paddy's day 2008

this was our first paddy's day in vancouver. well, by our, i mean mine with gerry.

there were lots of celebrations this week in vancouver, so on sunday we made our way to the city and missed the parade. *but* we did get to enjoy traditional irish treats like cotton candy and barbequed corn on the cob... oh wait those aren't irish! we did get some irish tunes, dancing and heaps and heaps of green: face painting, beer, hats, shirts and kilts.

it was good family fun followed by a leprechaun covered DQ cake. Yummy!

a letter about jPod

Dear Doug,

I like what I'm seeing. Keep up the good work.

Best regards,
Ursula

P.S. Thanks to Jen for reminding me; 2 episodes watched, 3 downloaded.

granola grrl

today i made my own granola. it is delicious. seriously, supafine! it's a martha recipe fine tuned to suit my needs. i can't believe how tasty yummy it is. mmmm hmmmm!

i also applied for another job, this time government - wish me luck. other things happened as well, but they aren't very exciting.

back to that granola - wow!

wikileaks - have you heard?

so, i just found out about this interesting little website called wikileaks. it's kinda like wikipedia, but it's all info governments, corporations, and sketchy individuals don't want you to know.

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Main_Page

it had to switch to the i.p. because of a law suit brought against them by a bank in the caymans. wonder what goes on there...

and another!

less pictures, more text.

just so everyone knows: gerry and i are in white rock. searching for jobs. trying to sort out some family stuff, you know... getting it done. i'm going to say that we are happy and starting to settle in alright. i'm really glad to be back despite the chaos that comes with it. we knew it would happen, and it has so we're going to keep working through it and then hope that there is an end, even if it's not in sight.

we had a great to california and nevada and got some ideas for the wedding. now we just need to get jobs so that we can actually start to budget and plan.

there is soooo much unpacking to be done. when i moved here two and a half years ago, i barely unpacked. i was moving to ireland, and there didn't seem much point in unpacking boxes that stacked very nicely, thank you. now we're dealing with that, all of the stuff we sent over for gerry, my own crap from ireland and then a heap of stuff from cleaning out my mom's house. some we have to keep, hopefully lots that i can get rid of. otherwise we'll never invite people over.

we've also been trying to meet up with people. some we've seen a couple of times, others not at all. the good news is that we're here to stay, so while i mightn't have seen you yet, i promise to do so. it's a lame excuse, but we've been very busy! in fact things have been pretty crazy and stressful since we got back (before that, if we're honest) and i think gerry and i are both feeling a bit overwhelmed, but positive.

the party will come soon. please be patient with us until then!

popular demand

i'm enjoying my evening off. to celebrate, i'm blogging and i'm going to upload some pics on facebook.

gerry and i got back about a week ago from our trip to the states.

first was healdsburg, where we visited wade and pattie, drank champagne and wine, ate yummy food, and had a good time.

then we headed to san fran to visit chris and sarah where more champagne, good food and some painful but interesting massages.

after that, it was off to reno for the night:





and then to elko to visit the fam! (this is my uncle chuck and my aunt rhonda.) we had an awesome time hanging out with everyone.



and this is my niece kaylee. i enjoyed the opportunity to teach her to say: i want chanel. and, 'five is for losers' just in case someone repeated gerry's question of, 'where is five?' when she counts: 1,2,3,4,6,7. good times! she is adorable.

on the road again

gerry and i leave tomorrow to start our new life in canada.

how excited am i?

and nervous. i hope canada shows well, cause i want gerry to like it. and i'd feel really bad if he didn't.

see you soon!

the king of cong

for christmas gerry and i gave his dad a trip to cong. on thursday we packed up the car and headed first galway and then to cong. in case you're not an expert on cong, it's where a john wayne movie called The Quiet Man was filmed.

