The morning after the day before...

Yesterday I used the power of positive thinking and wore a skirt and a t-shirt to work. I have learned a couple of valuable lessons though so I did wear my runners/takkies for the walking part of my trip -Dublin streets and slip slops are not a good combination...and of course I packed an umbrella AND took my rain coat. I considered driving but I love the walk, the exercise is great and Dublin traffic is an absolute nightmare especially when the weather is bad, lots of people who would normally walk take their cars!
Of course because I was so prepared for the rain hardly a drop fell from the sky which made walking all the more pleasant.
The shop was very busy which I really enjoy and I spent a lot of time stocking shelves and helping customers, so busy I forgot to do my countdown...oops! 4 DAYS TO GO
... and my power of positive thinking DID work because it did not rain and it was a warm day!!!

Rose was having her work farewell at 51 in Baggott Street and she had invited a few of her non-work friends so Carla and I went to help celebrate new beginnings with her. After a visit to Eddie Rocketts (never thought I would actually end up there after midnight!!) we all caught a cab home and I was sensibly in bed by about 2...I think! Malcolm came crawling in from a farewell that someone had at his work a little after 3...and he has to play cricket today, should be FUN...for now we let him rest!!!

Caught in the rain...

I worked today, I only work once a week at the moment, long story but basically one of the other girls was desperate for more hours as she needs extra money and seems as I am off to Holland and France AND the kids are on holiday I figured she could have my shifts. I worked 10 -14 today and then could not leave...the rain had me trapped. I ended up spending an extra happy hour with Debbi waiting for the rain to stop. It didn't. It slowed down to a drizzle and I decided that at least I would not be soaked through and spent the next 10 minutes making my way to the luas trying to avoid getting rain in my eyes!
I should have just caught the bus as it drops me off at the top of my road but opted for the luas which meant a 15 minute walk through rain yet again. I guess after a year in Dublin I should always carry around an umbrella or a rain coat. Oh well.

Streets of mauve

Tonight after a very wet hockey match I drove home on streets slick with rain, reflecting the most beautiful colours from the sky, the air looked pink, the streets were mauve and the sky was awash with oranges, pinks and purples. The clouds had a golden lining and the sun was making one final defiant attempt to make its presence known after a very soggy day. I was absolutely soaking wet after playing for over an hour in rain, so much rain that I had a little river running down my nose and I have never been happier! My friend also told me to keep 07 August next year free, yep it looks like the date has been set...07-08-09...pretty darn cool, my very first Irish wedding!!!
Oh yes...and as I was walking out of Trinity with Jess at 18h00, we bumped into a friend of mine Kelly, my my but Dublin is a small place!
I was in the shower tonight trying to think how to describe how happy I am...the best I came up with is that I almost feel like I am going to burst out of my own skin kinda happy...I know it sounds bizarre...
Oh...and I even scored a goal ;)

Where did you blog from?

It is raining, a lot! Of course as I left the house this morning I paused at the door wondering whether to grab my rain jacket and decided not to bother. Bad decision. I am also wearing flip flops, worse decision. I had to walk Jess to Trinity College today at noon, (about 10 minute walk) it rained the whole way, a fine rain so I did not get too wet, a few odd looks...crazy lady with no umbrella/rain jacket...but hey!
It rained the whole way back to work too...so by the time I got back my cardigan was rather damp, and me with a cough I cannot get rid of...oops.
At 15h00 I had to walk BACK to Trinity, fill in some questionnaires and such. This time I got an umbrella from work but because the streets were so wet my feet kept slipping out of my shoes, I was shuffling along using my toes to keep my shoes on, now I think I need to disinfect my feet! It will have to wait though as I am still sitting at Trinity, on one of their computers (all my questions were computer based and as Jess is still busy they said I could go onto the internet..he he) yep blogging from Trinity - pretty cool hey!!! Who would ever have thought....

