Ireland 2011

I've gotten quite the travel bug over the last few years and have made it a habit to go out of the country every year. I didn't after my surgery but I did spend that fall visiting relatives while I couldn't work. One of my best friends, Corey, had an aching to go see Ireland, the Mother Land. She's got quite a bit of Irish in her and while I've only got a wee bit, I had always wanted to see Ireland. So Ireland it was.

It was Corey's first trip out of the United States and it would be a doozy of a time change. Ireland was 8 hours ahead of California and we'd be arriving at 7am Ireland time. I briefed Corey on how to best go about dealing with it and we wondered how well we'd do. I figured with enough coffee I could handle anything. We debated who would be the worst at it.

We had driven down to Corey's house to fly out of LAX. On the way home, I would fly back to Medford and she would fly back to LAX. Of course we hit LA traffic and were late. The lady at the counter let us know it too. She stamped "Late" on our baggage and said she'd do what she could to get it there. I never expect my luggage to make it where I'm going, so I didn't care... except that I hadn't packed my toothbrush in my carry-on like I had suggested to Corey. We rushed off to our gate and made it in plenty of time.

Our next travel snafu was that we were not seated together for the first leg of our flight. I'm not sure how this happened since we had booked the tickets together and chosen seats. In any case, we met back up again in Atlanta for lunch and had seats together for the flight to Dublin. We both tried to sleep on the plane, but even after passing around sleeping pills, we both hardly nodded off.

We arrived early to Dublin at about 6:30am. The plan was to drop off our luggage at the Hostel and then go sight-see. We weren't allowed to sleep during the day because we had to reset our internal clocks. We did fairly well until Corey crashed and begged me for a small nap. She laid in bed while I showered and checked out the hostel. I don't think she slept much. Then we got back up to see the town. I took over 500 pictures throughout the trip but will not post nearly that much.

This is Christ Church Cathedral, one of Ireland's most important churches. We toured the cathedral and came back later to see the college orchestra play.

On the left you can see Dublinia and on the right, across the footbridge is Christ Church Cathedral. Dublinia is a pretty cool viking exhibit that shows the early inhabitants of Dublin. Bet you didn't know Dublin was founded by Vikings. Corey and I tried on some traditional viking garb. Not really all that flattering.



This is a statue of Molly Malone. There's a famous song about her, she was a fishmonger who pushed her cart through streets wide and narrow shouting cockles and mussels, alive alive-oh!

Corey having a local brew.


Dublin and the River Liffey.


These are statues in honor of the potato famine. I was quite moved by them and took some really good pictures. This one just shows the group of them better than the others I took.

We also toured a replica of a famine ship.

Our tour guide schooled us on US History. It was embarrassing. He was really nice though.


Of course we had to tour the Guinness Storefront. It's quite impressive. A whole city block is covered (and owned by) the Guinness Brewery and Storefront.

After a really cool tour of all the behind the scenes stuff, Corey and I got a free (included in the price of admission) Guinness. It was Corey's first. We enjoyed them on top of the Sky Bar which gave us a 360 degree view of Dublin.



We toured Dublin Castle and the art museum they had there.


We shopped around in Temple Bar, one of the more hip and college student/touristy areas. We must've walked miles, especially after I got us completely turned around one night.

After Dublin we took a bus to Kilkenny which is a smaller town with some cute shops and cobblestone streets. We toured the Kilkenny Castle.


At St. Canice's Cathedral, we climbed the 7 story tower to look out over Kilkenny.


The steps were more like ladders.




Our only night in Kilkenny, we went to a wine bar called The Hole in the Wall. It was a tiny little cluttered wine bar that had a choice of a few wines. The owner was a big US History buff and talked to us about the conspiracy surrounding the Kennedy assassination. He had it down to a science. Then we discussed George Clooney and how his ancestors are from Ireland and they will be filming a documentary there about it. We went upstairs to see Karrie, a local singer. She's the aunt of Mick Flannery who's pretty popular in Ireland. Mick's mom sang back up vocals and even a song on her own. They both had gorgeous voices. Not a lot of people came, so it was an intimate atmosphere with the stone walls and fireplace and wooden shutters. The place was dimly lit with candles and I was buzzed off two glasses of wine. It was absolutely fabulous, my best night there! We each bought one of her cd's and then went off to a pub to listen to some locals play traditional music.

