Hey Man, Nice Tan!

As a preview to our full Barcelona post, I would like to share this one special moment we had walking back to the hotel after a long day of sight seeing. This is highly inappropriate, but much too funny to ignore.

If you would like to know why the guy in the foreground of this picture (our buddy Mike) is laughing so hard go to this image and zoom in on the tan guy in the background (click on the image and then click on the magnifying glass in the upper right above the picture, then click and drag on the picture to pan over to the little tan guy). For those of you with pristine mental imagery or weak bladders you may want to skip this one. Everyone else, it’s not to be missed.

I don’t want to give it away, so we will deal with queries and explanations in the comments section on this one. Suffice it to say it was the most bizarre thing we saw on our trip by a long shot.

“That wasn’t real?!...was it?” Mike said, in utter disbelief…

NEWS FLASH!: No Imagination Required

We have now started uploading pictures to Picasa, an online photo storage site which comes as part of our Google accounts (free by the way…brilliant set of online information and apps) so that you lucky few readers are no longer stuck with only the few pictures we upload as part of the blog.

You can find my Picasa site here. For now my account will be the only one to have images, but Mariah’s is linked from mine in case we use hers as well.

To start I have just started uploading images from our last big trip. It takes a while to upload, so keep checking back as I get more added. After we will probably up up some other images, depending on how much space we have available.

When you click on pictures in the album you can select download off to the right of the page if you would like to have a copy for yourself. It seems you can order prints through the Picasa sight, though I haven’t tried this yet, but you could also download the image and take it on a disk to your local print developer for prints as well. For most of the images I have higher resolution versions that what are up on the Picasa site (to conserve space) so if you want to make a larger print of any image you are welcome to email me and I can send over the larger format image (which will make for better prints).

Blah blah blah…we hope you enjoy and if you have any questions or special requests feel free to let us know.

The Short And Dirty: Back In…Grey?

Well, when I started this blog the intention was to keep everyone apprised of what was going on in our lives without having to send individually crafted emails to everyone I know (yes, I am lazy like that). And, at the start…when I had no job, that was working relatively (I was only behind for a week or so there for a while) well. But now, despite Mariah’s strong efforts, the blog has been lagging behind on feature length stories, so I think I will amend the blog to include this semi-regular possibly-but-not-likely-weekly update which will give you the short and dirty (not too dirty though…this is a family blog) version in summary of what we are doing. I know this will require some restraint on my part, since I have the tendency to prattle on about everything to an extent that loyal readers wake up drooling over their keyboards with some lovely square indentions on their faces, but I will do my best. Here goes:

Unfortunately I can’t remember where my blog life left off in order to find a starting point, so I will just summarize a lot… We both have jobs and are enjoying them relatively well – especially in regard to the great people we are working with (this I know both of us have touched on). For me the work wasn’t fully what I was hoping for, but at least the environment is good and I getting to work on a massive project with some good experience. The weather here this summer has been excruciatingly miserable, even for someone who is no stranger to seeing rain in the middle of summer. There have been no real sunny days aside from the month of April. I am beginning to think that April was summer and we moved straight into fall… When a random sunny day does occur we often try to get ourselves to the beach, but those are few and far between at this point. I have high hopes for August and September, but I won’t be holding my breath (because I would definitely die…).

I did manage to post about our trip to Brussels last May, but you can start looking forward to a few new holiday stories because we have just returned back from a ten day whirlwind road trip from Paris to Barcelona with a stop in…London (don’t ask – we’ll fill you in eventually). I say a few new stories because it will take multiple posts to get through all of the things we saw. We again had US traveling companions with us, our friends Mike and Tauna, but this time we weren’t crashing anyone’s honeymoon.

The short and dirty version: We flew into London for two nights, then on to Paris on the Chunnel for two nights, then we rented the car and drove up through Normandy stopping in Caen for a night, down past Mont St. Michal to Bordeaux for a night, then across the border into Spain for three nights on the beaches of San Sebastian, and finally down to Barcelona for two nights and our flight back to Ireland. We saw a little of a lot in a fairly short amount of time. It was a great adventure, although a bit more stress than I would normally like to take my holidays. In any case I now know for sure that I’m not really a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of guy (I knew this already, but now I have experiential proof). All in all, though, everything worked out well and it was a really great experience. No one died, either by accident or by strangulation brought on by long hours in a car together, which is always a bonus. Beyond sore and battered feet from walking, no one was injured either. I learned a lot about strategies for road trips, but that you will have to find in a later post.

So, now we are back from our jaunt through lush villages, sunny beaches, and aired deserts to…patches of sun, swallowed whole by overwhelming grayness and gouts of torrential rain…

Football Tournament

My office paid for our office to play in a charity five-a-side football competition with the €750 per team going to the Chernobyl fund. Slide tackling, mud and football tournament is a great way to start out a weekend. We got off work a little early and headed to the same field we had our Olympics at. About 30 other firms with a men and women team for each were there. Brenda, Tullia, Michelle, me, Deirbhile, Karen and Denise made up our team.

