At the mall

I went to the mall today. Actually, "we" went, since El Burrito was along for the ride. And I was good. I did not buy

• the very cute Easter chick candy dish at Hallmark, even though it would have been discounted because of the cards I bought
  
• the cute socks at Gymboree that match the cowboy shirt El Burrito already has, two pairs for $5 - because even though they go with his shirts, the socks were a 2t-5t size, and I can't justify keeping cute socks around for 4 years before they fit the boy.
  
• the Welcome sign at Target with a chalkboard and shamrocks on it - clearanced to $3.78, even.
  
• the panda board book with the cutouts in the pages and the squeaky panda

I did buy

• the clacking stuffed crab I've had an eye on at Hallmark for months now. With a 40% off coupon.
• clearance windshield wiper fluid, for 31 cents
• a brick of clearance suet - we'll try feeding the birds this spring

Blarney Castle

This is the view at the top of Blarney Castle, standing in line to kiss the Blarney Stone. The view was great, but the castle didn't impress me that much. The main draw is climbing to the top so you can kiss the stone (which we didn't, more on that later). Unlike some of the other castles, where you can have a guided tour (Kilkenny) or wander through with a one-page map/guide sheet, this was strictly a one-way affair. You went up a series of stairs on one side of the castle, and down the stairs on the other side. If you changed your mind about climbing that far up, too bad. It hadn't been restored much, and what was there wasn't signed or labeled in any way. Everything was pretty vague.

As far as kissing the stone, we passed, thanks. To kiss the stone, you have to lay on your back on this walkway, and dangle backwards, upside down, over about a 3-storey drop. The fourth person from the left in that photo is the official photographer, who stands on a ladder and takes your picture (for a price) as you kiss the stone. There's another "official" person who holds your legs to make sure you don't take a header through the hole and break your neck. I think you're supposed to tip this guy, but I don't remember. I'm not that fond of heights, and since there's no way to know how often they clean the stone (if at all), we decided to pass on the experience. Although I do hope they send someone up occasionally to spray the thing with disinfectant of some sort.

Bonus: if you want to build your own scale model of Blarney, I found a website with plans for a paper-cutout castle. Could be fun. :)

My Day

. . . was an interesting day. At 3:30 this morning, I was awake and hungry - we'd gone out to dinner ($20 pizza) and I had a little too much caffeine, and the pizza didn't stick to my ribs like it should have. So I had a PB&J at 3:30 a.m. Oy.

The "fun" for today was getting lunch and eating it with DH and El Burrito in the public garden near the office. We should have gone with the cafeteria food. I was having my annual itch for KFC, so we went through the drive-through (I didn't have the stroller with me). I thought I could get two meals for under $10. Wrong. $14.80, for a total of 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 biscuits, mashed potatoes, & cole slaw. And sodas. Gah. But, the food quality has gone down enough that this fix should last longer than usual. It'll be a year or so before I get a notion to hit KFC again, and even then, it's the biscuits I really like. Probably because I don't want to know the fat content. Lately, the chicken from HyVee's deli is better than KFC.

Anyway, other than the food issues, lunch was fun. The garden is greening up, although they don't have the flowerbeds started yet, and the koi aren't out in the ponds yet. But the redbuds are looking nice. And the pin oak by our door has started to leaf out, although I think the lack of mulch and the hatchet-job of pruning last year has killed the roses along our sidewalk. Makes it more of a shame that the cuttings I took from them last year didn't work.

And, news flash!! El Burrito has his first tooth! At ten months and change, so not quite as late as I was (14 months or more).

A humorous picture from Ireland

Today's Picture:


Nice little building, right? Stone walls, window boxes, very nice. Can you guess what this is?

Anyone?

Bueller?

It's a public restroom somewhere on the coast in County Kerry. And it puts most public facilities I've seen in the US to shame, folks. This is the runner-up for Ireland's Top Toilet Award, 2002. If this is the runner-up, I wanna see the winner, really. Aside from the window boxes, the interior was amazing - hardwood ceilings and trim, a skylight (!), nice tile on the walls and floor. I had to have a picture of it (three actually - exterior, interior, and the plaque on the wall outside).

