Who, Me? - A Collection of Randoms

Has someone been lazy about blogging?

Who, me?

Well, we really haven't done much of interest since our Dingle trip. Greg is playing tag rugby at work once a week; I'm holding down the fort; sunny days have given way to more typical, changeable Irish weather.

We've tried out a couple of new restaurants this past week - lunch at Cafe Blue at the Blue Haven Hotel and dinner at the Wharf Tavern at the Trident Hotel. Both were good! We can't eat out all that often, though, due to the $$$...or should I say, €€€. You can find reasonable prices, but reasonable here is still more than you would expect to pay back in the USA for something comparable. I always look for the cheapest couple of items on the menu and pick from those; but, to be honest, I do the same thing back home! :)

I've decided that British television is strange (but I should have already known that, shouldn't I?), especially the commercials. You know the Febreze commercial, where the mom tells her teenaged son that he has to "wash" his room? Well, they have the exact same commercial here, but dubbed over with British accents, which is funny. I also laugh about the words that are pronounced differently. I saw a commercial that said the word "vitamins," but it's pronounced with a short i instead of a long i. Pantene hair products are prononced "Pan-TEN," and Adidas is pronounced "AH-dee-doss" instead of "uh-DEE-duhs." Oh, the small joys of my life.

We've been in to Cork a couple of times. Not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before, we went in to the city and walked around a bit. It has a neat pedestrianized shopping area, and we went into a department store that had amazingly low prices...I guess I expected clothing to be much more expensive here. By some strange chance, we ran into Melanie along with her husband and baby. (Greg is here because Melanie is on maternity leave, so he is covering her job here.) It was fun to meet them, and baby is doing well. We keep running into people Greg knows here, all the time. Strange, isn't it?

We also went into Bandon to the Garda (police) station/immigration bureau and I got my Certificate of Registraton card...so now I'm all official and everything. I've been fingerprinted and am legally permitted to be in the country until September 2. (Don't worry; I will still be coming home around July 1.) Hopefully I'll get to keep my card so it can be a cool souvenir!

This past Friday night we went into Cork to a microbrewery called the Franciscan Well, which has a bit of a Rathskellar vibe (for my Indy friends), but not really. It reminds me of it, though, with a large outdoor seating area with rows of long picnic tables, which is covered by a canvas "roof" or sorts. It was a neat place and we had a fun time. We were there to hang out with a bunch of Greg's co-workers. Let me see how many names I can remember...Tom, Jay (Tom & Jay are both from Indiana), Hugh, Cate, Madeleine, Ruth, Lelia (LEE-lee-a), Sinead (shi-NAYD), Mhairi (pronounced VA-ree, she's Scottish), Tomas, David, and Anne Maria.  They were all friendly and a lot of fun to talk to; we had a really great time with them. Greg gets along so well with his co-workers, which is certainly a blessing; I know he is enjoying the work environment.

One of the things we talked about was nationalities and how Europeans are really good at telling what nationality you are just by sight. When we had met Melanie in Cork the previous week, I was complaining that Greg wouldn't let me look at the map because he didn't want to look like tourists. She commented that there are tourists everywhere, and there was a group of Italians coming up to us right now. Sure enough, a group of people passed us and they were all speaking Italian. I mentioned this to the group on Friday night. They commented that Italians are always very well-dressed and stylish. They said that, at university, you can tell who is from America because they all wear North Face jackets and/or backpacks (except they couldn't remember the brand and were saying "East Face? West Face?"). Ruth said that Greg looks German, but that I actually look quite Irish, with my fair skin, greenish eyes, and blonde hair with a reddish tint. !!! Now all I need is to get an Irish accent.

At the far end of our tables at the Franciscan Well was a group of multi-national guys (I can't remember what countries they were from, some were Irish but there were also others) who had an iPhone or iTouch or something out and were looking up the lyrics to various national anthems and singing them. They started singing the U.S. national anthem and, when they found out there were four Americans in our group, they coerced us into singing it for them. :)

Saturday was a rainy day and we stayed home and had a very low-key day. We did venture out to go to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. Okay, so we didn't go to a candlestick-maker, but I had to add that in there! I joked about that while we were out and Greg did not understand my nursery rhyme reference. *sigh* But when we Skyped with his mom that night and I said that we went to the butcher and the baker, she immediately said something about the candlestick-maker, so that made me feel better. :) We bought some very fresh-looking meat (Greg commented that it was very purple, right off the cow) at the butcher and a loaf of fresh bread and a tart at the bakery.

Sunday was kinda rainy-kinda not rainy. After church, we went in to Cork to the Mahon Point shopping center and considered watching a movie, but then decided to drive out to nearby Midleton to see the Old Midleton Distillery, which is a restored 18th century whiskey distillery. We decided that the tour was too pricey, but we were able to wander around inside the main building and watch a detailed virtual tour. It's actually a very pretty complex - we took a few pictures to prove that we were there even though we didn't spring for the tour; I'll share some in a separate post (just because it's a pain to add pictures in the middle of a bunch of text).

Sunday turned into a gorgeous day by later in the afternoon, and we took a lovely walk along the Scilly Walk, stopping at the Bulman for a quick break before returning. I didn't take the camera along, but wished that I had - the water was gorgeous that day, and there were tons of sailboats out.

I also had my first driving "lesson" on Sunday. Perhaps the less said about that, the better. ;) I'll probably write a separate post about that little adventure later this week.

We've had a very nice electrician named Stephen out to our place a couple of times. Last night he was here for an hour and a half replacing about a jillion lightbulbs that were out or missing entirely (including some that made him climb so high on the ladder that I had to leave the room because it was too scary), installing a couple of new outlets, fixing some lamps that didn't work, and securing our intercom to the wall because it kept falling off.

The whole town is preparing for the Kinsale Sevens, which is the highlight of the year in Kinsale. http://www.kinsalesevens.com/ Of course, we'll miss it since we'll be in London. Who planned that, anyway? But I'd rather be in London than watch a bunch of rugby. Maybe it will be a good thing to be out of town this weekend; I'm sure it will be crowded!

So there you have a quick rundown of what we've been up to since I last posted. Start looking forward to next week, when I should have a Plethora of Posts and Pictures after our long weekend in LONDON! Everyone we talk to here raves about how great London is and how much they love it, so we're hoping for a memorable experience there!