Bachelorette night

Saturday a week ago, John had his bachelor party and I had my bachelorette/hen night. We had dinner at a lovely restaurant that my friend A knows. It was a lovely meal with lovely ladies. A had chosen the menu and tried to pick things that I would like (and she did quite well I must say). She even had the menus printed and a personal cake. I was quite happy that it was all in good taste. :)

After dinner, four of us when to a karaoke bar and tried to sing some karaoke. We stayed a couple hours but our name didn't get called. While waiting, J took some random guy's hat and cigarette and sported them for a picture. Luckily, the guy was a good sport about it. As we were leaving, we ran into some guys going in and chatted with them for a while before going for breakfast food a couple blocks away. After breakfast, we took the train back up to A's car and then headed home. We got home about 3:30 AM!! We were home about 1 1/2 hours later than the bachelor night. :)

The next morning, J, A, and I were up for an 11:00 AM manicure and pedicure. It was lovely pampering. and I'm headed back to the spa on Friday for a manicure and massage.

Roller Derby

This spring, one of my dear friends told me that she has was interested in Roller Derby. This summer, she told me that she was going to try out for the team and that she made the "you get to practice with us" "team." She seemed to really enjoy it and invited people out to watch a match last Saturday.

Since I had no idea what this Roller Derby was, we decided to go and check out what our friend was so interested in. So, in Roller Derby, the women skated around a track. There was one person who could get points by passing members of the other team. Another person set the pace for the rest of the skaters. Basically, it was contact roller skating around a track. It was really fast moving and has a lot of rules about how you can block and such and at any given time, there were usually at least 2 people in the penalty area. I didn't really understand all the nuances but it was quite impressive to see these women's skating abilities. It is something that we'll definitely be doing again and maybe we'll even get to see our friend out on the track...

A new local?

This weekend, we decided that we needed to explore our new area a bit. So far, we've been going to places that we know and mostly driving there. So, John had the suggestion since it was a nice evening to walk into the downtown area of our new town and see where we could find to eat. He knew of an "Irish bar" that wasn't that far away and off we went.

After a 15 minute stroll, we were at the pub and sitting outside in their "beer garden" area looking at their menu. I smiled at it since they had two Irish dishes on it: a full Irish and fish and chips. The menu was very beef heavy with only one chicken dish (besides a couple salads). We ordered home made mozzarella sticks as a starter/appetizer (very tasty) and John also got Guiness cheese soup. That was very rich and since it had a lot of sausage in it, I let him eat more of it. I had a chicken sandwich for my main and John had a Paddy Melt. They were tasty and the best part was that they were served with chips, not fries! I was very happy about this since I was missing the Porterhouse chips.

I don't think that they had dessert, but we were too stuffed to get it anyway. However, the chips made me miss sticky toffee pudding (I need to learn to make this myself).

We'll definitely be heading back there.

Where ya been?

OK, it has been well over a week since I last blogged. I've been busy, really. I can't really say what I've been doing because the time is just a haze, but I do know that it went by very quickly. I started the new job last week and I think I'm going to like it. I'm not really getting eased into the job but I think it is better that way. I am going to learn a ton and felt like a student at times last week since, well, I was a student 9 years ago!

On Saturday, I went to the hair salon to exchange some face wash that I got and then spent some time in the afternoon taking pictures for the This Is Knit's World Wide Knitting in Public Day Scavenger Hunt. It was fun but tiring riding around on public transport getting the pictures since John had the car. He was playing golf. We then went to the pub to celebrate a friend's birthday. (Note the size of the beer and sangria that John is holding)

We are also getting the house settled in. We went and got bookcases this weekend and John put them together so now we can start putting books away and getting rid of some of the clutter. Slowly, slowly putting things away and getting settled...

Goodbyes

During May, I had a couple leaving Dos and "goodbyes." It was very hard to say goodbye to everyone, partly because I just don't do goodbye. They are too sad! Anyway, Aileen decided that we should have a bit of a party at a Knit Night on her birthday so we had a bit of a party, knitting style. :) It was a lot of fun and pictures can be found on Yvvone's blog as well.


And I got some pressies. :) Aileen and Laura got me some lovely Newbridge Silver earrings and pendant. I have looked at this set many times and never taken the plunge so I'm quite happy with them. They are surprisingly hard to take pictures of. :( I also got a beautiful skein of handpainted yarn from Elana and Lisa. They also gave me some hand made stitch markers, all purple of course. Aileen also gave me some pretty sock yarn. Yeah, small things that are easy to pack and more yarn! :) Not that I "need" more yarn.

