New Friend

I forgot to mention this, but guess who I have been trying to make friends with ever since arriving back home?!?!

I would like to introduce you to my new backyard possum buddy. Whatever your feelings are on this marsupial are your own and will not change my mind one bit. This little one is cute and I am hoping to entice it back to make frequent backyard visits.

C'mon, look at those adorable ears and face! The lil' p is caught in the act looking at the camera.

Idle

Hello! Sorry for being the supreme lazy blogger that I am but I have had a jam-packed summer and reality has set in and I haven't had the urge to blog. 

Also, I can't believe it's going to be October already. It seemed like yesterday when I was writing about my summer. 

Quote of the day by Jack Benny:

"Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

Dublin: Week 5

You will have no idea how much I am craving Mexican food since living in Dublin for the summer. How perfect was it when both of my roommates mentioned they were having people over for a Fiesta party!!! Mexican food!!! After an afternoon out in the city doing a little shopping, Marisol and I thought it would be a grand idea to pick up a bottle of Tequila for the party. 

We stopped by Mark and Spencers market to grab a bottle of Tequila and asked one of the workers if he could direct us to an aisle where they have the Tequila. I guess he doesn't know much about Tequila because he asked me if it was wine and I told him it wasn't (didn't want to complicate the matter and say, "well, it is an agave spirit") and then he asked me what shade is it so I told him him, "um, well they can be clear to light brown" and then he said he knows he had seen that. Then he asked me how is it usually served so I said "you know, like in margaritas and shots with some salt and lime." So we waited while he looked around and I didn't have the heart to say it's OK because he was insistent that he did see it and they do sell it there. When he came back he told me that he asked one of his bosses and I guess they don't sell it there or they were sold out so we thanked him and he wished us good luck on finding it. And to think I was actually going to be picky and want Patron over Cuervo for the night if I had a choice. 

So we went to Tesco where we found only one kind of Tequila, yup, you guessed it, Jose Cuervo which also happened to be the 2nd to the last bottle on the shelf. We grabbed it and took the bus back home. 

When we arrived the party was out in the courtyard area. Our roommates are a part of an american internship summer group and the group is huge. Hung out for a bit and everyone made the long walk down Shanowen to ride in style hopping on the Dublin bus (or party bus from what it seemed that night with a big group) and head over to the city ending up at Messrrs Maguire pub. 

Jaime, Marisol, Caitlinn  (one of our roommates) and me.

Whoever took this photo must have accidently zoomed in because this photo is just too off and weird.

During our 1st or 2nd week here, we spotted Mexico to Rome restaurant in the Temple Bar area. I know what you may be thinking because I was thinking the same thing "Mexico --> Rome?!?!?!?". But hey, we have been craving Mexican food since we got here so this was definitely an option. My "Mexican" dish for that night was Chicken Enchiladas and I didn't know that it was a do-it-n-wrap-yourself chicken enchilada! Here is a crappy phone pic of my lovely Mexican dish that night.

Jealous much?!?! The entree was just OK or so-so. What I was doing a lot of that night was dipping my flour tortillas pieces into the "salsa" and guacamole since I don't like sour cream too much and probably because my meal sucked. At least my margarita was strong, in fact a lil' too strong.

We also found an Acapulco Restaurant (Yes, Acapulco Restaurant - I LOVE Acapulco) nearby a few weeks ago. We took the bus to O'Connell Street and hailed a taxi (who happened to be a taxi driver we had before!) and told him "please take us to the Acapulco Restaurant on So. Great Georges." It wasn't that far from where he picked us up that he didn't even charge us. And I'm sure it's because he remembered us so we tipped him generously anyway for being such a cool taxi guy. 

We shared chips and salsa which was a lot of chips and a little of the blended salsa and a side of guacamole. I was sparing the salsa and the guacamole as much as possible since we sure knew we weren't going to get refills on the salsa. We both ordered the steak burrito and it was pretty good. Instead of a log shaped burrito, our steak burrito was wrapped neatly into a nice little quadrilateral. It was cute. The square shaped burrito was enough to satisfy our Mexican cravings and we even had enough room to share a chocolate fudge cake. Delicious! Didn't take any photos because how could I think of taking photos when I am starving?!