The next day we went off to Galway on the west coast. We stayed a couple nights in a bed and breakfast to get away from the hubbub of hostel life.

I've never been a big fan of bus tours as I've seen a lot of them and developed a stereotype of them while living in San Diego. We all know the image of a big bus pulling over, a group of people climbing out to snap photos and then everyone hopping right back on. It didn't appeal to me being as I'm more of a free roamer. But it was either that or rent a car and try to figure out how to drive on the other side of the road. I was having trouble just trying to cross the street. The tours ended up being amazing. We went with Galway Tour Company and our first tour was The Cliffs of Moher and The Burren.

We stopped and took pictures of this little castle and then went on to a small town across the bay to grab a Bailey's Coffee and use the WC.


We stopped at a ring fort and I made a wish on a fairy tree. The white papers and ribbons mean you're wishing for good to come to some one. A red one meant you were wishing for something bad to come to some one. Needless to say my ribbon was red. Just kidding. I skewered a white piece of paper on to a branch and made a wish.


We took a small detour to check out an old abbey that's been turned into a cemetery.


There were castles, abbeys, churches and stone walls scattered all over the green countryside. It was amazing, and our guide was both humorous and informative.


The Cliffs of Moher rise almost 800 ft above the Atlantic Ocean. It gets so windy there that it almost knocked my legs out from under me. By the way, it pretty much rained the entire time we were in Ireland, and umbrellas were about useless because of the wind turning them inside out. It was best to just ignore it or slip into a pub if it got bad, drink a Guinness and go on our merry way.

This castle may look familiar. They filmed the Princess Bride here and apparently a few episodes of Harry Potter. The Cliffs also had a really cool museum and 3D virtual flight over the cliffs.

The next day we booked a tour with the same company to see the Connemara area and the Cong where The Quiet Man was filmed. We had a different guide but he was just as funny and knowledgeable. I saw three black sheep that day...in case any of you were wondering if they really existed. I was.

The Connemara area is beautiful country. We stopped for awhile at the Kylemore Abbey to tour the abbey, the gardens, chapel, mausoleum and eat lunch.






By the way, this here is turf or peat. Not like astro-turf or peat moss (which reminds me, I have to tell you about solicitors). If any of you would like to buy me a birthday present, Christmas present, Valentine's Day present, St. Patrick's Day present or whenever present...I would like some peat. This stuff is near and dear to my heart. And it turns out you can get it shipped here. When I get back from North Carolina, I think I'm going to order some.


Ireland is covered in Peat Bogs. These bogs are swamp-like decomposed stuff that settles down and compacts. I think it runs along the lines of fossil fuel or something. People take shovels and dig down into the bogs and pull this stuff out. They lay it out to dry and rotate it every once in awhile until it hardens. Then they burn it in their fire places. It puts out a wonderfully cozy smell. Even better than wood. It's amazing. The new love of my life. You can see some along the road here. Looks and feels like mud. Burns for hours I'm told. Smells wonderful. Emits an Irish warmth. Good stuff.

We drove around the country side stopping to take pictures and listening to the tour guide fill us with stories, history and lore of Ireland. Here is another fairy tree.


Feeding an apple to Joey the Connemara pony.


The Quiet Man House.


Drunken debauchery in Galway.


Galway.


I got a kick out of this port-a-potty. It's got a joystick. Hahaha! Ok, it's not a joystick. This thing flushes. It's pretty cool.


Ok, so solicitors. Everywhere you go in the US, you see signs that say "No Solicitors". We all know what those are right? People who go around trying to sell things or advertise or whatever. Annoying people. Anyway, everywhere we went in Dublin we kept seeing signs for solicitors. Corey and I wondered about this for several days. Then one day I was thinking about it (as it had been bugging me) and wondered if maybe a solicitor was a lawyer. That day we came across one of the offices and it listed what services they offer such as divorces and accidents, etc. So it turns out in Ireland, solictors are lawyers. I commented to Corey that solicitors from Ireland who come to the US must be deeply confused by all the "No solicitors" signs.

After a few nights in Galway, it was time to head back to Dublin for our flight home. We did some last minute shopping and flew out the next day. During our stay in Ireland we ate a ton of potatoes, drank a bunch of Guinness and had way too much coffee. I put on a few pounds.