The Friday before I left, I also had a work do. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner and then the Porterhouse (of course) for drinks. It was great fun. They also gave me a very generous pressie of some Waterford Crystal martini glasses (purple of course) that I have loved since I first saw them three years ago and a Galway Crystal bowl. They are getting shipped so I haven't actually gotten them yet...

**There will be pictures but they are on John's camera and he is still in Ireland!

1516

Alright, I continue to be remiss on the blogging. But I have a good excuse, really I do. I have been busy knitting. But that isn't the good excuse. The current one is that my parents visited for two weeks and then John's mom was in town for a few days. Yeah, so I was busy entertaining. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! (there is something else but I'll write about that later)

Anyway, back to the travel photos. Vienna, yeah. That's where our travels took us. While in Vienna, John was on a mission to find bock bier. It is a stronger beer that is only available a couple times a year, and Easter is one of them. Therefore, he consulted the "drinking" section of the guidebook and directed us to a pub that he thought should have potential. While the 1516 Brewery didn't have bock bier, they had a lot of other good things. Since we had gone to have dinner, we ordered food. I ordered a turkey burger and John ordered sausage. My "burger" was really a grilled fillet of turkey and tasty wonderful. It tasted well spiced and had a lot more flavor than I am used to turkey having. I gave John a bit. He said it tasted familiar. He then ate more sausage and he realized that my turkey tasted basically the same as his sausage!! The must have been grilled on the same grill....

Girls night out

After lunch one day, I had coffee with a couple of the girls and then went on my way. At 5:00, I got a phone call that quite a few of my mates were at the Porterhouse Central. When I met up with them, I found out that they had been there since 2:00 PM and were quite happy!

I ordered my hot whiskey to help my sore throat and the others kept drinking. And drinking. They tended to drink 2 for my one! About 10:00 PM, the music started and we started dancing. And some mates kept drinking.

About 12:00, I noticed that that staff were looking at us a bit differently, as were some of the other patrons. I stopped drinking and switched to water. After a while, one of the guys that was with us asked what we wanted for the next round. I said that I was cut off and that one of my friends was as well because she was quite drunk (pissed). However, he said that I couldn't cut someone else off. He then turned to a third friend and asked what she wanted. She said that she was cut off and so was the girl I said was cut off. He still didn't seem to like that but I think he allowed it. I guess it isn't socially appropriate to cut people off here. I was just trying to look out for my friend.

Paint your wagon

My friend Cot invited John and me to go to a pub quiz last night. Since John likes pub quizes and Cot is a lot of fun, we thought that we would go. It was a fundraiser for the Musical Society held in the Tennis Club in Glasnevin. The prize for winning was 200 Euro and there was a draw for 1000 Euro!

There were four of us at the table: John, me, Cot and her friend Ci. Ci has recently broken up with her boyfriend of seven years. Cot is dating a guy who lives in Oxford and was coming over to Dublin today. Both of them had dates today. Ci had a first date with a guy that she met last week in a pub. She has been texting A all week and read all the text messages to John and myself so that we could over analyze what each of them meant, if A was into her, and if she was playing it cool enough but also interested. She also wanted to make sure that she was being coy enough. Then Cot read some of her texts to us from Oxford A.

So, the pub quiz began while we were still over analyzing the texts from A to Ci. We were given a bunch of pictures of people and a painting of "Taking of Christ." We got one of six of the questions correct. That didn't bode well for us and certainly set the tone for the quiz. It continued to be the most difficult quiz that John has attended (he went to them weekly for a couple months when he worked in the UK). We decided pretty early into the quiz that our average age was too low to know answers to this quiz. They asked questions like what a digitalis plant was, to identify different classical and show tunes music, and a question about the movie "Paint your wagon" with Clint Eastwood. Now, John has seen a Simpsons episode where they make fun of this movie but he thought that the writers of the Simpsons made up this movie. He was quite surprised to find out that it was a real movie and the answer to the question.

Since we didn't have a hope in hell of winning the pub quiz (and they didn't tell us we couldn't "phone a friend"), Ci and Cot both texted their A's to ask them answers to a couple questions (and got us one more point). Ci also continued "text flirting" with her A during the whole quiz. I knew we could be boring at times, but are we really less company than texting someone? :)

So, after the quiz was the draw for loads of prizes. After the draw for the grand prize (which was first instead of last), Ci tore up her ticket, not realizing there were other prizes. She won the second prize of a large tv and DVD player! That was quite exciting since she didn't have a TV or DVD player since she just moved back home after moving out of her apartment with her boyfriend.

After all the draws, we kept drinking and then went to the Porterhouse North. We had a couple drinks there until they closed. We then walked to Eddie Rockets to have drunk food. They have really good onion rings and OK milkshakes. We ate our drunk food and went our separate ways, as it was 3:30 AM! I haven't been out that late in ages, probably since undergraduate university!

