2012 is going to be my year!

I think this is going to be my year.  2005 was pretty awesome - I graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, got engaged, and got married to the coolest guy around.  2012 has some pretty big shoes to fill.  But I think 2012 is going to be pretty amazing too.  12 is my favorite number.  This is the only "12" year that I am going to be alive for (god willing), so I'm going to have to make it an awesome one. 

I don't make resolutions, but I have adopted a motto for this year:

Yes, this is from a quotable magnet, and yes, it is kind of corny, but I really liked it and I feel like it really applies to me.  It made me realize that I tend to let my problems shape my life sometimes, and I don't want to do that anymore.  I'm going to change it up this year.

Happy New Year, and Happy 2012!

Having trouble deciding who to vote for?

Check out this quiz on ABC's website - the Match-o-Matic - find out which candidate is your perfect choice for the next POTUS.  Let me know who you get! 

Ireland Day 8: Dublin

Today was one of my favorite days of the trip.  We woke up and went straight to the Old Jameson Distillery for a tour and whiskey tasting.  As you may have guessed, I had been look forward to this day since the trip was planned! 

Despite my high expectations, I was not disappointed.  I opened the front door and walked into heaven - a bar stocked with nothing but Jameson.  I'm never going back to America.

I loved the tour here, even though we couldn't see where they made the whiskey.  It was very educational, and our tour guide was so knowledgeable and passionate about whiskey, and the whiskey-making process, and he had a great personality.  After the tour, we got to do a whiskey tasting, comparing Scotch, American whiskey, and Irish whiskey (Jameson, of course).  The Irish whiskey was the best!  We even got diplomas, to prove we are now certified whiskey tasters.  We also got a free drink with Jameson in it - I tried cranberry and Jameson for the first time and, surprisingly, loved it!

After we were done, we got some free time to explore Dublin.  We decided to walk from the Old Jameson Distillery instead of take the van, so we could get out and see the city.  It was a bank holiday, so a lot of things weren't open.  We walked to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but the exhibit wasn't open.  The campus was beautiful though.

The Dublin Marathon was also being run that day.  It was pretty cool seeing everyone run through the streets of Dublin, and cheering them on.

It was a pretty rainy afternoon, but we put on our raincoats and continued walking the city.  We are from Seattle after all - a little rain doesn't ruin our day.  We went in search of Christ Church Cathedral, one of the oldest cathedrals in Dublin.  It is believed that the cathedral was founded sometime shortly after 1028. It's stunning, and too large to fit in one good shot, especially while trying to protect a camera from rain, but here is my rainy attempt:

During our search for Christ Church Cathedral, we came across St. Audoen's Church, which was also pretty amazing.  It is another quite old church in Dublin; it was built between 1181 and 1212.

We got hungry for lunch, and decided to check out the chipper that our driver, Paddy, had recommended.  Leo Burdock has been serving fish and chips to Dubliners since 1916.  It's a tiny little chipper, with barely room inside for two people to place their order.  They throw handfuls of french fries onto a sheet of paper, plop fish down on top, cover everything with salt, pepper, and vinegar, wrap it all up in paper, and put it into a paperbag.  There isn't anywhere to sit inside, so you have to stand outside and eat.  The only problem was that it started absolutely pouring on us.  We hunched down in the doorway of the pub next door and ate one of the best lunches I ever had.  (It is the little doorway to the right in the picture below - just enough space to stand and keep our fish and chips dry!)  If you look closely, you can see Joe in there ordering our fish and chips.

After we got done eating, we ducked into the pub next door, named the Lord Edward, to have a pint and wait out the rain.  It was such a cozy little place.  Here's a picture of where we sat to relax and wait out the rain.

