Toucan Brew

Hello blog readers not too much to report today.

Sunday: Fransesca and i woke up about 11am and made pancakes and woke our house guest who was roasting in the sun up(it was quite a funny sight to see Paul's friend P2 (check previous blogs for info) roasting in the morning, why he didn't close the curtains i am not too sure, he learned for sunday evening). and the pancakes...not as good as the first time i made them for Paul and myself, so better luck next time. then at about 1:30pm Fransesca and i hopped the DART to Bray to hike the 6 miles hike from Bray to Greystones. it was just gorgeous to hike along the cliff not too many people and we decided we needed to come back in late August to pick blackberries that grow along the cliffs. we also came upon a wheat field and hopped the fence here to go and be in the wheat field, it was so short, only about knee high i thought wheat was supposed to be taller? then we stopped at a little mom and pop resturant (kind of like sue's sweet shop in Cotton MN or Betty's Pies, b4 it became such a tourist attraction) the shop was called Poppies it was cute but the Irish woman running the shop was not so friendly. i had a rubarb crumble and Fran had apple pie, and as a typical irish dessert too much butter not enough sugar, luckily i found a sugar packet on the table for coffee so i sprinkled that on top of my crisp. i just don't get it...the famines over hello? then we hopped the DART from Greystones to Dublin and we missed getting rained on by 10 minutes. and after the rain there was not only a full rainbow connecting the North and South sides of the Liffey but a double Rainbow! i have never seen one b4 so it was amazing. when we told the 2 Paul's about the rainnbows P1 said "I wonder which side has the pot of gold?" of course we all know it would be the south side! so then it was off to see the new Michel Gondry movie "the science of sleep" when we got there the woman told us that the producer had pushed the release date back. damn and i was so looking forward to seeing this film i just love michel gondry! so then off to Laser the local dvd shop where we picked up a french film about a little boy who wants to be a girl, ahh the restrictions of society. children can be so cruel, as can adults but beautifully done for sure. and for once it was a french film that didn't have a racey sex scene, although it had to do with sexuality, leave it to the french! after the film, off to the SinE for a pint of the new Toucan Guinness, Fransesca wanted to try it b4 they stopped making it. just a limited edition. This Guinness was lighter and not so bitter as the regular, and when we got back, P2 said it was aimmed at woman so i could see that. it's kind of nice having a pub a block and half from your flat.

monday, well i woke up to eat the last of my pancakes to discover my mom had mailed me a card with newspaper clippings woo hoo thanks mom. so i had some morning reading material with my pancakes. then i went and laid in bed and read my book for a while until fransesca came home and i ate lunch, it's amazing how much food i ate in the course of 3 hours. then off to do some shopping for some gifts and to the the Graphics Studio in Temple Bar, nothing mind blowing but i startd thinking about how differently everyone sees the world and that we can all enjoy the differences in how everyone views things, even if it isn't your way. i also went into a second hand shop called Eager Beaver, it sells mostly mens second hand clothing but they were playing Neil Young so i hung around for a while for a listen. so that's the word as of this moment and it's drizzling in Dublin today so i think i will go home and take a lie down until Fran texts me for our supermarket experience. if you have any recommendations of places i should go feel free to blog them to me. and perhaps i will expreience them for you. omnivores dilema is getting really old but i am on the last section, foraging and hunting.

xoxo,
christie

so what is that in US dollars?

Hi people not much has happened in the last few days. I made curried cashews, yum. i have read some more of my book "omnivores dilema" which i am trying desperately to finish. just working and making some yummy food over here, i found this great irish vegetarian cookbook, i was surprised considering how much of the irish food is, shite. so i really want to get a copy b4 i leave. i also purchased myself a plastic basin so i can give myself a pedicure and it was wonderful, some sea salt and pumice stone action. so my feet feel good and it has finally rained.

i don't think i have ever discussed the pendulum with you guys, while my boss Eamon purchased a pendulum(phonetic spelling) and you ask it yes or no questions hold it over food or your hand to see if you should eat it or what not. so i find this to be a bit on the poppy cock side so i tease him a little bit about it, he is alway s on a diet so this is the new diet scheme along with weight watchers. so dairy doesn't agree with him so he asked with a milk chocolate bar and a dairy free chocolate bar if he could eat it and it swung counterclockwise which means no for the milk choc. bar and clockwise for the non dairy bar. so i made him ask it if it was going to rain because it has been so wark here. and it said it was going to rain on thursday and it didn't! huh touche! so it finally did rain on saturday and then got beautiful for the afternoon, and it has cooled down so nice.

as far as the US dollars statement goes, a woman from the US came in asking for a face cream called Heather and she wasn't sure if it was the herb or if the face cream was called Heater, not helpful, so Eillen showed her the face cream by Dr. Haushka, which is very popular, and after the woman saw that it was 15 euro she said what is that in US dollars, isn't the euro like 2 times more then the euro? so i chimed in and said no it isn't that much for every euro you get about .70 cents from your US dollar. "so what is that in US dollars?" so i said you will drive yourself mad if you constantly try to figure money from dollars to euros. so the woman asked me about where i was from and that sort of jazz and then i sent her to a different health food store to bug someone else. i also had some sugar free chocolate today, it contained a plant sugar that actually good for your teeth, the chocolate was not so great, i will stick to my sugar chocolate thank you very much. also i tried some goji berrys, tasted like crap, the worst berry i have ever tasted in my life and they smell like a cross between the yellow hunza raisins we used at the coop to make raisin pine nut quiche and urine. so i will not be eating goji berries, no matter what their redeeming qualitites may be.

so i can't think of much else right now, another translations:
eggplant: aubergine, pretty isn't it?

i am going to go to the michel gondry film the science of sleep tomorrow, yipee! it should be weird and great.

xoxo,
christie

i am not a (bleep) eater.

