Another Reason To Miss Target

I'm attending a potluck meet up of Americans tomorrow with the theme of Mexican food.  We're all so excited because, Mexican food here?  Not good. 

While shopping for ingredients to the cucumber salad and the avocado and goat cheese dip I'm making, I had a brainstorm... margaritas!  Woohoo!!  What would make Mexican food even better?  Tequilaaaah. 

Unfortunately, I quickly came up on another roadblock placed by Rip-Off Ireland.  One pint-sized bottle of tequila = 35 euro!  What??? 

I soooo miss the Margarita Bucket mix from Tar-gay!  Add a bottle, freeze to slushiness in the (full-sized) freezer, and voila!  Good times.

Party Diversity... Irish Style

Four French, two Polish, one Russian and a Jamaican-American go into a bar... Ok, it was an apartment, but it still sounds like a great beginning to a joke. And, happily, there was lots of laughter.

An evening out at a friend's place in Cork is definitely more international than ones I would be used to. And not just the guests, the menu too! Lots and lots of crepes, handmade by the authentic French husband of my Polish friend. Washed down with wine, juice and, most intriguingly, a lychee liqueur that I have just got to try again! Not often though - 21% alcohol. Eeek!

The entertainment was just as new to me (though probably not to anyone else on the planet). Besides the fantastic accents and lots of French flowing in the background; we ended up playing Rock Band on the XBox. As a XBox virgin, let's just say 62% to 77% in 3 songs ain't too bad!

Celebration

Image by Camera Slayer via Flickr

Happy, Happy Fourth of July everyone! 

Here's to kicking some British butt and defeating the invading aliens at the very last minute.  Oh... wait, that last part was fictional, wasn't it?  Oh well, I say anything that involves Will Smith deserves celebrating.

Enjoy your grilled burgers (well done with cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles and ketchup), bucket of beer, and lazing around in the sun.  Now, if only I had some sparklers!

Home Again

I don't think I told you (my lack of Internet is still getting in the way of anything but the most basic blogging - this update is via iPhone), but I just arrived home to the Triangle (NC) for a friend's wedding and general having of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing loads of friends (I've had to resort to writing out my schedule 'cause it's packed full!), a quick jaunt to Miami to see family, and taking care of a few errands.

I got here Friday afternoon and the wedding was yesterday at Fearrington House in Chapel Hill. It was beautiful, but relaxed and fun. A total success! Weeell, except for the grooms's aunt tripping and dislocating her shoulder, but aside from that....!

Today I get to see my church family at CHBC and lounge around at Weaver Street in Carrboro, before meeting up with my cousin and her daughter later this evening.

I LOVE vacation! :-)

I've been busy

Yes daddy, I know. I've been bad. No posts for a month! Mea culpa.

It's shocking to me that I've now been here in Ireland three (3) months already! But, I also have to admit that I've started to feel very comfortable here. So much so that I'm having to remind myself that "yes, you are living in a foreign country and those are accents you hear around you!" I'm at a relatively calm stage, in between the initial excitement and relief of finally getting here, and the impending rush of homesickness I can sense somewhere on the horizon. I'm assuming it's going to hit me hard sometime soon. But, what if it doesn't? What would that say about me?

So, how have I been spending my time in the past month? Went dancing in Cork for the first time. Loads of fun and much different from the U.S. The guys here actually join in, even dancing with their other guy friends, instead of sticking to the sidelines searching for the perfect girl to approach. Have flown to London twice, once for fun (lots of sightseeing and also great dancing) and once to attend a memorial service for a family member. That's 2 relatives who've died in London since I've been here! What are the odds?

Managed to lose my favorite bracelet on the hour and a half bus trip through London to the memorial service. I am NOT happy! So far in my trek abroad, I've managed to lose my digital camera, and now my marcasite bracelet I got for a bargain while visiting Heather in San Fran. What's next?!

Attended a friend's son's birthday party - handmade pizza, face painting, and Jack Black! :-) Went to my first grown up party - almost as fun as the 4 year old's. Finally got myself settled in my new office - as of a week ago Friday, I finally have my own office and my own desk! Whoopee!

Went on a date!

Not bad for just one month's time :-)

Saga of the Monkey Cat and other updates

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update. Sorry folks, I've just been busy, busy, busy!

OK, so as of our last installment, I was happily anticipating the end of work at the Job From Hell (JFH) and of starting to get packed up to make my move. Thankfully, the end of work came quickly enough for there to be no dead bodies, though it has been pretty surreal being unemployed. It's only been 3 weeks, but I've never been out of work for so long before! It's been a real battle to not wallow in self-imposed guilt for not packing fast enough and for "wasting time". In my own defense though, it's pretty hard to push myself to pack consistently when I haven't known exactly when my leave date is. This also makes it hard to deal with people's excited but frustrating (because I just don't know!) and inevitable question - "So, when are you leaving?"

