Ireland Part 2

So Day Two in Ireland seems like an appropriate place to begin with Part 2. There was so much packed into Day Two that it might be all I can get to in Part 2, but I'll do my best. So after Fashion and I managed to seep sluggishly from our beds after our Super Sleep we got ready for breakfast in the hotel and then we would gather for the our first day on our "Taste of Ireland Tour." Breakfast in Ireland was probably my least favorite part of every day. If it hadn't been for the coffee and croissant I would have been incredibly grumpy until lunch. The Irish version of bacon is terrifying for someone who has issues with certain kinds of meat. The eggs weren't terrible, but they weren't good either and the cereal at our first few hotels was lack luster at best. Eventually we stumbled across some decent pastries and such, but the breakfast at the Stillorgan Park Hotel was not one of those places. Lets just say I ate a lot of carbs and avoided the blood sausage with even my eyes.
After breakfast we checked in with Patrick, our tour guide, received our name tags and then learned of the daily protocol - assigned seating every day so that everyone got a chance to sit up front. On the days where we changed hotels we were told to leave our suitcases outside the door and we would get it back in our room at the next hotel - Awesome Service! For some reason we had a different guide through Dublin, but Patrick (Pat from here on out) still drove for the day. Occasionally we would stop at a location with similar tour buses. In those cases we were to look for the bus with Larry the Leprechaun in the front window. That would be our bus:
Our tour around Dublin was similar to that of the Hop-on-Hop-off bus from the day before, but much more interesting and in much more detail. We also didn't have to tolerate the "please take yer headphones and yer parsonal baylongin's with ya" every time the bus stopped. That'll drive a gal mad! We traveled through the Georgian part of town which I was absolutely obsessed with - every building had a different colored door. One more interesting than the next. Our tour guide suggested this was so the Irish could find they're way home from the pub - just look for the pink door. There weren't many opportunities during our trip to take pictures during times of good lighting, but we made-do. Here are some shots from the Georgian part of town and the Doors of Dublin:

The drive through town pointing out areas we had visited the day before was an absolute blur. There was Oscar Wilde's home and Mary Malone as well as various churches and buildings all in a whirlwind, but then we stopped at Dublin castle. This is still an important location... would be like visiting the White House... only it's used for ceremonial purposes... no one actually lives there. It was absolutely stunning. I loved that every room was a different color and adorned with Waterford crystal chandeliers and hand woven rugs. It was truly a vision. I tried to capture what I found to be interesting...

I have so many more pictures and I'll be sure to put them all up on Snapfish when I do post them if you'd like to see them, but for the sake of the blog, I'm only posting my favorites of each location. Following Dublin Castle there was more driving around and funny like jokes from the guide... who's name escapes me. I tried to catch some interesting shots of the "goings-on" of Dublin through the bus window, so I missed some of the tour information, but got some interesting things... like these two boys walking their ponies down the street:

Tired of walking - Rent a bike! If I didn't think I would have killed someone, I would have tried it..

Every time I see something referring to prison I feel compelled to take a picture of it for Lindsay (my friend who works with convicted felons.)
The more humbling portion of the trip was to a sculpture near the water based on the famine. To see the emaciated statues of women, fathers carrying children and even their pets was so disturbing and honest. It was hard to not be deeply saddened by them.

Following the Dublin tour we had a couple hours to rest up and get ready for dinner at the Merry Ploughboy Pub. On the way back to the hotel our guide pointed out the shopping mall in Stillorgan where Fashion and I noticed was the ever elusive A.T.M! We paid very close attention to where it was and decided that during our time off before dinner we would walk there. Turns out it was very close to the hotel - left to the light and then it was just around the corner. It only took us an hour of walking through the neighborhoods to realize that we turned left at the wrong light. An unfortunate mistake that we seemed to make several more times... we finally did make it to the ATM and we also stumbled upon this place and I made Fashion pose for a picture:
Chilled to the bone and ready for dinner we freshened up (money in our pockets) and headed to the lobby to meet the group on the bus. At the Merry Ploughboy you receive dinner, a complimentary beverage and then a traditional Irish Coffee at the end. There is a show of traditional Irish songs done by the house band "the Merry Ploughboys" and then a show of traditional Irish dancing.
Dinner was grand, as they say in Ireland, as was the free beer. I was a little apprehensive of the Irish Coffee because I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, but all the talk of sugar and whipped cream sold me. Here is Fashion with her's:
The band was great! I think all the southerners were shocked to see a banjo...

