Well... I haven't updated in a while but of course it doesn't mean I haven't been up to much. First and foremost, I am sad to report that I was in my first proper bike accident (we won't count that time when I was 14 and I wiped out on a sandy road). I was going straight through an intersection, and was hit by a car coming from the opposite direction who was turning. She didn't see me (remarkably, since I was right in front of her). Here's my poor little bike:

It took two weeks and two x-rays, but they finally decided that my wrist is broken, so I got a huge cast! It's very annoying. I can't do yoga, go running, ride a bike, or do anything sweaty! Here I am looking very tired after getting my cast:

So it's been taking me a long time to do things without the use of my wrist -- but on the up side, my left hand is becoming more dextrous! The accident was a month ago, so I'm mostly over the feeling sorry for myself stage, however I still have at least a month to go with this cast, so I reserve the right to self-pity at a later stage.

I've gone on a couple of outings with friends who were kind enough to cart me out of Dublin to the "mountains" (large hills).

Visitors Centres in Ireland never cease to amuse me -- this nation sure loves its taxidermy. Here's the visitor's centre near Glendalough:

and here I am with a yak:

Not surprisingly, the yak looks better than I do, as I was feeling rather car sick from the journey. I will try to refrain from posting too many nature scenes:

What else? We had a fun time a couple weeks ago at Seomra Spraoi's first ever Karaoke night! I co-MCed as "American Diddly Idle" with "Darby O'Chill" -- it was a St. Patrick's day theme, so I wore my father-in-law's green Ireland sweater vest with an Ireland scarf.

My co-host held up signs to increase audience participation:

(audience:)

(photos by Andrew Flood)

And who can forget last week's big protest against the Household tax? I have a lot to say about it, but unfortunately I don't have the energy to say it all here. It was moving. It was energizing, but it was also sad. It was also funny! As always the signs were clever and heartfelt.

CLICK HERE for photos of the rally

But wait...there's more!

Way back when it opened, we were all wondering what the HELL could be in the National Leprechaun Museum. Every time we walked by, I'd ask, "What's in there??" So when a LivingSocial coupon came up for it, I couldn't resist paying 9 euro for two tickets. Then the challenge was finding someone to go with me! But go we did, and let me tell you, and I don't say this lightly, it was shit. Total shit! Our tour guide/story teller was a nice dude. He was someone I'd totally love to have some pints with. But it isn't his fault that the Leprechaun Museum is 100% a complete waste of time and money. Though I don't regret paying the 9 euro to sate my curiosity.
Here's a pot of "gold":

Here's Una and little Lola sitting on a giant chair (designed to make visitors feel like Leprechauns)

And last but not least, we went to the last ever Miss Alternative Ireland. I have a real knack for ending up with the worst seat in the house. I don't know how I manage it! I'm always in the last row. Despite paying to be in the circle, our seats were not so great. But it was still a good time! I liked the set design this year.

There's more stuff that I've been getting up to, of course, but I'm going to end it there. The weather was glorious for a while, then it went cold again. Hopefully we will have some warmth soon because I have a fantastic new yellow spring jacket that I want to wear!

Thanksgiving turned out to be a very pleasant day! We ate fake turkey, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, gravy, and I even made pork loin for the meat eaters! We lit a fire and ate until we couldn't eat anymore, then we headed to the pub. Then we had leftovers for a few days, which was very tasty.

I don't have a hell of a lot of time to post, but I wanted to celebrate this:


For those of you that don't know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. In the month of November, you write your butt off and if you make it to fifty thousand words before Midnight on December first, you are a WINNER! There's really no prize, per se, except the satisfaction that you wrote a 50k word, 175 page novel in one month. I took on the challenge and miraculously managed to make it to my goal. I say miraculously because I wrote 20k of the 50k in the last 4 days. But I learned a LOT about writing, how I work, and now I have a really, really crappy first draft. And I'm not saying that to be modest -- it's really bad. But like any first draft, it has great potential! So hopefully between now and death I'll be able to revise it into something that doesn't make me cringe when I read it.

What else has been going on? Well, of course Ireland's economy is almost completely flushed down the toilet, and we've been taking to the streets. However most recently, we were joined by 50,000 to 100,000 other people who also took to the streets. Here I am, waiting to march, in about six layers (it was cold):


I gotta mention this lady because she had one of my favorite signs. Apparently I'm not the only one who HATES Pat Kenny:


There were so many people, it was incredible. People of all shapes and sizes and interests. I've never been on a protest of that size before, and I wonder if it did any good. But there will be more, I'm sure. There are lots of images from the day, but here's a pretty good flickr set that someone has up.

I'm back in Dublin!

This will be a quick post, so I apologize. I've been pretty busy upon my return, and to top it off I've had a bit of a cold. Since I've returned, I've been trying to get some SPRING CLEANING done to remove all that dust and fire soot from the winter, as well as all that dirt and clutter than builds up when you aren't paying attention. It's kind of slow going, I have to admit, but the weather has been just gorgeous since I got back, so I've been able to have breakfast out in the garden every morning and go for beautiful walks in the afternoons.

On tuesday we partook in the great Irish tradition of protesting. If you haven't heard, Ireland's economy is the in the shitter. And it seems like the only ones being asked to sacrifice through "cuts" are people who need it most and have the least to give. So we went on a little march. I was a bit apprehensive, although this wasn't my first Irish protest, because I always am afraid something bad is going to happen and I'll get in trouble and get kicked out of the country of something, but I being certain that my luck isn't *that* bad, I went, and it was a rather moving experience. People from all sorts of different looking backgrounds were there, from your anarcho-punks to your working class ladies, to your academic looking types, to your regular nondescript looking people. I even saw a lady in a very nice business suit there, holding a sign. I took a couple of pictures, and then I also took a little video so you can see what it was like from my point of view, walking in the middle of the short march.



There was a decent showing, but the sad part is that there was absolutely nothing in the news about it the next day. The major media outlets here in Ireland are so tied into the government and the church that it's like a built-in sensor. What amazes me is that when you listen to the news on RTE radio in the morning, you'll hear about every dumb-ass drunk dude who crashed his car in the entire country the night before, but you won't hear about a few hundred people who were protesting the Dail and Dublin Castle the day before.

It's happening again next Tuesday, and I highly encourage anyone who wants Ireland to take care of its hospitals, schools, workers, people with special needs, etc. to come along and be a body of support.