***parental advisory***
Hello all, i have a funny story conversation to tell you about but if you don't like the swears you shouldn't read this blog. so today my flatmate and i were eating lunch and we started talking about how our flatmate Paul eats stuff from boxes and just all around not so good. and fransesca was having her friend Frederico over for dinner and sarcastically i said to her perhaps you would like to prepare your pasta with some traditional irish meats like bangers or rashers or blood pudding, or one of those other shitty meats the irish prepare. and fransesca said "but why? i am not a shit eater." and we both started laughing histarically about neither of us being a shit eater and that to say you are a shit eater is to say you are not irish in our slang world...which brings up irish slang for you all so here it goes irish slang:

so we all learned, "sorry about that". yesterday

another one is to say "i am going to get change and some" now this is a direct quote from one of my multiple bosses at the health food shop. when you say ...and some you mean to say i am going to do this one thing and then go and get lunch or a tea.

your man or your lady...this refers to a mutiual person that you feel the other person will remember you talking about or knowing the situation. this was one Eileen i work with taught me so the example i have of its use is "that's right i remember i saw your man" (she was refering to a delivery driver and where the boxes on the counter came from because we were both standing there when he delivered but she forgot he delivered.)

now on to the swears and durrogatory terms woo hoo...so we all remember the terminology knackers. another fun one that i have heard multiple irish say is bollucks or bollux which is essentially a testical but you say it when someone says something you feel is outlandish, we would say bull shit in the states but here they say bollucks.

a funny one that Eillen has used instead of swearing and saying fuck off she says fick off, it's really quite cute when she says it.

so some random words as well...
cart (like in the supermarket)-trolley
i will phone you later-i will ring you later
aluminum-aluminium pronounce the extra i
omega(i say o mega)- omeega
vitamin- vitamen
diaper-nappie
stroller-pram or buggy
corgettes-zucchini

my flat mate paul likes to say "top of the mornin' to you" whenever i see him in the morning.

so i will try to write more of these down but here are a few to throw into your vocabulary, perhaps you have a dinner party that is going down hill, throw out an irish word, i'm sure jarggle should be in there as well but that is Ormond Quay speak.

so this evening i met frederico and had fransesca's experimental dinner with pasta, mozzorella, corgettes, onions and apples. quite good, i made stuffed peppers with apples 3 nights ago. and frederico brought some tiramisou from the italian wine bar he works at. wonderful. so we were talking about how to make the tiramisou and i told them my bastardized american version which frederico thought was very funny to say. and i didn't help with dinner, nor did i do any dishes i just left to go to an outdoor film, which was kind of a bust but here is what i got. the film was called AWOL filmography and soundtrack composition by daniel figgis and was the third in i have no idea how many installments of an opera shot of a dancer under water and using hypnosis. so the film was a whole 5 minutes long, i watched it twice through but i have no idea why this even made the section of the newspaper about events around town, i asked Eillen from work if she would like to come and see it and i am glad she was tired, because i would have felt awful if she would have stuck around city centre for that long for a pretty lame lenght film. to sum it up it was weak. but the colors and the hypnotic effect of the small ripples was definately beautiful and i think i give the film more credit then deserved because of how tired i am. so now i will go home and continue to read the book i have been reading for close to 2 months now. so goodbye.

xoxo,
christie

sorry about that...

So this is what the irish say when they aren't really sorry, but because of the situation are required to say something. For instance you are walking down the street someone walking the opposite direction bumps into our arm and they see you drop the phone you were carrying, if they are irish, and they don't care that they made you drop the phone they would say "sorry about that". and keep on walking. this did not happen, i was just making up an analogy, Fransesca first pointed it out to me.

so hello my blog readers, sorry i have been away for many days. it has been jam packed with social activity. we have started referring to last week and the last few days as the week of first, even though it has been longer when we notice something in our household that is a first for one or the other we say "congratulations on your first...blank(insert thing here)." so my flatmate paul got his first real job ever, that doesn't involve manual labor, within his degree, congratulations, so i had a beer with him, an expired beer. i'm sure you are all laughing seeing as i never drank anything well in the states, let alone an expired beer, so it was also my first beer with paul. saturday not much here, i made a macrame necklace, but it's too hot to wear.

sunday was carnival day woo hooo. so fransesca and i didn't wake up until about 1:30pm and we wanted to have pancakes b4 we went out so we didn't leave the house until like 3pm, so we missed both the 1pm show as well as the 3pm shows. but we made it to, two halves of the 5:30pm shows. good for us. so we saw some tanzanian tumblers, which they were quite good, and paul came with us to this one! he went earlier with his lady friend carmen, but she had to go to work. so these 3 Tanzanian men had like black spandex shorts on and then like this horrible snow lepoard print material like a tarzan wardrobe over the shorts. i kind of laughed at this but they were very good at tumbling. and after about 25minutes of dancing and tumbling etc. the limbo poll came out. at which time paul said, "i hate the fucking limbo". so we left and fransesca and i went to a different part of the carnival where the Queens of the Something, which is a whole slapstick comedy routine, with volunteers from the audience are asked to be part of the tricks, and you guessed it, it is all put together with music by Queen, and we finished with a banana spitting contest and singing of We are the Champions. nice. so there were 3 locations that this carnival took place, all were from different countries. there were even some creepy huge puppets that could be equivilated to clowns at a circus, this was the first thing fransesca and i saw from a distance and decided not to get any closer, too creepy. so after this we met Paul's friend, Paul at the carnival events. so with the 2 Paul's fransesca and i went to a very nice art nouveau bar, that as P1(roommate paul) said is full of suits on a weekday evening or on a late evening, but it was like 7pm so not too many people in the bar. but it was a beautiful bar with columns and skylights, plants and like a 1920s parlour feel, it was gorgeous, and here it was the first beer we had with P1 out in a public place. i told P1 he was going to corrupt me by the end of my trip here in dublin, so he asked if fransesca and i wanted to go to a sporting arena (a casino!) we said no and went back to the flat instead, and watched the film city of god, i said i hadn't seen it but after the first 2 minutes with the chicken killing scene, i remembered indeed i had seen it. but i forgot to mention the pancakes, so i made these wonderful pancakes the previous sunday (i am so sick of museli) that i tried for a second time on this sunday, but i forgot to add the egg, pretty much the whole reason i wanted to make them was to use up my eggs i had bought for the previous weeks pancakes! so they were not as good and fransesca and i saved a pancake for carmen and one for paul but then we got hungry and ate the 2 left over pancakes. so even without the egg they were still great, and when we were at the bar with P1 and P2(friend paul) P1 was telling P2 how good the pancakes were and P2 was joking about how he was coming over next sunday for pancakes and i said don't expect to eat b4 2pm!

