Sunday Sundries

It's Sunday Sundries... on a Monday. Like Freedom Friday on a Taco Tuesday but less tasty.

My Internet has been dropping the last few days causing my Sunday night post plans to be thwarted.

1. I went to Wonder Woman after work on Friday. I need to do a full proper review but with my Internet still playing hide-n-go-seek, all you get is "I loved it. It was everything I wanted and more. My only complaint was that I couldn't just sit in the theatre and watch the next showing being apparently pets need to be feed or something. I don't know. I just know they ruin everything. But the movie was fantastic. It has flaws - I've yet to see a movie that doesn't - but they are so minimal and inconsequential when compared to what it got so very right."

Look at her kick butt!

2. I spent the weekend with Noah and Rachel. There was a failure with Noah's kidney transplant and they have had to start the search for another donor roughly 10 years sooner than anticipated. This is my reminder that there is a need for kidney donors. For more information about being a living donor in Canada, visit The Kidney Foundation of Canada. In the States, visit The National Kidney Foundation.

By The Awkward Yet

3. Ireland have officially entered their bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup. If they win the bid, I'm making plans to go the RWC visit my family. Who wants to come with me? 😉

They're even going to open up Croke Park to non-GAA games. LOVE IT!

4. National Aboriginal Day is coming up - many indigenous people celebrate the whole month - which means the Victoria Aboriginal Cultural Festival is just weeks away. I will be going because I believe it is important to support the First Nations in celebrating their heritage. There will be Māori dancers from New Zealand this year. That's something different!

If you are planning on attending, I highly recommend that you try and catch Andy's Totem Tour, the Le-La-La Dancers, and Alex Wells. Food, as always, is available from the Songhees Seafood and Steam Food Truck. My personal favourite is the Indian Taco (bison version).

It's a few years old, but a few good words from Wab Kinew.

Here's to a great week, everyone! Only four more days until the weekend.

Sports Ball

This video appeared in my Facebook feed today.

The other countries making bids for 2023 are South Africa and France. They've both previously hosted the World Cup - South Africa in 1995* and France in 2007 - so I'm hoping that works in Ireland's favour. Ireland's hosting the Women's Rugby World Cup later this year in August, so fingers crossed that goes well and also works to their advantage. 

Any excuse to visit the family. 😉

Keeping with the sports talk, I decided I was going to give baseball a chance this season to see if I could become a fan. I've always sort of poo-pooed American football and baseball - wimpy rugby and too slow, respectively - but I have some very good friends who are fans. Having never really watched either sport, I decided that I should give them a chance. Well, I'll give baseball a chance. American football will remain wimpy rugby until the day I die. 

The best way to become invested in a sport is to follow a team, so I sat down in March and made a list of what I wanted in a team so I could narrow it down. I didn't want Toronto Blue Jays or Seattle Mariners because they have large fan-bases in Victoria and I wanted to find a team that I wouldn't be quizzed on by people judging how committed I am as a fan. I wanted a team that had a chance at a post season, I wanted a team that didn't have a racist name or mascot, that had a history to learn, etc, etc. 

I ended up going with the Baltimore Orioles and, so far, they've been a good choice. Dare I say it? I actually look forward to getting the game updates on my phone app.

Might actually make a baseball fan out of me yet.

*This was the Rugby World Cup portrayed in 'Invictus'. If you enjoyed the movie, I highly recommend the book it was based on, 'Playing the Enemy'.

Focusing on the Positive

Note: I'm not ignoring the events of the weekend; I just need to be in a better headspace before I say anything about it. Right now, I would just be screaming incoherently and crying.

The Euros have started. For the first time in... well, in my lifetime (I'm too lazy to go look it up). both Ireland and Northern Ireland are going to the competition. Northern Ireland lost to Poland on Sunday. (And rightly so. They played like a Sunday fun-league team.) Not a great start.

Today, Group E - Ireland, Sweden, Belgium and Italy - start their Round Robin. Given that Belgium and Italy are ranked 2nd and 12th respectively and Ireland is ranked 33rd, I'm not very hopeful about their chances of moving to the next round. Still, if Italia '90 taught me anything, it's that I should never count Ireland out until they're actually out. (We beat Romania on penalties. It was kind of a big deal. You can see a retrospective on the penalties here. If you have a spare 20 minutes, you can watch the penalties in their entirety here. If you want to hear the greatest song ever written about that moment, you can watch it here. I so clearly remember watching this game. I remember how nervous I was during the shoot out. I remember my dad throwing his full glass of red wine against the just-painted white wall when Ireland won. I remember screaming and crying and singing on the phone to the family in Ireland. It will always be one of my favourite memories.)

But we're not here to talk about Ireland's past sporting glories (everyone one reading this "we're not?"), but for the Euro they're currently in. As has become tradition, Ireland has put out a song for the competition. A rallying cry for Irish fans everywhere to get behind.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Irish Roar.

Good luck to the Boys in Green against Sweden tomorrow.

UPDATE: Ireland tied because of an own-goal. Nothing like an uphill battle to spur them on to victory ;)

(I want to take a moment to acknowledge that Irish rugby had a fantastic weekend. The Under-20s beat New Zealand and the National Team beat South Africa. Both are pretty big freakin' deals for us. So proud of the other Boys in Green.)