The women on my team, most had never played soccer before or had only played once or twice before. So it started out rocky, but we were doing well. I was exhausted about halfway through since I was doing every throw in, free kick and playing defense while still trying to score. I went out for the second half, and then the other team scored two points. That sent us to the losing bracket. Our men’s team was doing well and we were little cheerleaders for them. Since I am from the US, that means that I am able to be a cheerleader by default. Of course I do know one cheer and how to make letters with our body so we yelled and cheered and did our OMP letters for our blokes. Tullia is the O, Karen is the M and I am the P.

The second game started out brilliant. Michelle did a wonderful save, kicked it out to me, where it trapped it beautifully, zig zagged up the pitch, pulled all the defenders to me slowed down for the rest of the team to catch up and at the last minute I passed it to Tullia who put it into the goal! YAY we scored. And did I mention all the lads were watching us and witnessed our magic moment. That little trick I learned from my indoor team just before moving and it worked wonders! By then we were pooped and wanting to get everyone a chance to play, so Tullia and I went out. Then the unimaginable happed they scored two points back to back on us. So sad.

That left one last game and our goalie did not want to be goalie anymore so I did it. Our last game both sides were scoreless and we were off to the pub! It was the last day of a few people so there was much to celebrate; us not getting creamed, the lads being undefeated, and remembering the good times with co-workers leaving. By three I had had enough and could have curled up and gone to sleep on the bench with my other deskmate Sean. Good times had by all that night and no hangover the next day. But I was so sore after that much footballing! Next year I need to train atleast a few times before just running out onto the pitch!

NEWS FLASH!

As of today I am able to work legally in Ireland! I am an official employee of OMP! My “green” card arrived in the mail and I look forward to the next few years of working there. Here is the top floor which I will be sitting on, I am in the background in front of the rose window.

Strange Anomaly #10

There are palm trees all over Dublin. Really! I guess since it never gets really cold, and does get semi warm, they are able to survive here. Palm trees, who’d a thunk it?!

OMG it is 1980 all over again!

I know that the ‘80s are making a global comeback, but it is HUGE here. Jelly bracelets, the leggings and oversized tops, ridiculous colored eye makeup, acid washed jean skirts and pants, skinny legged jeans, and big hair. But thankfully, no big bangs….. yet. I just was glad that I have passed that fashion faux pas of my life, and do not wish to relive it again. Not only is it the young people who were born in the late 80s and therefore do not remember Madonna back in here heyday, but it is also people my age. Did you not get enough of it the first time?!

Saint Patrick: The Saint of Drunken Debauchery

Back in March, when St. Patrick’s Day actually happened (oh yes, I will catch up with past events some day – perhaps if I wait long enough they will become current events again…like fashion…), people were asking me if they actually celebrate this great day of drinking in Ireland, or if it is just a US manifestation like green beer.

As it turns out Saint Patrick is simply a patron saint of Ireland and Saint Patrick’s Day is a feast day celebration to commemorate his death. So, they do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and boy do they ever! The day has evolved into a celebration of all things Irish and, since drinking is the most Irish thing they can think of, drinking is what you do on St. Patrick’s Day. It is even a national holiday. Just think…no need to call in a sick day with a hang over because you already have an extra day off. That’s thinking ahead!

There is a big parade through Dublin for the celebration and it’s just filled with…Americans… It seems often enough the Irish take the opportunity to travel to Boston and walk in their parade, and all of the Irish Americans come over and walk in Dublin’s parade. I keep missing the parade (I’m not a big parade type of guy), so I don’t know if it’s worth seeing or not. Most locals would skip it, considering it primarily a tourist attraction. The weather is almost guaranteed to be awful (typically they say you get four seasons in one day on St. Patty’s – sun, snow, rain, hail…everything), so that’s another reason not to venture out in it.

No, most Dubliners would find a good pub to park themselves in for the majority of the day. No green beer, no green dyed rivers, and most Irish would just as soon pummel the first smart a** punk they see dancing down the street in a Leprechaun costume (this does happen…a lot). This makes Saint Patrick’s Day not all that different from any other day in Ireland. It’s still drinking, but it’s drinking for a reason, and you get the day off work, so you can get to the pub earlier. Tourists though…lots and lots of tourists…

This is not unlike how I spent my St. Patty’s: Sitting in a pub…all…day…long… As it turns out I was there for different reasons than most. There is a Rugby tournament in the spring called the “Six Nations Championship” which involves six European nations (England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales) vying for the title of six nations champion. This year there were three games playing, one after the other, on St. Patty’s, and Ireland was essentially tied for the championship with France. This made for a pretty exciting group of matches, so I met up with a few friends from work (mostly Australians and Irish this time) and we watched those matches…all day long…

In order to win this tournament, it’s not just based on your record. In fact, the teams’ records are actually a secondary qualifier. What really matters is each team’s point total for the season (actually the total number of points that each team exceeds it’s opponents score by). These would be the last three matches of the season, so this was effectively the championship, though Ireland and France weren’t actually playing each other and at the end of the day, the team with the highest point total would be crowned champion.

