TG(Tomorrow)IF

I hit checkout time at work today and all I could think about was this gif.

It's just been one of those work weeks and I still have one day to go. Ugh.

On the upside, I now have my stepmom's grandma's fine china. I know, that relationship connection is a bit of a ride. It sounds like the start of an urban legend. To keep it simple, she's grandma from here on out because that's what I actually called her when she was alive. When grandma moved into her first assisted living home, she gave the china to my stepmom. I've been asking for it since I was... five? I don't ever remember not being vocal about wanting the china. I am forever grateful that my little brother was a brother because he had zero interest in it.

As of last night, the china is mine. Half of it is. The other half was still in my stepmom's storage. It will be mine soon!

I'd post a picture but I haven't unpacked mine yet and there are a lot of rose china patterns so... you'll see it some day.

Another upside is that a cousin is coming to visit in a few weeks. YAY!

Finally, I'm spending this weekend volunteering at the Victoria Highland Games and Celtic Festival. I'm volunteering with the hurling matches so I'll be surrounded by the Irish diaspora while I'm there. Still, I'll be sure to venture over to the Scottish exhibitions for the lovely... views ;)

It's sure to be a great weekend.

Maybe I can make it through that last day of work.

Ireland 2014: Family Lore

When my aunt Mary was born there was serious concern that she would not make it and it was decided that she needed to be baptised as soon as possible so she wouldn't die with original sin on her. Priorities!

Someone was sent to collect my granddad from the pub - this was 1933 rural Ireland after all, men didn't stick around for the birth - and told him to collect the priest and a godfather. He asked his drinking buddy at the pub if he'd be willing to be the godfather, his drinking buddy said 'sure', and that is how Patrick Kavanagh became my aunt's godfather.

At least, that's how my dad tells the story.

I'm sure this is a shock to none of you, but the Irish do have a habit of improving stories. In fact, some might accuse them of making up half the stories they tell. Which is why I don't know exactly what is and isn't true about this story. Patrick Kavanagh being Mary's godfather, however, is true. (Mary being on death's door is also true. Her ability to cheat death is renowned in the family.)

Still, it has always left my dad with a soft spot for Patrick Kavanagh. Not only is Patrick Kavanagh a well-known (in Ireland) poet, but he's from Co. Monaghan! Patrick Kavanagh later settled permanently in Dublin to help his writing career where, as the story goes, he met a young up-and-coming folk group called the Dubliners and they discussed putting his poem Dark Haired Mariam Ran Away to music. One of the members of the band, a fabulous balladeer called Luke Kelly, suggest instead that it be set to an old Irish tune, Fáinne Geal an Lae (Dawning of the Day in English).

What does all this have to do with  my trip to Ireland?

Well, On Raglan Road is one of those songs that I always find myself humming. If we ever drink together, there is a good chance I will sing it for you. It's not my only party piece, but it's my most consistent party piece.

I knew that Conor's place was close to Raglan Road, but I didn't realise how close it was until we were walking home from town after Croke Park. We turned south too soon and had to cut across to get on the correct road when I saw the sign for Raglan Road. I squealed and did my happy dance as I pointed at the sign to Katie. And then I made her take a picture.

I know I've already shared this picture but I was just that excited about this. This moment was almost better than the rainbow at Slieve League.

Ireland 2014: Glendalough and Kilkenny

The south end of Dublin backs up against the Wicklow Mts. The mountains (and as a Western Canadian, I use the term 'mountain' very loosely here) are lovely with plenty of hiking trails, including the Wicklow Way. About 1500 years ago, a monk named Kevin (later St. Kevin) fled to the mountains to find solace and settled in a valley which had two lakes. The plan kind of backfired as people followed Kevin to learn from him and study his teachings. The end result was the founding of Glendalough.

At its height, Glendalough was a huge monastic city. Despite centuries of Viking raids, it was an invasion of English cavalry in 1398 that put an end to it. Now, it's home to sheep and a daily rotation of tourists.

The Round Tower

There are plenty of day tours that go to Glendalough but if you're up for renting a car, it is well worth a longer visit than any of the tours will give you. With only two hours there, we had to skip a lot of it to make it back to the bus in time. Plus the tours all tend to come through around the same time (roughly 11-1 is high tourist time), so you can time it to miss the largest of the crowds. (We went with PaddyWagon tours. I'll talk about them later.)

The area around the Lower Lake was later used as a cemetery.
If you know one thing about me? I love old cemeteries.

After a quick turn around the lower lake area, we booted it over to the upper lake to try and get away from the two rather large guided tours clustered around various points of the site.

It wasn't until we were flipping through our pictures after the trip that we realized we had both taken the same photo of each other.

The upper lake hiding behind some trees

We were hoping to get up to Kevin's Cell, a cave in the mountain that is reputed to be where Kevin actually lived but we were running short on time so we stuck with the sites closer to the actual lake.

The ruins of the Reefert Church

It was only us and the nice French couple we befriended on our tour bus at this site.
Despite leaving us rushing to get back to the bus, I'm glad we made the effort to get away from the crowd.