  

Quotes of the day by Jane Austen

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and sometimes and indirect boast."

Dublin: Wondrous

A sight for sore eyes this is! 

Maybe if we had more time we could have followed the end of the rainbow to see if the leprechaun was really hiding his pot of gold! Wish I had a more significant distance when snapping this photo so you can see the perfect semicircular shape of the rainbow. 

Quotes of the Day by Anais Nin:

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

"We dont' see things as they are, we see them as we are."

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."

X-rays Expose N.C. Wyeth Painting Hidden Under Another

Ooh la la. Very interesting. X-ray imaging exposes surprising details of another painting lying beneath another painting by artist N.C.Wyeth. At first glance of the painting without reading the headline, I thought it was an artist's depiction of Wolverine or something. 

Hidden Painting

Dublin: Recent Addictions

Loving this postcard because the sheep is too cute! I think I was drawn to it because the sheep reminds me of my little Boo Boo that I miss. This postcard is for me.

Egg cups! I am in LOVE with them. We have them here in our apartments and how cute would it be to have my boiled egg served in an egg cup when I get home. I just had to get my very own egg cup. Here in our flat, it is used primarily for serving alcohol shots. Dual purpose indeed! 

While shopping, I came across this cute Celtic Magic necklace. It's a *mood* necklace and look at the cute cats looking out into the horizon! Morty!!! (and the rest of my cats), definitely entering crazy cat lady zone. And I love that it is a colour change mood necklace. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

Baby Roll with strawberry and chocolate on vanilla cake --> OUT and American Style Mini Choco Chip Cookies --> IN!!! So addicted to these. The little baby cookies has an abundant amount of mini chocolate chip cookies in every bite! And for those that do know me, you know how much I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. And the best thing besides our boil-a-bag long grain rice is the instant just add water spaghetti bolognese. So much flavor, so much MSG! Love it on a lot of my I'm-too-lazy-to-cook days. Simply perfect!
Sweet potato chips in Sweet Thai Chili or Salt and Vinegar (for this week). I have been missing cassava chips that I always get at home so these are a great substitute although a bit lighter, but delicious with my ham sandwiches. And BALISTO is divine! It has a graham bottom with muesli mix and chocolate on top. So good! It's like Twix but a 1000x better since I am not a big fan of caramel.

20 minute meatloaf and Marisol's yummy rice. Sorry it looks pretty funky and plain gross, but the meatloaf crumbled because I was in a rush to transfer it to my plate with a butter knife, but I guarantee you, it was very very very good. Also, you can't even see the parsley scattered on top of the crimson colored sauce. It wasn't that dark! Don't make fun of me! This time the meatloaf was made with ground sirloin and I think I really like ground sirloin over the ground chuck (one I have been using here) or ground beef (at home). I've only seen the ground chuck and ground sirloin (the leaner ones) being sold so it gave me no choice but to cook with those and I really like the way the meatloaf turned out with the ground sirloin. Now, I want to try making it with ground round if I get a chance. As you can see, I was again, in a rush to chow down.

Dublin: Week 4 - Intern Event

Hello! Did you miss me?

Long time no update I know, but as you know, or will know now, I have been beyond busy with Marisol during the week trying to get our experiment rolling.  Since DCU has a swipe card access and booking system to follow, there are bumps I must overcome to get down to the nitty gritty of where we need to be. I have been trying to get swipe card access to many of the rooms with the equipment we need but since it is after all holidays for many during this time, it has been one delay after another since those people that are vital to my access have me hanging on a limb to take care of my much-needed issues (card issues, not psychological - I am perfectly normal!).

Thus, it has been increasingly difficult to keep up here. But I will update. 

Here are some photos from a our roommate's friend's event at The Church bar and restaurant on Jervis street. Super cute and cool spot. It was a fun event. 

Jamie (left), who was part of the 2 member team that worked on the event with her friend.

Just kidding, that really wasn't my Guinness, it was Marisol's. Stuck to Pinot Grigio all night, thank you very much. No more Guinness for me after the Guinness tour.

She won a shirt at the raffle! Winners get to choose their t-shirt! Sweet!

Their boss and head of marketing. I have a shirt too!