Flying out of Dublin, they sent us through US Customs before getting on the flight which is unusual to me. Usually my first stop in the US is where I go through customs. But this seems like a much better idea. We had gotten there in plenty of time and I thought I had briefed Corey pretty well on how to go through customs. Since we are not in the same household, we have to go through seperately. They put us in two different lines and I went through with ease. The officer in Corey's line disappeared and I was trying to get her attention to signal her into another line. I don't think she was aware that it was ok for her to go into another one. An agent came up to me and told me I had to wait further away. So I waited. And waited. Then I saw an officer escorting Corey to another location. I thought, You've got to be kidding me. Corey is the least threatening person I know.

I noticed that there was yet another security screening for me to go through so I figured I would get through there and wait on the other side. After about 20 minutes I got worried. What if Corey wasn't out there by the time the flight left? Her family would kill me if I left Ireland without her. I couldn't call her as phones were not allowed in the screening area.

Finally after over half an hour, she came out.

"Carrie, they put me in a dark room and made me tell all my deepest darkest secrets!" Geez, and it took that long?

Apparently US Customs does not appreciate rawhide bones as a Christmas gift for the doggies. Corey also took out her phone to turn it off and got yelled at. She misunderstood what the lady was asking and got yelled at. They went through her entire suitcase and did a crappy job putting things back so her Guinness glasses broke on the trip home. I was just glad she was released. It wasn't quite as scary as if she had been detained by Irish authorities, but still.

Living Room and Dining Room Renovation

Better late than never, here's the renovation pictures for the living room and dining room.

It seemed so simple when I first bought the house: the older half of the house was wallpapered. They tell you not to judge a house based on cosmetic things such as wall color or wall paper. So I didn't. And to be honest, I'm still glad I didn't. It's been a pain in the butt, but my house is still absolutely beautiful.

One day I got the itch and decided to start removing the wallpaper. Anyone who's done it can tell you that removing wallpaper is not that simple, but I had done it before and was prepared. Or rather I thought I was prepared.

Under the first layer of wallpaper was another layer of wallpaper.


The living room had two layers of wallpaper and the dining room had three. So what was under all that wallpaper?

It's a little hard to see in this picture but in the corner you can see the old 1970's faux wood paneling. I thought it was a little odd that someone would wallpaper over paneling instead of removing the paneling...which said something for what could be under the paneling. See the mauve-ish color in the middle? More wallpaper under the panels. What's under that layer of wallpaper?

Wood. Some of you may not think that's strange. I however, was hoping for drywall...or as they say up here, sheetrock. Best case scenario. With a house this old though, I should know better than to hope for the best case scenario. Interestingly enough, under some portions of the older wallpaper was a muslin cloth which is indicative of a much older process. Very cool.

On one section of the old wallpaper was a list of phone numbers written in pencil. I can only imagine that was where the phone once sat. I didn't call any of the numbers but it was fascinating to see.

For a little background, once I figured out that the job would require more than scraping wallpaper, I decided now would be a good time to update the electrical and insulate the house. The electrical in the old half of the house is knob and tube wiring. In itself, not so bad but combined with the newer copper wires it can be a fire hazard. To my knowledge, there aren't any combined wires, but up to date electrical is usually a decent idea. Not to mention that you can't fully insulate the house with that sort of wiring. The wires dissipate their heat into the surroundings, which actually makes it fairly safe. That way they won't overheat and catch on fire. But that also means the old part of the house is not insulated. At all. Ever lived in a snowy environment in a house without insulation? Yeah. Exactly.

So I called up a recommended contractor and got a quote. Holy moly!! I decided that to save money I would do the demo (tearing apart the walls so he can do the insulation and wiring) and do the drywall and trim myself. How hard could it be?

After taking a pretty decent fall in which I broke my wood holder/rack (for wood stove wood) and the controller to my wood stove blower, I decided I was done and I'd see if the contractor would finish the demo at a discounted price. He came down a little bit, but since fire season was in full swing I decided to just let it go and hand it over.

When the insulation and new electrical was finished, my superintendent came over to show me how to hang drywall. Being as not a single wall in the house is level, measuring and cutting the drywall was tedious work. We spent an entire day measuring, cutting, shaving down and hanging drywall. We got a lot done, but he had a life to go back to and during the next couple weeks, I hung drywall on my own when I found time.


