I'm the doctor!

I was roused from my internet stupor Saturday afternoon by the following text message* from our neighbors K and the OGD (Other Good Doctor): 

"Hey, our friends we were supposed to see tonight were at a mansion party last night and aren't up for anything, so now we've got all this food and wine and only you, me and [the OGD] to eat/drink it."

I can't say that I found anything to complain about in her misfortune.  I have never turned down a challenge involving excessive food and drink, and in this case, the fewer the merrier (er, drunker); plus, plans for Saturday night!  Awesome.

I realized it was already 2:30 and hopped on the DART down to Dun Laoghaire (pronouned Dun Leary, silly Irish language) to catch a puppet show I had been reading about at what seems to be the only puppet theatre in the area.  I was pretty excited about it, imagining Bread and Puppet-/In the Heart of the Beast-style antics.  I had read about the founder and lead artist of the Lambert Puppet Theatre and he seemed like an interesting guy.  They had staged puppet adaptations of Oscar Wilde!

The place was flooded with kids.  I was the only one there without a small brood in tow; in fact, I was the only one there solo.  I tried to exude Artist! as an explanation of my presence to the surrounding families, but I think Weirdo! was the more probable read.  When Lambert himself came out and started an Abbott and Costello-style routine with a stuffed dog, I knew I was at the wrong show.  The kid behind me (two, too young) was kicking, and the kid next to me (ditto, ditto) was covering what kid one couldn't hit from the side.  I stuck it out for the Billy Goats Gruff (just ask me to sing the Trip, Trop song!), but skipped out at intermission, missing out on the Three (Tree! - Irish) Little Pigs.  So, I kind of accidentally found myself at a show for preschoolers, but I did pick up a pamphlet on the International Puppet Festival - Ireland 2009.  The brochure looks sweet--acts from Russia, Spain, the Czech Republic, France and Italy--and the festival is much more in line with what I was looking for.  One of them in a Spanish puppet adaptation of The Miser, only "it is no longer money that everyone covets, but water."  The puppets are made out of faucets and stuff!  I'll definitely be there for that one.

Free of the tots, I hopped back on the DART and headed home, then across the courtyard towards the promise of wine and company.  What I got was champagne (fancy), cheese (French), wine (check), dinner (penne bolognese), more wine (check, check), drunk (duh), a TV (more later) and a rousing game of Operation.  Yeah, this one.

Doctors love money!

Predictably and (hopefully) due to my level of inebriation, I completely failed.  The OGD was ridiculously good.  Apparently there's something about being a real doctor (dexterity, nimble fingers, concentration under pressure) that carries over to extracting ice cream cones, pencils and butterflies from a red-nosed, buzzing man.  K also kicked my butt.  I can only presume this is because she owns the game and (therefore) practices constantly.  I got the wrench-- $100, a poor showing.

A second game was vetoed (that final butterfly really took it out of all of us), and we all piled onto the fold-out couch to watch Spinal Tap, which I barely managed to stay awake for.  It was 11pm.  I thought about pulling a similar stunt as earlier in the day and skipping out half-way through, but a combination of pure laziness and pride (bruised by my recent defeat) kept me glued to the couch and my eyes (mostly) open.  Plus I wanted the OGD to carry over the promised extra TV (again, pure laziness), and I thought there would be a higher chance of that happening if I stuck it out.  The movie ended and the OGD's proposal of an outing was mutually shot down by the women; just the same, he did bring over the TV (which is sitting on a chair, untouched and unplugged), for which I was grateful.  

Sunday was a bit quieter (a little more hung-over-er) with the GD arriving home from work in the a.m.  Apparently my drunk dial(s) had not been too disruptive, but I did effectively get the Operation jingle stuck in his head all night (I did not sing it, he just made the association).  At least it was thematically appropriate.

In other news, I continue to be under-worked and under-paid.  I have some rehearsals starting up next week (I'm and extra!), at which point I'll just be regular-worked and under- not paid.  In the meantime,  I'm thinking I should buy Don't Break The Ice, practice at least an hour a day and then invite K and the OGD over for dinner.  Best to have some wine on hand, as well.

*I accidentally deleted the original message; this is a close approximation.

So you just stay home and play synthesizers*

Or – When you’re unemployed, there’s no vacation (except when your bf has a week off work).

The Good Doctor stole the internet today (or, you know, he took our little Broadband To Go stick to work), so I am forced to hang out in a café for the free Wifi—not a terrible consequence, as it turns out, and on track with my goal of getting out of the apartment at least three times a day.

Last week was gloriously full of oversleeping and riddled with evidence that the GD and I are both very set in our ways. TP over the front or back of the roll? Lasagna foiled or unfoiled? Front and foiled, obvs, but one must pick one’s battles when one is living with someone with whom one wishes to continue living. I learned this lesson repeatedly by picking as many battles as possible (compulsively and without intent of harm) during the GD’s week off and then feeling like an ass about it immediately after the fact. But, come on, put some foil on the lasagna so it doesn’t dry up. Right? Am I right?

Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one making an ass of myself in week one of the Living Together Adventure (LTA), and we’ve come out of it stronger than (and as stubborn as) ever. Don’t worry, we didn’t spend the entire week arguing about who was going to do the dishes (that’s right, we both wanted to do them in our respective ‘right’ ways). We didn’t go far, but we did manage to get out of the city on several occasions last week. We went out to Howth (pronounced like a frat boy chanting "Hoath!") on the train and walked the peninsula to the point where some actual hiking trails started and a downpour forced, er, allowed us to turn back to town for a pint. We took the bus to Sandymount, a lovely little suburb that’s also right on the water and made me happy to be living by the ocean again.

Howth!

On Saturday, we took a windy and slightly hung-over coach ride out to Glendalough (which is part of Wicklow National Park) and (after an emergency 40-minute sandwich detour), we ‘hiked’ one of the trails through the park. The first part of the ‘nature trail’ sure had a lot of pavement and noisy European teenagers, but one we broke off onto the ‘Ramble,’ things cleared out a bit. That’s right, the trails were ranked Easy, Moderate, Ramble and Hill Walk. How is a Ramble harder than Moderate? (It’s not.) Also, Hill Walk? How much more lamely could you phrase that? Moving Your Feet Forward On A Slight Incline? Anyhow, we totally would have done that one, but it was supposed to take 4+ hours and we didn’t have that kind of time; plus, there was an alarming warming sign by its description on the map depicting a man falling off a cliff, and I found that to be off-putting.

Alas, the weekend ended, the GD went back to work, and I decided to create a less ridiculous sleeping schedule for myself. I have to pretend I have a job by saying things in my head like, “Anne, you are due at the gym by 9:30am. You have a very important meeting with the treadmill,” and, “The servers at Taste of Emilia^† are waiting for you to order your coffee and write for an hour in their café.” So far, dividing my time between things like this and the general pursuit of domesticity (doing dishes and laundry; elaborate meal-planning and baking projects; finicky tidying and rearranging of furniture) seems to be an effective way of killing a day. I’ve also secured myself a spot as an extra in a Dublin Fringe show from Argentina, and I’m trying to become a volunteer with the Fringe Festival, itself. Pretty productive, right?

The only real tragedy I’ve suffered in the last week is the half-death^‡ of my ancient iPod. The thing is still kicking, but the headphone jack has crapped out. I can still listen to it on the GD’s dock in our living room, but alas, no more trips to the grocery store with the world around me completely drowned out by Girltalk. I think the damage may be a result of The Dropsies at one of my important gym meetings, but I drop that thing ATT, and this is the only serious injury it has sustained. I refuse to let it die completely, though, because I cannot afford to replace it with one of those new-fangled ‘color screen’ iPods with a million GB of space that I could never use. MyPod will serve out its final days honorably: as the soundtrack to my confined life of poverty and small domestic tasks^§.



*FOTC: Inner City Pressure

†Amazing little Italian place right around the corner. Apparently Emilia is a place in Italy, and most of the food and drink is from that region, including the little sample platters of parmagianno with balsamic they give you when you’re drinking a delicious glass of red wine! Also, bomb cappuccinos. The only place in Dublin they don’t put chocolate on top.

‡Not the correct use of the term ‘half-death.’ I think it has something to do with cells, or maybe that's half-life. I do not claim to know.

§That one guy from The Stepford Wives would like to watch.

Time, time, time and not a thing to do

The past few days have been pretty quiet around here. I'm settling into the apartment, the GD has been working crazy hours this weekend (one week of annual leave starting after his nap today!), and I'm doing my best to get into the habit now of audition-searching and looking for ways to make connections here in Dublin. I have (already) managed to eke out a friend; that is to say, the gf of one of the GD's friends (and former co-worker) is similarly unemployed and bored out of her mind, so we've joined forces. Her situation as an unemployed writer (who came from a good job in Australia) doesn't really bode well for me and my artistic job-seeking plans (having come from a series of short-term, non-commital jobs, myself), but I hope we can find some kinship in the excessive amount of freetime we share. She seems to enjoy drinking, so in that regard she's got my vote, and she and the OGD (Other Good Doctor) live in an apartment directly across the courtyard from ours. Convenient? I think so.

I called my sister last night to ask her what that one website was where you could find tv shows watchable outside the U.S. She pulled through for me and I entertained myself with several hours of 30 Rock hilarity last night while I went into a bit of a cleaning frenzy on the stovetop. Yeah, it's good to have the GD home from work. It will be even better when I have people to call when he's not around. Maybe I'll take out a personal ad:

WF available most afternoons for baking, margaritas, light manual labor. Seeking daytime platonic companion to share in activities, crack jokes, generally be entertaining. Dance background a plus. Or, you know, employment. I'd take employment, too.

Needs a little work. Don't worry, I've got time.

Dual Citizenship!

I can't believe I forgot to tell you, but I'm Canadian!  

Thankfully, my WIG Lauren mentioned it in her blog, which reminded me that I had recently made a trip to the Canadian embassy in Seattle.  I think I mostly forgot on purpose because the whole process of printing a card with my picture on it as proof of Canadian citizenship is going to take about a year (serious backlog), and I was trying not to fixate on the awesomeness that will ensue when those 12 months are up (in an effort to make that time go by more quickly).