We took the slightly longer, boardwalk path back to our tour bus which passed through some farm land.

When I saw this sign I started laughing. All I could picture was some dog
wandering into the field and asking the sheep if they had heard about climate change.
"What's going to happen when the rains stop and there is no grass left?
What will you eat?"
"BAAAAAA!"

The lower lake

Dear Dogs, DO NOT worry these sheep!

From Glendalough, our tour headed through the Wicklow Mt National Park to the Wicklow Gap. The drive through the Wicklow mountains really was beautiful. Wicklow gets overlooked by tourists in favour of the South-West and West of Ireland, but it's well worth the effort to see this part of Ireland.

The Braveheart wedding scene was filmed to the right of where this pictures was taken.
In fact, most of 'Scotland' that is seen in Braveheart is actually the Wicklow Mts.

Our tour then headed to Kilkenny which is one of the reasons I picked this tour. Kilkenny was kind of a bust for us. For two very specific reasons, I was Miss. Pissypants for the rest of our day tour. It was lovely place and I will make it a point to get back there (especially for longer than a couple hours), but it was just not my day in Kilkenny.

Side note: I found out from my dad that Kilkenny is where the pub with our family name is. If you're on my Facebook, you can see a picture of it in the old Ireland photos. As I was nine when that photo was taken, I could only recall that the pub was somewhere between Dublin and Rosscarberry (one of the my aunts lives there). Just another reason to get back to Kilkenny.

Our tour took the motorway back to Dublin and got us back in town pretty much on time to when they said they would. Overall, I had no real problems with the tour company - reasonably priced, we got exactly what they said we would, the tour bus was nice, clean and comfortable - but I wasn't too crazy about our tour guide. He was friendly enough and had some great stories, but he also gave out 'facts' which I know to be falsehoods. And easily verifiable falsehoods, at that. It meant that when he was giving out facts that I didn't know, I had a really hard time believing him. For people on that tour who a) haven't spent multiple summer holidays in Ireland and b) haven't read anything on Irish history beyond the chapter at the start of their guide book, they're reliant on their tour guide to impart knowledge on them. They believed him. Would I book with PaddyWagon again? Possibly, but if I saw that man in the driver's seat, I'd return to the representative and ask for a refund.

Being our last night in Dublin until the end of our trip, we headed out with Conor to Mary Mac's in Ballsbridge. In the true, time-honoured way of our family, Conor and I both randomly sang a song each in the pub before finishing the night with phone calls to any members of the family we could think of who weren't in Ireland.

This pretty much sums up our Friday night

Ireland 2014: Dublin

Remember that time I went to Ireland on holidays and then never blogged about it? As we all know, if you don't blog about it then it never happened. Right?

Truth is, I have stared and deleted this post at least once a week since I've been back. Talking about Ireland is something that comes very naturally to me - in fact, I usually have a problem shutting up about it - but I spoke extensively about Ireland on an old blog (found here) after my trip there in 2011 and writing about Ireland this time just felt really repetitive.

Still, I do have stories I want to share so I'm going to suck it up and just be repetitive.

We flew to Dublin via London's Heathrow and I was reminded why I disliked Heathrow. The airport is in a perpetual state of 'upgrading'. If it ever finishes, I fully expect a minotaur to live in the middle of that maze. Still, punchy and sleep deprived, the signs looked an awful lot like a moose.

I'm sure our continually shouts of "follow the moose!"
really endeared us to the other travellers.

We arrived in Dublin and made our way to Ballsbridge in south Dublin to stay with my cousin, Conor.

Patriotic reminder at the Dublin Airport to drive on the left.

I had never stayed with Conor before and I have to say that Ballsbridge was a great location. We were close enough to walk into town if we were feeling up to but there was also a direct bus just on the main road and the Landsdowne DART station just a 5 min walk away along the river. If you're going to Dublin but aren't really jazzed on the idea of staying downtown amidst the noise, there were a fair number of hotels in the Ballsbridge area.

We took our first day in Dublin easy, heading into town around lunch time to do a little casual sight-seeing before attending the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. If there is one thing I insist you do if you ever go to Dublin, the Literary Pub Crawl is it. One thing I recommend, however, is keep your drinks at the pubs to a half pint or a glass of wine. Other than the first and last pub, you usually only have about 20 mins to get your order and drink up before you're off again. At the first pub, The Duke, they have a longer set in a private room. But once you leave the Duke, the educational parts of the pub crawl come between the pubs. You don't need to know anything about Irish literature to enjoy the pub crawl (but you'll definitely know something when you finish the crawl). I have no pictures of that night that didn't end up horribly blurry, otherwise I would post them right here.

We headed out to Kilmainham Gaol early the next morning. You can't make reservations and I really wanted to make sure we got to the jail as Katie said she wanted to know more about Irish history.

The Victoria Wing. If it looks familiar, it's been used in a few movies.