They take the tourism seriously in Ireland. We saw a lot of signs at the edge of various towns, proclaiming their placings in the Tidy Town contest and other contests. And they're not kidding around, because I don't recall seeing much in the way of trash or litter, and graffiti was practically non-existent (except in Derry/Londonderry). Things were neat and tidy, there was landscaping and flowers where appropriate. It makes the town I live in now look a bit scruffy around the edges.

What am I doing now?

So, what am I doing right now? Plugging away at my Yahoo inbox, muttering nasty things at Windows Media Player, and simultaneously digging through a box of my "notes" on bits of paper. El Burrito will be awake any time now, and ready for what we call "lunch" even though it'll be 3:30 or so when he eats it. This is one of the little problems with having noonish for a naptime, but that's how the schedule is working these days.

The Yahoo inbox is currently at 1,631 messages. It's the address I use when I sign up for stuff online, so it gets a lot of just stuff. I'm unsubbing from newsletters as I get one I don't care for, and hopefully that will help. Media Player is being a rotten little snot - I've maxed out both the volume knob on the speakers maxed out, and the volume slider on the player, and I can still barely hear the music over the keyboard noise. It wasn't like this yesterday, so the MahJong software I installed last night must have boogered something up. And I've got this habit of making notes on envelope backs, the subscription cards from magazines, and any other bit of paper I can find when I need it. So last weekend, I dumped all those bits into a box, and now I'm sorting them out. Part of the notes go on the Mega To Do list, part go in a list of books to get from the library, and part go into a big word doc (actually, Open Office, not MS Word) called "notes."

Since Jan asked about progress on the riding - there isn't much. Stephens is supposed to mail me the info on the summer riding program when it's printed up. Since it's usually in June and July, I hope it will be here soon, so I can either get ready, or chicken out. Or find out that they have a weight limit and I'm not under the limit. However, I did remember to check the local Orschelns (a farm supply place) last time we were there, and they do carry riding helmets. Just one brand, and only three sizes, but also only $39.99. They didn't have any out to try on, which doesn't really surprise me. I didn't check whether they were ASTM certified, and I can't seem to find the manufacturer's website (odd, these days, for a company not to have something), but I am on an email-list for horse owners, so I can ask around on the list. There are a couple of tack store owners, so there's lots of information available.

The plan to lose weight before the program starts is also stalled out. I swear, if that scale wasn't digital, I'd accuse it of being rigged, because my weight has a 2-pound window that it's been stuck in for months. I guess I should look on the bright side - at least I'm not gaining, right? Actually, the Plan is pretty much where it always is. I sit around wishing I could lose weight, but don't actually do anything about it. Sigh. I also gripe about our lousy eating habits, usually while continuing to buy chocolate, and my cooking skills have gone waaaay downhill since El Burrito's arrival. (And honestly, I'm glad it's almost Easter, because I'm just waiting for the chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies to hit the stores and go on sale. I don't care if they're solid sugar.) Lots of self-induced guilt there, especially since DH had his 3-month checkup last week (Type 2 diabetes, plus little issues with cholesterol, blood pressure, and now iron levels. Oy.)

Now that the weather is nice, I'm going to have to suck it up, stick El Burrito in his car seat stroller, and go for a few laps around the condos. There's no sidewalk, but since we're on our own little cul-de-sac sort of setup, it's not so bad. And there's a nice hill, too. Plus, now that the rotten time change has passed, DH gets home while it's still daylight outside, so we can take him with us too. Lord knows we could both use it. The hula-hoop workout idea is still stalled out too - I can't seem to get the hang of it, and I swear I used to be able to do it. That's compounded by El B's odd dislike of the whole idea.

Plus there's that whole "have to clear out the living room so we can get the door fixed" thing. And it occurred to me yesterday, that if we're going to replace the green fake-grass-carpet on the screened porch, we should probably do that before I move all the houseplants outside for the summer. The "grass" needs to be replaced before we list the condo for sale, and we may as well do it now and get some use out of it ourselves. Luckily, that's a job that will only take a few hours. It won't get done this weekend, since we're going to visit my folks, but next weekend should be do-able.

