November 26, 2002
11:42 AM dublin time
overheard on the bus last friday night:
'you see that girl in the wooly hat, doesn't she look like a doll'.
and i swear i was only wearing my usual friday night ammount of red blusher.
[link]November 15, 2002
01:20 PM dublin time
far and away the most enjoyable hour spent every day while on the meditation course in thailand was the 5.30-6.30am yoga session. now it might sound a little early, but as we'd been up since four, it didn't feel too bad - especially after a couple of mornings to get used to it, and as that was the coolest part of the day, it was the most practical time for exercise.
the location of the yoga class was in a medium sized pagoda - sort of a hall with no walls but rows of pillars supporting the high roof. it was open enough to the elements that one felt nearly outdoors, but suitably covered that when the tropical rain became torrential, which on one occasion it did, we were sheltered.
this feeling of being out in the open in the total peace of the thai countryside enhanced the enjoyment of the yoga each morning, but the crowning moment was watching the sky fill with pinks oranges and yellows as the sun rose in front of us - often, depending on the timing of the class, as we were doing our 'sun salutation'.
given circumstances like these, it's not surprising that as the meditation course drew to a close i swore to myself that i would dilligently repeat the yoga lesson daily at the crack of dawn on arrival home. needless to say this hasn't happened - even when aonghus, very perceptively, bought me a yoga mat for my birthday. i'm not the sort of person that's generally given to exercise, and certainly not one to get up at the crack of dawn to do it, and back in a miserable irish climate it was just too hard. sure i wouldn't even be able see the dawn given the typical irish cloud cover. so i sort of decided if i wasn't going to do it early in the morning, i wasn't going to do it at all.
until last monday afternoon when probably out of feelings of guilt and general sloth, i set down my yoga mat in the garden room in aonghus' house. it's a lovely warm room [both in temperature and appearance] with golden wooden floorboards and french doors opening out onto the garden. and for about an hour, i went through all the yoga positions i'd learned on the course. i've even managed to repeat the event every day since.
[link]November 13, 2002
01:09 AM dublin time
for the first time in eight years - since i was in school and lived at home - i'm living in the same city as my lil sister eileen. it's the first time that we've both been grown up enough to take advantage of this and socialise properly with each other. so last sunday when ab and me and ted were planning a walk in the countryside i got to play the all grown up big sister and picked her up from her house to join us on the walk [well, aonghus did the picking up really coz i'm still not so grown up that i can drive].
we were planning to go to the hellfire club - the ruined shell of a notorious gentlemen's club in the dublin mountains, but didn't have a map, or any real idea how to get there, and ended up taking a very roundabout route to a small forest park with a stream instead.
this being abcd's first real venture outside in the fresh irish air since our return, we may have gotten a little overexcited. we took the first interesting looking route off the main one, up some leafstrewn wooden steps and ended up following a faint track along a low ridge above the main path. when the track totally disappeared, we had to scramble back to the lower path down a tree spotted incline, muddy with old leaf litter. the boys were well ahead - skidding down the slope on their hunkers - eileen and me were being more delicate about the whole thing, picking our way down through the undergrowth. until eileen wandered past some angrily lurking wasps who decided to inflict some end of season pain on my poor lil sis.
they got her twice - one on the back of her head and one on her shoulder right under her t-shirt, cardigan, scarf and coat [don't know how it got there - they're burrowing little buggers]. i did my best sympathetic big sister impression and accompanied her back to the car making hopefully appropriate soothing noises and giggling altogether too much [i've never seen anyone take off a coat, scarf and cardy with such speed].
[link]November 06, 2002
06:44 PM dublin time
this morning i was awake at about 11.30. that's the earliest i've woken up in two weeks.
i only brought one pair of shoes down to waterford with me. they're my black boots, and they've gotten really mucky with dirty grey brown splashes up the back. this is partly due to the intermittently pissing rain and partly due to the flat-building works that's muddying up our little street.
i've been drinking a lot of coffee since re-arriving in ireland.
the battery on my watch is dead, but my watch is in dublin so i can't bring it to the watch-battery-fixer-people.
i haven't watched 'murder she wrote' in at least six days.
[link]12:33 AM dublin time
i've been going scan crazy and can now bring you shots of middle earth:
