This is the way...step inside

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:20:49 GMT

So, yesterday I was taking the bus through the southside - a posh area I rarely venture into - and was entertained along the way by the conversation the young woman in the seat behind me was having on her mobile phone. She was talking about a friend of hers who is, apparently, currently juggling two suitors.

Bachelor #1 lives in a humongous house in Killiney (where the likes of U2 live), owned by his filthy rich parents in London, who send him a weekly allowance of €250 "for food". (Har. Wonder how much of that actually goes to nose candy.)

Bachelor #2 is in his first year of college, and has just been made CEO of his daddy's newest company.

So I was sitting there thinking jeeeeez, what a pair of insufferable mommy's boys these two must be. Probably incapable of tying their shoes on their own. Would bore you to tears before they'd finished telling you their names. And yet without a trace of irony the woman on the bus said of her friend, "She knows how to pick them!"

Sometimes I think I'm not just in the wrong country, but on the wrong planet.

And my annoying person of the day is....

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:06:34 GMT

... the anti-choice male who listens to a female colleague's description of the pain she suffered in childbirth and then announces, "I'm glad I'm a man."

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:48:54 GMT

If you're easily offended about people speaking ill of the dead,

I am sorry but Natasha Richardson was an atrocious actress. At least in everything I saw her in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm deeply sorry for her family but I cannot for the life of me understand all these accolades about how "talented" she was.

RIP RickQ

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:01:06 GMT

Heart test

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 07:40:39 GMT

I thought this was kind of funny:

Your result for The Heart Test ...

http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-heart-test

The Soldier of Fortune
Dependent, Realistic, Passionate, Explicit

You are the most ravenous of hearts, the Soldier of Fortune. You desire love, but on your terms and no one elses. You are a passionate person who knows what you want. Love is something to hunt out, and when you find it you will guard it under your watchful eye. You are a mercenary of love, seeking love fervently, and likely to treat it as a trophy once it has been snared.

That's pretty accurate actually ...

Sign in Tesco

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:54:04 GMT

"Free parking when you spend over €20 or more"

My last free weekend

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:56:15 GMT

That's what this feels like. I start law school on Monday.

It's not proper law school. In the Irish system, that comes later. The first thing I have to do is pass a bunch of exams showing that I already know the law. Yeah, it's a bit weird. You can take these exams without doing any classes for them, but that's widely considered a recipe for failure, so most people do a prep course. That's what I'm starting on Monday.

You have to do exams in eight subjects and pass all of them. Most people do them in at least two groups. At your first attempt, you have to take at least four exams and pass at least three. So you have to be a bit strategic about which subjects you take and when. I decided to do the exams in two groups of four. Starting with the four usually considered the easiest, just to make absolutely sure I make the minimum threshold for my first attempt. That's Property, Equity, Contract and Criminal. Assuming I pass them all (and the failure rate is about 50%, so I'm not taking it for granted!) then in the next session I'll do the remaining four - EU, Constitutional, Tort and Company. It may sound a bit mad to put all the "hard" ones together but I reckon I already have a head start since I did Tort in my paralegal class; I deal with EU and Constitutional in my current job; I dealt with Company in my previous job; and as an undergrad I studied Constitutional - American Constitutional, of course, but the similarities are greater than you might expect. Plus, there would be the opportunity to re-take any exams that I fail before I would be able to begin proper law school anyway.

I'm doing actual lectures for three of the classes. Criminal I have to do distance learning, since they re-scheduled the lectures either for late Friday night (no fucking way) or smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I'd arranged all my other classes for weekday evenings so that I could have the weekends entirely free to study and I'm not going to mess that up by taking a Saturday afternoon class. So it's distance learning for that one. I did Criminal in the paralegal course so I think I'll be fine.

It's exciting, but at the same time, I know I'm going to be absolutely miserable for the next few months because I will not have a life. At all.

Exams are in the beginning of April.

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:45:42 GMT

There are times I really hate living in Ireland.

Such as when you run out of paint and you can't go out to buy more paint because it's a Sunday and all the shops that sell paint are closed even though you live in the centre of the capital and largest city.

Grrrrr.

Something that occurred to me today

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:34:24 GMT

It's a real tragedy that Molly Ivins died before Sarah Palin was nominated. Just think of the pages of hilarity we've missed out on.

Who the fuck came up with this stupid phrase?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:15:14 GMT

"Look-back review". Been hearing this a lot lately. What the fuck other type of review is there?

Yeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwwwwwww!

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:16:20 GMT

I knew I shouldn't have left that thumbtack on the floor!

