Hair raising!

I don't have great hair.  I have lots of it, but it's not great.  Every day it's a challenge as it has a mind of its own.  It's always a running battle between me, several 'wonder' products, the hairdryer and the straightener to see who will win.  Victory is occasionally mine, but it is usually as short lived as my glossy locks when the life of the products wears out and the straw that I was born with returns with a vengeance!

Not being blessed with long glossy locks,  most days are 'bad hair days' for me.  But yesterday was the worst!!  Because not only did I have the ordinary everyday follicle problems to contend with, I also had a new style thrust upon me that I could do nothing about....."Helmet Hair".

I had my first lesson on the bike yesterday, and  I am not impressed.  I know I tried the helmet on in the shop but it wasn't on me for very long so my hair stayed (sort of) intact.  But yesterday I reached all new 'bad hair day' heights.  Actually it wasn't high at all, it was flat, flat and stuck to my head making me look like I had been....em.....well.....eh, wearing a helmet!  None of the other bikers seemed to care, perhaps because they were a bit more 'follicle - y' challenged than me! So now, on my four day Charity trip around Ireland, I not only have to cope with sitting still for hours on end without talking, I will also have to cope with bad hair days!!

But my lesson around the racing circuit yesterday, wasn't a complete disaster, I learned loads.  I now know how to be safe on the bike.  I know how to board and disembark, I know where the emergency exits are, I know what to do in the case of an emergency.  I also learned that falling asleep on the back of the bike is dangerous (as if!!)  and most importantly, not to ask the driver "are we there yet" every three minutes while he is concentrating on driving the bike....

But all joking aside, I actually surprised myself and wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be, and even got so comfortable that I was able to move around on the seat so that I wouldn't get stiff.  I learned how to keep my legs moving, safely, so that they won't seize up from siting in the one position for too long.  I also learned that I don't have to lean over as far as I though I would and that the bike most of  the work when going around corners.  He (Joe, the Rider) also showed me how to stand up on the back to relieve the stress on my knees, but I didn't quite have the courage to do that.  He assures me that after the first day, I will be doing that every hour.  I love his optimism!!  We did get the bike up to cruising speed of about 60km (well it is a Harley after all and not a racing bike) and that was just about enough for me.   It was a lovely day and it did feel quite pleasant to have the wind whipping around me.  Joe did tell me tho' that the bike could do 120km and he would do that speed if he had to overtake a truck on a motorway.  Yikes!  That made my hair stand on end!  Obviously metaphorically speaking, as in reality it was jammed to my head by the helmet!

Except for the hair bit, I am now beginning to actually look forward to this trip.

Anyway it's such a beautiful day today, so who cares about hair and it's problems.  I am going to sit here, outside on my decking, in the rare and beautiful sunshine and just enjoy it....

(while the sun bleaches my hair.....and dries it out......and makes it fuzzy..... and makes it stand on end.....I give up!!!)

Fund raising or intimidation?

I am now the proud owner of a white with a black stripe (needs a bit of customising), extra small (which is still I bit too big), open faced (so I can wear a bandanna), with detachable sun visor (in case I want to wear trendy shades instead), Nitro motorbike helmet!!

Now what in the world would I need that for I hear you ask.  Well, for those of you that don't already know, I am taking part in this event:

http://irishprematurebabies.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=99

I know, I know, I must be mad!!  But it was one of those things that happened on the spur of the moment (in a Pub, very late, after several drinks) and then I found that I couldn't (didn't really want to) back out of.

My brother has very kindly offered to lend me all the protective 'gear' that I need from a Motorcycle  training school he is involved with, but I was advised to buy my own helmet, for safety reasons.  And the advice I was given when I went to look for a helmet was, "If you have a cheap head, then buy a cheap helmet..."  So, obviously, my Nitro helmet was VERY expensive.