well monday had ups and downs. first of all when i was on my way to the bank i caught Fransesca on her way up the stairs crying, she had just found out her granny had died. sadface:( although she knew it was coming it is still hard news to take. so i sat and chated with her and she said she didn't want to use up my whole day so i then scooted over to the bank. i set up my online account as well as made a deposit so here's some interesting banking info about ireland, apparently identity theft isn't a big worry here in ireland. i asked a banker so where do i sign the check?
he replied with anywhere on the back, but it isn't necessary. excuse me i need to take the carrot out of my ear, did you say it's not necessary to sign my pay check from my boss from his account to my account? that's right folks you don't have to sign your checks, good god. then i tried to make an atm deposit, so i stuck my card in and the same guy was like no you don't use that machine, you use this one over here...
so i walk up to this other kind of machine and try to stick my card into the machine and again he's like no you don't need you card...so this is getting more bizarre to me every second. so you just type in the amount in the envelope, and drop it into a machine, no electronic things linking your transaction to you and you get a little recipet which i have no idea how that is any proof that it was you or your money or anything, on your unsigned checks. so no idea about this kind of banking hoo ha apparently everyone else is still hiding their money in their matress because this banking system is ridiculous.

afterwards i purchased some flowers for fransesca and went back to the flat. after that i took the DART out to Bray, and it wasn't raining, excellent. so i was going to walk to Graystones (about 7mi) but since i needed to be back in town in 4 hours i decided to just walk up the Bray head, which is pretty much an intense hike up a really talk rocky piece of land with no where to stop and rest, so it was hard work especially in the heat but it was so beautiful on top of the hill, there was a big stone cross on the top and you could look on one side and there was the city of Bray (and there was a real carnival with carny's and rides) and to the left the irish sea and rolling hills with a small foot path, absolutely gorgeous, i got some nice photos that are on film. i also took the photo of a nun and her brother, they had hiked to the top, the they insissted that they take a photo of me with my camera, so i will have at least one photo of myself! then back dosn the hill to the DART station. so on my way back i was just sitting enjoying the ride, people watching, when the 4 seat compartment i was sitting in was inundated with knacker children, dammit, they always have to ruin my journeys. i tried to not make eye contact and pretend they weren't there, at least i had my ipod so i could drown them out. it's the lack of respect i just can't stand, it drives me insance how much they disrespect, even the dart, the one sitting across from me had his feet up in a diagonal line sohis feet were on the seat right next to me, now 5:30PM is a busy time so move your feet so someone can sit down, people are getting off of work etc. not to mention i need to get out into the aisle to get off the train! so that's my 2 cents for that confrontation. once back fransesca and i went and saw the film "tale of the yellow dog" it was about a mongolian nomad family, which i had watched a documentary with julia roberts a few years back on how these people live, so i knew some of the history and culture of the people and it was beautiful, it was kind of shot in a documentary style, as well as a film style, and it was amazing to see this film as one of the questions a child was asking in the film was "will a human soul(they were buddhist) always come back as a human?" and the older woman said "take this needle and dump this rice over the top, and when you balance a grain of rice on the tip of the needle you will see how possible it is to know the answer to this question." so the child did this and concluded that it was not possible so the old woman said "you need to realize how precious a human soul is here in any lifetime." wow and fransesca's grandmother had just died that morning at 4am, my good emotions! but it was a great film, afterwards i went home and she went to a call shop to call her brother and mother back in verona and i went home to prepare a meal of mushrooms and peppers stuffed with wild rice, nuts, apples, carrrots, corrogettes(zucchini), onions and garlic for dinner and that was absolutely gorgeous, we even got paul to sit down and have dinner with us, for the first time.

so tuesday, the day i write, i am back to work and it is warm warm warm. so it was hard to work, but the work day went by quickly: i had my heartrate taken by a watch, ruth said she's considering naming her child Christie because she really likes the name, and carmen(paul's girlfriend) makes us all uncomfortable and crabby in our house for dinner (congratulations carmen) she is a spanish woman so she is really posessive of paul so fransesca and i just avoid talking to either one of them when she is over, it is just easier. so that's the scoop here in dublin for the last few days, i'm sure i am forgetting something, and perhaps i will ramble another day about the previous days, right now i am sleepy and my tea is calling me.

xoxo,
christie

what do you call those?!?

