I LOVE organization. I think that may be one of the reasons I hate my current job - I feel so unorganized. I'm drowning in work. I'm so busy trying to keep my head above water, that organizing is way down on the priority list.
But I digress...
Resolution #3 - ORGANIZE our house!!! I started yesterday with this closet (this picture actually taken AFTER I worked on it for an hour or so!):
One thing I discovered - that whole 2nd shelf is full of candles. My mom doesn't burn a lot of candles, so she gives me ones she doesn't want. I got a ton of candles when I had a "At Home America" party several years ago as hostess gifts. And, I've bought a few candles, too. I do LOVE candles - almost as much as organization. But I realize that over the past few years I have been buying and burning specific brands and scents. As a result, I have this shelf-full of candles that has been growing for years. So...yesterday and today I have been burning candles. One in almost every room. All day. In the name of organization.
On January 2nd, Joe and I accompanied my parents to a restaurant that they had seen on their new favorite show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives that they watch on the Food Network. The restaurant was Tip Top Diner in San Antonio and is claimed to have the best chicken-fried steak anywhere. So, we had CFS all-around.
What I am about to say could be considered treason in the Great State of Texas, but during that meal I realized something. I don't like chicken fried steak. GASP!!! I know how shocking it seems, but I voiced my opinion to Joe on the way home and he agreed. Of course, he's from Illinois, so he doesn't have to worry. As a Yankee, he's allowed not to like chicken-fried steak. What's more shocking about this discovery is that aside from the fatty, grisly meat that I don't like, they use too much breading. I KNOW - I'm the biggest bread lover in the world!!! How can it be that something has too much breading? Baffling.
So...this discovery has led me to my next resolution for the year. No more chicken-fried steak. EXCEPT at Babe's, which I do like because they don't overbread and they have the best gravy I've ever tasted and, frankly, anything smothered in that probably tastes good.
First of all...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I love New Year's. I spend lots of time every year making resolutions and thinking about how the new year might be better than the last. It's an opportunity for change and it fills me with hope every year. But then, February rolls around and I'm back to same 'ole me. I LOVE my life, but, it's the little things I'd like to change. Things like getting birthday presents to people on time and watching less TV and reading one night a week. And, of course, being healthier and losing weight. But, let's not go there just yet.
Here I am today...
I would bet that most of my friends would give anything to have a day like this - laying on the couch under my favorite blanket, reading a book. Sometimes I even take a little nap. It's blissful, but I think I do this too often. So, besides buying a NEW couch, one of my resolutions is to get off this couch!
I took the long road through college - working full-time and going to school part-time. Toward the end, when I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, I really started kicking it in high gear, taking 3 classes and working full-time. It was busy!!! I never had time to lay on the couch and do nothing. Then, there was the CPA exam. For years after that schedule, I could never just do nothing. I always had to be doing something. But, somehow I guess I learned and now I'd like to find a happy medium. So...there's resolution #1.
For the record, we did get out of the house today. Today, we went to see Valkyrie at the movie theatre close to our house. It was pretty good. The review on the radio said that Tom Cruise is a bad actor surrounded by good actors in this film. I used to love Tom Cruise, but now I don't really care for him that much. Mostly this pertains to some choices he's made in his personal life and also for some of his personal values and opinions. Oddly, I realize that a lot of people would feel the same way about me, but fortunately, I don't live my life in the public eye. At any rate, the movie was good - and interesting if you like history. And it got me off the couch!
Everyone says that Christmas is for the kids, so if that's true, maybe Joe and I should start skipping Christmas. My niece and nephews are all grown, so Christmas for the Knight family isn't the same anymore. In fact, we aren't even getting together to celebrate until Saturday - 2 days after Christmas is over. Joe's nieces and nephews are 1,000 miles away in the frozen tundra that is central Illinois right now, and with only one day off (for Joe anyway), it's not feasible to make that trek - or risk getting stuck. Joe and I - long ago - made a pact not to buy Christmas presents for each other. Our gift is that of travel - a gift that we give each other all year around. (I enjoy it each time we take a fabulous vacation, and then curse it when I have no gift to open on Christmas.)
I believe that in reality, Santa Claus is for kids. Big presents and bows and trees and lights. As an adult, I admittedly enjoy that too, but it's not the same as the wide-eyed expression on a child's face. But Christmas is for everyone because Christmas is about hope, joy, and the birth of Jesus. Christmas is about generosity and love. Christmas is about sharing and family. And all of those things are for the adults, too.
I got this poem in an e-mail from a Yahoo! group that I'm a member of. It's a group of women who used to crop at Recollections before it, sadly, closed last year. I thought it was so funny, I sent it to my scrapbooking friends, but I guess everyone is too busy with Christmas plans and work. So I'm posting it now along with a picture of why I think it's so funny!!!