As we walked out of Eddie Rockets, a Nite Link bus passed. Doh! So we had to hail a taxi to take us home. I knew the taxi driver! I was slightly embarrassed that this person was seeing me drunk at 3:30 AM. Oh well. He took us to the Ha'Penny Bridge and didn't charge us! I thought that was very nice of him. Upon getting out of the taxi, we said thanks and goodnight to the taxi driver and some drunk people got in. They wanted to go to Castleknock and heard our American accents. They said a few obnoxious things about Iraq and Americans. They kept shouting at us as we walked away. I wonder how the taxi driver handles the drunk guys. My guess is that he was probably annoyed with these passengers since they were being rude to me and he likes me. :) It must have been a good fare, though.

This morning, we slept in. Well, until afternoon. It took a while to recover.

never to early for beer?

One day this week, I stopped at the Grocery store to get a banana and juice for breakfast. In line in front of me was a guy with 5 cans of beer. He was with someone carrying a few cans himself. I guess it is never too early for beer.

Lately when I walk Caineal in the morning, I have also noticed half consumed glasses of beer. Bars here seem to let people take their glasses of alcohol out of the establishment. On the weekend mornings, there are usually at least 2 broken beer glasses and a couple glasses with beer still in them. When I got her, Caineal would try to drink out of these glasses. She doesn't anymore.

Last Friday, John went to the airport bar in London and he drank a Budweiser! Don't worry, it wasn't the American version, it was the original formula that is a Czech beer. He insists it is a respected beer.

Changes in my social life

Since I moved here, there have been many changes to my social life, which some of you who know me have probably figured out. First, I go out A LOT more. I also go to the pub more and drink more often than I have since I was 22! OK, I also go out with people younger than myself, like 22-25 who are still drinking a lot. But seriously, there really is more of a culture of going out drinking here. Like many smaller towns, the social centers here are the pubs. People don't seem to go hang out at other people's houses. I wonder if part of the reason is that we all rent and most of my mates don't like their roommates that much. I like to have people over and want to start having dinner parties and game nights but that seems out of place here. People don't have parties at their houses here, or at least not my mates. People do like my cooking, though. :) Overall, I like the changes in my social patterns but it does get tiring and expensive. I am remembering why I become more of a home body back home.

Closing the Porterhouse

After a tough week, J and I decided that we needed to go to the Porterhouse. Ok, it is common for us to go there. One day this week I had a migraine and couldn't sleep at night for a few days. I got some good ideas and work done when I couldn't sleep, though. I figured out a budget and planned some lessons.

Anyway, that threw my week off as did having to take Caineal to the vet. She passed out late Wed. night and was out for probably about a minute. It took a few minutes for her to get her strength back. The vet thinks that her heart murmur has gotten worse and she has some fluid around her heart. She is now on two medicines, a heart med and one that keeps fluid from building up. I think that she is already starting to feel better and has a bit more energy than she has had for a couple weeks.

So, J and I went to the Porterhouse for dinner and drinking. We got there about 7:30 and it was already pretty full. There was a guy sitting alone at a table with a couple stools by it so we asked if we can share his table. He says sure as long as we don't talk to him. He was reading the paper and doing the crossword puzzle. Or so we thought. So J and I are chatting. J goes to the bathroom and a guy at another table starts talking to me by asking where I am from. He asks a couple questions and then my friend comes back and we stop talking. Later, the guy at our table "reading" the paper asks what time it is and then I go to the loo. When I get back, J is at the table next to the one we were sitting at and a bunch of guys are at the table we were at. Apparently while I was in the bathroom, the guy "reading" the paper asked J a bunch of questions she didn't want to answer. He also was waiting for friends who happened to show up while I was in the loo.

So, now we were at a table with three guys. I ended up sitting next to the guy who had talked to me while my friend was in the bathroom. We start talking about politics because a lot of people like to ask what I think about Bush and American foreign policy. J hates these conversations so she starts having her own with the other two guys. It was an intersting conversation and the guy I am talking to knows a lot about American history and foreign policy. He was almost like an encyclopedia and had an intersting prosody (little flat/monotone ish). So, the night goes on and we seem to be having fun and OK conversation. Then one guy leaves. I go to the loo again and a few minutes after I come back and we had a new round, my friend suddenly says she has to leave now. I had no idea what happened. She was just really angry and she NEVER wastes any beer. She gets mad if the waiters/waitresses take her glass with a sip left. The other guy calmed her down. What I found out later was that the guy talking to me had asked her a politcal question about the Iraq war. I had specifically told him not to ask her political questions becuase she doesn't talk politics. J is fiercely loyal to America and doesn't like it when people diss the country or policies, even if she disagrees with them.