Fashion and I were tickled to see the pint holder on the mic stand

The Irish dancers were insanely talented, but the eerie plastered smile on of the girl's faces started to seriously freak me out.
They brought people up from the audience to dance and the band brought up those who broke the rules. How might one break the rules? There was a song that required clapping, but only through the chorus! If you stopped late - you broke the rules. If you stopped early - you broke the rules! I knew that this would put me in the clear. Even while video taping with one hand, I was able to mind the clapping sequence by slapping my leg. I didn't miss a bit - totally not breaking the rules... or so I thought. It was then brought to my attention that knee slapping = breaking the rules. Damn! That's when my reverse strip tease career began. Fashion attempted to record the whole thing, but never actually hit the record button. This is probably to my benefit. One person from our group (Brittany) actually did manage to record the event... thankfully she sat far away. Still you can see the whole thing on youtube if you would like... CLICK HERE.


One of the women on our bus told me a few days later that she had no idea I was on the bus with her... she thought I had been planted in the audience by the band and was actually part of the show. I thought that was hilarious. That closed out Day Two. I became a YouTube sensation and everyone now knew me by my proper title "The Shy Girl."

I accidentally included this picture in my editing so I'm including it. This is a Fairy Tree. To qualify as a Fairy Tree it must be a certain kind of tree, must stand alone in a field and can't be within a certain distance of other trees. To cut down a Fairy Tree would mean a horrible fate not only for you, but for anyone related to you. No one in Ireland would ever dare cut down a Fairy Tree - this is one example of such a tree.

To Be Continued...

Ireland Part 1

As a Murphy I'm sure you can imagine that I've dreamed of going to Ireland all my life. See where my Murphy people came from, stand where they stood, see what they saw. Only... I'm not a Murphy... I'm actually a Henderson. From Scotland. There is an ancestral line that connects me to Ireland by my grandma on my mom's side, but that's all together too complicated to explain. But I have actually wanted to visit Ireland all my life... so, while in Ireland I just stuck with the "I'm a Murphy" story because you can't argue with the obvious connection to Ireland with that last name. It's like Smith in America... they're everywhere. In fact, I believe those were my exact words when I made fun of Fashion (my travel buddy) for spelling my name to the travel agent in Ireland. So you can imagine my surprise when our born and raised in Ireland (by parents who were born and raised in Ireland and so on) tour guide told us his name was Patrick Smith.

The trip to Ireland ended up being full of surprises and fun and I'd go back tomorrow if I could. Traveling with Fashion turned out to be great fun! She is a wonderful traveling partner. I can't remember a time where I've laughed so hard, so often. Our journey began in the Knoxville airport. We were so excited to get on our way to O'hare airport, that we got up and in line for a plane boarding to Dallas. Fashion actually gave the agent her ticket and started walking down to the plane before the agent realized we were a flight early and chased her down. We chalked that one up to being really excited, but throughout the trip it became all too clear that together Fashion and I are hopelessly navigationally challenged.

Because the trip was 8 days all together and I'm incapable of telling a short story, I've decided to divide the blog up into an unknown number of parts. This part will just be Day 1 since I've already talked too much and still have pictures to post! And to be honest, Day 1 was really 2 days when you factor in all the travel. We left Knoxville around 5pm on Friday and arrived in Dublin Saturday morning around 10am.

Here we are on the 1st plane. We're trying to get as far away from my camera as possible so as not to leave you with a close-up shot of our nostrils.

Here's one from on the plane. No idea what's its of or where we were over... we'll chalk that one up to being excited also.

