been difficult. The actual change is yet to come. And I wait, and wait. I got impatient for a while. And now I am more patient.

Planning, planning, planning

Since we got engaged, I have been online many evenings browsing the web to help plan the wedding. We found our reception site online and signed a contract on Friday! We have a date and a location for the wedding!! I am quite excited and relieved to have the reception taken care of. It has been a challenge planning the wedding from this side of the pond (we're having the wedding at home) but also easier in some ways. I've been able to do almost everything over email. I know it isn't the same as seeing the site in person but we went with a pretty safe option. I know there is a lot of planning left, but at least we have one thing done. So far, the planning has been stressful, but fun. But then, I like to plan social gatherings. :)

WIPs and FOs

When I started knitting a mere 6 months ago, I told myself that I would have one work in progress (WIP) at a time. I did that for the first project. Well, the first few anyway. This weekend, I had 4 WIPs on my sticks! John teased me about that. I know that is a pretty average number of WIPs for a knitter, but I also kind of like having different projects going.

See, my wrist still hurts a bit even though I went to physio therapy and got some exercises for it. The physio said it was nerve and repetitive strain. So, I have to strengthen my back muscles, relax my neck muscles, and stretch the nerves in my arms/wrist. I am also supposed to "sit better" and "improve my posture." I don't know what that means. Overall the exercises are working wonders. I can knit about an hour a day on larger needles with no problems. It does depend a bit on what I have done at work, but I can knit! Since I am trying to sit well and not strain myself, I decided that working on the wonderful cable scarf/wrap would be a bit much for now (but see how far I've gotten?). Therefore, I have been working on K's poncho and have it about half done, I think. It is nice and relaxing to just knit, knit, knit on the larger needles.

One of my mates is going on maternity leave soon. So, I looked through some patterns on Friday and through my stash and found a little hat to make her. I finished it last night. I am quite happy with it and think it is really cute. I will definitely make it again for other people having babies. I was informed by someone I showed the hat to that it is definitely a boy's hat. Other people have said a girl could wear it also. I think it looks really cute on the doll but if she has a girl, she can certainly embellish it if she wants to.

Rain, rain, go away!

So, it has been raining A LOT in Dublin, and all of Ireland in fact. According to Met Eirann, June was the rainiest since 1958!!! It was also twice as wet as usual. Rain fell at the Dublin Airport 25 days in the month of June. And it doesn't seem to be stopping. I think it has rained most days in July as well. At least there was a bit of sun yesterday before it lashed. Today was just grey.

In the spirit of all the rain, here are the descriptions of rain that I am aware of:

soft day: a wet, light rain, a drizzle
lashing: this is the usual term for rain. It is supposed to mean rain with a lot of wind.
wet rain: this one I just learned. It is the term for big, heavy drops of heavy rain that no matter what protection you are wearing, you will get soaked.

Rarely, people just say that it is raining.

water water, I want water

Last night, I came home and John was doing dishes. He said that there was no cold water in the kitchen so he had burned his hands a bit doing the dishes. I said, "yeah, that happens" and started making dinner. While making dinner, we checked the pipes in the apartment and still no cold water in the kitchen (this has happened before). It was working in the bathroom, but not in the kitchen.

About 11:00 PM, we were getting ready to go to bed. I decided that I needed to figure out why our bedroom smelled musty (besides the fact that it has rained every day for the past month). I checked the usual culprits of the windows, floor, and carpet on the other side of the bedroom. Nope, not wet. I then started sniffing around on my side of the room. Yep, smelled musty. I picked up something that was on the floor. It was damp. I then checked the floor. Yep, it was damp. I then reached under the dresser. Yep, wet. I took out a pair of shoes that happened to be under the dresser. They had mold on them!!! Yes, I said mold on my sandals! I have thrown them out since they weren't comfortable anymore anyway. We then cleared off the dresser, took out the drawers, moved it and picked up the stuff that happened to be on the floor and vacuumed. Thank goodness for the Dyson. It cleaned well. We then dried it with my hair dryer.

During this process, we tried to figure out if we could see where the water was coming from. Nope, couldn't tell. We have two guesses. One, a couple bathtub tiles are loose and they could be leaking into the far wall. Two, it is coming from the walls/ceiling from all the rain.

So this morning, we wake up. John starts getting ready to shower. No water. None. Zip. He gets dressed and I go back to sleep. I got up a bit later and washed off with the face wipes I bought while in Galway because of their contaminated water. I then got ready to go to work. After work, I went to the DIY store and picked up the stuff we needed to fix the tub tiles. Now, you may wonder why we didn't just tell the landlord. Well, I feel bad because the tiles have been loose since we moved in and I've never said anything and it has caused water damage to the wall by the tub. So, I got the stuff and went home. I made frozen pizza for dinner because we still didn't have any water. John then started working on the bathroom and who should be at our door but our landlord giving us an update on the water.

In their infinite wisdom, the Dublin county council decided to turn our water off but not tell us. Apparently they verbally told the Internet cafe downstairs (they are supposed to give written warning). Well, they seem to have forgotten to turn the water back on! Oops. So, my landlord's plumber turned the water on and now we have water. We have also attempted to fix the tub so we'll see if it continues to leak and if it is the tub affecting the floor in the bedroom because that carpet is dry right now!

07-07-07

On Saturday, we tried to have a belated 4th of July party. As my future sister-in-law pointed out in an email, the date happened to be 07-07-07! How cool is that? Anyway, we tried to have a party but most people were out of town. Two people ended up attending!

Anyway, we decided that a party in the park would be nice. Now remember, this is Ireland and itrains a lot. It has also been raining every day for I don't know how many days (too many tocount). We almost cancelled and had people come to our place but decided to chance the weather. For the most part, it payed off. We had a little spread on a blanket in Herbert Park and enjoyed a lovely afternoon with the other two brave souls who joined us. And it only rained a little bit!