The opening and closing of the jail pretty much bookend the Irish struggle for independence. The tours are about an hour long and worth every penny. The museum attached to the jail is fantastic with a plethora of artifacts from former inmates.

"Beware of the Risen People that have harried and held, Ye that have bullied and bribed."

Paraphrased from the poem The Rebel by Patrick Pearse. The term 'risen people' stems from the Jim Larkin quote "The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise." It was a call to the working class to rise up in protest. If you read Irish literature, especially Fenian or Republican literature, from the early 20th century, the idea of risen people is a common theme.

This is the cell where Patrick Pearse was held after the Easter Rising of 1916. Patrick was one of the instigators of the uprising and read the Proclamation of the Republic out loud from the steps of the G.P.O. Patrick and his brother, Willie, would both be found guilty of treason and sentenced to execution by firing squad.

The plaque on the wall of the area where the executions took place listing those leaders who were executed for the Easter Rising.

After Kilmainham, we made our way to Dublin Castle and its adorable little chapel.

Apparently, you're supposed to pay to go into the chapel. I always enjoy visiting it so much that I would totally pay for it... if I had seen the sign "please pay for your chapel visit in the castle" before I left the chapel. Whoops! Next time.

On our way to grab a bite to eat, I took Katie past this fine establishment.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first bar I ever got right and truly shitfaced in. My cousins, scared of getting their 16 year old cousin drunk and then returning her to her father would only buy me half pints. Nine half pints later, I needed help walking down the stairs. (Whose bright idea was it to sit upstairs?)

After that stumble through memory lane, a visit to the Guinness Storehouse was in order.

The lease that started it all!

I've been to the Guinness Storehouse enough times to last me until the end of days. That would be three times if anyone is wondering. One of the things I did finally try on this trip was pulling my own pint.

They look so pretty! I want to drink them all!

You get a group lesson and take turns pulling your own pint. When it's done, you get a certificate with your name and get to take your pint up to the Gravity Bar at the top of the Storehouse to drink it. While I was worried about mucking up my pint to the point of not being able to drink it, it turned out to be a really fun and educational option. Also, my pint tasted damn fine. The only downside was that we starting judging every Guinness pint poured for us for the rest of our trip. It was kind of annoying but we couldn't stop. doing. it!

You can hire us for all Guinness pint-pulling needs.

After a quick bite in town (and another pint) we headed home for an early night. We had a day tour to Glendalough set for the next day and we did not want to be sleeping for the drive through the Wicklow Mountains!

After dinner wander across the O'Connell St bridge

Until next time!

Elaine - Part Two

I wrote about Elaine on the anniversary of her disappearance. Based on her past, it was assumed that she had committed suicide.

Roughly a month ago, her remains were found along with evidence that it was not suicide. Other than an amendment to my original post, I chose not to mention it directly other than to a few select friends.

This past Friday, a man was arrested and charged with her murder.

It is a surreal feeling to read a newspaper article about something so grisly and know the person in the story. While I am both elated that there is a strong chance of justice in a situation where we thought there was little, I am angry that one person could have altered so many lives with the senseless taking of Elaine's life.

No amount of justice will bring her back.

So, in memory of Elaine, please hug your loved ones and tell them you love them.  Do it now and do it often.

Sunday Snippets

Being the anniversary of Elaine's disappearance, I took Thursday off work. The last place I wanted to be was surrounded by people who a) didn't know about her and b) I didn't want to get emotional in front of. It turned out to be the right choice as I cried twice before 10:00am.

I spent some time with my dad, went blackberry picking with my mom, and then baked a blackberry pie with said berries. All in all, it was a much better way to spend a day remembering Elaine then feeling alone and weepy in a soul-crushing cubicle. (This is not a commentary on my work place specifically, all cubicles are designed to be soul-crushing. In fact, I'm pretty sure the word 'cubicle' means 'four wall soul destroyer' in Sanskrit.)

Say hello to my mom, the woman who taught me how to bake.
Home Ec Teacher Moms for the win!

I love to bake but living alone (and not having a dishwasher), I don't do it very often. When I do bake, I tend to keep one or two pieces of the baking for myself and then give the rest away to family, friends, co-workers and the employees of my favourite coffee shops and restaurants.

If you are a proprietor of such an establishment and you see me coming, you want to befriend me. So far this year, I have given out Sansa's Lemon Cakes, Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Bailey's Cream Cheese Icing, Zopfe (a type of Swiss bread), and Blackberry Pie. Plus, there's another round of the cupcakes already in the works thanks to a certain beloved employee's imminent return to Dublin. I pay you to serve me and I give you food... not a bad deal.

My younger brother is significantly younger than me. This means that for the releases of 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz', he had to patiently wait until they were available on DVD. With the release of 'The World's End' this past weekend, we finally got to a Cornetto Trilogy movie in the theatres together. We decided to forego a sunny afternoon outside for the confines of a darkened theatre in which we proceeded to laugh our asses off. According to my text messages, we made our plans to see this together on June 21st. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only geek in the family.