The rain let up a little, so we decided to head back to the hotel to get ready for the night's festivities.  We came across Occupy Dublin on our way:

Today also happened to be Halloween, which the Irish take very seriously.  I think it is even more popular there than it is here.  We honored the occasion by going on a haunted tour of Dublin.  We snuck around outside Christ Church Cathedral, and ended up inside the gates of St. Audeon's, where we heard many ghost stories.  I think I even caught an orb on film, where the ghost of the Green Lady lives!  She is believed to be the ghost of Darkey Kelly, who was executed for the murder of her unborn child.

We finished the night with a pint in, fittingly, a bar named Darkey Kelly's.

Good night Dublin!  Have to get some sleep tonight - tomorrow is our last full day in the city.  Sad!

Dear Santa . . .

I'll make you a deal - if you leave these things under my tree, I'll leave you cookies, and promise to be good next year!

1.  Clarisonic Mia in turquoise or blue
2.  gift card to Home Depot so I can buy paint and stuff to make my reading room
3.  Aveda hand relief cream and foot relief cream gift set
4.  Earrings and/or necklace from Dotted Line Jewelry **
5.  books - pretty much any book, but one i want for sure is "the wolverine way"
6.  waterproof stuff sacks
7.  gradient lens for my camera
8.  espresso roast coffee from starbucks (whole beans)
9.  cute headbands and bobby pins
10. Sweet Vanilla perfume from Melvita


**I bought #4 for myself today at the Urban Craft Uprising - saw the perfect necklace and perfect earrings and had to buy them.  That's the only bad thing about buying stuff from local artists - it's pretty much all one-of-a-kind, and if you don't get it when you see it, you probably aren't going to get it.  At least that is my excuse for buying this for myself today!

One of my favorite Christmas songs

I finally own artwork!

There is this wonderful painting hanging in the place where I go to get my facials (shameless plug:  Skin Care by Casey - Casey is the best!).  Every time I see it I just feel so happy and peaceful and serene.  I know that sounds corny, and I'm not normally the artsy, feely type (or the happy, peaceful, serene type either), but it really just has this effect on me.  The painting is of a big tree, with pink and reddish leaves, surround by grass and flowers and blue sky and clouds, and there is a girl with dark hair sitting under the tree, leaning against the trunk, reading a book.  If you know me at all, you know that if there is anything I love more than reading, it is reading while sitting in the grass under a tree.  Over a year has gone by, and every time I see it I have the same feeling, so I decided to finally buy it.  My plan is to take over one of the rooms in our house (the guest room?) and turn it into a reading room/my own personal sanctuary from the world.  Just me and my books and my dog and a big comfy chair to curl up in.  This painting was the inspiration for that idea and will hang on the wall in that room.  Sorry guests - you're out of luck - air mattresses in the living room for you from now on!     

Yoga - maybe it IS just for skinny chicks in spandex after all . . .

That is pretty much all the class was filled with.  I really did think there would be other normal people there, but no such luck.  The husband and I were the only two there who had never been to yoga before.  The class was packed to the brim with taut muscles and tight tank tops.  The floor was wall to wall mats and hippies.  Before class, everyone was curled up on their mats doing I'm not sure what.  I just kind of stood around awkwardly, then eventually sat down with my legs crossed and tried to be quiet and not look out of place.  When class started, I couldn't really see the instructor.  I was surrounded by people doing handstands and what appeared to be break-dancing moves of some sort.  Every once in a while I got a glimpse at the instructor and figured out what I was supposed to be doing.  If all else failed, I just did downward dog, because it seemed like eventually everyone else would end up there too.

Once class started, I didn't feel nearly as self-conscious as I thought I would.  I was concentrating so hard on not falling over that I didn't have time to worry about what anybody else was doing or if they were looking at me.  It was very challenging.

The good things about yoga so far:  (1) it is one heck of a work out.  After an hour and fifteen minutes of yoga, I am sore in places I forgot I had.  And it's not like I'm a total wuss - until three weeks ago I was working out with a trainer three times a week; and (2) it definitely gets your mind off of things - it takes so much concentration that there isn't room in your brain to think about anything else.