Summer Fun

Well the weekend would be over...but tomorrow is a bank holiday. Yay!!! The weather has been absolutely fantastic, sadly the girls and I worked our tails off yesterday, IN A CELLAR!!! We were unloading the container for the shop and were up and down stairs with all manner of goodies. I did not even get a sniff of the Temple bar market as I was at work by 08h15. Today Kirstin emotionally blackmailed us to go to the beach, she did not really have to do that as I was all geared up to enjoy the gift of ANOTHER good day. She started making picnic sandwiches AND came prancing downstairs in her swimming costume (togs here) and singing about the summer sun....fair play to her I guess as we certainly ended up at the beach! We all applied sunscreen liberally and I put on my new polka dot (yes really!!!) bikini with my sarong and off we went.
We got to Brittas and the wind was HOWLING which makes the beach a very unpleasant place. Luckily there are a lot of dunes so we found a marvelous spot sheltered from the wind with a fab view of the parking lot....very sad but oh so very true...in our defense there was nothing else we could do, unless breaking our youngest child's heart counts...we could have got back in the car and gone home!!!
I decided to work on my tan and promptly fell asleep in the sun, not much else to do what with the other options of counting cars or people traipsing to and from the beach...
All I can say is that the sun in Ireland is....small fry, after 2 hours of rotating and snoozing I cannot even see a tan line...ask anyone from the Southern Hemisphere what that time worshipping the yellow ball in the sky would do and it will definitely involve colour, depending on the factor of the sunscreen applied. Lobster red anyone?
We also managed to bump into friends while there, Tracy and her family had stopped off for a swim and sat and chatted a while, made us feel very local...

Hamburgers fit for a....family

The weather is fantastic - stunning, unbelievably sunny and blue so we just HAVE to have a hamburger bbq this evening before I go out. I made these about a month ago, had a little sulk when Malcolm was not really inspired to do the fire, in fairness to him when my lip hit the kitchen floor he did say he WOULD if I REALLY wanted him to, but if you know me it was too late by then, damage had been done...
ANYHOOOO... I grilled the hamburgers, they were delicious but just not the same.... *sigh*
Now the weather is marvelous and I am making them again and M already knows that when he gets home he has to light a fire - clear up any misconceptions early on in the day, and things are grand. Now as Jess, the hamburger QUEEN proclaimed my burgers to be the best in Dublin....and I was running against Real gourmet AND Joburger here, I decided to share my
recipe...


500g lean ground beef
1 slice bread crumbed
1 egg beaten
Milk to make a nice sauce (yuk) about 80ml I GUESS
1 - 2 cloves crushed/grated garlic - depends on taste (leave out if you do not like garlic - NO WAY!!!)
a good size handful of basil chopped finely
1 small onion finely chopped.
75 ml freshly grated Parmagiano (spelling...)

Mix the mince with the garlic,basil, onion and parmesan.
Beat the egg, and mix in the bread crumbs and milk and allow to soak.
Add to the rest of the ingredients, shape into patties and allow to rest for at least an hour, well maybe not quite an hour..Feel free to correct me anyone out there...
BBQ over hot coals basting with equal quantities of butter and tomato sauce/ketchup mixed together if you are so inclined..You should be because it makes it even better!!!
For an extra special treat CAREFULLY toast the buns on the bbq before serving...YUM.

* This makes 4 decent patties - nobody will be able to fit in seconds...if they can they are just being greedy...

The beginning of a smashing weekend...

Fabulous. The weather, the company, the surprise, the weekend all of it. Fabulous. Friday started out a bit miserable but by dinner time we knew we had to braai so I ran out to get meat at Supervalu. Ooh, ooh, ooh... when we got out of the shop there were 3 Garda cars and people milling about, sadly we had missed all the action while merrily shopping. The next day we heard that there had been a fight between 2 gangs in the car park! Not sure if that is the real story, will find out from our neighbors once they get the scoop!!!
So....the braai was great, Malcolm did an awesome job and we ate chicken kebabs, ribs AND steak, blew the budget but a BRAAI with GOOD weather people!!!! Have to grab oppurtunities like that whenever we can! Saturday the forecaster had promised rain, intermittent showers, so the chance of good spells (He he listen to the weather girl in me) and we had another awesome day, it started out looking rather threatening but by the time I got in my car and drove to Naas it was gorgeous! Naas, what can I say about Naas? What a pretty little town!!!! I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately I did not get to explore, I was fixing a WHOOPS I made at work and had business to attend to!!! Divine intervention is what it was. I ended up sitting around the kitchen table at L and G's for at least an hour and a half having the most excellent chat. We all decided that a dinner or a braai is definitely on the cards, all because I forgot to send off a delivery on a specific date!!! When I got home the kids had vacuumed, dusted AND mopped the entire downstairs AND had gone off to the little local hardware store and bought me little pots of mini pansies for outside the front door!!!! Not only that, Jessica had also made us a full on breakfast that morning, what on earth did the kids want? Nothing, absolutely nothing - I am one lucky parent, Malcolm is the other one! There is so much more news, but if I give it to you all in one go it will be too much reading so ........ LATER dudes!!!