So, my mom is Canadian by birth, thanks to my Scottish grandparents who moved there en route to the US.  (So international, I know!)  Anyhow, my mom only lived there until she was two, but her birth certificate gives her citizenship, and after some recent inquiries on my part, I found out I'm in, too.  I just have to fill out this form (done), drop it at the embassy (done), and wait a year while the people in the one office in Canada who process all the applications from all over the world shove mine to the bottom of the pile and ignore it for about six months until they finally get around to processing it (doing).

But that's it!  I will totally have two passports.  This confuses me, by the way.  I read a pamphlet about it in the embassy, and they were mostly like, Make sure the dates of entry and exit are in the same passport for each country you go to!  Also, some countries don't want you if you have two passports.  But I don't want them either.  I just want access to all the former commonwealth countries, which I will have with my fancy new Canadian passport-- in 10- to 12-months time plus 2 to 4 weeks to process the passport application.  So there.

Dublin Invasion

Folks, I am back in the game-- the game being Europe.  After a brief two-month stint working as a file clerk in my mom's law office (thanks, guys, for always giving me a job) and a week of mayhem (ish) in the Twin Cities, I've broken a little higher than even and arrived in Dublin with enough money in account to live here very, very humbly for as long as they'll let me.  Luckily, the Good Doctor has a place, so I only have to pay a fraction of the rent I would if I was trying to get a place on my own.

So, at the moment, I'm chillin' to some Salt-N-Pepa while the GD works a 24-hour shift, planning some errands (mobile phone!  kleenex!), and generally plotting (legitimate) ways to stay in Ireland for longer than the three months allotted to me by the very kind, but very stringent Garda officer who let me in.  He looked up the GD in the system!  He took my picture!  Anyone know someone in Dublin who's hiring?

In the meantime, I'm just working on adjusting to the time difference.  I think I may have slept 11 hours last night?  To be fair, I didn't sleep at all on the red eye, and my four-hour nap yesterday afternoon just did not cut it.  I forced myself out of bed around 11 am (just five short hours after the GD had to get up for work), but I would have had no trouble sleeping another five or so.  I am going to use the same technique shortly, however, to force myself off this couch and out into the streets-- just for errands, don't worry.

Also, apparently I only blog when I'm in Europe?  Or maybe it's just that I only blog when I don't have a job, or don't have a job that takes up more than twelve hours a week.  Here's to more of that, at least as long as my credit card balance stays low and my bank account high.  Cheers.

Back in the Yu Ess uv Ey

I'm over the initial culture shock and back into the routine of living (temporarily) with my parents, and suddenly instead of feeling like I've been back for three weeks (which I have), I feel as though I never left. Frightening.

In May I was in London, Paris, Càdiz, Granada, Madrid, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna and Paris. Yeah, I know I said Paris three times. That's how many times I was there. And, okay, I was only in Dublin for 12 hours (would have been shorter if the GD and I hadn't missed our original flight to Budapest), but it still counts. My job ended April 30th, and I was on a train out of Flers the morning of the 1st. Never looking back.

Early on, I think I was pretty good about blogging. That is, I vaguely remember writing stuff about being in London with my sister. Then, as my internet access got spottier and spottier and my schedule involved fewer nights in each city, I found myself becoming lazier and lazier about keeping my (huge) reading public up to date on my travels. Then I got back to the states and was jet-lagged and mostly just felt like sleeping (or not, depending on which was less convenient) and that got in the way of blogging. Then I just hadn't blogged in so long that I felt overwhelmed by the idea of starting up again. And that's where I am now.

I saw more places in a month than I thought I would see at all in Europe, got to feel inadequate in numerous languages, bickered and made up with my mom at least 17 times, and enjoyed a well-mediated birthday dinner in Edinburgh. That is to say, the GD met my mom and managed to cut the tangible tension (after two weeks of mother-daughter travel) with pleasant, engaging conversation. I made it to (surprise, birthday destination) Budapest despite missing the aforementioned "plan A" flight by the second of three overnight trains the GD and I took in our travels.

And now I'm here, wondering if any of that just happened. I'm pretty sure it did. I've got pictures.

Càdiz

This place is amazing. My activities today included (but were not limited to) getting up after 11, walking out to the plaza to use the free wifi, spending several hours on the beach, and filing my nails. Yeah, it's rough here. I can see why my sister might not want to, like, stay home and do her homework.


Tomorrow we're taking a ferry to the nearby town of El Puerto de Santa Maria, which is supposed to have beautiful beaches and some kind of celebration going on. Yesterday we took a day trip to Sevilla. The weather was a bit drizzly, and two-thirds of what we went to see was closed for the day (the Cathedral and the attached tower) but getting to see Alcazar (which I hear is similar to the Alambra in Granada but on a smaller scale) was pretty awesome. I'll fill you in on the comparisons (if I feel like it) after our stay in Granada Tuesday night.

I don't want to leave the beach! But I guess Paris* will be okay too. Again. Quel dommage.




*I am afraid that I have not been making any kind of an effort here with the language, and even more afraid of the state my French will be in after a week and a half of English.