Twas the night before Christmas, I'm glued to the tree. I'm wondering what Santa brought just for me. Could it be cardstock or chipboard or lace? Or a Cricut, I said, with a smile on my face. And that's when I heard him, "Hi Santa, " I said "You know....good little girls Should be in their beds." "I know I should Santa, And now I've got caught. But I was just so excited To see what you brought." "Well, let's take a look In this room where you work. " He shook his head quickly, And left with a jerk. I heard him exclaim As he put it in gear. "You've got enough crap, I'll see you next year!"
Yeah - that really IS my scrapbook area. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I lost some momentum quick with my daily travel journal, didn't I? Well...sorry about that! Here's the rest of our Dublin experience:
Day 2:
Did I mention how tough the time change is to Europe? Well…more on that later. For now, I will say that we watched a movie that 2nd night – Armageddon, but I had trouble staying awake and then Joe had trouble staying awake. I got the gist of it and I think Joe decided that he liked it much better 15 years ago, but we managed to mostly stay awake until 8:00 or 8:30. Then we went to sleep and although we both woke up a few times, it was only for a few moments at a time and we slept all the way until 8:45 the next morning!!! This victory, however, would be short-lived.
The sun does shine sometimes in Dublin and it was shining today. So we decided to take advantage and go to the Guinness Storehouse because we knew they had an incredible bar at the top that overlooked the city. We bought a Dublin Pass when we arrived at the airport. The Dublin Pass gets you into lots of attractions for the one price you pay. The bad thing about it is that you have to use it on consecutive days, which would end up kind of biting us later.
The Guinness Storehouse was our 4th brewery in the beers of the world tour. It was preceded by Heineken, Miller, and Coors. I actually thought it was quite well done – especially the actual brewing part. This one was a self-guided tour. They had a big “bin” of barley so you could see what it looked like and a cool display of hops and then a huge very cool waterfall because, yes, there is water in beer. There was lots of good information about the history of the brewery, too. The highlight of this brewery tour, though, is the Skybar. Up on the 7th floor, you get a 360 degree view of Dublin. We could see all the way to the ocean. We got our free beers and Joe drank his and I drank about 1/3 of mine, because let’s be honest – I don’t care for Guinness. Great story and all, but dark beer is bitter and just not good to me.
Guess which beer is Joe's and which beer is mine:
From the Guinness Storehouse, we headed to Kilmainham Gaol. Gaol is the Gaelic word for jail, and this is an old jail that is no longer in use. This was actually one of our favorite stops of our visit. We got a look at prison conditions before prison reform came around and it was pretty gruesome. We learned more about the potato famine as well. In fact, we learned that the prison population exploded from 700-900 to over 9,000 in 1850. This was due to 2 things – 1) a vagrancy act was passed by Britain that called for the arrest of any person found begging in the streets; but 2) (and more fascinating) people were so hungry during the potato famine that they would commit a crime just to be thrown in jail. Because no matter how bad jail was, at least you were guaranteed 2 meals a day – 2 more than you were getting at home and / or on the streets. The prison housed many political prisoners before it was shut down. Before Ireland gained its freedom from Britain, anyone who protested against Britain was thrown in jail. We actually saw the jail cell of a man who helped lead the revolution – a man that would later become the President and would lead the country for many years, Eamon de Valera. The jail has been used in 3 movies that we plan to add to our Netflix list – Michael Collins, The Italian Job (the original one), and In the Name of the Father.
And now to the sad, sad story of adjusting to the time change. After our day out and about we returned back to our hotel and spent a couple of hours planning our next day and looking a few things up on the free internet. A little before 10:00PM, we turned in. We both fell sound asleep immediately. Only to wake up at midnight. Wide awake – both of us. We talked and commiserated about being awake for 2 hours until Joe fell back asleep. I, however, was not so lucky. I laid there praying for sleep for another 2 hours. At 4:00AM, I turned on the light to read because I thought I might lose my mind just laying there. I thought Joe was asleep enough it wouldn’t bother him – and it didn’t for about 15 seconds. But then he jumped up, squinting at the light. So, I turned the light back off. At 4:15, I took my duvet and pillow into the bathroom and made a pallet on the floor. From there, I read my book for 45 minutes, but the floor was too hard and too cold, so I gave up and went back to bed at 5:00. And then I finally fell asleep. Sigh.
Day 3:
This is kind of where the Dublin Pass burned us. Another sunny day in Dublin and we might have enjoyed a stroll through St. Stephens Green and Merrion Square, but we couldn’t pass up seeing the rest of the places covered by our pass. The parks are free, so today we concentrated on the sights with admission costs, covered by our pass.
Our first stop for the day was Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle was built on the spot of the first Viking fortress. For 700 years the castle was occupied by the British viceroy – who implemented the will of the British royalty in Ireland when Ireland was still part of Great Britain. Today it is used for state functions, including the inauguration of the Irish president every 7 years. This is the room where the ceremony is held:
Our second stop was Christ Church Cathedral. Neither this, nor St. Patrick’s Cathedral was actually recommended by our official "tour guide," Rick Steves. They are both Church of Ireland and he felt that in “Catholic Ireland” the sights felt hollow. However, as they were covered by the Dublin Pass, we checked them out anyway. The Christ Church was particularly interesting because of its underground crypt. It is very extensive and kind of spooky. Christ Church Cathedral is the oldest structure still standing in Dublin.
Not far from Christ Church was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and he is celebrated around the world every year on March 17th – St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s is the national cathedral of Ireland. It was built in 1192, but the site has always been religious. On his journey through Ireland, St. Patrick is said to have passed through Dublin and baptized converts to Christianity at a holy well on the cathedral grounds. St. Patrick’s was home to one of Dublin’s most famous authors – Jonathan Swift – and he is, in fact buried here.
We decided to make the most of our Dublin Pass by sprinting over to the Dublin Writer’s Museum. This was really just an effort to maximize the Dublin Pass by going to a museum that charged admission. I’m going to have to quote Rick Steves on this one because he had it right on: “No other country so small has produced such a wealth of literature. As interesting to fans of Irish literature as it is boring to those who aren’t, this three-room museum features the lives and works of Dublin’s great writers.” Well…I didn’t know most of them, so I guess boring would be an adequate description.
After all that, we lost 0.55 Euro on the Dublin Pass – I really should have done better research on that one!!!
We walked back down O’Connell Street to the bus stop. O’Connell Street is the main street through the city centre. They had a pretty cool Christmas tree in the middle, which I wanted to photograph. We also checked out the General Post Office building. This one is not just any post office – it was from here that the Proclamation of Irish Independence was read in 1916 and kicked off the Easter Rising. The G.P.O. building itself – kind of an Irish Alamo – was the rebel headquarters and scene of a five-day bloody siege that followed the proclamation. Its pillars remain pockmarked with bullet holes.
With the help of Tylenol PM, I managed to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow would be our last day in the city.
Day 4:
The clouds moved back in and we were greeted with a dreary, misty day. Should I reiterate that buying the Dublin Pass, though great in theory, was probably not our best decision?
We spent today checking out the free museums that the Dublin Pass claimed to cover (I guess it covers special exhibits that cost extra). First, I wanted to head back to the end of O’Connell Street to get some pictures that I missed yesterday. The days are short here – the sun doesn’t rise until almost 9:00AM and sets about 4:30PM. Therefore, I didn’t get a picture of the Dublin Writer’s Museum. But, more than that, I wanted to visit the Garden of Remembrance, which is right across the street, and they were closing it as we arrived yesterday (the parks – including St. Stephen Green – all close at dusk). The Garden of Remembrance honors the victims of the 1916 Rising. It was dedicated in 1966, the 50 year anniversary of the revolt that ultimately led to Irish independence. The Irish flag flies above the park: green for Catholics, orange for Protestants, and white for the hope that they can live together in peace.
We passed through St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on the way to our next museum. Mass was just getting over as we arrived. This is Dublin’s leading Catholic Church, although it is not a Cathedral like Christ Church and St. Patrick’s are. It was very pretty and very busy and the good Catholic in Joe forbade me from taking photographs or even walking around much because we weren’t appropriately dressed for church in Ireland. So I guess I’ll just note that we were there.
Our next stop was the Chester Beatty Library. Chester Beatty was a rich American mining engineer who retired to Ireland in 1950 and later became Ireland’s first honorary citizen. It’s a small collection with one floor dedicated to the world’s great religions. The other floor is all about the written word, with topics including etching, medieval book binding, and fine old manuscripts. The oldest surviving copy of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is part of the collection. I was skeptical of this museum, but it was highly recommended and we both enjoyed it immensely.
Our final stop was the National Museum: Archaeology and History. I learned here that I’m not that interested in archaeology. I’m interested in what we LEARN from archaeology, but not the artifacts so much themselves. There was a wing dedicated to Viking Dublin, which was the most interesting.
As I walked around Dublin for the last 4 days I thought to myself, Paris has the Mona Lisa; Rome has the Sistine Chapel. Dublin isn’t a city as rich in art or history as a lot of other European cities, but it has a great character. And the people are so fantastically friendly. It made the visit such a great pleasure.