Walking on sunshine

Life is just so bloody marvelous at the moment. On Friday night I went to my dreaded hockey tournament, had an absolute ball (tee hee) and scored my very first goal, then I went on to assist in another one so I was on top of my meatballs! After the game Meriel and I drove around looking for an in service A.T.M which just added to the fun of the evening in some bizarre sort of way, and then we had drinks and dinner at the hockey club with all the other teams.
On Tuesday we woke to the sun streaming through all the windows and a beautiful day. I decided to get out there and make hay so I called a friend, Kelly and we went down to Avoca in Wicklow for lunch and wondered around the nursery. I then picked Kirstin up at school, hunted Tracy down in the car park and we all set off with the kids to Airfield Farm. We were scraping all our cents together to pay the admission for the kids and then scraped some more to have a coffee at the restaurant. It was an awesome afternoon, we sat outside in the sun and I actually....wait for it....got too hot!!! In true Dublin fashion though my jersey/jumper came in handy about an hour later when the sun finally disappeared behind the clouds.
To top it all off I have actually managed to stick to my healthy eating plan for about 54 hours and the temptations that I have faced....the food at Avoca is begging to be eaten and then I was faced with it a second time at Airfield, which was worse because we even managed to scrape together money for scones for the kids and I had to butter and jam them.....and they looked sooo very good. Of course it fuelled my resolve and I am hoping to get through all the temptations at work today too. Ooohhh oohhhh ooohhh I also did some running yesterday morning, now that is one for the history books!!!!!
This morning I woke to magnificent weather again, and I had to walk through the cobbled streets of Dublin with my sunglasses on! Bliss I tell you, pure bliss.

Best laid plans...

Okay, so the weather is L - O - U - S - Y and I mean lousy. The wind is whipping my hair all over the place, at one point it actually felt rather dramatic, I swear I could just about here lights, camera action, unfortunately I could not be 100% sure because of the howling wind at my ears.
Perfect weather for a cozy evening by the fire, a great book, hot chocolate, all manner of things bad for you and smiling to yourself as you here the wind rip through the top of the chimney. Bliss, but alas not for me. That's right folks I will be enjoying that icy whippy wind tugging at my shirt, getting up my nose, teasing up my skirt and freezing off my ears while I run around with a stick chasing a ball, yep 7 a side hockey tournament tonight. I happily signed up, Spring was in the air, the sun is with us for so much longer, or at least the LIGHT and I was in great anticipation for our little run around this evening. Now it does not look nearly as appealing so I have eaten some ginger biscuits, consumed some pasta and masticated on a chocolate I found lurking in my bag from my last visit to Butler's. Now I have a bloody good reason to go out in this crappy weather, a couple of hundred calories are waiting to be annihilated before they turn into lovely layers of marbling on my thighs.

How could I have forgotten?