Social Weekends

Last time I wrote, I was counting down the hours until I left for a camping and wedding weekend on the Cowichan River. The location was beautiful, the group campsite was beautifully set up, and it pissed with rain the entire time.

The roof of my tent and a very wet fly on the first morning.

Okay, maybe not the entire time, but a good 80% of the time.

To give you an idea of how much it rained, we received more rain in 4 days than we did in the 4 months proceeding them. The Lower Mainland more than doubled the amount. Along with all this rain? A wind storm. In a year of recording breaking heat, drought conditions, and double the amount of forest fires, my friend picked the one weekend the weather was shite.

We needed to warm up during the ceremony so we made coffee.
This was encouraged by the wedding couple.

At least the Friday we arrived was sunny and hot. Some of the party even got in some swimming. I did not because that morning I tried to break some cement stairs with my back. FYI: the stairs won. It made for a slightly painful weekend with limited movement but I wasn't missing the wedding!

Down at the river.

To top off the rain and the wind, on the day of the wedding, the Malahat was closed due to an accident which left those who hadn't come up on the Friday scrambling to make it up. If you don't know Vancouver Island, the quickest way 'up Island' - to go north - is over the Malahat. There is also a ferry crossing which is a) never on time, b) always late, and c) notoriously unable to keep to schedule, or the 4 hour drive west to Port Alberni and then loop back east. People who needed to make it over the Malahat included friends, family, and the caterer. Eek!

The mantra for the weekend became "this will all make a great story." And how many brides have a photo of their wedding dress hanging in a tent?

I selflessly agreed to bring the giant six man tent instead of the
cozy two man tent so it could double as the dressing room.
Selflessly.

After the wedding weekend, I met up with my friends who were visiting from Switzerland. It was a wonderful reminder of how awful my German has become. Obviously, I need to make an extended trip back to Germany, Switzerland and/or Austria to practice and improve. On the upside, this was the view from our table.

This isn't even the 'good' view to the Olympic Mts. That was taken by a private party!

The following weekend, my younger brother and I met up at the Irish Times to watch the Liverpool vs Man Utd game. I grew up watching English Premier League soccer but no one in my immediate family had any real loyalty to a specific team. Then B returned from living in Ireland after high school (family tradition) and he was a die-hard Liverpool supporter. By default, the rest of us have kind of become converts.

Walking in, I found a solid wall of red Liverpool shirts. Apparently I had found the unofficial Liverpool supporters club in Victoria.  No matter where you go, you'll will never walk alone. It was a fun way to watch a game that didn't exactly go in our favour.

TSN! Hire me for more of this great insight!

Today, I got up at Ass O'clock to watch Ireland play Canada in the Rugby World Cup. I headed over to my dad's, fried up the healthiest version of an Irish fry you will ever see - scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato - and sat down to watch the game.

Yeah. I don't want to talk about it.

At least my dad was happy.

(I expected Ireland to win but I was hoping for a bit more a fight from Canada. If they had played in the 1st period like they did in the 2nd...)

I Should Probably Start Wearing a Toga

Beware the Ides of March! Beware friends brandishing knives in the forum.

It was not my intent to go from one Roman day-of-note to the next one between posts but somethings that's what happens when you're busy being awesome. Yeah, let's go with awesome. I celebrated the Ides by waking up way too early after a night of drinking to clean gutters at my dad's house. Kind of hard to stab someone in the name of the Roman Republic when you're six feet up a ladder, dripping pine needles down your shirt, longing for some Tylenol.

Anyway, it's time for a random post because I have a lot of random thoughts in my head at the moment.

1. Running is on hold. My running partner, Katie, has been in physio due to a car accident a few months back. On her physio's orders on Thursday, she has to stop running. I'm not going to lie, without a running partner I'm not sure I'll have the get-up-and-go to continue lunch-time runs, especially with projects meaning lots of meetings with people I probably shouldn't be stinky around and evenings at the gym not leaving any other time to run.

I will still walk the TC10K because I promised someone I would moonwalk across the finish line. Silly promises like that obviously have to be kept!

2. To make myself feel better, I've listened to this cover of Frozen's "Let It Go" about three dozen times. I'm in love with it:

3. Warning: Rugby talk ahead. Ireland won Six Nations this year with a win over France this morning. There was a lot of smack talk between myself and some certain French macaron proprietors prior to the game. Sadly, the next time I'll get my macarons with a side of sports sass won't be until the World Cup. It's going to be a long three months.

4. Today's rugby game was also the last game for Brian O'Driscoll in an Ireland jersey. This is a bitter-sweet moment for Ireland fans. BOD, as his is affectionately known, has done great things for Irish rugby. He is also a fantastic humanitarian. I recommend having a hanky nearby while you watch this video.

5. I am obsessed with BBC's The Musketeers. I'm actually more excited about watching it on Sunday nights than I am about The Walking Dead and that's saying a lot. I think part of that might be simply because I've been watching a lot of fairly heavy drama TV shows and while this is definitely drama, it's a lot lighter in tone. 

Witty dialogue and a cute cast also helps.

6. Alumni Band season is starting up again. In other news, I'm a gigantic nerd. 

7.  St. Patrick's Day is on Monday. You know, just in case you somehow weren't aware of the biggest drinking day in the world.