With the drywall up, I was beginning to feel relieved about the whole process. I could now envision my house with walls, which is something it had lacked for several months. The next step was to tape, mud, sand, texture, prime and paint the drywall. It sounded easy enough.

First I taped all the seams with an adhesive mesh tape. I chose this over the paper tape for a couple reasons. It seemed like it would be easier and it also allowed me to apply quick drying mud. Mud has to be applied three times to the seams and screws and if you have to wait an entire day for one coat to dry, it's going to take awhile. In the picture below you can just barely make out the tape.



Then I applied the drywall mud...three times. Every single seam and every single screw got 3 layers of drywall mud. It was exhausting.


After all the mud had dried, it was time to sand. In the dining room I sanded everything by hand. What's nice about that is the dust falls straight down (onto my head and eyeballs). What's not nice about that is it takes a lot of time and my shoulders were aching pretty badly by the end of it. One of my captains suggested I use a palm sander, which I own. I didn't think to use it because I figured it would take off more mud than I needed and I'd have to redo it. He said it should be fine. So I went home and took out my Dewalt 5" Orbital Palm Sander (power tools!) with vacuum attachment and tentatively set to work. What's great about the palm sander is that it took very little effort and was quick. What's not great about it is that even with the vacuum attachment, dust flew everywhere. It was so thick it set off my new smoke/CO2 detectors.

A note on the detectors. New California Building Code requires that with any new electrical work in a house, hardwired smoke/CO2 detectors must be installed (in pretty much every room). You know, I can almost understand their good fortune, due to the job I'm in, but I'm perfectly capable of maintaining battery operated ones. Unfortunately, when one detector goes off if it's hardwired, they all go off. That also means if one is malfunctioning (like smoke detectors never malfunction) then they all do. Next thing you know the entire house is beeping in protest.

After setting off the detectors in my house, I went to the circuit breaker and flipped it off. Ha! I'll show them! I thought. I went back to sanding and the detectors went off again. I climbed up on the ladder and removed the back up battery. It was almost Thanksgiving and leaving windows and doors open was not an option. And yes, I was wearing a face mask.

So once the walls were sanded, I went about practicing my texture technique on scrap pieces of drywall. It looked about average and I was in a hurry. The days to my big Thanksgiving party (that no one showed up to) were dwindling. I rolled the texture on with a paint roller and let dry for about 10 minutes, then I knocked it down lightly with a trowel. It didn't turn out half bad.


When the texture dried, I set about priming the walls. I think paint primer must be incredibly toxic because it's the most noxious stuff I used in the entire process. And I got some on my hands and feet and it literally took weeks to get it washed off. I even tried shaving it off.



I think I was looking forward to painting the most. I guess because I feel it's the easiest part...until I actually get to it. Painting takes so much time. It takes forever to cut in the edges and corners, then you gotta paint the walls and then repeat the whole process. Both rooms got two coats of paint.

I'm not incredibly fond of how the colors turned out. I'd like the living room to be a little more gray and I meant for the dining room to be a darker grayish purple. Looks a little more pink than I'd like. But I'll tackle that this summer. For now it looks so much better than it did before.

Showers

The other night a guy from the electric company called and wanted to ask a couple questions about the energy saving rebate program I took part in when I bought my refrigerator. The last call I got from the electric company lasted all of 5 minutes because I didn't really know a whole lot about the energy saving light bulbs and didn't really go out of my way to purchase them. I answer these calls because people are friendly up here and talk, so I'm trying to assimilate. Not to mention it's fairly lonely up here and I've started answering solicitors calls just to have some one to talk to.

When I bought my house, it didn't come with a refrigerator, so I went out to get one. It was a sort of desperate purchase because it would dictate when I got to live in my new house. So I went to the local appliance store and picked one out that I thought would fit (I had measured height and width but not depth...which is apparently pretty important). Anyway, my refrigerator is an energy efficient one so it came with a $20 rebate incentive from the local power company. Ha. No, the $20 did not inspire me to purchase the refrigerator, which was one of the questions the guy asked me in the survey the other night.