I had such excitement on Thursday night, I can't believe I forgot to blog about it! I skipped to Weight Watchers, had a brilliant week, stuck to my points faithfully, drank my water, walked every day and....................lost four pounds!!!! Walking on air, it was so much easier with those banished pounds! Of course the weekend was horrific, Malcolm's birthday, Mother's Day and "Houston we have a problem" (No lift off anymore...). So today I made what Weight Watchers refer to as 'free' soup. Leeks, celery, carrots, courgettes, cabbage and chicken stock. I will be enjoying it for lunch for the rest of the week to pay for my weekend sins!
I also had an interview with a recruitment agency, they were very positive, of course this was before the actual testing of my proficiency levels on word and excel, but I did warn them. It also happened to be one of THE crappiest days in Dublin, rain and gale force wind literally shoved me all the way to the luas, so I hope it was worth all the effort, I felt like a real idiot in a SKIRT but it was the smartest thing I could pull out of my very casual cupboard.

Mackintosh's and galoshes

Ha, woke up to rain this morning, watching it patter down onto the skylight as I type. I cannot tell you when last we woke up to this weather, we have had rain but it has not greeted us first thing in a while, I cannot even remember when....now where is my book......for now I still love this weather

Favourite topics

In Ireland everyone talks about....the weather! Irish people often tell us we are mad to have moved here from sunny S.A. It is difficult for them to comprehend our decision to move here. I was on Wikepedia ( a mom's best friend, along with google) and I found a couple of interesting bits of information that may help some of you out there understand our decison to choose Dublin...hope I am allowed to add this stuff to my blog, the articles on crime and weather are excerpts from Wikepedia:
Crime

Official statistics from An Garda Síochána for 2001-2005[25] show that the overall headline crime rate for the metropolitan area per 1,000 of population is the highest in the country. During the 1980s and 1990s, a heroin epidemic swept through working class areas of the inner city and outlying suburbs. Dublin had 80 homicides from 2004 to the end of 2006. 32 were gang-related. In 2007, as of mid July, there have been 15 homicides, in which 4 were gangland shootings. Homicides in Dublin from 1/1/04 to 20/6/07 took place in many crime hotspots.

Climate

Dublin enjoys a maritime temperate climate characterised by mild winters, cool summers, and a lack of temperature extremes. Contrary to popular belief, Dublin does not experience as high rainfall as the West of Ireland, which receives twice that of the capital city. Dublin has fewer rainy days, on average, than London. The average maximum January temperature is 8 °C, the average maximum July temperature is 20 °C. The sunniest months, on average, are May and June, with six hours of sunshine daily (though daylight in these months is a lot more). The wettest months, on average, are December and August, with 74 mm of rain. The driest month is April, with 45 mm. The total average annual rainfall (and other forms of precipitation) is 762 mm, lower than Sydney, New York City and even Dallas. Due to Dublin's high latitude, it experiences long summer days (around 19 hours of daylight) and short winter days (as short as nine hours). Like the rest of Ireland it is relatively safe from common natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
Strong winds from Atlantic storm systems can affect Dublin, though usually less severe than other parts of Ireland. Severe winds are most likely during mid-winter, but can occur anytime, especially between October and February. During one of the stormiest periods of recent times, a gust of 151 km/h was recorded at Casement Aerodrome on 24 December 1997.
An urban heat island effect means Dublin is a few degrees warmer than surrounding areas. There is also a slight temperature difference between the city centre and the city's suburbs, with the city centre slightly warmer, as it is more built up. There are slight differences between the city centre[22] and the Airport,[23] just 12 km north.
The city is not noted for its temperature extremes due to its mild climate. Typically, the coldest months are December, January and February. Temperatures in summer in recent years have been rising to substantially above average figures, e.g. 31 °C in July 2006, over 11 °C higher than the average maximum. Recent heat waves include the European heat wave of 2003 and European heat wave of 2006.
The main precipitation in winter is rain. The city can experience some snow showers during the months from November to April, but lying snow is rare (on average, only 4/5 days). Hail occurs more often than snow, and is most likely during the winter and spring months. Another rare type of weather is thunder and lightning, most common in summer.

AND
from: www.breakingnews.ie/ireland

A new survey by worldwide travellers has voted Dublin as having the most friendly and helpful locals in Europe. The poll, carried out by the TripAdvisor company, was based on the responses of 2,100 travellers.London came out on top for nightlife, shopping and being family-friendly, while Paris was voted best for romance, art and culture.The French capital was also found to have the most unfriendly locals, however.Edinburgh tied with Prague for the title of the most "underrated" European city.