Of course, I don't have a motorbike or a motorbike licence, nor can I ride one, so I am going on this trip as a Pillion passenger.  I will be in the safe hands of a very experienced 'Rider' who has done many trips across the US on the Route 66 expedition.  But even tho' he is very experienced, I am not, and I do have to learn how to ride as a passenger, safely.  So I will be spending my day off on Saturday, going round the racing track, where I sometimes work with the Grid Girls, being instructed on how to move from side to side at the same time as the Rider, and how not to fall off!!  I am not going to think about it until I am actually on the bike.  And even then, I might have to think about something else.... but I'm not afraid.....or worried....or nervous....or scared.....or wondering can I get a flight to Outer Mongolia late on Friday night....I'll let you know how it goes!

I also had to do some fund raising to get the money together to go on this trip.  That was interesting, as I had never done anything like that before.  I started with a Pub Quiz, which after a lot of begging, cajoling, and threatening I got a good few tables together and we had a reasonably successful night.  I'm glad that I wasn't answering the questions, because some of them were really hard.  One of the questions was:  How far away is the Moon?  The best answer?  "Not that far, because I can see it...."

I'm not quite finished with the fund raising yet as we didn't reach our target, but I still have a few more ideas up my sleeve to raise the extra funds, like, looking down behind the sofa for the change that collects there, selling my first born, or telling my family I will come and stay with them unless they pay up, or singing for my supper, and last but not least, probably issuing more threats...  I'll try not to intimidate anybody, and I'll let you know how that goes too!!

And speaking of fund raising.....I'm off now to read a 'hot off the press' article about a €250M Tribunal, a Former Taoiseach, an Irish Politician (or several), Planning Permission, intimidation, and an unaccounted for €165.000 (that was just resting in his account)... you couldn't make it up....

Nothing Much...: Just two things...

Nothing Much...: Just two things...: Firstly, "HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY" where ever you are!  Do something green!! And secondly, "COME ON IRELAND"!!!  (Come on, 'cos we can't...

Just two things...

Firstly, "HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY" where ever you are!  Do something green!!

And secondly, "COME ON IRELAND"!!!  (Come on, 'cos we can't let the English beat us on our national day!)

:-)

What being 'Irish' means...

Sticking with my Irish theme this week, (well, my Ethnic joke did have an Irish person in it) in honor of St Patricks Day, I like to share with you some of the results of an Irish Times poll on what it means to be Irish.

Apparently being Irish means:

 - Having an Auntie Mary!  (That's a good start.  I have one of those)
 - You don't have the foggiest idea how to speak Irish.  (Hold on a minute - Ta cupla focal as Gaeilge agam!!  But wait I also have a few words in German, so does that make me German.  Yikes)
 - Answering the question "How are you" with "How are you"  (OK, that can be confusing for foreigners)
 - That you complain about everything but never do anything about it.  (Eh....guilty as charged!)
 - That every other nationality loves you  (Of course they do - they're painting their buildings green....oh wait)
 - If there's not some form of potatoes with it, then it's not dinner.  (Maybe that's why I hate pizza for dinner)
 - Having great pride in our Nobel prize winning authors - but never reading their works  (Eh.....guilty again)
 - Being able to laugh at yourself and not take anything too seriously  (What?  Never!)
 - Saying "That's Grand" all the time  (It never sounds the same when a non Irish person says it....)
 - Enjoying a traditional Irish breakfast at any time of the day or night  (What exactly is an Irish breakfast?)
 - Having freckles!  (I'm under no illusions now)
 - Having our own words i.e. craic (fun), banter (chat), shift (eh....eh....click with somebody!), morto (embarrassed), jaysus (oh my word!), state of yer wan (goodness, have you seen how she is dressed today?), and 'feckin' (Eh...I have no idea how to translate that into any other language)
 - You can mime the whole national anthem  (that goes back to the not speaking the language thing)
 - If Pennys closed then half the country would be naked  (If Dunnes goes too then the other half are in trouble)
 - Getting travel directions that consist of pub names, churches and roundabouts  (Road numbers, what are they?)
 - Going to Mass to check out the talent  (Well now, there's an idea....)