Hello my blog readers Christie here with some several day updates. So today is Friday which means that tomorrow is Friday in working measures. The big circus is this weekend, and i am off on sunday so when i wake up at the crack of noon i will be going to Temple bar for some genuine circus/acrobatics action. so Here's the craic here in dublin...first of all it's said crack, like the drug which is slang that means what's going on and it has another meaning but i can't remember what it is. so on Tuesday i went to work and i think my ATM card came, woo hoo. Wednesday, it was hotter then a cat's flannel pajamas. And since we didn't have AC in the shop you can bet the health food store had had better smells then that day. I met someone from Chicago so we chatted about the MN hip hop scene and Del the Funky Homosapien, so that was the excitment aside from Fransesca coming home from Italy in the evening, she was glad to be bed but her Grandmother is sick so she felt really horrible leaving. She is waiting for the call from her mother telling her, her grandmother has passed. I know how she feels with all my fun family stuff so I could totally understand how she felt, and she said "i am so lucky to have you as a roommate for being able to understand the torn feeling i am feeling." what a sweetie. we also practiced our irish, none of which i remember but perhaps i will put the effort in saturday after work. Thursday was movie day. I went with my two coWorkers to Ruth's house, one of my coworkers, for dinner (chickpea potato curry, Ruth made it Yum) and then we went to Superman. It was a pretty good movie considering the farcity of it, why can't they figure out that Superman is Clark Kent, is it that hard? but it was good to hang out with other people, and surprisingly we didn't talk about work at all, i think everyone had, had enough, it is so miserable and hot we just don't want to think about it! oh yeah, on thursday the store reached an all time high of 85F, inside the store, it was cooler outside, nice. so not so much work got done and there were lots of giggle fits by the three of us. i got to see another suburb in the north of the city where Ruth lives. She lives in like a 2 story/3 bedroom condo type thing, with her husband Ruth, as the irish say "it was just lovely". And Friday, well we worked and it was pretty uneventful in the store, just Ruth, myself, and Eamon. So here's a funny story for you I was instructed to go and pick up my boss's perscription at the chemist's (pharmacy) i love the strange adventures of the Down to Earth, my boss was also singing the Teddy Bears picnic song written by Jerry Garcia, and i told him this and he said oh it's just a children's song, and i said i know it's a Jerry Garcia song and the book with CD was just released last August, i had no idea that i had that stored in my memory, isn't it strange how things are triggered even though it was over a year ago that i thought and read about that. strange. then i went home and a beer with my flat mate paul, he just got a job in his profession, woo hoo for him. he will be working with at-risk teens at a sort of retreat camp, so he's pretty excited but raises a whole bunch of things like, getting 4 wheels instead of 2, 1 hour commuting each way, what to do about the drug volunteering at the methadone clinic across the way. so that's the word here in dublin, tomorrows friday (saturday) then it's circus day.

xoxo,
christie

another weekend wasted?

ccTravelAbroad

well people christie here once again, sorry to disappoint you with boring old star sightings and drug begging so here's some other news. on saturday i worked, hardly, i'm not sure why i was so tired, i'm hoping next week will be better after my 11/12 hour sleep cycles on the weekend. so on sunday the plan was to get up at around 10 am make some banana pancackes and then go to a whereabouts event/play thing. so i didn't get up until quarter to 12 which kind of squashed the pancake idea since the whereabouts started at 12:30pm, so i showed up and other people did not so they asked if it would be alright to start at 1pm instead of 12:30pm, it was really warm, not US warm, but about 79F so i thought i would go home a change into something that wasn't as warm tshirt and kahkis too much! so this whereabouts thing was pretty great. it was like an play/happening (do some art history research if you don't know what a happening is)/comment on modern irish society/moment of glory for new irish playwriters and it was free! i even got a medal(but i had to give it back at the end, it was only to identify me if i got lost) it was also very cool because we went to like 5/6 locations around the temple bar. there was one on affluent society in Ireland, since Ireland is realitively "new money" and with the most millionaries per capita in the world...sorry don't know where i was going with that, anywho there was one on the knacker/drug culture, one on the conspiracy theory/truth about the Irish govt. letting the CIA come in and just snatch people off the street, one on suicide/drug culture, and some less memerable ones (it also included swears and nudity no PG13 shows here, hubba hubba).

i also went to the National Photogarphy Archive to find out about darkroom facilities, and if i become a member at £40 then i can use the dark room every sunday if i want, otherwise it is available every morning i work except the monday i have off, how convenient, but there was also a new photo exhibit called "American Ruins" by Camilo Jose Vergara who has been photographing in NY for the last 30 years the two works i really enjoyed were "On the Way Out: Fern Street, North Camden" and "Neither Time Nor a Harlem Store Front stands Still" these two photograph collectives were taken by Vegara from about 1976 through 2006, it is amazing how the store fronts can change over time, and the degradation that society can over look the poorer classes when not having to deal with it first hand, or at all. i was also thinking about this area in NY when they just keep building taller and taller buildings instead of taking over buildings that are abandoned and how we have this option in the US but not here in Ireland, it would have been great to get a Europeans ideas/feelings about it fromt that perspective. i almost asked someone i saw in the gallery, mostly because he looked like someone i knew in MN but i decided not to.

i had pancakes for dinner instead, hooray for me. they were delicious, my flat mate paul concurred! i purchased some organic vegetables today and i went into a huge asian market close to where i work i bought some stuff to make curry, i also took a trip to the library to get some different vegetarian cookbooks, so i am ready for the week. i am so glad i didn't work today it is very hot here today. hopefully tomorrow will be cooler. i am trying really hard to finsih omnivore's dilema but it is hard to care when you aren't faced with corn fed cows over here, everything is grazed and no growth hormones, so the meat is minorly safer then the meat in the us. so that's the word on the block here. hope everyone is doing well, take of yourselves, notice something strage, funny, interesting to your, unique about your fellow humans today:) i saw topless tanners in a city park today and a man tanning in his brief underware, how's that for unique, who knew people would do that in a city park, but they also drink beers on the boardwalk illeagally.

oh i got things to fix my betty rubble necklace (heather will laugh at this) and the woman at the bead shop gave me directions and explained to me what i had to do and got all the supplies for me in a bag, i must of looked dazed and confused, so that is what i will do tonight, fix my betty rubble necklace so i can wear it to work and tell them the story. for those of you who don't know it, my roommate Heather (back in duluth) wore it to work at Old Chicago and one of her coworkers said to her "Hey Heather, Betty Rubble called, she want's her necklace back." but both of us still continued to wear the necklace. but it broke in my backpack so i will fix it and wear soon hopefully:)

xoxo,
christie

observation-station

well another not so interesting couple of days at work, my work is done, i was accepted by AIB bank to open an account if i wish, but they have a transaction fee, for every transaction you do with them, so i think i will save up my checks until i desperately need money then deposit. kind of a crap deal, and they charge me everytime i use my checkcard or write a check. what the hell? i talked to my flat mate paul to see what he had to say, and he said he just has student accounts at banks, then you don't need to pay any fees, so i am going to see since i am here on a student work visa if this would count for me. monday i will check.

