Holiday, Celebrate!

We have booked a holiday for the summer. It is very exciting as this will be our first foreign holiday in 4 years :-)

We are not counting trips from england to Ireland as foreign, or holidays; since it's not that far and we were coming home to see family, friends and organise a wedding. This is a proper holiday - you know, a getting-away-from-it-all type holiday.

We're heading to Tobago in September. Don't ask me how we chose Tobago out of all the places in the Caribbean; I leave these things to Jamie as there's usually more he wants to get out of a trip than me. It would be unfair to say he's picky, but all I'm looking for a is a beach for swimming and sitting on while reading, which is convienently located for the bar. Jamie, on the other hand, likes activities. We will be snorkelling, maybe a sailing trip or two and getting photos of all the tropical birds on the Island - and apparently it is quite unspoilt.

We booked it through these guys, as they are apparently the experts on the caribbean in Ireland. What a cushty job that is. The on-hold recording tells you that all of their advisors have personally inspected all of the destinations and accomodations they offer. By the time I got through I wanted to apply for a job, not boko a holiday.

No doubt there will be blog posts and phtotos on our return. Wahoo!

Related articles

When writing a blog post I often find myself searching for related articles, you know, things that might help the understanding of the story or add credence to something a little strange.

While writing one post earlier today, unbelievable as this may sound, I searched for related articles and I came across this forum.

AppleInsider is apparently a forum area for MAC users. So here's a bunch of (I gathered from references) male MAC users talking about poo! Regularity, consistency, timing, you name it!! I do have to admit that there were parts I was reading and I was just crying with laughter but almost the funniest thing is that these grown men continually referred to it as poo and at one stage some guy called it #2's.

Does this make me a hypocrite now? Aren't girls supposed to use the politer terms for these things, but men are rough, hardy souls whose terminology is also on the rougher/cruder side?

I'm not going to worry about it, I'm going back to my sofa.

House & Garden - Update

I feel like a BBC 2 programme with these sorts of posts, which is not a good thing for a woman of my young years. But I am very excited about our new house (and the garden).

We've rented in apartment-land for so long that it's great to have the extra space and comfort of a whole house. We've also rented the new place unfurnished so we now own some nice bits of furniture, and will continue to add to our collection over time. Despite the fact that there are only two of us in a three-bedroom house, we've managed to fill up all the spaces - mainly with junk and boxes we are too lazy to unpack. Most of those unpacked boxes are filled with books and we have no bookcases. Although, I imagine to store our collection we would require a room of wall-to-wall book cases (MGB knows where I'm coming from). To date we have bought a bed from Swan Beds, a kitchen table and chairs from Whites on North Main Street and 2 sofas from Caseys on Oliver Plunkett Street. I'm hoping that this shameless plugging of local businesses will earn me a discount the next time I go in (note for locals and Limerick people: Caseys are beginning their Summer Sales this Thursday, June 14th).
A thumbnail of one of our sofas is to the left, more photos of the interior of the house can be found here.

The other joy about our new abode is the garden! Especially on sunny days when you have a private space to sit and enjoy the sunsine, with a glass of wine and some BBQ! As an update to a previous post about gardening I have some pictures of the plants I've been killinggrowing.

This (left) is my 'Money' plant (known as Jade plant. I get pretty impatient about these things and in the last 7 days have not witness nay progress so believe that the thing is dying. Although there are no obvious signs of death on this plant, so I'm trying to be positive.
These (right) are my Giant Sunflowers. They have reacted very well to the rain the last few days, so I must now be the only person in Ireland who is happy that it's forecasted to rain for the rest of the week. The rain is doing good for my plants, it takes the pressure off me when I can blame external forces for any potential failures here. I also have some Evening Sun sunflowers, Teddy Bear sunflowers and some kind of dwarf sunflower. At this stage they all look the same except, as might be expected, the Giant sunflowers are somewhat taller and bigger.


I have been informed that the large bush in this pot is an 'ornamental' redcurrent plant. The most disappointing thing about this piece of news is that I am not going to get nice red berries which will make the plant look even prettier. It may not be clear in the photo but the leaves at the top have a nice redish tinge to them. And here is a close-up of the pretty mini trailing petunias that I bought in B&Q.
There are also some herbs but I'm fairly certain that the chives are going to die soon (they and the parsley got severly water-logged before I managed to get them repotted) and only 2 small bits of parsely have survived so far, so I'm not holding out great hope for them. It's kind of embarrassing since chives and parsley are some of the easiest herbs to grow and herbs are some of the easiest plants to grow.

Discoloured P**

This is one of those things that Jamie won't allow me to tell him so, inappropriate and all as it may be, I am putting it here. I'm sure others have had similar experiences and may want to share; this could even turn ito a little online support group!

For those of you with a sensitive disposition, I am giving you fair warning, turn away now!

About a week or so ago I threw together this little salad. It was one of those really hot days and it was a nice, light meal for the evening; something just a little different. Anyway about two days later during my regular morning visit to the toilet (my father refers to this room as 'The House of Horrors'; that has always amused me), something was amiss. I was startled to find a purple colour staining in the loo!!! I know, this is shocking - there wasn't that much beetroot in the salad. Ok, I did have beetroot in my sandwich for lunch the next day but I thought it took copious quantities for it to change the colour of your p**. And anyway, doesn't it change the colour of your #1's not your #2's?

I have looked this up - there are no definitive articles by healthcare professionals but it is widely known that beetroot can effect either #1's or #2's!

Jamie finds it distrubing that I noticed this at all, because he can't understand why I would look into the loo after doing anything. I have explained to him that it's a basic healthcheck thing. Apparently, he never does this; I find this worrying!

Kiss me quick

I am not sure if this is sweet and romantic on a very laarge scale or just plain weird....?

Discoloured fingers

Our new house has a small lawn out front and small garden at the back. This has encouraged us to try some gardening. First steps in this direction were for me to plant some sunflowers and some herbs in seed trays and see what happened.

J's mum helped with repotting them last week. I didn't realise they would need repotting so soon and didn't have pots and generally wasn't prepared. The next step will be to plant them in the garden, so J mowed the lawn the other night (very domesticated isn't he :-) and next we will have to find the perfect spot in the garden for the sunflowers. For now I think I will keep the herbs in a pot so I can move them indoors in the winter; so I will need a bigger pot.

I also have a large flower pot on our front porch - a present for my last birthday. It came with a red currant plant in it, which is growing quite fast (I'm proud of this fact). So in a few weeks it will be too big for the pot, and I will need to find a spot for it in the garden!

In the meantime though I have added some mini trailing petunias to the pot to give it some nice colour (bedding plants rock, you just plant them, and you have instant flowers, all the hard bit is done).

My brothers girlfriend gave me a cutting from a money plant - I've always loved these. I have put it in a nice pot (thanks to J's mum, again). So we are working on developing green fingers, although I am sure I will have to tell you of all the disasters that will be fall us (andmore importantly our plants) soon.

Working from new home

We moved house about 4 weeks ago; we are now renting a lovely 3-bed in Riverstick, Co. Cork. We do like our new house, but more on that later.
For various reasons (getting eircom to connect broadband, travelling) today is my first day working from our new home, in the little dedicated office in the box room. It's quiet here and I've been settling in and getting on with work. I've just discovered, though, that this is the time of the day our next door neighbour likes to start up her sewing machine. It sounds like she might come through the wall. I'll let you know!