Dublin Zoo

A new record for the Rules in Ireland, out of the house at 08h00 on a Sunday morning! Roelie had invited us to join him and his family in Tullamore. There was an agricultural fair taking place there and we decided that it sounded like a fun day out and the kids could see a bit of the country. Unfortunately Catherine (Roelie's wife) had a bad night, newborn baby, been there done that(!) so she stayed home. We were merrily following Roelie on the highway, the sun was shining and the day was full of promise, when he pulled over near an exit and we saw him chatting on his mobile... turns out he was listening to the news and heard that the Tullamore Fair had been cancelled.....because of flooding OOPS!!!
Aimee had been so looking forward to seeing all the animals that Roelie decided that a visit to the Dublin zoo at Phoenix Park would be a good alternative. We had been planning to take the kids there at some stage, no time like the present... so we all turned around and went to Phoenix Park. Of course it was still early, 09h30 and the zoo only opened at 10h30 so we went for a little walk to see the Obelisk (pictured above) and then had a quick cappuccino at a little tea room outside the zoo. Aimee thought we were leaving when we left the tea room to go, it was so cute, she said "But Daddy we have not seen any animals yet."

Now the list of animals is long....we saw LOTS, including some idiot sneaking bread to the penguins while his children looked on which was really irritating as there are signs asking people not to feed the animals and as Jessica and Kirstin loudly proclaimed, "Penguins eat FISH".

On your left is the new look reindeer according to a woman standing outside the BONGO enclosure, she was very keen to impart her extensive knowledge to the little sponge brains around her. The fact the the animal happened to be in the African Plains section of the Dublin zoo seemed to escape her. Now to be honest I would not have known that the animal was a Bongo, and on the endangered list, but I did know that it was NOT a reindeer and I have learnt that if you do not know....say nothing!!!!

We were lucky enough to see some baby animals which was really cool, especially because there was a baby long neck! The baby gorilla scored top marks for cuteness and the baby Asian elephant was very shy and stayed half hidden behind his mother! The website for the Dublin zoo is http://www.dublinzoo.ie/ and it is pretty cool, so instead of waffling on about the animals anyone interested can have a look there!

We also experienced a typical Dublin day with regard to the weather, we got caught in 2 showers and took cover twice! The second was fairly amusing as we were in the farmyard section which has a whole lot of little "houses" and I was with the dogs, the kids were with the rabbits and the guys were with the guinea pigs! Luckily both showers were fairly quick affairs and within minutes everyone was walking around like nothing had happened! we all decided that after the second shower it was probably best to call it a day before the heavens really opened. When we got home the sun came out and the clouds rolled away and isn't that just typical! And your lesson for today.....when it looks like it is about to pour in Ireland.... "It is going to lash".

Ignorance is.....NOT bliss

We have seen the sun every day! Not all day but I am happy to report that it does exist in Dublin! Of course this is interspersed with clouds and the occasional (poetic licence) downpour. On Tuesday (17 July) we went to Tescos to get a few things and when we came out it was drizzling. My umbrella was still in my luggage and we had no raincoats, but being the tough South Africans we are, decided that as the drizzle was light we would make a run for the car. About half way there we learnt what under-estimating your opponent can do and the heavens opened and we got SOAKED. To make matters worse Malcolm got a blood nose...wearing a white shirt, so we had to go home again to change into dry blood free clothes! At 14h00 we went to look at our first rental, it was a 3 bedroom in a lovely little suburb but it backed onto a horrible open piece of land with a few rusting containers, so we decided to give it a miss.
Wednesday dawned bright and sunny AGAIN.....but not for long! Kirstin woke up with a temperature and aches, we had brought no remedies from home, so a trip to the pharmacy was required. Luckily it is a short walk, so I made the journey on my own and felt like an idiot asking the pharmacist what I could give my 11 year old for aches and fever! So, anyone who is planning to do what we are doing.......pack a little medical kit, especially if you have kids! The kicker? They suggested Calpol, ha ha ha globalisation!!!! We are certainly learning fast and having a lot of fun doing it.