We had another unfortunate sleep night on this last night before our journey was concluded. I did not take Tylenol PM because I was afraid that I wouldn’t make the 6:00AM alarm for our trip to the airport. So, instead, I lay awake for hours. I tried to read, but I woke up Joe again and this time he had trouble going back to sleep. I believe that I finally managed to go to sleep about 3:00AM. At 3:39AM, the fire alarm in our room went off. OMG!!! My heart was POUNDING!!! It only sounded for a few seconds, so I figured it was probably a false alarm, but to be sure I called the front desk. They did confirm that, so we managed to get back to sleep for the couple of hours we had before it was time to get ready for our journey home.
Our flight home was fairly uneventful. We did, fortunately, get business class again on the way home, but we didn’t get to sit together. By the time we reached our house at 9:00PM, we were pretty exhausted, but it was worth it. Another fabulous trip in the books.
Let's see...cloudy, dreary, river through town...I guess that could be a million places, so I'll just say it - DUBLIN!!! It was almost Paris this time...so close, but between the bazillion things I had at work and the millions of things I had at home, I didn't get it planned and researched. And the thing is...I don't do very well without a plan. Dublin was already planned, the flights were WAY more open, and I already knew where to stay, so voila! Here we are.
First I have to say that our flight was quite enjoyable. Other than getting freaked out about the Chicago weather (had to connect through Chicago), it was one of the smoothest vacation experiences we've had non-reving!! We got business class, which is as good as it gets on a 767 and that was fine with us. We left Dallas at 1:00PM on Sunday and arrived here at 9:00AM-ish on Monday. We had quite a long layover, but that was our choice to get to Chicago while the getting was good.
Europe is a tough first day. It's 4:45 in the afternoon and I can't keep Joe awake. And, in fact, I'm blogging to stay awake myself. But, I have found it's the best way for me to operate - try to stay awake as long as possible on that first day to adjust to the time change.
So...we arrived today, made our way into the city to our hotel and started checking things out. Nothing serious - just walking around and getting our bearings. The bridges in the picture above are the Millennium Bridge and the Ha' Penny Bridge (named for the halfpence toll people used to pay to cross it) which cross the River Liffey. We also checked out Henry and Grafton Streets - both shopping meccas and busy, busy, busy right now.
This is Trinity College. It was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I to establish Protestant thinking about God. Today, it is the most prestigious college in Ireland. Originally the student-body was limited to rich, Protestant males. Women were admitted in 1903 and Catholics were given formal permission to attend in the 1970s (although the school actually allowed them much earlier). Today, 50% of the student body are women and 70% are Catholic. Trinity College is also home to the Book of Kells, which was written on vellum (at that time baby calf skin) in the late 8th century by Irish monks. It is an enthusiastically decorated copy of the four gospels written in Latin and is the finest piece of art still in existence from the Dark Ages. Unfortunately, it was not on display today. Sigh. We will try again in a couple of days.
Along central Dublin is a street named O'Connell Street. This street is named after Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator of the Irish Catholics. We learned about him and visited his home when we were in Ireland in April. The statue below is of O'Connell, is in the median of O'Connell street, and was designed by Daniel Foley. I'm sure he must be a long-lost relative.
The spire behind Mr. O'Connell's statue is the Millennium Spire, which was completed in 2003. Taken from Rick Steves, Ireland: "While it trumpets rejuvenation on that side of the river, it's a memorial to nothing and has no real meaning." We've heard that Dubliners call it the tallest waste of 5 million euro in all of Europe. Here are it's nicknames: Stiletto in the Ghetto, the Stiffy on the Liffey, and the Pole in the Hole.
Our quick tour ended in the Temple Bar area which is the town's hot spot - especially (we've heard) in the evenings. We had a late lunch at Gallagher's, a place known for it's boxty. Boxty is a traditional Irish dish (obviously) that we thought we needed to try. It's like a pancake with meat and gravy inside. Very tasty. I had the chicken boxty and Joe had the Gaelic boxty (which is meat with mushrooms). A side of mashed potatoes - and let me tell you no one does potatoes like the Irish - and a couple of beers and we are set! I think the beers may be adding to our inability to stay awake, however.
Not sure which sightseeing adventure we will take on tomorrow, but hopefully we'll be good and rested and ready to go!!!
Oh, and as far as the title...Joe and I are both aware that Desmond (from Lost) is really Scottish, but his trademark "Aye...brother..." has become our motto when in Ireland and our response to every affirmative question!
Are you hungry?: Aye...brother
Do you want to go back to the hotel?: Aye...brother
Are we silly?: Aye...brother...but we're in Dublin, so who cares!!!???!!!
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Guess which beer is Joe's and which beer is mine:
