February 27, 2002
10:10 PM dublin time
[inspired by cutebutstupid who was inspired by high fidelity to come up with the sound track of his life] i present cd's life soundtrack:
opening credits, babe in arms:
- 'pirate ships' sung by judy collins - my mum used to sing me to sleep with this when i was little. though i thought it was pirate chips. my dad is a big judy collins fan and we listened to lots of her records when i was younger.
- 'prince charming' by adam and the ants - joining in with the tribal sounding 'uh whaaey hau, uh whaaey hau' wailing at the start.
- 'frankie' by sister sledge - as we raced down a country lane from our tent in a field to our cousins rented cottage on holiday while on rainy valentia island.
- 'spirit in the sky' sung by doctor and the medics - while my sister eileen and i danced around the sitting room holding our hair up off the tops of our heads imitating the band's standing straight up punk hair-dos.
- 'come on eileen' by dexy's midnight runners - thinking dungarees were ever so cool but jealous that my sister had a song with her name in it.
- 'crying in the rain' by the everly brothers - my dad doing his best to teach me and eileen this song so we'd sing it [i got the harmony, eileen the melody] for grandparents and the like, but we were too shy and avoided it whenever possible.
- 'real gone kid' by deacon blue - off [i think] the first album i ever bought.
- 'love shack' by the b-52's - working at my first job washing dishes in our family restaurant.
- 'stand' by rem - watching my classmates in school try to copy michael stipe's footwork from the video.
- 'twist in my sobriety' by tanita tikaram - making me so sad.
- 'carey' by joni mitchell - part of a compilation tape made from my parents' records for long driving holidays to france.
- 'brewing up a storm' by the stunning - the first gig i ever went to.
- 'where is my mind' by the pixies - usual teenage stuff, shutting oneself in ones bedroom listening to music
- 'alive' by pearl jam - moan moan, nobody understands me, isn't eddy vedder gorgeous.
- 'blister in the sun' by the violent femmes - moan moan, at least i have music to escape to.
- 'been caught stealing' by jane's addiction - that for years i knew only as 'the barking song' that the goth girlies liked.
- 'bullet in the head' by rage against the machine - chipping my tooth by dancing i little too energetically and nearly giving judith concussion.
- 'way me down' by the madrigal - a band from waterford that that we were more or less groupies of for a couple of years.
- 'groove is in the heart' by deee-lite - no matter where you were when this came on you had to battle your way immediately to the dance floor in flomotion.
- 'original' by leftfield - living away from home, going to college, tasting dance music.
- 'she don't use jelly' by the flaming lips - i didn't use tangerines to die it, but i did have tangerine coloured hair.
- 'karmacoma' by massive attack - listening to the wonderful x-fm, a dublin pirate radio station, while studying for my first year college exams.
- 'cowgirl' by underworld - getting bleepier, seeing underworld play in waterford of all places.
- 'ping pong' by stereolab - who played one of the best gigs i've ever been to.
- 'sure shot' by the beastie boys - the nearest i get to moshing.
- 'rapper's delight' by the sugar hill gang - the first vinyl record i bought while in america working one summer. i brought it back and inflicted it on aonghus and it's now the closest thing we have to an 'our song'.
- 'kooks' by david bowie - aonghus being a big bowie fan pushed for us to go see him when he played in dublin. i'm glad we did, the gig was most excellent.
- 'organ donor' by dj shadow - the music really was coming through me.
- 'gorecki' by lamb - this may be another contender for 'our song'. it's a bit more suitable too.
- 'sing it back' by moloko - dancing in cheesy clubs where this is the only good song they're likely to play all night.
- 'waltz #2' by elliott smith - just coz it's a lovely song.
- 'svefn-g-englar' by sigur ros - st. patrick's day weekend in edinburgh with friends singing 'it's yoou-hoooo' across the scottish parks. the only live music that's ever brought me to tears.
05:57 AM dublin time
this is the second time i've heard of somebody getting fired for things they wrote in their blog [this is the first]. the thing is, i don't know what she said in her blog to get her fired. did she deserve it or are the company over-reacting?
i've called my manager a 'hot-blooded, overheated dictator' in my blog before. i wonder would that be enough to get me fired if he knew it was there. and it's not like it'd be hard to find. a quick google for 'caitriona dwyer' is all it would take.
it's definitely made me think about maybe trying to regain some sort of anonymity.