The bad things about yoga so far:  (1)  it is one heck of a work out (haha); and (2) there are a lot of people at yoga class, and I'm typically a loner, especially while working out.

I thought for a long time after I got home about whether I liked it or not.  I'm still not sure.  But I'll definitely go back and give it at least a few more tries.  I don't think I am ever going to be a "yoga person," or find my "zen" at yoga, but it is a fantastic work out!

John Elway walks into a bar . . .

Bartender says: "Why the long face?"

HAHAHA

Yoga - it's not just for skinny chicks in spandex anymore!

I'm going to my very first yoga class tomorrow.  This makes me nervous.  Well, actually, it scares the shit out of me.  Yoga intimidates me.  Or rather, its followers do.  They're all super-skinny, super-cute college girls with bouncing ponytails and perfectly coordinated, skin tight yoga pants and tank tops that flatter their already slim and trim figures. (You know, all of the things that I am not.)  They eat vegetables and tofu and soy.  (Instead of double cheeseburgers and pizza and beer.)  They are already experts at being all zen-like, and bending effortlessly into poses that I'm pretty sure will kill me if I try them. 

I realize that in reality,  people who practice yoga are probably not all like this.  Hopefully, a lot of them are just like me.  But in case they aren't, I'm dragging my husband along to the first class.  He has selflessly promised to be even worse than I am, so everyone stares at him instead of me.  Now that's love!

Ireland Day 7: Straffan to Dublin, via Tullamore

Woke up in the castle this morning, and walked the grounds.  Beautiful morning.  After breakfast, we piled into the van and headed out for an exciting day - Tullamore Dew in the morning and the Guinness Brewery in the afternoon!  Our first stop was the town of Tullamore, located in County Offaly.  We got there a little bit early, so we walked around the small town for about half an hour.  It was a Sunday morning, and the town was quiet except for people walking to church, and the sound of church bells ringing.  It was nice.

We headed to the Tullamore Dew distillery.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Tullamore Dew - I used to drink it at the VFW in Carthage, NY when we lived there with a guy named Marty.  It was a really cool old distillery, and was founded in 1829. 

After the distillery, it was time to head to the holy grail - the Guinness Brewery.  I hate to say it but I was kind of disappointed when we got there.  Because of the laws in Ireland, you cannot tour the place where they actually make the beer.  This made me sad, because one of my favorite things about visiting breweries is the delicious smell of the malt and the barley.  Plus it was amazingly crowded.  Aside from that, it was pretty cool.  Our first order of business when we got there was to head straight away to the cafeteria to have some of what I heard was the best Guinness stew in the world.  And it was!

Next we walked around the brewery on a self-guided tour.  Lots of interesting stuff. A couple of my favorite parts were the advertising section and the locate your ancestors section.  The advertising section had all the different advertisements Guinness has created over the years, including some really cool old commercials.

In the "locate your ancestors" section, there was a computer where you could look up your family name and see if any of them worked for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin.  I did find a "Peter Penrose" who worked there - only one Penrose.  I'm now on a mission on Ancestry.com to figure out if he was a relative of mine.  Oh how I hope he was!

I also found this quote painted on a wall in that section.  I fell in love with it instantly - I think it sums up how I feel about Ireland.

Next we headed up to the Gravity Bar, located at the top of the brewery with floor to ceiling windows, hoping to get our free pint.  But it was not to be - the Gravity Bar was packed with people - you could barely move in there.  We elbowed our way up to the windows and got our first real glimpse of Dublin.  Wow!  It was way bigger than I thought it was!  You could look out at the old Guinness Brewery, which was huge.  Past that was the city.

We moved downstairs to another bar and got our free pints of Guinness, and found a few moments of relative quiet in a table in the corner by a window with a nice view.

It had been a pretty long day so far, and after the brewery, we were definitely ready to head to our hotel and have some dinner.  We arrived at the Arlington Hotel, located by the O'Connell Bridge and the River Liffey, right in the heart of Dublin.  We ate dinner a pizza place beside the hotel.

