The Varros Come to Ireland

They came. They saw. They drank Guinness. We had a wonderful week with our New York friends, the Varros. The weather didn't really cooperate, but that didn't stop us from doing all of the fun Dublin stuff. We also took a 3 day road trip to Galway and Bunratty Castle and to County Kerry--Sarah's ancestral home (she was a Sullivan until last October). We saw sheep and cows and goats (oh my!) and enjoyed our fair share of Irish goodies and full-car sing-a-longs. Pictures!



That, my friends, is Picasa's fancy new slideshow embedding feature. Pretty cool! I like to embed things within other things. Like embedding pigs into blankets, or jalepenos into poppers. Mmmm, snacks filled with other snacks.

Baby update: we have have movement! Unless it's some kind of weird prolonged bout of gas, I've been feeling Max Jr. squirm around for 2 weeks now. It feels a lot like riding a roller coaster, specifically the part where you go down a big drop and your stomach follows you down a little bit slower than the rest of your insides. But just slightly and only for a second. It's really quite amazing. Nothing like the hiccups and acrobatics that I'm sure will start in the months to come, but enough to bring a smile to my face when I'm just sitting there minding my own business and he reminds me that I'm not alone.

Other than that, it's time to pack it all in here in Dublin. Moving (part one) is less than 2 weeks away, and there's much to do. So I'd better get doing.

I'm too sexy for just about everything

This commercial has been on here for over a month, so I have no idea why I only thought about posting it today.



Round two of the Turkey pics are up. Underwater cameras, action sampler, fish eye, all the plastic and artsy cameras.

Turkish Delight

We had a wonderful week in Turkey, a great last hurrah as my days of living in Europe, and flying at all, come to an end. What? What's that you say? You want to see pictures? Well, I'll have to see what I can do about that. Let's start with 42 of the 143 pictures from the digital camera, and I'll follow up later this week with the 6 rolls of film from various Lomo, action samplers, and underwater cameras. Yikes!

Highlights:

Seeing our friends from Israel. Since none of them will be able to make it out to SF for the wedding in August, we invited everyone to join us in Bodrum for a pre-wedding celebration. Remember, these are the same people who engineered and produced the famous zombie engagement of 2005, so it was no surprise when they surprised us with a mock wedding on Friday night, complete with a rabbi, a priest, and Elvis. It was terrific--and good practice for the real thing! Only 74 days!



Boat trip on a Turkish Yacht. We spent all day Saturday cruising around the Aegean Sea, snorkeling, and soaking up the sun. It was my first time snorkeling and I had such a blast. The water wasn't the most tropical, most of the fish were pretty much sand and water colored with a few blue or orange guys swimming around. But between the snorkel mask and my contact lenses, I think it was the first time I've ever actually seen underwater. It's a whole new world, and I want to live in that world all the time. And then there was the ice cream boat at one of the snorkeling stops. Genius!



Turkey is also the land of meat on a stick. I've eaten enough kebabs in the last week to last 2 lifetimes. And the cherries! The had these really big, juicy cherries at our local fruit and veg market, plus every restaurant and mini market and grocery store has cherry juice--the ice cream vendors on the beach promenade even have cherry ice cream! I got my fill of my favorite fruit flavor in all of it's various forms. Delicious.

Then there was the Hamam (Turkish Bath). What a weirdly fun experience! We skipped the sauna portion of the bath on account of baby Samson, but the soap massage was out of this world and the oil massage was to die for. The whole thing was made even more hilarious by the super friendly Turkish guy in a skirt and a Beckham jersey who dried us off after the soap massage. What a surreal time that was.

It was hard to come back to Dublin, especially considering that the weather was crap yesterday, but it's kind of nice to be back. I'm in the home stretch now, only one more month until I go home. I'm starting to get bigger, and next week marks the half way point in my pregnancy, so it will be great to get back to the Bay Area and be able to start the next chapter of my life. As much fun as I've had living in Europe the past year, I'm ready to be somewhere that we can stay for a few years, to have the dogs and cats back in my life, to go back to the office, all that stuff. Not that the next year will bring anything resembling peace and quiet, I realize that. But it's going to be such a great thing to start our new family, and I can hardly wait.

Gobble Gobble

Well, after another in a medium-sized string of disappointing manicure/pedicures (the Irish mani/pedi is a crap experience), I'm ready for our trip to Turkey. A whole week of tankinis, flip flops, shorts and swim fins! Not to mention ancient culture, like Ephesus, and super vacation-y boat trips.

You just know the pictures will be plentiful.

I Demand Satisfaction

Ooooh, I've got Turkey on the brain, in more ways than one. I simply can't wait to go to Bitez and Bodrum! Snorkeling! Lounging! Dolmas! Turkish Delight! Only 14 more days! I also simply can't wait to have a Beli Deli turkey sandwich! The oven roasted turkey! The soft french roll! The tomatoes! Only 54 more days! Yum!

Other US-centric cravings:
Froot Loops
Thai food
Chorizo Burritos

Scottish Road Trip

It turns out that I was quite ambitious in my Scottish trip planning, as far as distances between destinations go. We did a ton of driving over the bank holiday weekend, and we saw an awful lot of Scotland. The iPod rwally came in handy, providing us with 3 days of extra super fantastic driving tunes, from Weezer to Neil Diamond to David Bowie to Neko Case. Of course, it was amazing! We spent most of the time in Highlands which is known as the UK's wilderness area. There were tons of lochs, dozens of castles and ruins, and copious amounts of sheep and pheasants. Pictures are up at Picasa Web, and I apologize for the obvious lack of sheep.



On Saturday, we took the ferry from Northern Ireland to Southern Scotland and proceeded to drive up the west coast along Loch Lomond to the lower-to-central Highlands, spending the night in a wonderful hotel in Ballachulish. Max encouraged me to try the haggis, and I have to admit, it was pretty darn tasty. I won't be rushing over to the interweb to look for any recipes, but I did enjoy it.



Sunday was whiskey day, and we drove through the Highlands up to Loch Ness and east to the River Spey where a good deal of Scottish single malt whiskey is distilled. On the way to our first distillery tour of the day, we stopped on the Glenlivet estate for Max to try his hand at clay pigeon shooting. (No clay pigeons we're harmed, but Max's shoulder is a bit worse for wear.) We toured The Glenlivet and Glenfiddich distilleries, learning the intricate differences between Scottish and Irish whiskey--Max is a total expert at this point. We also happened upon the annual Speyside Whiskey Festival which brought together a lot of smaller, independent distilleries--and more tasting. It was beautiful driving, and a lot of fun. To top it all off, we stayed the night in an old castle that had been converted into a hotel. It was really something special, and the grounds were astounding, not to mention the food and hospitality.



We started off bright and early Monday morning to make the long drive down through Braemor, Perth, and Glasgow back to the west coast to catch out ferry back to Northern Ireland. The weather was dramatic and mixed, with lots of heavy spells of rain and bright sun and rainbows all over. We drove the last leg down from Belfast to Dublin and arrived home as two very tired, but very happy and satisfied road trippers.

Next trip: Bodrum, Turkey in a few weeks, followed by Spain in June.

Where, oh where has my extra super fantastic blogger gone?

I've gone to wonderful and amazing places! Like Giant's Causeway:



And Glenveagh Castle and Gardens:



And the Waterford Crystal Factory Tour:



And the Old Midleton Whiskey Distillery:



And the Blarney Stone!



Did you know that in order to kiss the Blarney Stone you have to hang backwards over the edge of a very tall castle while an old, whistling Irish man grasps your midsection? Because you do.

My mom has been visiting from California this week, and she brought the sunny skies with her. We've been touring Ireland in our trusty rental car and having a brilliant time (as they say here). The days have simply flown by, and, sadly, Mom goes home tomorrow. But she definitely got her fill of sheep, scones and thick Irish brogues. Come back any time, Mom!