[link]February 26, 2002
11:22 PM dublin time
frustration-station.
i'm just off the phone from aonghus. aparently the van that we're planning to buy is going to be about a grand dearer than expected.
see the guy we're buying it off works with aonghus. the arrangement is that we pay a thousand dollars for the van plus the cost of repairs [new shocks and tyres and the like] plus cost of registration and transfer of ownership. it was originally anticipated that the extras would come to $1000, but now that it's been [eventually] dropped into the garage, yer man has told us that it's looking more like $2000.
grrr. damn.
he basically didn't know what he was talking about when he quoted the first price for the repairs.
it's our own fault really for believing him. and we could still back out now, but would probably end up paying a similar price for a van we know nothing about. at least we know this one runs. still it's knocked $1000 off our savings.
but the way i'm looking at it is we'd be mad not to arrive back to ireland up to our ears in debt; $2000 aussie is only £1400 [doh!] £940 irish and twice as easy to pay off. i'm hopin'.
02:51 AM dublin time
we put up a webcam. i would have told you about it, but by the time i got around to it, we'd already taken it down. see our internet bandwidth from our provider is limited and there just wasn't enough to go round. instead aonghus is permanently sorry.
[link]February 25, 2002
06:37 AM dublin time
i've been burning mp3s to audio cds all day and there's a strange smell coming from the cd burner. a smell of hot plastic. i think it really is burning.
seeing as i can still abuse the stationary cupboard at work, i have requisitioned a red, a blue and a black pen for writing on the blank cd's to emulate the original cd art. well kinda. when i'm bothered. most of the time though i'm just writing the name of the band in a different colour pen.
the smell from the pens is now combining with the smell of the burning burner. i think it may be affecting me because work doesn't seem too unpleasant, though maybe that's because everyone else has gone home. hang on.... everyone's gone home? that means i'm in work late - the fumes are definitely affecting me.
[link]February 22, 2002
02:42 AM dublin time
i've been reveling in a return to one of my favourite childhood activities recently with mena's online colouring contests [though coz she's american she calls them coloring contests].
my favourite possession when i was about eight was a tin of colouring pencils. i distinctly remember getting it. it was sometime around easter and we were on holiday in a lovely house in the irish countryside with our cousins. my dad had to work during the week, but came down on the first weekend bearing this beautiful gift of colouring pencils for me. i don't know why i got it - it was nowhere near my birthday or christmas. we didn't tend to get many spontaneous presents when we were kids and i don't think anyone else got anything. not that i cared. it was the most wonderful present ever as far as i was concerned, probably the more so for it spontaneity.
the pencils were produced by a company called 'faber castell' who's name for me became synonymous with beautiful things, made by people like laura ashley, crabtree and evelyn and royal doulton. and the pencils weren't just pencils. they were magic water pencils. if you painted a little water over what you'd drawn, it gave it a smooth washed-out look, like you'd used paints. they were fantastic. i coloured and coloured and coloured. mostly in colouring book and never outside the lines - if i went outside the lines the picture was ruined and i'd have to start on a new one. mostly i'd colour pictures of princesses and fairies and little girls and their sheep. my pink and purple pencils were always the shortest. i was such a little girl.
so you can understand why i'm enjoying colouring again. though it's a bit easier to stay inside the lines using photoshop. and it has its own magic paint effect filters, though i'm not sure if i've mastered them quite yet - i'm still learning to colour with this new tool and i'm delighted that these contests have given me a good excuse to practice. japanese and tiffany birds were my entries to two of the contests and i look forward to the next.
[link]
February 21, 2002
09:21 PM dublin time
as if yesterday's enlarged screen display wasn't bad enough. this morning i started my most recent library aquisition - ken kesey's 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest' - to find it's printed in large type. i sat on the train attempting to read it at full arms length. i don't think the woman sitting opposite me appreciated my plight.
[link]05:38 AM dublin time
i'm doing some very exciting screen shots [yes, that was sarcasm] of our software in work today which means i have to set my screen resolution down to 800x600.
it's too big. it's making my eyes hurt.
and my head.
how did people used to work like this? especially on those little dinky monitors.
i've had to push the computer screen an extra foot away from me [lucky i've got room on my desk] so i don't go instantly blind.
everything is going to seem so small when i leave work.