And my favourite:

 - Never having to say sorry, oh wait no.....that's just the Government!! 

I'm adding up my score to see how I did.  Although I did notice tho' that nobody seemed to mention having a sense of humour....Or spending a week celebrating our national 'day'...

Apologies in advance...

The Mother of all Ethnic Jokes!!

An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Southerner, a New Englander, and a Californian) an Argentinean, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovakian, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Kyrgyzstani, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, an Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian and 47 Africans all from different African countries, all walk into a fine restaurant...

The Maître D' scrutinizes the group one by one, and then bars their entrance.

He tells them…  "Sorry, you can't come in here without a Thai."



Well.....I did warn ya!!

The 'look' of the Irish!

You've heard the saying "paint the town red"?  Well being Irish, red wouldn't be the colour we would be painting anything.  No, green would be our more our colour.  But we are not going to paint the town green, no, instead we are going to paint some buildings around the globe green, all in honor of St Patrick's Day.

I heard a presenter on the radio this morning telling us that the leaning tower of Pisa had been added to the ever expanding list of buildings being turned green in honor of our patron Saint.  What list, I don't know anything about this.  So I did some research.....

It seems that everybody wants to be Irish for the day.

As well as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Niagara Falls will turn green!  The Sydney Opera house will turn green.  The London Eye will turn green!  Table Mountain will go green!  The Empire State Building will go green!  The TV Tower in Berlin will turn green!  The Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai will turn green!   The Burgtheater (City Hall) in Vienna will turn green.  The Sky Tower in Auckland will turn green!  The whole town of Moraira in Spain will turn green.  Several other buildings dotted around the globe will turn green, and, last but not least, the fountain in the White House will turn green for the day!!

What a fantastic tribute to us Irish, I didn't realize that we were so popular.  Thank you all!!  I am so proud to be green!  Go us!!  I am going to get out all my Christmas lights and change all the bulbs to green hang them over my house and show my solidarity.

Oh wait......I read to the end of the article..... It has all been organized (and paid for) by Irish Tourism, to promote Ireland all over the Globe.  What a let down.  There was I thinking they were all doing it because they loved us Irish.....not because they were being paid.  Hmmmm!!

And you know, the first St Patrick's day parade wasn't even in Ireland, it was in New York, and Patrick wasn't even Irish, he was Welsh, and his name wasn't Patrick, it was Maewyn Succat, and his favorite colour wasn't green, it was blue....

PS...

My son was very impressed with my cassette 'find'.

Not because it was U2 or because it was the Joshua Tree or because it was an original.  But because he thought it would be worth something.  He checked eBay and discovered that original cassette versions of U2's the Joshua Tree sell for about......€20!

So it looks like my 'find' is safe for another 25 years...

Isn't (old) technology marvelous....

I've been off work sick all week.  Nothing too serious, you will be glad to hear, but any sympathy you want to send in my direction will be gratefully accepted!!  I find chocolate always works....

Anyway, while I have been at home, coughing, blowing my nose and lying on the couch feeling sorry for myself, I have been listening to the radio and reading a lot.  And I have just read a very interesting article by Dave Fanning about U2's album the Joshua Tree, which is 25 years old, today!  Released on 9th March 1987.  Wow!

Not content with what I read in the article, I went seeking more information and that led me straight to Wikipedia where I read some more...

How interesting!  Apparently the album has socially and politically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery.  No wonder it received critical acclaim!!  Seriously, I never really understand music critics descriptions of albums, they always seem to use words which I can't relate to the music at all, to me the music/lyrics are just good, really good, absolutely brilliant, or not great!  But I suppose if they just wrote that then their articles would be boring to read.

