Sno Cone of Luv

One of the simple pleasures I have enjoyed while being in Dublin is the smell from the Guinness brewery. On cool, damp days (you know. . . everyday!) the odor can permeate the entire town, or at least the entire distance I cover when walking from our apartment to the hospital.

It is different from your standard “brewery smell” in that it has much more of a roasted quality to it, as if they are roasting the grain at that very moment, knowing that I would soon be walking by. Yes, it is a simple pleasure, but sometimes that is what you need most when walking home after a hectic 13 hour day in the ICU.

The last few days, however, the odor from the mighty Guinness brewery has not been such a joy. Think of the smell when someone makes a fresh pot of coffee, but never turns the burner off. In a few hours the fresh coffee is replaced with that nasty, thick, tarry muck stuck to the bottom of the pot. That is the smell that has been greeting me as I walk past the brewery. I know it is not a big deal, I just want my warm fuzzy back again. Is that so wrong?

Besides, I hate coffee.

As I type: Listening to Burning Airlines “Mission: Control!”

Posted by Brandon at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The most remarkable thing happened today. I woke up this morning knowing that I needed to talk with someone in the nursing administration office regarding a form I needed so that I could get my Work Authorization, my “official” paperwork. I walked down to the hospital, got my form, then made my way down to the immigration office. It was there where the amazing happened. I was actually getting something accomplished at the immigration office. Yes, I FINALLY have my Work Authorization. I can now stay here for up to two years if I so choose.

More important than that, I had Jenniffer meet me at the immigration office. Once there, SHE was able to get her passport stamped. Now that I am finally official, she now has her dependent’s visa. She is no longer a visitor. She is actually here. She can stay. I like this idea, it’s something I can get behind. No longer will she have to leave for a bit at the end of April, the time when her visitor status was to expire, though thanks to everyone who offered to put her up at that time.

The last thing I need to say is that I’m sorry there was no play-by-play from St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve heard from more than one person that I was in trouble for not commenting on the occasion. I will say this, we had a good time. We did not, however, see any green beer in any of the places we visited that night. Oh well. . .

As I type: Watching “Slap Shot” on TCM. God love the Hanson brothers.

Posted by Brandon at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'll make Brandon post a real message later, but I was just writing a friend a quick e-mail and came up with the best sentence to describe my life right now:

"I am a multi-tasking queen with nothing to multi-task."

Posted by Jenniffer at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello again! Finally I’m off of night duty and seeing the sun on a regular basis, that is when the sun actually shines here. Despite my best efforts, my sleep schedule remains off kilter just a bit. At least I have a few weeks off to get myself back in line, assuming that the presence of Jack and B.C. in Dublin doesn’t kill me first.

Yes, the boys arrived safely this morning, and seem to have a somewhat favorable impression of Dublin so far. Of course, it would be easy to have a favorable impression of a place when you had just flown across the Atlantic, didn’t really sleep, and upon setting foot on foreign soil had two pints, lunch, and another pint. They’re currently passed out here in the apartment, and I can’t say I blame them. In fact, I think I might do the same for a bit, as my body doesn’t really know what time it is either.

We’ll update through the week, as with any luck we’ll have some interesting stories to share.

As I type: Listening to my mellow “Porch Sittin’” mix, currently playing “Three Hours Past Midnight” by Colin James.

Posted by Brandon at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We all know I’m a dork. If you’re reading this and you didn’t know that, then you’ve never met me. With that said my “big Friday night” activity was finally getting to do our taxes. Generally by this time we already have our refunds back, but Brandon’s job here took 1 month and three phone calls to send us an income statement for 2005. (maybe we should start today to get one for 2006).

I have always done my own taxes since my very first job (thanks dad). Sometimes I have even helped others with theirs. My entire immediate family has the same illness of enjoying this task. For example, on January 1st while I was in California, my parents started getting all of their information together. (final amounts spent on every conceivable category). So as you see I come by this through genetics. I actually love and appreciate these genetics. My organization, while sickening to some is just who I am.

One year I had to do taxes for Missouri, Iowa and well luckily Nevada doesn’t have state income, but I still had W-2’s from three states. I thought that was a challenge, but I enjoyed it and made it through. This year will prove to be yet another challenge. Try this on for size: two different states, plus one foreign country, and both people did not arrive in the country at the same time. For this reason this year I broke down and bought TurboTax.

While we’ll most likely get audited this year, even though I’m doing everything the best I can. I can’t wait until next year when we have at least two states, a foreign country and one of those states we don’t really live in.

I love this stuff.

(this post was writen 2-hours before true freaking out started)

Posted by Jenniffer at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tonight I watched “About a Boy” for about the twentieth time. It was on TV and just a movie I really enjoy for odd reason. It was nice watching it this time and seeing products and other items that I now see everyday here. It almost made the movie new to me again. My favorite moment was when I realized that the show I have enjoyed occasionally here, “Countdown” , is the show that they watch in the movie a lot. Same main two people are in the show too. To me it was very cool.

Now because I grew up in the time period that I did, I have this compulsion of flipping channels during commercials. So I flipped away, watched a little “Rocky”, you know for something COMPLETELY different and then tried tog o back to the channel with the movie. I couldn’t find it. I thought I was going crazy. There was about and half hour of the movie left, and poof, it was gone. I searched and searched but nowhere to be found. Now, we have had a problem with the cable where sometimes channels disappear for no reason. (like BBC1 & 2). Usually they reappear at sometime. This has never happened in the middle of a show though…and well it didn’t this time either.

I saw that the movie was going to be on again in about a half hour so I thought, “I’ll just watch it again, why not.” I didn’t have anything going on. Well, when it started, it was at the point I had left the movie before. They stopped the movie IN THE MIDDLE to show the news. This just seems like poor planning. Start the movie a half hour earlier or show it after the news. I have never had this happen before.

Well, at least I’m not going crazy.

Posted by Jenniffer at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So Brandon is working nights this week again so he most likely will not be doing a post anytime soon. (who knows he may surprise me) As you can tell, I have tweaked the page a little. I hope it is appealing to those of you who check the site. It only took about 18 hours of very slow computer time to get it done. (and totally screwing it up first, I'm sorry if you saw it in disarray). Also, I have tried to install gallery so we can get some pictures up, but it just doesn't seem possible since we lose a connection so quickly and everything takes so long. I will try to get one of my much brighter friends to help me out with this so I can get some pictures up soon.

Posted by Jenniffer at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I know the other day I mentioned the cold snap that came through Dublin, which provided us with a bit of snow, none of which actually stuck to the pavement for more than two minutes. I just wanted to share something I read in a newspaper last night while at work. In this paper was a small article detailing the “plummeting temperatures” and “uninhabitable arctic conditions” we were currently experiencing. Now for the rest of the story. . . Yes, it snowed the other day, and yes, it is about as cold at it has been since I arrived here in Dublin. That being said, the temperature this morning when I walked home from work was 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Arctic?!?!? Are you friggin’ kidding me? At least when I started laughing aloud my co-workers confessed whole-heartedly that, indeed, the Irish do NOT deal well with temperature fluctuations of any sort. I followed by telling them not to go to the upper Midwest.

As I type: Listening to my “SKA!” folder (3MH, the Specials, the Toasters, Hepcat, etc.) played at random.

Posted by Brandon at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)