We walked to a pub called the Brazen Head - Ireland's oldest pub, dating back to 1198.  It was a really neat pub, with several different rooms, and an Irish band playing, as well as seats outside.

Next we headed across the street to O'Sheas Merchant, a pub recommended by our driver, Paddy.  A friend of his from Kerry owns the bar, and there is a painting of his uncle on the outside of the bar.  They have really good traditional Irish music every night.  On this night, when the band took a break, they let Donal perform.  It was so cool seeing Donal perform in a real Irish pub in Dublin!  He even sang Fields of Athenry (one of my favorites)!

We walked back to the hotel.  On our way back, we went to McDonald's and had an Irish double cheeseburger (my favorite late night snack).  It was similar to, but not exactly the same as, an American double cheeze.  Still delicious!!  There was a club beneath our room, and the windows opened onto the alley where all the music and people were.  It was very loud, but we were really tired, so it didn't matter.  We drifted off to sleep to the sounds of 80's American music - Guns N' Roses, Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle, and Bon Jovi.  It was awesome.

How to retire from being a lawyer after one year . . . .

1. Pack all of your stuff into a 16-foot moving truck and move two states away.

2. Become a volunteer bartender.


If you feel this does not put enough distance between you and your career in the dreaded legal field:

1. Pack all of your belongings into a 26-foot moving truck and attach your car to the back of it.

2. Drive 3,000 miles across the country to your dream destination.

3. Once reality sets in, consider shooting yourself in the face at the thought of facing another bar exam. Get out the Tiffany's catalog and give it to your husband after circling several items that you feel will make up for the fact you have to take another bar exam.

4. Run around hiking in the mountains all day. Forget the bar exam. Who wants to be a lawyer anyway? I hope there is a VFW nearby looking for a good bartender . . .

Me v. the Turkey, Round 5

This is my fifth year making a turkey.  Round 5 of the annual "Me v. the Turkey" fight.  After a forty-five minute struggle with the Turkey, I won.  He put up a good fight, as he does every year, but I finally got him in the oven (sans stuffing - I gave up on that part after Round 1).  I didn't even need the tongs or the rubber gloves to remove the neck and the organs this year - I toughed it out and did it with my bare hands!  And, I didn't even break any of the bones this year either!

Below, I'm posting my notes from my first go-around with the Turkey.  It was pretty traumatic.


Me v. the Turkey, Round 1

Well, I decided to make my very own turkey yesterday.  My first stuffed poultry experience.  I know, I know, it was a crazy idea - me?  Stuff and cook a whole turkey?  Me - who eats cereal for dinner, and considers making macaroni and cheese cooking?  In fact, I usually just make Velveeta mac and cheese, because Kraft is all complicated, what with adding the butter and milk and everything.  So anyway, back to the turkey.

I can describe the whole experience in one word: nauseating.

First of all, as soon as I cut the wrapping off the turkey, watery blood oozed all over my counter, which I had luckily covered entirely in wax paper (so turkey bacteria wouldn't get all over it).  Gross.

Next, I had to remove the disgusting bag containing the turkey's neck, which had been stuffed up its butt, and the even more horrific bag of internal organs, also known as giblets, which had been stuffed into its neck.  Why?  Why do they take off the neck and put it in the body cavity and then remove the organs from the body cavity and put them in the neck?  Anyway, in order to remove these disgusting items, I had to lift up flaps of turkey flesh and get enough of my hand into the orifice to get the bag out, but not enough to make me puke.  The bags were all slippery with gross turkey juices and hard to get out.  I'm not going to describe all the gross sensations, but I felt like a gynecologist.  The LAST thing I want linked in my mind with the food I am about to eat is a gynecological exam.

At this point in the process I felt entirely nauseated and had no appetite whatsoever, especially for turkey.  I really thought I would never eat a turkey again and that all this disgusting work would go to waste.

Then, it got even better.  I had to rinse out the turkey in the sink, which consisted of pouring all the gross bloody liquid down the drain, and filling it with water until it quit oozing blood.  Then I had to pat it dry with paper towels, so I ended up with a bloody pile of paper towels on the counter.  Then I started trying to put the stuffing inside the turkey.  Again, I found myself asking the question "why?"  Why do we stuff gross, soggy bread cubes inside the body cavities of the turkey where the neck and organs just were?

My mom told me she wraps the wings around behind the turkey so that it is resting on the wings, kind of like a cradle, so the bird looks better.  So I am on the phone with my mom, squeezing the phone between my shoulder and face, trying to maneuver the slippery turkey, getting covered with turkey slime and turkey rub, while attempting to bend its wings behind its back.  It just wasn't working, so Joe took over. I then hear a bunch of cracking noises coming from the turkey.  Joe didn't get its wings behind its back, but he managed to break all the bones in its wings, so they were just kind of twisted around sticking straight up the sides of the turkey - kind of like its being held at gunpoint or something, only the wings are completely backwards.

So we finally just gave up and put it in the oven. It came out 4 1/2 hours later and it was DELICIOUS!  The best turkey I ever had (except for my mom's of course).

Thank God we are having ham for Christmas.

Ireland Day 6: Derry to Straffan, via Ulster Folk Park and Newgrange

We woke up early this morning because I wanted to walk the Walls of Derry, and this was our last day here.  Derry is the last walled in city in Ireland - the city is entirely surround by a stone wall that was built during the period 1613-1619.  Derry was the location where Bloody Sunday occurred.  Derry is officially named Londonderry, but you have to be care what you call it depending on who you are talking to.  The nationalists (mostly Catholics) call it Derry.  Neighborhoods in the city are still divided by religion - there are Catholic streets and Protestant streets - there is even a place where the Catholic part and Protestant part is divided by a huge, tall wall with barbed wire on the top.  Many disputes and civil rights marches took place in Derry during the Troubles.  The Catholics were discriminated against, politically and economically.  Like in Belfast, you can see all of this by driving around the city.  It is amazing how recent all of this history is here, and how strongly people still feel.  (In case you can't read it, the writing on the red hand below says "IRA.")

In any event, we walked the Walls around Derry in the morning.  It wasn't super early - probably around 8:00 or 8:30, but no one was out yet and we practically had the place to ourselves.  As we started walking the wall, I heard someone whistling and saw a guy working in the street, carrying boxes into a restaurant or shop or something.  It was such a happy, cheery sound.  I'll never forget it.  I think people are just happier there.

The Walls are really cool - there are several cannons pointing out of the walls and the views back into the city were nice.

 

While walking on the Walls we came across St. Columb's Cathedral  - an absolutely beautiful church built between 1628 and 1633.  

 

 

 Very beautiful - definitely worth getting up early to walk the Walls.

We left Derry and headed toward Ulster American Folk Park, located in Castletown, just outside Omagh, in County Tyrone.  Ulster American Folk Park is a museum about the Irish immigrating to America in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  It was pretty interesting.  There is a bunch of stuff inside, and outside there are many original buildings, such as jails, printing presses, school houses, and cottages.  Employees are dressed up in historically accurate clothing and teach you about life in that time period when you go to the different buildings, including having samples of food that would have been eaten.  I didn't take a lot of pictures because it was pouring rain when we were there.  I did take this one of a couple of black and white horses that I really like though:

We left Ulster American Folk Park and headed to Newgrange.  Newgrange is pretty crazy.  They don't really know a lot about it for sure.  It is a prehistoric monument located in County Meath.  They think it was built around 3200 BC. They think it may have been used as a burial because they have found burned human bone in there.  It is a huge mound of earth and stone with a very narrow passageway that leads back into a a cross-shaped area with three small chambers that form the shape of a cross.  Above the door is a slot that allows sunlight to reach back into the chamber only during the Winter Solstice (around December 21). Pretty crazy!  No daylight reaches into the tomb at any other time.  They re-create this with artificial light while you are in there.  Each year they have a lottery to see who is going to get to be in there during Winter Solstice to see the phenomenon.  Also, there are several Neolithic carvings in the rock, inside and out.  You are not allowed to take pictures inside, but here are some pictures of the outside.  You can see some of the carvings and the slot above the door that lets the light in.  There are several other mounds and stone structures around the main structure - they don't know what they were used for.

We left Newgrange and headed to Barberstown Castle in Straffan, County Kildare, where we were going to stay the night.  Yep - we're staying the night in a castle!!! Barberstown Castle was built in 1288.  It was once owned by Eric Clapton!  I was a little bit disappointed when we got there because there was only one room actually in the castle, and we didn't get to stay in it.  The rest of the hotel is actually built onto the castle.  We went into the castle while we were there though and it was really cool - dark stone walls, all cold and gloomy like you expect a castle to look like.  It was a pretty fancy place.

This is the view from our bedroom window.

It looked just like the gardens I imagine all the people in my favorite books to walk in with their loves - like Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, or Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.

Tomorrow, it's off to Dublin!!

Ireland Day 5: Inishowen Peninsula and Malin Head

Today we woke up in Derry.  I was quite disappointed when I got to the breakfast bar and there wasn't any gravy boat full of Bushmills.  I settled for a cup of coffee and some juice.  The rest of the breakfast was quite delicious though, containing the standard Irish breakfast stuff - eggs, soda bread, mushrooms, baked beans, roasted tomatoes, sausages, rashers, pastries, cold cheese, ham, fresh-squeezed apple and orange juices, fruit, yogurt, and more.  I am really loving the baked beans with the sausages.

After breakfast we left Derry (and Northern Ireland) and drove up the Inishowen Peninsula, en route to Malin Head.  The Inishowen Peninsula is in County Donegal, and is the largest peninsula in Ireland.  It is pretty rural and we passed several thatched roof cottages that people still live in.

 Malin Head is the northernmost point in Ireland, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.  Malin Head was chilly and extremely windy.  It was hard even to stand up when some of the gusts hit.  The coastline is beautiful, and almost reminds me of parts of the Oregon coast, or the coast in Northern California.

 After we left Malin Head, we stopped at Farren's - the northernmost pub in Ireland.  This place was cool.  There was only one local guy in there.  Donal, our fearless leader, brought his guitar into the pub and played guitar while some of the guys played pool and we all sat around and chatted with our driver, Paddy, and the bartender. 

The bartender was pretty great - he managed to write my name in my Guinness in a half-pint.  That's a lot of letters to fit in a half-pint.  Quite impressive!  Paddy told me that the best Guinness was in Dublin, because Guinness doesn't travel well.  I hadn't been to Dublin yet, but I couldn't imagine a Guinness tasting better than the one I was drinking right then - it was creamy and chocolaty and had my name written on top!

We drove back to Derry, stopping for a bathroom/pint break every half hour or so - whenever we happened to come upon another pub, it was time to stop for a pee and a pint!  When we got back to Derry, we had some time before dinner, so we wandered around and ended up in a pub called "Bound for Boston."  We talked to some local guy forever - he had just turned 30.  We played songs on the jukebox and talked about Americans, homeless people, music, surfing, motorcycles, healthcare, and just about anything else we could think of.  Both that guy and the bartender thought that the best Guinness could be found in whatever pub people drink it a lot at, because the lines and taps are fresh. The local guy we talked to hates U2 and the Dropkick Murphys, and just wanted us to play Placebo on the jukebox.

We eventually headed back to the hotel for dinner, and turned in early.  I really wanted to get up early the next morning - we were leaving Derry the next day, and I really wanted to walk the walls of Derry before we left.