in other news, Beck came into the store on Friday, i didn't help him with anything, he was just there...shopping...like the rest of us. i also have been trying lots of expired candy bars at the store (insert chuckle here). so far i haven't seen any big white rabbits, i just feel kind of ill from all the sugar, it may be organic sugar but it still makes me sick. i tried some choc. with hazelnuts today, about 7 days overdate, and it was lovely. i also picked up a bottle of detox stuff you mix into your water to help me not feel so yucky from all the chocolate:( i tried some free soy cheese from the shop yesterday, and it does not taste a thing like cheddar cheese, it really has no flavor whatsoever. i have never purchased soy cheese because i had a suspicion that is what it would taste like. i'm going to make banana pancakes tomorrow morning on my day off hooray! i'm doing some in town things on sunday and hopefully sleeping, i am so tired this week, i'm not so sure why (chocolate) i've been really lathargic (chocolate) and really sluggish at work (low motivation when others aren't working). so that's what's going on here in this area. hope you all enjoyed the world cup we watched the last half hour of regular play, overtime and the kick off i can't remember what they are called (chocolate) and i will find out about the dark room chemical action, but after i found out from Paul's friend, Paul, that no where on the country of irealnd is there a silver hallide recycling center so it all goes into the water (ick) hopefully i won't grow a third arm or something. i think this info is faulty but i will check any way.

xoxo,
christie

what the jarggle are you talking about?

So this brings up an interesting story...my flat mate, Fransesca is going to Verona on Friday for 4 days, i know sad face you won't here about the exciting adventures of the bobbsie twins. so she was trying to say to paul and myself at lunch on wed. "I hope that my mother makes some chocolate cake while i am in verona, so that i don't have to go cold turkey". What came out is a totally different story. she couldn't think of the word for cold turkey so she said to Paul, "Paul what is the medical term for when someone is on the drugs, and they haven't had it so there body is physically wanting the heroin?" and we both said what?..."you know what is the medical jarggle for not having the drugs in the body?" what the hell does jarggle mean?
christie: do you mean jargon?
fransesca: what does this mean?
paul: it means site specific/work specific language.
fransesca: then what does jarggle mean?
paul: unless you are trying to say jargon, i don't know what jarggle means.
christie: i think you combined the words jargon and google, to get the word jarggle.
fransesca: after lunch, i will google it!
so these are the kind of happenings in our house all the time. as fransesca put this evening, when the three of us talk, it is for certain that one will say something and the other 2 will not understand.

so this week has been pretty boring, i've been very tired at work and at home so besides some yummy food being made and a measuring cup being purchased not too much has been going on. but on tuesday evening fransesca made us dinner, italian pasta with brocolli and breadsticks and afterwards we went for a walk. we got some italian icecream in a shop in temple bar and then watched some fire dancers/jugglers. then fransesca said "let's go to grafton street, which is the street lots of street performers, and see if anything is going on". we were then acosted, while fransesca was by a young man with a brooklyn accent, so we talked to him for about a half hour, guided him to his hotel and then he asked fransesca for her phone number, i explained that she was leaving town for a few days and that she was very busy so she wouldn't have time to talk to him, when he would try to find another reason she should give it to him i said well she has this, i don't trust the peeps from the E.Coast so much, except for Derrick, so we were kind enough to direct this gentleman to his hotel and then went home, only to talk to Paul and his friend Paul for the next 4 hours making bed time after 2am when the 2 of us had to get up early.

so that is some happenings in this area, i found out from Paul's friend Paul where i could go to ask about possibly developing my black and white film, which i kind of guessed was the case but they weren't open on monday so i could find out, hopefully i will find out on friday whether or not they will give me a bank account or not in this country. they have this strange process that even if you come in with a work pay check, doesn't guarntee you an account, i have no idea who they were calling or what they do for the 5 days, we'll see what kind of background check they have done on me.

so yep...hope all is well in the old US and it is not too hot for the peeps in the states. it's not so hot here in Ireland, it was last week, i was working in the shop with no AC and the air temp. being about 84degrees F and a tiny 10inch fan to cool the entire shop down. wonderful, but i survived, it could also be the reason i am so sleepy this week, not enough water. so ciao ciao, i feel my bed calling me.

xoxo,
christie

sunnyMunnyDay

Hi everyone- so here are some things to mark down on your maps at home about where i went this weekend. so sunday was pretty gray day, saturday evening ended with high gusts and rains hooray:) let's hope for a tsunami the winds were really strong. so sunday was a toss up day, i was either going to go to phoenix park/botanical garden or merrion square and some cooking. so i decided to go to merrion square, which is kind of like a smaller park within the city very close to st. stephen's green that had a really cool art project in it. there was the wish project that was in the square on top of the air raid shelter, no kidding. but it was a need idea it had these sticks with slots in them and vellum paper that had wishes written on them and then folded into flower shapes and stuck in the slotted sticks. i found it pretty creative but it was a little lame because of the wishes, " i wish to be happy" "i wish my friend's and family to be safe and happy". not that i don't want these people to be happy but what about things like, i want to understand the free radicals, plastic, and a microwave phenomenon? they might have been written by kids, i'm not sure. i also had a very nice savory scone at AVOCA, cheddar tomato. i also found some organic vegetables in a market (that were overpackaged:( but i bought them anyway. i then went home and made spicy chickpea nuts with ginger and cayenne, i marinated the vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, red and yellow peppers, purple onions) in balsamic vinegar and oil with rice and for dessert vegan chocolate cake (i also applied for the vegetarian chef job at Cornucopia because i realized how much i love to make vegetarian food) so i will probably call them during a lunch break this week. then as flat mates the 3 of us watched the end of the italy france soccer match and then a french movie by the directors of amilee (it was about meat eaters eating vegetarians, i feel this way a lot of times around the meat eatin' peeps). so at 1am it was time for bed.

so monday, well...fransesca's alarm startled me up and i shot up in bed and then laid back down. i tried to fall back asleep but then just got up at 9am. today was a busy errand day. i went to the post to mail some analog email, i went to the bank to open up a checking account, which i will find out about in 5 business days. i applied at AIB, which fransesca had recommended, but another option would have been IBS (hehe) not kidding about that one. i also went to Cultivate, where fransesca used to work, and will there again in the fall to find some volunteer opportunities within the organic community. there is a cool event that is going on in the fall about design and the ecology of the enviroment, i am going to see if eric, the guy in charge (aka fransesca's friend) needs any help. so more to come on that.

the art today: so i went to the hyde gallery, which is located within the trinity college grounds i saw the work of Laura Owens and Mark Garry. Both pretty intersting Mark had a single work where he took rainbow colored thread and had it across two parallel walls, i so wanted to pull my fingers down all the threads, like a harp, even though i know it would probably ruin the exhibit, but it was so tempting. Laura had some nice work the bio said she was one of the most brilliant upcoming american painters of the post modern era...crickets. i'm not sure about that, i'm pretty sure Ginny and Maria at UMD has created much more interesting and with more depth pieces then Laura, but i could be biased. i also went to a gallery inside a mall...not so inspiring. so i don't have anything to say about that.

i did go to the photography archive today as well, the place that had the 4 MFA photography shows taxidermy women in uniform...jogging any memeories? so the photo archive had old photos from county Waterford from the early 1900s, horse racing tracks, boats, bridges, not so happy looking weddings but the cool thing was the upstairs photos were created recently from the metal plates that held the negatives. the plates are the same size as the photo and set directly on top of a fiber paper and exposed to a light source and developed in a very similar way as i have developed my photos in the dark room...crickets again? so kind of boring subject matter but cool process info.

i also got some tickets to an afternoon play called whereabouts, as part of a vestival that happened in may this is a video experience that i will experience on sunday afternoon, free tickets woohoo i love you temple bar. i also found an eletrical adapter so i can charge my pod at home, excellent. as well i had gotten some soap from down to earth that was going to go into the garbage (we got some with new packaging) so took the 10 bars and brought them to a shetler that is up by christ church, just across the liffey. the staff at the shelter were so happy to take them (warm fuzzies inside) so 1 for mother earth and 1 for the homeless community in dublin, the geranium rose smelling bums. nice. so there may be more to come today but currently i am kind of all typed out. so...
xoxo,
christie

i'm just workin' for the weekend

Hi ya folks-

Just another pretty face is done with work for this week again. Hopefully i can open a checking account on monday, i don't know what i need but hopefully i can convince them that i need the account and that i have money to put in the account.

i had a lovely goatcheese hummus sandwich on a ciabatta bun today for lunch. i also took some photos around the town again at funny signs i saw, i went back to shoot one this afternoon that said "absolutely no world cup jerseys". it only takes one bad potato to spoil the soup. now no one can wear a jersey! oh crumbs.

so i am going to google and see what there is to do around town on sunday it started raining today so tomorrow, with my luck will be rainy as well and i will be going to a museum, and making a vegan chocolate cake. we will see though. so nothing new to report. i found out that basically everyone who works in the shop, aside from Eillean is married to or is one of Jack, my boss's kids. nice lets hope he has another one to set me up with. i kid i kid. Eillean went through the list, and like a traditional irish family there are about 8 kids.

So hopefully i can get some things done as well as some places seen, if anything maybe i will go to dun Eagile or however you spell it to see some nice trees.

so xoxo,
christie

christie, not just a pretty face.

so here's the update folks, i blogged yesterday but something happened where it didn't save so here's a condensed/different version of yesterdays email:

tuesday: it started out the same as most work days, wake up, eat breakfast, run late for work but still manage to get to work on time, so as i got out the door, about a block down from my apartment i saw a guy stop on the sidewalk and proceed to as the kids say "shoot up" his drug of choice, probably heroin right on the Quay, a busy street, now i know the alley behind my house is known to have addicts, so i just don't go back there but i had no idea someone would do it right on the street in front of everyone, but hey we're in dublin, throw all social standards out the window. work was uneventful, i made a bean vegetable soup and a rice dish with apricots and currants i also watched a movie with Fransesca that was about the political revolution that happened in Chile during the 70s, where a school tried to integrate the rich and poor communities to teach children of accepting others, it was really sad but mainly to know that this sort of thing happened, and still happens in many countries.

wed.: today was the day i was ready to kill my boss. so the first week i was there i was taking everything off the shelves to dust and pull the out of date stuff off the shelf, about half way during teh first week he told me not to do all that just straighten the shelves, i was like okay no problem, but on wed. he said no you can't just straighten the shelves in the shop you need to create a system and (basically do exactly what you were doing during the first half of the first week). so far i have received only negative critisism from this guy and have no idea where i stand with him. so i am comletely flustered and feel to stupid to do my job, when in reality i know he has no idea what he wants me to be doing. so not a good time. after lunch, jack left so i talked to Eillean about it (she works in the shop full time) she told me what to do when Jack is in the store which is just pretend to do work so i will implement this method whenever he is in the shop, which isn't so often. and Fransesca felt bad for me being so frustrated so she made me a fruit smoothie from our lovely strawberries and pitted fruit we each bought.

thursday: today hooray!! i went to work, and jack wasn't in, yipee, that means stress free day with loads of little jobs for me to do, so i can actually be helpful, we'll see how he feels about me on friday. it was really hot on both wed. and thursday (about 83F inside the shop) we don't have AC so it's hard to do any work. but i did get lots of stuff out on the shelves and i feel like i am being helpful. i also went to the supermarket to get things for a greek salad (tomorrows lunch) with the bean soup i made, i also made some hummus from a box (not so good, just sort of tastes like soy flour) but add some black olives, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese and you've got yourself a pretty good wrap. i dropped one by the wine bar for fransesca as she was feeling a little grumpy today:( hey, but no one was shooting up right on the street, and i met my really nice french neighbor boy). i also got to try some diabetic organic ice cream today, summer berry ripple. it tasted great in the 900million degree shop. i almost forgot about some phone calls i got and made. first off all during lunch, a starbucks i dropped my CV off at gave me a call to possibly have me take over a floor supervisior position, it would mean more responsibility, but i would be properly trained, and it would mean i would have more managing experience which could get me a job easier in the UK as well as back in the states "would you like fries with that?" i was completely honest with the guy on the phone and said listen...i am currently working at a job but am not loving it, i am very limited on when i can come in for an interview but i would still like to interview if you are still interested. so we'll see what happens after he talks to his supervisor, i am not getting my hopes up, seeing as it would mean i would have to commute, for like 40 minutes, each way, i also want to hand in a CV at a vegetarian resturant called Cornicopia but we will see what happens.