[link]February 20, 2002
06:32 AM dublin time
food, weather or work? food, weather or work?
ah bloody hell, i can't be arsed. go read aonghus instead [there's photos of me there y'know].
[link]February 19, 2002
12:16 AM dublin time
our fridge.
our bloody noisy fridge.
it's always been a bit temperamental. i think it may have suffered an accident and shoddy repair under past ownership [well, renter-ship] and its motor now cycles in regular loudly vibrating complaints - common enough among fridges, but in this case the volume is enough to keep us awake at night [a definite disadvantage of living in a studio apartment].
when we first moved in, a couple of days [or possibly hours] of living with the recurrent noisy shuddering was enough to spur aonghus to fashion a tea towel muffler. that did the job for a month or so, but aggressive tea towel action must have loosened some of the equipment because muffling became ineffective and no creative wrapping would do the silencing trick.
so we moved on to the the tea-towel-shock-absorber method. towels placed underneath the fridge stifled some of the noisier vibrations and some delicate fridge-nudging and re-positioning stopped the rest. we became adept at stumbling blindly fridgeward [having been woken in the early hours by a cranky juddering frigo] to give it gentle prods towards silence.
but now our shock absorbers are failing. every motor cycle seems to start up louder than the last and only the most expert nudging and bumping can silence it - and then only til the next time. it doesn't make for a good night's sleep. though we have established that i'm the heavier sleeper of the pair of us - i was woken at regular intervals during the night by aonghus getting out of bed to fix the noise and not by the noise itself.
[link]February 18, 2002
04:23 AM dublin time
i have corn-on-the-cob corn still stuck in my teeth. [does that count as talking about food?]
[link]February 16, 2002
01:46 AM dublin time
i can't believe i've been in australia for more than six months and have only just purchased my first jar of vegemite.
i 'got into' marmite [vegemite's european equivalent] about two years ago whilst staying with a friend with strange eating habits in edinburgh. he was a firm believer in marmite and butter on toast [for breakfast, dinner and/or tea] and even won over such culinary snobs and marmite sceptics as myself.
so in the run up to our arrival in oz as aonghus anticipated the gastronomic delights of the meat pie, i looked forward to my first taste of vegemite. and it has been shockingly long in coming [i think the gastronomic delights of the meat pie may have distracted me somewhat].
and the verdict?
i think vegemite definitely has the edge on marmite.
it's just slightly milder which means you can spread that little bit more on your toast without being totally overwhelmed by the saltiness - too much marmite is not pleasant but with vegemite you can put a tad extra on without disasterous results.
also, it's consistency is less syrupy and more buttery, making for easier and evener spreading.
and it comes in these dinky little jars for one-person-marmite-eating flats like this one. though having said that i'm racing through it. and i haven't even tried it in beverage form yet.
so right, it's brunchtime, i'm off for some vegemite and butter on toast.
can you overdose on vitamin b?
[link]February 15, 2002
01:14 AM dublin time
bye bye tinman. i'll miss your soul baring honesty.
[link]12:47 AM dublin time
two lists
1) cd
sheet of black card
metallic pink gel pen
rose petals
paper glue
2) ab
grass and trees
rug
cheap sparkling
mediteranean dips
turkish bread
hungarian salami
olives and feta
fruit salad
hedgehog slices
February 14, 2002
02:27 AM dublin time
it must be at least 30C today, and after sitting in the sun for half an hour at lunchtime i think my arms are a little too pink - the sun is much much stronger here than it was in asia - in a good way - i am now blissfully awash with endorphins and vitamin d.
[link]February 13, 2002
03:53 AM dublin time
'nightswimming deserves a quiet night'
the pool was empty of people last night but it was far from quiet with chinese fire crackers going off at random and regular intervals.
but that was alright. it's the people type of quiet that nightswimming deserves.
i hope it's people quiet again tonight.
[link]February 12, 2002
05:11 AM dublin time
this pancake tuesday i shall be mostly eating baked spinach and cream cheese pancakes.