My understanding of the time frame had been that I would be getting my Irish work permit just about.... oh, like NOW! And, had been expecting to buy a ticket to fly out at the end of June. However, I've fallen afoul of the bureaucracy gods, and I can't even blame the government this time! I got a call from the recruiter yesterday letting me know that the Work Permit Authority didn't receive the application till June 7th and so anticipate that it will be another month!! That is so not what I was expecting to hear. What this tells me is that my new agency's HR department sat on it for almost 4 weeks (!) between when they got it from the recruiter with all of my information, accompanying documents, and Fedexed signature and when they deigned to submit it. What the heck were they doing with it all that time?

So, I'm probably not going to get the work permit for another 4 weeks!! What do I do with myself that long? I certainly didn't plan for this long of a "vacation" and, if I'd known they were going to sit around scratching their ***, I would have stuck around at the JFH for another 2 or 3 weeks and made some much needed money! That's the other big problem, I thought I was being cautious in my estimates, but did not budget for this kind of delay.

So, long story short, yesterday was a bad day. Today is better - I vented to my sister and cousin, and did a not so quick and quite intense supplication to the man upstairs for some major guidance (and maybe a nice lottery windfall). No windfall yet, but I have decided on a couple of things. I'm going to take some friends up on their invitation to their beach house for a couple of days next week, will now be packing like a madwoman to completely clear out my house by the end of next week and leave it available for new tenants starting July 1st (I'm already selling off some stuff through Craigslist - the dining room table goes tonight), and plan to trek down to Miami for the week of July 4th (Independence Day) to hang out with family and friends and eat cheap :-) In the meantime, there's still a million and one things to do. I think I'll be taking up my friends on the offers of packing help in the next several days and making a few trips to the storage place.

Thankfully, my sweetie, the above referenced Monkey Cat (as a kitten, she looked just like a lemur), does have a place to stay for the 6 months before I can bring her over to Ireland. It's not free (my cousin's daughter "decided" to get asthma, so no free family visitation for the MC), but is still cheaper by far and a whole lot more humane than the worst case scenario, which would have been placing her in a kennel. Small wire cages and once a day free time, what a nightmare that would have been for her! In the meantime, I've gotten the initial microchipping and extra rabies booster done (more money draining from the overloaded wallet) and we're now waiting a couple more weeks before I have to take her back to the vet to get the blood sample, which I have to pay to be sent to a special Kansas (?!) lab to verify that her blood levels are optimal. After that, nothing to do but wait out the 6 month holding time before I can finish up the paperwork to bring her over.

Here's a picture of my baby. It's a little blurred, so it doesn't really do her total and complete cuteness justice!



Pretty much the last thing that's still hanging in the air for me is my car. Still no takers for assuming my lease, so I went ahead and listed it for sale yesterday. I would probably make enough to cover VW's payoff amount. Even if not, the remaining amount shouldn't be higher than it would be for me to continue to pay for the lease for several more months. We'll see.

Thankfully, not everything has been stressful. I have had a couple of extremely fun Bon Voyage parties (yeah, me!) and had a chance to hang out with some great friends at the local Irish pub "practicing" :-) I actually have another party on Saturday. Eating deep fried whitefish and hushpuppies while sitting out on the deck in the middle of the country. Darn, I really love the South sometimes! :-)

There's no going back now

So, the round of goodbyes has officially begun. Last Friday, some wonderful church friends gave me a send off dessert party. It was intimate (read "small"), though I've been assured that most people didn't actually know it was happening! Apparently, I'm the only one who reads the church bulletin! :-) Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience. I was reminded again what amazing, funny, intelligent and giving friends I've racked up at CHBC over the years, and I was made to feel loved and appreciated in a very concrete way. That's not to say that I didn't already know that my participation, personality and talents were valued, but it's very affirming to have people actually say such things to your face, to be actively loving in a way that we often forget to be with each other.

It's interesting because the message last Sunday was about the (assumed but often ignored) centrality of the relationships among and between members of the Body of Christ as the way we grow spiritually. Certainly, that's been true for me. However much I gripe and complain sometimes about how much I miss having someone like my dancing partner Heather to sit with on a Sunday morning, now that she's abandoned me for San Francisco (so what if she got married!), the truth is that this church family has been my home for more than 10 years and it's almost impossible to imagine myself without it.

This Saturday, I'm being given another party, this one with a wider range of family and friends. Even my mom is coming up from Florida. Yeah! I'll get to see friends I haven't seen in many moons and get to hang out and soak in all the lovingness :-) How cool is that?! Of course, as someone who shall remain nameless was snarky enough to tell me at the church party, this means now I've got to leave. I've had my party(ies) and no changing my mind is allowed! You'd think church people wouldn't have such sarcastic senses of humor! Of course, hmmm, we pretty much have the same sense of humor. Oh well, there goes another stereotype :-)