A shuttle carted us off to our first hotel - The Stillorgan Park Hotel just outside of downtown Dublin.
Our adventure began here. Our decision to not get money exchanged at the airport wasn't a good one, but the lady at the hotel informed us there was an ATM at the petro station down the road. Which we went to only to discover it was out of order. So we ventured back to the hotel and were informed that the same woman at the hotel could change over our American money for us... which would have been a better place to start than "you can try the petro station down the road," but we got money either way! We then hopped a bus to downtown Dublin and decided to bounce around town through dinner and go back to the hotel that evening. We had vouchers for a Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour and for Guinness. We got off the bus somewhere near or on O'Connell street and wandered around for a while just checking things out. We stumbled upon a crew race where I discovered that being short is rarely to my advantage... still managed to get a couple of shots, though.
Then we found Mary Malone - known to the locals as "the Tart with the Cart" but I didn't take any pictures of her statue. I was too mesmerized by the life-sized leprechaun that I swear wanted to kill me...
And the guy with the chalk poem... not like I haven't seem this guy in pretty much every city I've been in, but I still felt compelled to take his picture
On the Hop-on-Hop-off bus I snapped a couple of pictures of stuff we drove by, but none of them were really that interesting in the grand scheme of things... so I'm not including many of them, but here are some from random buildings and things that we passed, but didn't go in:
Someone's house
One of about 9 million churches
Then we hopped off the bus and went to Trinity College to see the book of Kells before we knew they were going to charge us. Once we discovered it was going to cost money, the Book of Kells became much less interesting than the Trinity College gift shop. In the gift shop Fashion found just about everything she wanted to by for everyone, but then decided that you can't buy every souvenir at one place on your first day... which of course left us scrambling on our last day to get back to Trinity College so that she could buy all of her souvenirs. Live and learn, I guess. Here are a couple of shots from the campus:

We then got back on our tiny little tour bus and listened to the guide talk about all the places we would learn about in greater detail on our regular tour the following day until we finally hit the motherland - the Guinness brewery.
Here's our voucher!

The Guinness Storehouse is much like any other brewery, only they brew Guinness there so it's better.

They have a brief introduction and then the rest of the tour is self-guided and therefore as long or as short as you'd like it to be.


After you complete the tour you're given a shorty glass sampler of Guinness - here is Fashion with her 1st Guinness... Double fisted!?

Yay
Then you go all the way to the top where you get a free pint and get a bird's eye view of Dublin. It was breathtaking...

and the view was nice, too.

Unlike Fashion I decided to spend my entire budget at the Guinness gift store! First day, Schmirst Day! Of course it didn't stop me from shopping and eating over the next 7 days. We left Guinness in a hurry and caught the last Hop-on-Hop-off bus and then took the city bus back to Stillorgan to have dinner at the hotel because at this point we were so tired we could barely stand. We slept from 10pm to roughly 8am and then got ready for Day two! Dublin castle and a tour through the city and then my day of infamy at the Merry Ploughboy Pub - which I will post in Part II...

To Be Continued...

Scent Scented with Scent?

I was fast-forwarding through the commercials of my Tivoed Gray's Anatomy when I saw an ad zip by for Febreze scented like Gain detergent and like Downy dryer sheets. I immediately stopped my frenzy through the commercials to find out about the events at Seattle Grace Hospital to go back and find this commercial to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. I mean SURELY I was mistaken, right? Could this be possible? I have been through the detergent aisle a dozen times, browsing through all the Febreze scented products, wondering how they chose which Febreze scent to use (since there are so many!) and being totally uncertain if it really made a difference because I'm kind of scent freak. I find one and latch onto it in what some might say is an unhealthy way. You might use the word "obsessed"; I would just say I'm passionate.
So now we have Tide scented with Febreze and Bounce with Febreze scent (which I'm still not sure what it is and how it's more beneficial than their regular scents) and now we have Febreze that smells like Downy and Gain... So does that mean that we should just switch to Downy and Gain instead of Tide and Bounce? I mean are they going to have Tide with Febreze's Gain scent? No, I'm guessing they're not. It's a total traitor move by Febreze. They're saying, "Tide isn't good enough smelling on it's own so they need us to make it better, but even though we're better than Tide, we're not good enough smelling on our own either. So we need the greatest scent of all - Gain. So if you're picking a laundry detergent by it's scent, then you really can't use Tide... you should use Gain because, even with our scent, Tide is still not good enough." If I were Tide I'd be pissed... unless they're all owned by the same company and it's just meant to be one big ole Mind "F" and we're not supposed to know what the hell to do anymore because all the detergents and dryer sheets are looped together in some sort of tickery. It's like laundry detergent incest. I no longer trust any of them.