The Quiet Man is gerry's dad's favourite movie so we treated him to a couple of days of rain and wind seeing the locations of the movie and a night at The Quiet Man B&B which was full of movie stills, posters and quotes. Gems from the movie include: You're the woman of the house. Where's mae tae? (Where's my tea?) and A man would have to be a sprinter to catch his wife in a bed like that.

i'd definitely call gerry's mom less of a fan of that movie. i think we were mostly just along for the ride.

tonight is a family dinner at a restaurant in carrickmacross. tomorrow we're off to dublin.

a letter to tom cruise

dear tom,

you are a crazy man. and i mean crazy crazy, not crazy fun.

good luck in the future,

ursula

step on a crack

it's now been three years since my mom passed away, and whether i like it or not it's still a difficult time of year. to add to the emotional roller coaster that has been today, i got a text from my oldest sister, annemarie. she told me there's an emergency and that i had to pick up my phone (i'd been in the toilet so i was unavailable for a bit).

eventually i got a hold of her and she told me the store heidi works at was robbed and that her neck was broken. i tried to find out how serious it was, and if she could walk and stuff. annemarie told me she couldn't and that she didn't know what hospital she was in or anything other than she'd told me.

finally, after calling the hospitals in abbotsford and vancouver, and having been told by the abbotsford hospital that she's not there, i got in touch with heidi who was in emergency (in abbotsford) but stable; able to walk, but yes, with a broken neck.

so, panic over and shaking stopped, gerry and i decided that we would keep our thursday flight to vancouver from london, and just check on the situation in the meantime.

luckily the real news isn't as bad as the first news, if that makes sense. so although a broken neck isn't a great situation, and in no way is good news, it is a lot better than what it could have been.

it's a poo thing to happen

as i've mentioned, we are spending some time at gerry's parents' in monaghan. it's a quiet place, and because you (i) always want to make a good impression, the little things kind of get focused on. they are my future in-laws after all.

there are two toilets in the house (pretty fancy for ireland). one is fairly new because gerry's grandma came to live with them at some point and they needed an accessible bathroom i guess. anyway, that is the washroom i prefer to use... since turkey. i'd heard of places where if you had a poo, you would use water to clean your bum, and i'm sure i'd heard of places where you couldn't flush the toilet paper. i must have really... i mean, i have traveled a fair bit. when we went to turkey, we were told we need to put the toilet paper in the garbage, and absolutely not flush it. if you've ever met me, you would know that this kind of sent me into panic. i mean, we were going to a place over run by western europeans. when you go to mexico you can flush the toilet paper. i knew i would get sick at some point (i'm delicate) on our trip there, but this brought out a whole new dimension of potential illness. i think putting out the garbage everyday helped and in the end i survived turkey with only a mid-digestive tract infection that still periodically makes me barf.

but i learned something else on that trip. while in some moment of complaint about the toilet paper situation, gerry said he didn't know what the big deal was because in the old bathroom here, they can't flush toilet paper either. well, i had either never heard that or i'd completely blocked out being told that. as with other things that i don't like hearing, i didn't believe it at first. so now i'm totally afraid of forgetting and then causing total mayhem here by subsequently blocking the toilet. i'm also afraid to poo in that toilet because if toilet paper can cause problems, poo can too.

mostly i use the new bathroom. but since it's off gerry's sister's room and she works (and unlike me, keeps regular hours) this has become a win/lose situation. in the morning it's completely win. i get to take my time, have my poo, relax, and not take advantage of her kindness in letting me use the space. but at night when i like to do number 2 before bed, it's lose. i would never wake her up to go, especially when there's another bathroom. and the poor girl has to get up super early for work so it would be a crap (oops, that's a pun) thing for me to do. of course, his sister is super nice and wouldn't complain about it, but that doesn't excuse any outrageous behaviour on my part.

so instead of taking my time to enjoy my pooh 2 of the day, i've been holding it until morning. i think it's hilarious on one hand because i know i'm the freak of the situation, but on the other hand, i'm glad the apartment in white rock has stellar plumbing that will accomodate my needs.