So, we get her calmed down and later the band starts and J and I go downstairs because it is too loud where we were. It was also a bit uncomfortable because only the guy talking to me and antagonizing her, J and I were there (and he was trying to hit on me which made me uncomfortable). So, J finds different seats and I go and join her. Then John comes and we order more rounds. Then my friend C and her friend come after getting done watching "Brokeback Mountain." They start flirting with a few guys and gets a German guy to ask John a question in German to test John's German. We also wonder why a different guy at the bar was cranky (he had left his seat near us to go to a different part after one of the barentders was tapping on the taps). The bar closed at 2:30. That's when we left since they asked us to.

After leaving the Porterhouse, we see the pizza place across the street is open. We go there and have pizza with chips. I missed the late night diners because I think pancakes make much better drunk food than pizza. It soaks up the alcohol better.

We finally headed home about 3:30 AM! I haven't stayed out that late since I was in college. It was a good night. We had fun and definately let off the stress. I wonder if J made it hiking like she wanted to today. John and I had a pretty lazy day. We are planning on going back to the Porterhouse for dinner tonight with our friend M and her boyfriend

Early bird special

Today I got home, walked the dog, and was settling in for the evening when my friend J buzzed and asked if I wanted to get dinner. Since we were both were in the mood for Italian, we went to Toscana. They have an early bird special that ends at 6:30. We decided to try to share one of the early bird three course meals for 20 Euro even though it was 6:40. The waiter lets us do it and I think brought us bigger portions of the bruscetta and pasta. The bruscetta had so much garlic that I can still feel it in my mouth! I haven't had that much garlic in a long time. I hope that the taste in my mouth goes away by tomorrow morning. The food was excellent, though and we each got 3 courses for 12 Euro including tip (we tipped well since the waiter let us share and have the early bird)

Radler

In Munich, they serve a beer called Radler. Well, it is sort of a beer. It is lemonade mixed with beer. It is surprisingly tasty and we had it at the oldest pub in Munich. It was quite tasty. The Hofbrauhaus also has really big and tasty pretzels. John wanted to take my picture with a whole pretzel and the litre of beer (yes, I drank the litre) but I was too hungry and started eating the pretzel. :)

Boxty restaurant

Tonight John and I went to dinner at an Irish restaurant. It was tasty. I had boxty vegetarian chili and John had a chicken dish. Mine was wrapped in a potato pancake (but tasted like a normal pancake)! It was quite interesting but tasty. The chili was actually spicy and pretty thick. John had chicken on the bone with mashed potatoes. It was called Avoca chicken. The strange part of this place was that we were seated next to two other people that we didn't know. They were already seated at a table that could be for four and looking at their menus. We were then seated next to them. The funny thing was that the two ladies next to us were also from Chicago (Arlington Heights)! It was funny. It was their last night in Dublin and wanted Irish food. In the four days they were here they also did more sightseeing than I have since June!

This morning on my bus ride I really valued the Americans with Disabilities Act. There was a guy in a wheelchair getting off the bus and he fell out of his chair! The bus driver didn't pull all the way up to the curb and the "ramp" didn't work so as he got off the bus he fell. We had to wait for the ambulance to come and then another bus of the same route came and we all got on that one and went on our way. I think that the guy was OK because he was able to talk on a mobile phone and seemed to be talking to people. The paramedics were wrapping his head when I got on the new bus.

Porterhouse!

Last night for dinner John and I went to the Porterhouse. It is a bar/restaurant and is pretty big with a comfortable/lodge type atmosphere. The food was good and John got a German beer that he liked. While we were there, we saw a group of women getting ready for a hen party. They dressed up like nuns! Ok, not really, they just wore the head dress and the thing around the neck with a cross. I think it was actually a Sound of Music theme because when one of them came in, the other ladies sang the theme song from the movie. We took pictures of the whole group for them.

restaurants

Today John and I went to a Thai restaurant. It was good. While there, I remembered another word use difference. Here take out is called "take away." So far there are four restaurants that I like enough to go back to. They are:
+Thai Orchid: good Thai food with a good variety and they have an early bird menu
+La Paloma: a Spanish place with decent tapas on the weekdays.
+An Italian place, I think it is called Toscana but I am not sure. It is tasty.
+Pad Thai: this is another Thai place and I tried it for my birthday. It was pretty good but I like Thai Orchid better.

My local pub is also OK but gets some strange people. We went to the Porterhouse North in June and there is one near me. We haven't been there but think it will be nice.