*sigh*

I will continue to use my Tide original, I guess, but PLEASE Arm & Hammer, don't do anything to your 2 in 1 Lavendar Vanilla moist dryer sheets. Remember, I'm passionate... obsessed... passionately obsessed. It will crush me. So Back OFF Febreze.

What's the Point?

My husband made an accusation the other day, and while I'm not saying that his accusation was very far from the truth, I felt like his example was stupid and caused me to be argumentative.

We were in the kitchen when he pointed out that I have a tendency to not use the last bit of a product. For example, the milk. I can stretch a tablespoon of milk to last through two pots of coffee, but apparently when I put back the milk jug with only teentsy bits of milk in it - this drives him batty. The milk, however, is my example. HIS example was the cheese. He said, "...like you put back the Swiss with only one slice left."
Now while I totally see his point and am very positive that he is right (if he weren't right I wouldn't have 45 bottles of lotion, shampoo and conditioner with an ounce at the bottom of the bottle as I preserve them for no apparent reason) I couldn't help, but be totally agitated by this example. So... if I am making a sandwich and I normally only use one piece of Swiss on my sandwich, I am supposed to use TWO pieces of cheese because having ONE piece of cheese left in the fridge is somehow irritating? Somehow one piece of cheese in the fridge is LESS appealing than not having any cheese left in the fridge? How does that make sense? I have never gone to the fridge looking for cheese to put on a sandwich and gone, "Aw crap! There's only one giant slice of cheese? What am I going to do now?" So I got mad at him, not because he was being critical of me, but because his point was spoiled by his poor example choice.

What does this say about me??

How to Boil Water

I have become so reliant on technology. Sad, really. I remember when Neal was deployed for 6 months and we had to write letters. Not emails. LETTERS. Like with stamps and an envelope and two weeks of waiting... military mail moves a little slower than a snail. There was no email, let alone video chat. I also remember getting so peeved at people and "their cell phones." There was a time when I used to say, "I refuse to get a cell phone!" Me! The one with the Blackberry in the doctor's office giggling at Facebook posts and texting all my friends like a teenager... I used to say I would never have a cell phone. It's kind of funny that I was so ANTI technology for a minute considering my dad's work has always sort of been at the forward point of technological developments. He sold the first fax machine, we had the first car phones, they even tried to develop a pager watch in the 80's, fiber-optic phone lines, video phones, and now renewable fuel. We were of the first people to have the CD player, the VHS player (never the Beta - my dad was too smart to fall for that short lived advancement) and the DVD player. My husband has an iPhone, we have a Wii and my mom's car doesn't require a key. So the short stint to struggle against technological advancements was kind of odd for me! I am now being punished for it.

My microwave is broken.

Do you have any idea how hard life is when you don't have a microwave!? And it's not one of the counter-top jobs that you can just toss and get a new one. It's one of those over-the-stove deals that requires a repairman. He's coming Thursday. The microwave broke Saturday night. My kids have no idea what it's like to live in a world where food isn't ready in 30 seconds. They have no idea what it's like to live in a world where you flush your own toilet, pump soap with your hand, turn on the faucet using the hot and cold knobs and roll the silver handle on the paper towel roll to dry your hands! Okay, I admit it's not quite that bad yet, but it's close. I can already see the future conversations like, "when I was your age we had to cook our food, it wasn't delivered by a machine in the kitchen and we didn't have robot maids! We had to clean our own rooms! And we drove on roads, not in space ships." Did I watch too much The Jetsons as a kid? Perhaps. But you get my point. Back to the microwave.

I have a 10 month old who no longer nurses - she drinks formula. Typically I heat the water in the microwave and then add the powder. But now I actually have to get up at 6 in the morning to boil water! Well... I put water in the bottle warmer and turn it on, but I still have to wait 5 minutes for it to warm the bottle... now that I've said that "out loud" it sounds really stupid, but I can't deny the truth in it. Waiting 4 and a half minutes longer for a bottle just sucks. Also, my usual lunch is something from the freezer, a sandwich or soup. Two of the three require a microwave. Okay, that's not entirely true, but it feels true. What's the point of cooking a Lean Cuisine in the oven? I might as well cook in that case and that is just too much effort for the middle of the afternoon when you're already chasing a 3-year-old, a 10-month-old AND trying to pay attention to Days of our Lives! I am not Super Woman! I am flawed Liz who is desperately trying to figure out the best way to reheat my cup of coffee!! The mugs are too big for the bottle warmer... I tried.