Cheerio Gov

I'm off to London tomorrow to visit my soon-to-be-brother-and-sister-in-law. I love these city breaks that one can take while living in Europe. Barely an hour on a plane and I can spend the day site-seeing, eating at new restaurants, seeing dear-but-not-so-near ones. I'd like to take a lot more of these city breaks over the next 6 months--Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Dubrovnik. Even though I hardly spend a weekend in Dublin anymore, it still feels like there's so much more to see and there's no way I'll even see a tiny chunk of it. I've got to knock the holiday machine into high-gear. I mean, how often do you get the chance to live in Europe for a year? The smart readers of this blog will promptly buy stock in Aer Lingus.

It's so fun, I'm going to be sick

Ah, the Tea Cups. Disneyland's way of telling you that you've had too much popcorn, french fries, and/or cotton candy.

We really had a terrific time in Paris last weekend. Two fun-filled days in Euro Disney followed by two day filled to the brim with historicois touristicois. And you can see it all here and here! The weather was really cooperative inasmuch as we stayed mostly dry.



The don't call Paris the City of Lights for nothing!



Euro Disney may be running a little low on the pixie dust and a little high on the whole French thing, but you can't beat it. From Space Mountain: Mission Deux to Aerosmith's Rock n' Rollercoaster, I had a big ol' goofy on my grin for 48 hours straight.

If they sold original flavor mouse ears at Euro Disney, which for some unknown reason they don't, I would have bought them this time.

Bonjour, Souris

Hooray, we're off to Euro Disney bright and early tomorrow morning! There are very few things I would wake up at 4 am for. An all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast is one of them. So is a road trip with Mir. Euro Disney is definitely on that list. With a 7 am flight from Dublin and tranferring to the RER in Paris, we should be riding Space Mountain by noon tomorrow.

As I typed that last sentence, I suddenly got all glossy-eyed and far away in my head. Space Mountain...mmmmmmmmm...

But I digress. Combine a 4 am wake up time with the Disney-related excitement of a 6 year old and we're talking zero sleep tonight. Maybe an hour or two at the most. I'm going to be running on pure adreneline tomorrow, baby. Adrenelaine and various forms of sugar, mostly shaped like mouse ears. Oh yeah!

Let's harken back to a previous Euro Disney experience, shall we? Hark, hark.

Soundtrack of strange

The drive up to Northern Ireland was great. We had clear blue skies on Saturday and some spectacular countryside. Sunday's coldness brought with it a super thick misty fog which gave the drive a beautiful and other worldly feeling. And that deserved a beautiful and other worldly sing-along, compliments of Beyonce.

There's nothing like a good road trip. Max and I have often talked about driving cross country together--across the US, that is. Driving across Ireland takes about 3 hours. There are so many places we haven't seen, so much music to sing along to--at the top of our lungs. So many rest areas, squashed penny machines, random diners and truckstops that need to be seen, photographed, and experienced by us. Think of all of the national parks and monuments we could see, the postcards we could send, the happy meal toys we could collect. With a rich and velvety landscape like the US of A, a cross country trip should be required of every able citizen.

To be fair, I've done the cross country trip once before when I was 7, and we did it with a tent trailer. It was as spectacular as something so blantantly without dolls or cartoons could be to a 7 year old. But I'm looking forward to doing it as a grown up.

Crash Course in Israeli Holidays

There hasn't been much time to blog due to all of the fun I've been having. Here are some highlights:

1. Brekhat Ha-Meshushim (Hexagon Pool)



We took a little break in the Golan Heights over Christmas. The Hexagon Pool is on the Jordan River where it meets the Sea of Galilee, and it's this amazing pool of water surrounded by long hexagonal columns of rock and it looks amazing. Any Israeli will tell you about how it's the only place on earth like this. Very special. You like it.

2. The Original Israeli Pancake House. Super Fantastic!

3. Trick! I've been getting plenty of cuddles from my doggie nephew. He winks.



4. The Hevre: in Hebrew, a "hevre" is a group of close friends with names like "Yair" or "Yossi." By definition, they are dependable, funny, and like to drink. Many dinners and poker nights. The fun is non stop!