All this reading about how great the album is made me want to listen to it again.  I know I bought it when it came out first so I dragged my poor 'under the weather body' off the couch and went searching in the old 'vinyl record' boxes in the attic, and eventually found it.  A cassette version, covered in dust.  An original!!  How cool is that?  I opened the card inside the cassette box and four young, very serious faces stared back out at me.  That made me laugh (and cough!!)

But, my initial excitement was quickly diminished when I realized that I had nothing to play it on.  It's a long time since I had a stereo with a cassette deck on it.

On a mission now to hear it, I though I might download a new digitally remastered version from iTunes, when I suddenly remembered a conversation that I had with my brother a couple of weeks ago, about something he had given me in 1985, I think, after he returned from a fishing trip to Alaska!!

Back to the attic again and more searching through the boxes dust and cobwebs.  Which by the way, is not doing my poor infected chest any good.  Again, after a bit of searching (unlike U2) I found what I was looking for!!

Gosh, this takes me back.  I turned it around a couple of times in my hand and eventually figured out how to open it, and to my dismay I discovered that there are batteries still in it.  God knows how long they have been in there, that's so typical of me.  But again this time luck was on my side and they haven't leaked and ruined it...  One more search now, for batteries, and I'm ready.

I'm back on the couch.  But I'm not reading.  I'm listening to the original cassette version of the Joshua Tree......on an original Sony Walkman!!

And when I'm finished, I'm going to look for my video cassette version of Rattle and Hum to watch...

Tweet treats!

I just read an article about a dog loving IT guy.

He has invented a hi-tech gadget to feed his dog remotely.  He works away from home a lot so he uses his invention to give his dog a treat from wherever in the world he is.  At first, Toby the dog, didn't know what was going on, but being the clever cute little dog that he is, he copped on very quickly and he now sits under the device wagging his tail waiting for the treat to drop.

Apparently, Mr Dog loving IT guy uses his iPhone and Twitter to deliver the treats. He can send a tweet at any time to a device he has rigged up to a feeder, then when he tweets a buzzer goes off and the device releases a dog treat into the dogs bowl.  How clever is that!!  Of course he limits the tweet treats to a few a day so that the dog doesn't get 'puppy fat'.

The things you read in the paper!!

Underneath that lovely story was another article about Champagne.

'Eureka' suddenly I had a brilliant idea.  Now all I need is that IT guy's number and to make sure all my friends have my Twitter address....

What's another year...

It was a really nice day today.  And not just the weather, which was really nice (until a couple of hours ago when it got really windy).  It was also nice because I got to drive a really nice car.  Well, that's not really that unusual, because I do after all work for Mercedes, so all the cars are nice.

At first I didn't want to leave the office, laziness was the only reason, but when I heard what I was going to drive and where I had to deliver it to, I couldn't resist.  So I got into my (OK I know it's not mine) super shiny new E-Class coupe, brand new with no mileage on the clock, and set off on a route I knew very well.  It was lovely to be out in the sunshine, shades on, cruising!  I delivered the car safe and sound and the car that I had to drive back, although not new, was equally as nice as the first one.  This is the life.

I got back to the office, turned on my computer, logged in to blogger and looked up my post from March 2nd 2011.  Ah ha, just as I thought.  It was a beautiful day last year too.  Well it was nice up to a point....I was out in the sunshine too that day, but on my return to the office, I was greeted by roars from the Dragon.

So today it was so nice to drive that familiar route, and drive right past the Dragons Den, to deliver my car to a house beside that horrible office.  It was nice to drive by in my swanky car with the blacked out windows, knowing that they couldn't see me and stick out my tongue in a really childish manner!!  It felt good.  I wonder what the Dragon would have said or roared.....Maybe it would have been nice if they had seen me, but no matter, I still got great satisfaction knowing that I was driving by and could keep driving by, and that I never had to go in there again.

It just goes to show that you never know what a year can bring.....

I wonder will I be checking back on this post next year.  Maybe I should make a plan to do that, and who knows where I will be and what I will be doing and what I will be writing about then!!