[link]01:13 AM dublin time
i was startled into consciousness this morning [happily right when my alarm clock should have been - and wasn't - going off] by what sounded like a glass smashing into the wall beside my head. me and aonghus jerked awake on the lookout for glass shards through bleary eyes. but there were none.
we live in chinatown and as it's currently the chinese new year there were heaps of firecrackers and bangers going off last night. my sleep addled brain thought that maybe one of them had sat dormant til this morning and somehow sparked to life and shot up to our sixth floor apartment to smash a window in time to wake me up. but no, all windows were still intact.
unable to find any damage anywhere, we reckoned it must've been in the street or an upstairs flat. i wasn't sure how, as the crashing noise had been damn loud, but there was no other explanation...
...until, half way through getting ready for work i spotted one of the spare ickle batteries for my camera on the floor. i had left it sitting in a little ceramic dish of coins beside the bed, but it was now on the other side of the room and mysteriously kaput - all it's innards missing, like it had somehow exploded.
which is exactly what must've happened. it had been sitting all night in the midst of the miscellaneous small change, being short circuited by the coins, until just in the nick of time when i was at risk of oversleeping and being late for work, it overheated and went bang, smashing out of the dish of coins [making a noise similar to breaking glass], flying across the room, frightening the bejaysus out of me and taking several minutes off my life.
[link]February 11, 2002
06:32 AM dublin time
bad cd didn't go to work today - decided to make the most of yesterday's st. kilda festival and called in 'sick' this morning - the first morning in ages that one or other of aonghus and me haven't had to get up for work. it was our last joint lie-in for another couple of weeks as aonghus is still working weekend mornings.
[link]February 07, 2002
10:35 PM dublin time
i had an amelie moment last night.
walking barefoot across my bathroom floor, i noticed that the tiles underfoot felt decidedly wiggly. on closer inspection one of them was indeed totally loose - separated from its cement and merely slotted into place between the surrounding tiles. excitedly i tried to prise it out, imagining the secret box of forgotten childhood treasures underneath. but the tile was wedged tight and being stubborn and i wondered about getting some sort of prising tool. i stopped short of fetching aonghus' [very handy] swiss army knife with a return to reality and the reasliation that the tiles on our bathroom floor are about one inch square and as only one was loose, it was very unlikely that anything was hidden under it.
just as well really. i don't think i'm energetic enough, or nice enough, to run round melbourne trying to find the person who used to live in our apartment. i probably would have ditched the childhood treasures and gone back to watching the great program about jazz that was on tv.
[link]02:40 AM dublin time
one time, in a meeting, one of my geekier bosses, actually used the word fubar when referring to some messed up software.
[link]February 06, 2002
11:31 PM dublin time
this isn't even funny - blair and bush nominated for nobel peace prize
[link from notsosoft]
[link]10:54 PM dublin time
some evil man just stole the only tea towel from the kitchen to wipe his pizza soiled hands with – i know - pizza? and it’s only ten o’clock.
[link]10:52 PM dublin time
i feel like this is going to be a day of one-liners
[link]10:46 PM dublin time
is it foolish not to be concerned when one has a sudden fleeting red wine craving at nine in the morning.
ooh. there's another one, now I’m worried.
[link]02:17 AM dublin time
i realise i've recently been churning out the photographs at a somewhat increased rate. there were lots of sitting on my work computer that i wanted to upload before i leave.
for a change though this next lot are black and white. and these are probably the last you're gonna see for a while - we're trying to ease off on the spending and unfortunately that includes taking pictures too.
February 05, 2002
01:10 AM dublin time
more mirror project mayhem. this time squashed car.
[link]12:42 AM dublin time
i bought walking boots. yeah, boots for walking. i guess this means i'm going to be doing some walking - bushwalking perhaps, or 'tramping' if i happen to be in new zealand. believe me, no one is more surprised about this than i am.
[link]February 04, 2002
02:18 AM dublin time
yesterday me and aonghus took a wander down by the yarra river where the midsumma festival [melbourne's gay and lesbian arts and cultural festival] was going on. we had some candy floss [or fairy floss as they call it in australia. no, nothing to do with the festival], met up with ciarán and mary and watched some sequined transvestite dancers do a diana ross number before heading off to the cinema to see 'jay and silent bob strike back'.
en route to the cinema i nearly did a doubletake as we passed a boy and girl smooching - an afternoon surrounded by girl-girl and boy-boy couples had totally skewed by perception of what was 'normal' or usual - like when you wear those upside-down glasses for a while and your eyes adjust and when you take off the glasses your eyes see everything upside down.
[link]