First of all, he had a terrible speech impediment. I don't mean to knock anyone who's got a speech impediment, but I just don't think telephone surveys are the way to go in that case. But I let him continue on while my Irish stew got cold and my stomach continued to get ever more empty. He also had a tendency to apologize or say "that's alright" as if I gave him a wrong answer. It also became very apparent that most people do not agree to do the survey because he'd finish a question and then say "Oh wow" and continue with another one, as if he was shocked that the survey kept droning on. I was too. But by that time I was fully committed (or should be as Johnny would say).

Then he got to some interesting questions which gave me some pause. "On average, how many showers per week are taken in your household?"

Please keep in mind, there's only one of me in my household. I couldn't hold back my chuckle and he apologized for what seemed to him to be an embarrassing question, which caused it to become an awkward moment for the both of us. I thought about lying. Those who know me real well know I do not shower every day. Especially in the winter. Not to throw anybody under the bus (oh heck, I'm throwing somebody under the bus) but Candace told me if she had my job she wouldn't shower every day either. Actually she doesn't have my job and I'm fairly certain she still doesn't shower every day (tha-thunk, tha-thunk).

The first answer that popped into my head was 3, which while being the most accurate, was not one I'd advertise to just anybody. So now there was an even more awkward pause as I tried to do the math in my head: weighing how many days there were in a week, versus how many days a week it's unacceptable to not shower, versus how many times I week I honestly shower. (Right now Melissa is cringing. We had this conversation, didn't we?) I either settled on 4 or 5, I cant recall at this point. He said ok and jotted it down.

"And how many baths are taken per week in your household?" Oh, shoot. Those were tallied in my shower answer. Should I go back and correct him on the shower number? Better not. He was obviously uncomfortable at this point. I told him one, which isn't far from the truth. On average.

I'm surprised he didn't ask about how many times I have to flush my toilet in a given day. The survey lasted almost 25 minutes. It was painful, literally. I'm glad he didn't ask about how often I shave my legs.

Hmmm...interesting.

There's a "Stats" section on this blog and out of curiosity I clicked on it. I had 12 page views yesterday. 3 today (one was probably me signing on). 94 in the last month. This is really interesting. People went to my blog page 12 times yesterday. I don't think I even have 12 friends...so I'm really curious as to who is reading my blog. Maybe I should write more important things other than not being able to get out of bed or fix my lawn mower. I feel a sense of obligation now that I see I have an audience larger than my immediate circle (either that or I've underestimated my immediate circle).

I also get the feeling that maybe people are waiting for my house renovation update pictures. It's mostly done, and yes, I did take pictures and meant to post but my motivation to do anything really has been non-existent. Just getting out of bed is a feat in of itself.

Or maybe people are dying for Ireland pictures and stories and keep re-clicking on my blog to get the scoop. How disappointing my blog must be these days. I blame it on my new work schedule. The 4 ten hour days per week leaves me with no time for anything during the week and too exhausted to do anything during the weekend. Really my only free time is when I'm at work. I'm not entirely opposed to posting while at work being as people have been promoted for greater offenses.

So to my faithful blog viewers or anyone else who has accidently stumbled upon this blog, I will strive to not only post more often, but post more interesting blogs.

Winter Blues

I'm starting to get that itch to do something extraordinary. Like run another marathon or become a fitness model (just kidding). But I'm about to ship off to Asheville, NC for a winter season of fire on the Asheville Hotshots, which means no marathon for me, no Century bike ride and no body building. Just hiking and running and lifting weights....which isn't really all that inspiring. If I had a meaningful goal I'd be doing much better. But there's no marathon in my future because you just don't do crazy stuff like that during fire season and I've got two fire seasons coming up: back to back.

I do miss the life I had in San Diego, before I got sucked into full time fire where I had pools to swim in, oceans to surf in, time and weather for long runs and a plethora of 24 hour gyms at my disposal. I miss the sunny days of looking out the window, excited to get out and run or ride my bike. Now I look out the window with coffee and cookie in hand and stare at the snow and ice on the road and listen to the little voice that says softly but firmly "No way".

After having a ton of potatoes and Guinness in Ireland, I would like to be able to see my abdominal muscles again but that might take a few weeks. Funny how it takes twice as long to lose what you put on. I'm scheduled to run today, and I thought with it being so warm (32 degrees as opposed to the 12 it's been) I would run a 5 or 6 miler instead of a 3. Looking at how gray and cold it is outside, I'm thinking 3 would be miraculous.