I might regret saying this, but

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:41:32 GMT

there's a part of me that actually perversely thinks it would be hilarious to see McCain/Palin elected and McCain die in office. I mean, the sheer incompetence of a Sarah Palin presidency trying to play tough to Iran or Russia or whoever the enemy du jour is at that point. (Come on, wouldn't you love to see her try to take on Putin? Wouldn't you? He'd have her for breakfast.)

It would be a disaster for the American people - or at least, those below the Country Club class - but it could be a good thing for the world in the long run by diminishing American hegemony. And it would have to diminish American hegemony, because it would be totally impossible for anyone else to take the US seriously!

Please don't bookmark this page and come back to remind me about it when she's fired all the federal judges, replaced them with graduates of Bob Jones University Law School and sold the Rocky Mountains to Exxon.

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:27:59 GMT

There is a film crew in the courtyard behind my apartment. And a person walking around dressed as a star.

I am intrigued.

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:55:02 GMT

I've just heard that they're doing a remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This is a bad idea on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.

Hey, Kyla

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:21:13 GMT

http://community.livejournal.com/balkans/104872.html

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:12:39 GMT

A couple I fixed up have just got engaged.

ETA: It must be because I caught the bouquet at a friend's wedding a couple months ago. Not exactly how that's supposed to work, but better than nothing, I suppose.

Home decorating hint #1

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:46:12 GMT

Take the bottle of wine off the bookshelf before you try to move it.

Disaster averted. But barely.

Is this the ultimate in consumer gullability?

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:27:18 GMT

On the ketchup shelf in the supermarket. A 1.35 kilogram bottle costs €3.60. A 1.2 kilogram bottle costs €3.88. They're both your basic Heinz variety. Both come in an easy-squeezy plastic bottle. So why is the smaller one more expensive? Because the bottle is sold upside down - cap at the bottom. I bought one of the cheaper ones and put it in my refrigerator upside down and it seems to work just fine. What am I missing?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:14:34 GMT

Well my parents went home yesterday. It was very sad. I'd really got used to them being around. I have the most amazing parents in the world. But I'll see them for Christmas anyway (by which time they'll be grandparents! Yay!).

I'm not sure I mentioned this but they were originally planning to go home at the end of July. Then my mother had this bright idea that, since they're retired and can stay however long they like, they should stay an extra week and help me paint my apartment. Seriously this was my mother's idea. She loves painting. So I said ok. So now I have a freshly painted living room and kitchen. We didn't have time to do anything else because that took so bloody long. But it looks wonderful. Here's the door to the broom closet - we did the whole kitchen/living room in that green for the walls and ceiling and that blue for the trim. It looks fabulous.

But damn, I miss my parents.

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:24:29 GMT

I bought a new kind of coffee yesterday and when I drank it this morning I thought it was awfully grindy.

Now I've just gone to wash out the pot and I've realised why. I forgot to put the filter in the coffeemaker.

It seems I need my morning coffee before I can even properly make it :(

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:58:38 GMT

How is it that Amtrak from DC to Tampa takes 21 and a half hours and costs $102 while Greyhound from DC to Tampa takes 21 and a half hours and costs $177?

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:52:03 GMT

If you thought your First Lady was bad, just be glad you don't live in the North of Ireland.

Stupid evil cow.

Sigh

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:35:10 GMT

1. The former Prime Minister, who had to step down last month after questions were raised over how he came into such large sums of money, has finally given an explanation to the investigating tribunal: he won it on the horses.

2. A court ruled that an asylum seeker's right to a fair hearing was violated when his application was dismissed without leave to appeal on the basis of... an allegation made on Wikipedia against the organisation he was a member of.

I swear this country is an absolute joke sometimes.

Fri, 23 May 2008 21:48:57 GMT

Surprisingly enough, the new Cure single is quite good.

This summer

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:50:05 GMT

My parents are coming to visit this summer. They're going to fly into London and stay with my sister a few days, then head up to Scotland, down to France, back to London and then over to Dublin. It's their first proper holiday since my dad's (latest) retirement and because they're weird, they want to spend the whole thing with their kids. So we've been plotting the trip the past couple days.

The cool thing about this, apart from just that I'll be getting to spend so much time with them, is that they have the same approach to travelling as I do. They think that getting there is half the fun, and that planes are something you take only when you're pressed for time. Which means we're doing the whole journey by train, except for the ferry crossing to Ireland.

I've done all this so many times. But not for years. I can remember a time when I was thoroughly sick of that London-Glasgow train. But now I can't wait to do it again. It'll be just like my student days! Except with someone else around to pay for the sandwiches.