8 more sleeps!

today we went to northern ireland, and i used our change (think mostly 5, 10, 20 and even some pennies and 2 cents) to buy lunch.

we checked out some digital SLR cameras, to replace our older cameras to take on our upcoming trips. and lucky thing too! we tried an olympus and it was super uncomfortable to hold, so that one got the boot.

now we're going to make a veggie loaf and some taters for dinner. yahoo.

it happened!

last night i slept well. well, okay: well enough. i thought i should share, since i'd been whinging about the crappiness that has been sleep lately.

since our party on friday, things have been pretty tame around these parts. i'm certainly not complaining. i'm merely saying.

saturday was a complete write-off. gerry spent about 20 of the 24 hours that are called saturday asleep. i went for breakkie and then watched him struggle with that very same day.

sunday was breakkie with suz, ann-marie, and late comers elaine and isabel. then off to the train station with our heaps and heaps of luggage. it was a quiet night in carrickmacross and today was mostly some prep for our trip (packing and money exchanging) and a few hours of games at noel and norah's (gerry's aunt and uncle). good fun there!

hopefully tonight will have me asleep in no time. let's see, shall we?

dig a hole to china

it's true, there is an expression (at least where i'm from) that if you can 'dig a hole to china'. turns out, if i had dug that much, i would have ended up in the indian ocean. how fun is this though? you can actually see where you would end up. i love it.

if you dig from ireland, you end up in new zealand. gerry said as a kid, they would 'dig a hole to australia'. turns out they were wrong too.

two more sleeps

wow. only two more sleeps until we leave the house. in two weeks and one day we'll be back in canada.

i haven't slept properly in ages. which is making me less productive during the day which is then creating stress about being ready, and not letting me sleep. argh.

today, after lunch, i'm going to do a big push. speaking of lunch, gotta motor.

thanks martha!

guess what i found on the wedding channel today? MARTHA!!! it was very exciting me. a very happy fluke. there was an hour long special on weddings. it was dreamy.

ha ha. well, i'm kidding about the dreamy, but it did remind me that when times are tough, you can always turn to martha. she realises the importance of the perfect butter cream icing and i can relate.

i immediately checked out the website on weddings and guess what was there? A LIST! pure heaven. it was just so exciting.

i already feel better. thank you, martha.

his dark materials

at the beginning of the week, i finished the last of the philip pullman trilogy called his dark materials. the first book is what the film the golden compass is based on.

i'm going to strongly recommend this trilogy. i read all of the books very quickly (and not just because i was getting pressure from gerry).

it's an adventure along the lines of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe and there is a strong theme of god challenge going on. but the fantasy was well drawn out, and the characters endearing.

whoa!

i think i should probably clarify here. i totally agree with you guys, we *do* plan to do what we want. absolutely. but i also, as cheryl said, feel a bit lost at sea! i just need to do some research, steal some ideas and make lists. you know, get myself organised and sorted on what i *do* want. mostly because i haven't spent any real time thinking about it so i have some catching up to do.

i think i will get that book.

the first part is a venue. and we're gonna work on that next month.

once we've completed the move, and sorted out some stuff. i'll be fine, and i promise, it'll be what we want.

don't do that!

as someone with anemia, i probably shouldn't pull out my hair, but i do. i saw another grey hair. i think they grow fastest. or else a strand will lose its pigmentation once it's already grown. that's the only thing i can think of because i've had some full - length grey hairs just show up.

oh, and the reason they say four hairs will grown back where the one was pulled out? simply because you've pulled out four trying to get the one. well, that's my theory.

the good news is that since leaving my last job, i've only found this one grey hair.

another dirty confession? i've been watching wedding tv. i have never been someone who's mad for weddings. i think that might be the problem; a lot of girls have had their wedding days planned since they were a little kid. not me. not even close. i'm so lost on this one, i don't even know what the basics are. so, off to weddingtv to give me some ideas. maybe i should be making lists about this.

i know everyone says to just do what you like, but let's face it, i've been to 4 weddings, i might have to buy some magazines here so that i can decide what i like.

happy happy new year!

last night was a bit of a quiet night. sure, it was new year's but it's been pretty busy around these parts, and the next three weeks won't slow down much.

we had dinner, some yummy piper champagne and watched heaps of IT Crowd. basically i got drunk and laughed even more than i usually do at their crazy antics in the IT department.

all in all, a good start to the new year.