My house is starting to feel like post WWII Germany.

That might be a wee bit on the dramatic side. We have bread... and money, albeit no a lot of it, and most of all electricity. But I will admit that it will be a long time coming for me to squawk about technology again. Unless my WiFi goes out...

Fall! (and football)

Fall is so close I can almost taste it and all of it's pumpkiny goodness. Of course they totally cheat here in the south because school starts in August so I get the fall bug early. August is not fall. August isn't even Fall's close relative. Hell, August isn't even Fall's third cousin by marriage on it's father's side. How they can justify starting school in the ugly, sweaty heart of summer is beyond me. Everyone knows you start school in early September when fall is so close by you can at least pretend! And you end it in June, not when you're still picking May flowers. We might as well have spring break in February. But I didn't want to write about the goofy school system and how they're blowing half their annual budget on air conditioning in the first month of school - I wanted to write about FALL!!!

Oh glorious Fall. The most wonderful time of year. My heart is swelling at the idea of pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin lattes, pumpkin rolls... oh, I can't wait!!! PUMPKIN FUDGE!!! Sorry... I'm just excited. Email me if you want the recipe for pumpkin fudge - it will blow your freakin' mind! Pumpkin is just one of the many things I'm looking forward to. Can you believe I'm actually excited to turn 33?! The 3rd annual Halloween Bash will be in full effect this year! Of course last year I was fully dilated. I've been tossing around costume ideas... I'm totally blank. I'll come up with something! All ideas are welcome... of course I probably won't use your idea, but it will surely point me in the right direction. The party will be at Bud's Pub & Garage this year - which means it will take place at the bar that has been built in my garage. I really need to do a blog about BP&G. It's a special place.

And since you are all AWESOME at math, you know that this Fall my lovely little baby will have her 1st birthday. Which is lovely and sad all at once. And right on the heels of my sweet little girls first bite of birthday cake will be the birth of my cousin's (who is more like my sister) first baby. And that is just lovely!

But what I'm REALLY excited about is FOOTBALL. Those of you that know me will know that I attended two colleges - The University of Oregon and the University of Tennessee. And even though the Ducks will always hold a special place in my heart - I am a Vol through and through. From my orange hair to my white blood cells. V-O-L-S go vols go! I am not ashamed to admit that I am drinking the Kiffin Kool-aid, either. (CLICK HERE if you need the back story)And it's totally not because he's smokin' hot, either. Okay... maybe it's a little bit because of that. I'm just about to jump out of my skin for the first game of UT football to see just exactly what it is we're made of under this new leadership. This will be my first year as a Tennessee Volunteer outside of the Phillip Fulmer era. I was not born here, was not raised a Vol - Phillip Fulmer is all I've known. I cried when they ousted him. But what's done is done and I'm not one to sulk over the things I cannot control (of course hiring a super hot coach that hates the Raiders as much as I do helps a lot in the non-sulking department). Just get into the season already and let's beat Florida and Auburn. Oh... and all the other games, too, but those two games specifically give me braggin' rights within my family. My brother went to Auburn and his lovely wife went to Florida and as long as I can mail them "sorry for your loss" cards after the game, I'm good. (Lee, if you're reading this I could really use a good card for this purpose - maybe a "way to fail" or something? Maybe the "after all these years" card will be appropriate this season... assuming we pull off the win)
If all this Tennessee football excitement wasn't enough, I'm having to experience two regime changes at the same time. The Denver Broncos gave my favorite coach Mike Tan-a-shan the boot and then quickly delievered Jay Cutler to Chicago in exchange for Kyle Orton... and somehow - NOT ON PURPOSE - I eneded up with both those guys on my fantasy football team. This should prove to be an interesting year for football fans... or at least Tennessee Vol fans that are also Denver Bronco fans... so for my husband and me... and Al Wilson. If there are others like us, I have yet to meet them.

This Fall is going to be the awesomest Fall yet! I hope you're prepared with your apple, cranberry or pumpkin recipes, your Halloween costume ideas, your baby gifts and your football orange (and blue on Sundays) or whatever your team's colors are! I know I am!!