To make a long story short, Ireland played in the first game and just crushed their opponent, beating them by a ridiculous margin of points. It was thought that this would too great a margin for France to overcome…but it wasn’t. France played the second match and scored enough points (crushing their opponent as fantastically as Ireland had done previously) to put them just two points ahead of Ireland to win the championship. You could have cut the suspense with a knife. Very exciting stuff, but ultimately the ending was a let down. The third game was between Scotland and England, so everyone was rooting for Scotland to defeat the English, which they did, but it wasn’t enough to lift everyone’s spirits after that slim defeat to France.

To finish off the night, the World Cup Cricket match between Ireland and Pakistan was on (the one that the Pakistani coach died after). The Ireland cricket team is very new, this only being their second year in international play (or something like that), but they actually had a shot to beat Pakistan, which was one of the best teams in the world. As we watched, one of my Ausie work mates explained the game to me (Australia is big into Cricket) and after an hour or so of watching I came to the conclusion that Cricket tops out Baseball for most boring sport ever… There is more scoring in Cricket, but the games are similar, and Cricket lasts ALL DAY LONG…and those are the short matches…

This would probably not be considered a typical Saint Patrick’s day because of all the sport. Last year when we were over we were out with a different group and hit up a few different pubs before heading off to a dance club. Almost everyone got completely locked (drunk out of there minds), and Mariah and I turned in early at 4am. This would probably be more typical for an Irish St. Patty’s celebration…but then again, people do this every weekend here.

In conclusion, the Irish definitely celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s definitely more exciting for the tourists than it is for the Irish. It’s kind of like a bachelor’s party (stag party here): It’s not really for the groom; it’s for everyone else.

Strange Anomaly #9

The bums do not smell and take pretty good care of themselves. The bums are very nice, bless you and are not meth scary, they really are not scary at all. Missing teeth, had to much to drink, and have some strange lesions on their body, but all in all, sound folk. That in itself should be the anomaly, but what I want to comment on is every time I see someone asking for money, the people walking down the street are very nice to them. They chat them up and even share their Fanta with them. Then, they take it back from the homeless person and they keep on drinking it. I am all for sharing, but that is a little out there for me. Well, plus I don’t like to share my Fanta!

Weekend in London

For my office’s 15th Anniversary, they flew all of us over to London for night. We stayed in Soho in the heart of the posh district of London. We had enough time on Saturday to catch a nap to sleep off Friday’s hangover and do a bit of shopping before dinner. They paid for all 83 of us to stay in a 5-star hotel, have a fantastic meal, and an open bar until midnight. The speeches were kept to a minimum, and the drinking to the maximum. Tullia, my little Italian friend, just loves taking photos, and somehow she ends up in a lot of them like the one of her, Karen and I.

My team sort of sticks together so of course we all ate together, laughed together and moved on to the dance club together. Sean is always taking the piss out of me at work, and Ruth, Tullia and Edell are on my team as well. When we headed out for the night we got lucky that the club was only a few streets over. Since there is nothing quite like walking on cobblestones in 6” spike heals, but I looked fabulous. We dance and partied the night away, but by 3am I was partied out and help escort a coworker back to the hotel. The club closed at 4 and everyone came back to party in the lobby until 6 with the red wine still flowing. I am glad that I stayed clear of that, since I wanted to be functional on Sunday. England goes smoke free July 1st and I am really looking forward to that. I have been spoiled in Irish pubs with the no smoking ban. I felt like I smoke 2 packs myself the next day.

Sunday morning after a huge breakfast, Claire, Catherine, Karen and I headed out into the tourist world. Catherine knew London very well, so we just followed her, I love having a built-in tour guide. We had enough time to do one thing, so we headed towards Buckingham Palace and St James Gardens. Now that is a palace! Lizzy was not out to wave at us though. It was about 80 degrees out, no clouds, slight breeze. There were no guards with the fuzzy hats since it was so hot out, which made me sad since I wanted to see them. We could start to feel our sunburns kick in, so we grabbed a cab and headed back to the hotel to get back on the bus, to head to the airport. All in all, it was a great little weekend getaway, great chance to get to know my coworkers and see a bit of England. I left wanting to see more, I cannot wait to go back in a month!