Pictoblog

I got the first 3 rolls of film from NYC-DC developed, 2 Holgas and an Action Sampler. Some highlights:



My brother brews beer in his Williamsburg, Brooklyn apartment. The whole dang place is filled with metal coils and giant glass jugs and things that create various types of carbonation. It's a great place to take pictures of light reflecting off of things. Things like beer-making equipment.



From the top of The Empire State Building, through the haze.

There should really be a warning on maps of Washington DC and Metro stations and hotel lobbies warning tourists NOT to use the Washington Monument as a directional landmark to try and find their way to or from somewhere. It looks the same on all 4 sides so it's incredibly disorienting. You might think you're walking from the Lincoln Memorial to the Smithsonian via the Bureau of Engraving, but you're actually walking form the Lincoln Memorial to the White House via some messed up path known as "The Eclipse." And since, by city ordinance, no buildings can be taller than the capital building (3 or 4 stories), there aren't a whole lot of other tall landmarks to use as directionals.

I'm just saying.

Early evening on the National Mall

It's humid in DC. Just look at that frizz:



Granted, it was a blustery day yesterday. Perfect weather for checking out the National Sculpture Garden. Yep. Some of our national art is damn strange.



And some of it so awesome, I would hypothetically cross the "Do not cross" line in order to get a better picture. Hypothetically.



Washington DC is more than a city of National thises, National thats, and National the others. It's also a global city of internationalness. Hence the International Spy Museum. It's fun to learn about how the whole world lies to one another in order to learns each other's secrets. And the gift shop was extraordinary. Plus, the sign is super snazzy (you know how I feel about marquees).



I know, I know. "What about the conference? You know, your job?" The conference is going well; it's good to see the international community coming together to promote Small Business. Plus, I get to practice my Swedish. There's a huge focus here on Women's Entrepreneurship, which is exciting especially as some of the Middle Eastern countries are starting to give their female citizens a few more of the freedoms afforded to their male counterparts--financial freedoms, physical freedoms--the elements necessary in enterprise creation. I've always felt that if the women in some of these more volatile societies had more freedom and social responsibilities, there would be less fighting, less religious fundamentalism, less classism and racism, and more education--the US included.

How's that for a tangent?

Taking the Metro in DC

The Blog is Back

(Warning: this entry contains graphic images that may offend some sensitive readers. Approximately eight fish were harmed in the creation of this entry.)

After seven glorious days at Arnold Lake, I am enjoying the amenities and air conditioning in my hotel room in our nation's capitol, Washington DC. Let me just say, there is nothing like spending your days swimming, canoeing, and walking around the lake. Here are a few pictures to prove it:



There was much paddling of the canoe. It's just like riding a bike! But wetter.



And where's there's a lake, there's fish!



Thankfully, where there's fish, our neighbor Chuck is close at hand to do the dirty work:



Now that's good eatin'.



We left it all behind today as we boarded the plane from Albany to Washington.



We are now enjoying the beautiful yet muggy Crystal City area, complete with underground mall, metro stop, and lovely fountains.



Soon, I will have remembered how to post blog entries that are more than just pictures. I promise.

Milford, NY: buying bait

Guess where I am?

Site-seeing in NYC

Lobster and Bacon Sandwich

Those are the four words I would use to describe Minneapolis, if I had to do so. The combination of vacation in Minneapolis and a gnarly case of strep throat have kept me from functioning properly for the last week. But you can't get rid of me that easily! I'm back, and swallowing no longer makes me cringe!



As you can tell from the picture, Minneapolis is cold. It actually snowed Sunday night! But apparently, it got much, much worse, as Ira sent me this the next day:



Screw that! I like boots and scarves and stuff as much as the next guy, but I also value my sanity which, as it turns out, requires the daytime temperature to be at least 15-20 degrees above freezing in order to operate as advertised.