in the grand scheme of things i am enjoying every minute, even when my blog from yesterday accidently erases, and i need to rewrite everything i wrote b4 but whatever, operator error. so dublin is fine, the days are hot working in the shop, so hopefully it will cool off soon.

i bought some funny socks today with a lion on them that looks like it is holding your shoe with it's front paws, so corny. my mom called me on my cellular phone, while i was in the basement of a mall, doing some shopping at a supermarket, so now she can call me if she needs to! but i think i will continue calling her because land lines here from call shops are so much easier to hear people on. i also got to talk to derrick on the telephone, hooray another person who speaks english fluently!

we have some friends of fransesca's @ our flat the last couple of days who are here in ireland for the european national juggling convention, in county cork. then they will be back in dublin the 17-19 for juggling shows, i am hopping to go to a few events next sunday on my day off, i need to check the event guide.

so that's the scoop, if it rains this weekend i will go to the chester Beatty library, it has art and books and lots of bibles, korans, and other holy scriptures, it seems a museum i missed, if it is beautiful, i will check my book and possibly do another day trip, maybe to the mountains, but perhaps some place else in ireland. i might even take a bus on saturday afternoon somewhere and come back on monday. i can do that here, most people do things like this, more spontaneous:) well have a good night folks.

xoxo,
christie

i have been shooting more photos of interesting things i notice and see. lots to be seen, but i often times forget the old camera.

comfrey tea and bowel movements

hello peeps of the states-

yep. just like in the states, customers tell you more then you wanted to know about their lives. including a customer who told me she needed to go on a special diet for her bowels, no need to explain, just give me the list! i also got to encounter the eastern european woman who won't come into the shop but shouts her order from the sidewalk, "can i have my vegan ice cream!?" don't worry illean was back so she could help this woman, did i mention she won't let men wait on her? so like that, there were no new encounters with the allergian doctor, he didn't have many patients on tuesday. i have however gotten to encounter my boss, who hired...what a d-bag. so last week i was cleaning the shelves one way, and he told me no you don't need to do that, just straighten the shelves (i was taking everything off, dusting, checking dates, and putting things back on the shelf using first in, first out) today however (when i was going around straightening) i was chastised for this and told i needed to create a system and do one area of the store everyday (so essentially back to what i was doing my first week), i also find it frustrating because i have only gotten negative critisism from this boss.

so i left for lunch just so frustrated (it was also 82 F inside the store-no AC). i proceeded to tell my roommate at lunch how i didn't know what i was supposed to do, and she suggested i have a meeting with him. so maybe in a few days. when i came back from lunch and jack left for the afternoon, i talked to illean, she told me to take jack with a grain of salt, whenever he is in the store (which isn't very often, just do what he wants you to do) so one amon comes back from the world cup it might be better. illean told me i was doing really well, and i was picking things up quick and i understood what i needed to do, so at least i know that i am doing the job that one person wants me to do. after work i went for a walk through st. stephen's green, and i walked back home through wicklow street, i saw a sign up for a cook position at Cornicopia, a vegetarian resturant, so the plan is to update my CV tonight and drop it off there possibly during my lunch break and see if i can find myself a job i would love even more, i told fransesca and she said "oh babe, you would like this job even more!" so we will see, i won't quit the job i have unless i get a different job.

other then that, i might go to the temple pub tonight, i can only assume it is in temple bar, or i might just do some reading, it has been really hot (by dublin's standards) here in the city, not many places have AC.

i completely forgot about yesterday AM...as i was walking down the Quay on my way to work tuesday AM i walked by a young man who was proceeding to as they say "shoot up" his drug of choice right on the sidewalk on a busy street, i had no idea what to do but the next time i am phoning the garda and describing his clothing, this is disgusting to be doing right on the street, not to mention if there were children. it was also really sad, and really shows you how difficult having an addiction can be. my coworker illean said "perhaps he as diabetic..." in my head i was like "what are you crazy?", the alley behind my street has lots of heroin addicts, not to mention the same 2 young men sit down the block every morning trying to get money to get high. it is just a way of life here, and one more thing to accept and realize. my roommate paul is working in a fransiscan homeless shelter a couple of blocks away dealing first hand with these people so we will see what becomes of him.

there are many beautiful experiences as well as many eye opening experiences, i would not trade it for the world, even with my outrage, without this trip i would not have seen the things i have seen, experienced the irish culture ( which reminds me of a little joke from work, on tuesday i had to mop the floor, so i had to pick up the one rug we have, and i said where should i put this while i mop, and jack said "just leave it outside" and i said to him, "won't someone steal it?" and he responded, "the irish wouldn't steal the rug, it would look to much like work." and there my friends seems to be the irish work ethic, of some, not all). so until the next time, hopefully something more exciting will happen.

xoxo,
christie

who's on first, what's on second...

so the plans to go to the mountains today was foiled by the weather, as usual. we even set the alarm to get up on time to go so at 10 am we got up and it was pouring...so we ate some breakfast and sat around the house a bit and then at about 2pm it started clearing up so we walked to the DART station on tara street and took a train to Howth (rhymes with Both) there was a beautiful food market when we got off the train, so we got 2 heaping pints of strawberries for 4 euro which wasn't too badly priced then we sampled some other fruit, vegetables, as well as some breads just to kind of fill ourselves up for our little hike. fransesca and i notice kind of similar things, and one thing we noticed while on the sidewalk was all the people scowling, the irish don't seem to be happy unless they're in the pub, so we kept on smiling through this half a block of crabby pantses and i said afterward "is it just me or did those people seem a little unhappy?" she just laughed and shook her head. so then on our trek up hill up hill up hill, we saw donkeys, right inside the city limits, we nabbed some wild rosemary from someones front yard, i mean it was a rosemary tree, not a little plant, so they won't miss it. then we saw a woman pull her horse up to a little stone wall to get on his back, he was just an enormous horse. once we reached the top we finally got to the cliffs of howth, from the cliffs you look across and you can take a ferry or speed boat to the eye of ireland, or an island called something like that, it was just beautiful, the cliffs/hillside were covered in little purple flowers and prickley bushes. we only saw a few people and we could hear the planes leaving the airport but it was just very nice, more of the emerald isle, that you usually read about and see pictures of.

on our way back down the hill we happened upon a group of "knackers" which are, the really poor people of ireland. these were teenage boys, and as fransesca said you never know what they are going to do, so these boys had gone fishing in the bay, not that i would eat these fish but we thought that's what they were going to do with them, but know someone dropped one and they procceded to mutlilate the 2 fish by picking them up and throwing them at each other and just disgusting immature behavior. so we were trying to either pass them or just hang back so that we didn't have to walk near them and create a situation. this is the part of the irish that i have found i don't like, they make you uncomfortable and you saw what they did with the fish what else are they going to do...this is one of the class issues that i think ireland is working on but it is still so prevelent it is hard to know where to start and what to do about it. but it's not like our day was ruined, we both just couldn't get over the destruction and lack of respect for the fish's life.

monday, well i went to do some shopping for work clothes, i got some pants and a couple of funky shirts from the charity shop so i am good to go on that, i found that one only article of clothing i need to purchase before i leave ireland are a pair of fisherman pants, they are so cool, the are like a one size fits all pair of pants but they are funky and come in lots of fun colors, just solid colors and at 25 euro it's not to expensive. so that's about it, i'm making a spinach garlic pizza tonight as well as some fruit smoothies, so i am going to go to the supermarket and well as the fruit market so that's the word on the street. i have taken some shots of interesting graffiti since i have been here, some of it is lame but some of it is really making an interesting social statement.

so that's the word on the street here in the old stinky city, dublin is hot and humid today, as it wasn't yesterday when fran and i both were wearing scarves and 2 long sleeve shirts a piece, so you never know what it's going to do here in dublin, just like the people (sorry bad joke). but that's the word. work tomorrow so not to much else interesting planned for the next couple of days, i may go and rent dogma, seeing as fransesca has never seen it and has wanted to see it.

xoxo,
christie

2 scoops for you?

so last time we met i was talking about a scarf, tv tax and my new job.

so i have gotten a number of free organic products as well as international goody products. ruth was very nice and gave me a pack of burts bees lotion set, so i have shared those with my roommate fransesca, there is no reason to horde, i would just have to give them to her when i left in a few months anyway. so the final day of the work week came with a paycheck, and getting to leave a half hour early. it was really slow on saturday in the shop. i must have straightened every shelf like 3 times and then some. i restocked what i had, dropped a bag of soya beans, as they call them not in the US, on the floor and had to try and sweep them up.

and i'm sure you want to all hear about the allergy doctor, he comes in every saturday and tuesday to do allergy tests, i saw the little machine, i don't know what it does and i really don't want to spend the 40 euros to find out, but perhaps my discount applies to this as well. so whenever i talk to him or say hello or something like that, it's like talking to the southpark character with the snowsuit pulled over his head. i can barley understand him from his irish accent and he mumbles. he was eating a piece of candy off the counter and he offered me one and i said "you be the taste tester and just let me know how they are" there was a laugh and then some candy wrapper noise, then pretty soon he was handing me a piece of candy, so to make him happy i just took it and ate it, i decided it would be easier he then threw the candy wrapper in the flammable material can...i don't know...i just work here. but he's a nice guy, no incidents with the toaster today, i think he went out for lunch.

i was also sent to the resturant juice, to get Amon, Ruth and myself a juice we all got: apple, carrot, beetroot, ginger, sparaiglina. it was not bad i must say, and i am getting used to these lame little errands around the town.

during my lunch break, fransesca met me in temple bar meeting squre (started by the quakers but now used for cultural events) there was an organic market that takes place every saturday as well as a book fair. i bought us each a feta cheese, black olive, pesto, sun dried tomato, table greens crepe, absolutely fabulous. and the crepe was fresh, and from a van (ask kevin erickson for detail on the lefse van). we also each purchased a dessert but both decided like most irish desserts had too much butter. i had a piece of banana cake, not very bananaie, and fransesca had a lemon bar, not very lemonoy. but beautiful fruits and vegetables, all sorts of foods you could choose from, there was an olive bar, a fruit and nut stand so cheese stands etc. no live animals though. there was also someone playing bob dylan songs, but not bob dylan. i also found out a rumor about who my boss is at Down to Earth, apparently according to some irish people who work at Cultivate(our competition, kind of) the owner of Down to Earth is none other then...Colin Farrell's father, wether or not this is true i don't know, i'm not going to ask unless, someone else in the shop brings it up.

so my day will end with me making some pizza from a pizza crust i bought at the shop, and some sauce i made yesterday for my free organic spelt noodles, with pinach, garlic and fresh mozzorella from the food hall, it's kind of like a mom and pop grocery shop only with a wine seller, ready to eat foods and some other gourmet stuff.

tomorrow morning, fransesca and i hope to go to the mountains, by bus and hike for the day, then i will go shopping on monday for another pair of pants to wear in the shop, since i currently am wearing the same thing on a daily basis, as i would do as experiments, and out of sheer lazyness at barnes and noble, old habits die hard.

so funny saying of the day "football free zone" written on a sign outside a coffee shop on abbey street. it is starting to get out of control with the people misbehaving, i heard someone kicking the side of a garda vehicle as it drove by this afternoon, but this could have also been the israel peaceful protest outside of the post(office, the people who dole out the TV tax).

xoxo,
christie