And now El Burrito is awake, so it's time for dry diapers and lunch.

Photos from Ireland - peat

Today's photo - turf, or peat, logs, stacked to dry. Yep, they still burn peat blocks in Ireland. Some of the B&Bs use it as a selling point. It's got a smoky sort of smell, a bit like bacon or something. It's hard to describe. We saw this field of stacked peat somewhere as we were driving along. Ireland is 1/6th peat bog, and has both raised bogs and blanket bogs. Peat cutting has actually increased since the 1980s, but with the increased cutting, as well as bogland being reclaimed for grazing and for tree-planting, the government has started to set aside some of the bogs as a preservation measure. One of the historical sites had a display of peat cutting tools, as well as some well-preserved artifacts that were found in the bogs. The acidic environment in the bogs slows decay, and occaionally tools, bits of wood, and evenwell-preserved "bog bodies" are found.

Springtime

Spring is here, and I have proof:

1. The lawn crew is mowing the complex today. Lovely hours of lawnmowers and leafblowers making noise outside.
2. I kicked the stronger houseplants out onto the deck Sunday.
3. I washed the winter coats yesterday and they're in the closet until fall.
4. I started taking the amazing Target-generic Claritin over the weekend. And will be doing so until the first good frost, in about October.

Of course, moving the plants has good and bad issues. It freed up some space in the living room, but also brought back the fact that all of our exterior doors are messed up because the building has settled (not uncommon in the complex, and ours isn't as bad as some I've heard of). And that they all need to be re-hung, which isn't a DIY thing for us right now, since it involves yanking the whole freaking door out of the wall, and it's warm enough now to have it done. And while we're having that done, all four need to have new knob/deadbolts put in, because right now we have three doors with impending issues, and one door that isn't usable at all - we've got one broken deadbolt, which we put on one of the doors opening onto the porch. It's permanently locked right now; opening that door means getting a screwdriver and taking the whole lock shebang apart. New lock/deadbolts (there's a word for this, I know) means re-drilling the holes in the doors, since the old mechanisms are all older than Moses and have a non-standard-sized hole and setback. "Non-standard" as in, I couldn't even find one on Ebay or Google. I swear, when they built these units, they got some of the parts uber-cheap because no one else had used them in decades. As in, DH found the bolt parts in a hardware store once, and they were sold as patio door fixtures. Ask me about that weird light fixture in the hallway that no one sells a cover for. It's on the list of things to replace before we move.

Anyway. There's no room to do all four doors at once, so I need to get motivated and get the living room cleared out enough to do that door, and possibly the front door the same day, depending on whether we find someone who knows what they're doing. Oy. You have no idea what a job it will be, getting this room cleared out enough to pull an 8x8 double door out of the wall.

Today has been unproductive. Instead of taking El Burrito to the library today, I called DH to come home for lunch while I ran out. Library day is Tuesday, when the Friends have their cart sale. Unfortunately, the sale runs noon to 3:00, which coincides almost perfectly with El Burrito's nap window. Sigh. And today he was tired before noon and generally being a Fussy Butt, so I decided not to attempt it. So, I went alone to the library, spent $3.50 at the sale, came home with the copy of Shopaholic and Baby I'd been on the waiting list for, stopped at the store for bread so I could have lunch, and went on a whild goose chase at Michael's for some things my mother needs. I couldn't find the things she needed, so I need to wring some less-vague descriptions out of her and go back. Who knew there were so many kinds of double-sided tape?

On the "progress" list, I recycled 19 pounds of paper and magazines yesterday, and we now have hotel reservations for the road trip concert next month. That took longer than it should have, too. Something's going on in Nashville that week, and everything downtown is booked solid, unless we want to pay $250+++ per night (plus 14% tax). Plus, there are days when too many choices is much much worse than having only a few choices. A list of 50 hotel possibilities, after you narrow down by availability, price, and location? It's insane. At some point, you end up just closing your eyes and picking one at random. So we now have a room at the Best Western near the airport, apparently next to a nice lake, about ten miles from "downtown."