Cinnamon patrol

Ok, a brief break from the cooking (and geekiness, love you David, mwah mwah).

I've completed two knitted garments recently. Both were intended to be comfy but stylish wardrobe staples for my winter - ah feck it, for my wardrobe, I don't have summer & winter wardrobes here because it is SO DAMN COLD the whole year long.

Anyway, these were going to be great garments. A lovely, classic cardigan in a nice teal merino (the Tangled Yoke, for knitters in the know), and a chunky v-neck vest in what was supposed to be pale grey, but ended up being pale lavender, but thankfully looked all right (Rowan - seriously, name your colours better in future please!).

Both patterns saw me measure myself carefully, select the appropriate size, and check my gauge (for non-knitters, that's the number of rows and stitches per cm, to make sure you'll get the intended size). I *never* check my gauge normally, because I always knit to it anyway, but I checked.

Both garments ended up HUGE on me. Not cutely oversized in a kind of stylish way - massive in a even-too-big-for-a-fake-hiphop-wannabe way. That's right, not once, but TWICE!

The cardigan has been shipped off to someone who will look stunning in it. The vest has been frogged (again, for non-knitters, this means unpicked and undone), and I've cast on again for the smaller size, which is supposed to be too small to even get over my head. I still want the cardigan, so I may try again at the smaller size that is also supposed to be too small to accommodate me... right after I look at the other* project I have on the needles that may also be too big.

Knitting gods, wherefore hast thou forsaken me? Is this a hint to bulk up for winter? Because I had plans to do exactly the opposite, but all this knitting and ripping and having nothing hand-knitted to wear is really starting to bug me.

Labels: Dublin, Grumbles, Knitting, Laura

I've never been one of those people who can eat and eat and EAT and never gain weight. (Hello, immediate family, how are those crazy-fast metabolisms of yours?)

I didn't really make an effort to slim down for our wedding. It seemed a shame to miss out on those yummy cocktails/that nice chocolate/those delicious chips... you get the idea. I got a little skinnier, but not much. I figured I'd probably stay that size for awhile if I worked at it. So I bought work clothes in anticipation of our move to Dublin, and prepared myself to make an effort with food.

Fast forward five months. (Can you believe it's been five months already??) I'm a size or two smaller, because none - NONE - of the clothes that used to fit me, fit me anymore.

Okay, my t-shirts are all right. And the more fitted dresses still look ok as less-fitted dresses.

But none of my pants and skirts fit right. My beloved Workshop jeans - too "firm" to wear on my hen's night (I had a lot of fun planned), are loose. LOOSE, people!

And the most annoying thing - aside from an ever-shrinking wardrobe - is that I don't know how I did it. Okay, I don't pig out all the time, but i eat what I want, when I want, pretty much. I don't exercise much, and I don't have a medical problem or drug addiction to burn the extra calories. (I know you that when you think "Laura", you think "drugs". Obviously.)

It's like the fat fairy decided to be kind to me, now that I'm married and can let myself go. Which I'm not complaining about.

What I *am* complaining about is that I'm now down to 2 pairs of pants, a pair of jeans, and a couple skirts that actually kind of fit me, and are appropriate for activities other than mooching around the house. (My new trackpants also fit, and are nice, but are not work-appropriate, no matter how I accessorise them.)

So I need new clothes. Only, I don't want to go shopping. I can't be arsed. But if I don't, I will start to look like a sad, uniform-wearing loser. Or risk flashing everyone when my pants droop too low.

While these are both options, they are not very attractive. And there are enough unattractively-dressed people in the world. I know this because I see them every day: the white pants, overly tight skirts, barely-covered bosoms, thick makeup - and that's just the men!

(Seriously, there are some really good dressers here, and some really appalling ones. We seem to live near the appalling dressers, which makes it ok to shop in your pjs, but is less than inspirational.)

So. Shopping this weekend. Even though I don't want to. And when I'm magically a size or two bigger in 6 months' time, you can laugh at me for not just buying a big belt. But I won't need to go shopping.

Labels: Dublin, European fashions, Grumbles, Laura

A 6 1/2 foot tall colleague of mine was mugged for his cellphone by a guy with a knife, in broad daylight, outside the business park, on a busy main road.

My commute is an hour from door to door each way - but when it rains, it can be 1 1/2 hours.

(It rains a lot in Dublin.)

It would be convenient to be able to drive places and do things when it suited us, not just when it suits Dublin Bus/ Bus Eireann/ the DART or the Luas.

And most compellingly, this morning on the bus, the guy behind me puked, with 30 minutes left in my journey.

Labels: Dublin, Grumbles, Laura, put me out of my misery

I'm safely home from Vancouver - it was a great trip, no complaints there. And once our current crisis is sorted, I'll post about it in more detail.

Right now we have 2 problems:

1. I'm hugely jet-lagged and suffering from a cold. Last night I got about half an hour of sleep. I'm taking today off as a lieu day for all the travelling on the weekend.

2. We haven't had more than 3 minutes of hot water or heating since 18 June, and any at all since Saturday.

It is not fun to have to boil the kettle to wash your hair.

It is even less fun to have to tell your landlord that you want to move because of said water problem - and the fire alarm that's been deliberately turned off for 2 months, and the hugely excessive noise - and have him tell you that you either need to get a replacement tenant, or you forfeit your deposit.

Never mind that it's illegal to turn the fire alarm off. Or that the water and heating problem last happened 6 months ago, and has been worked on for the past 2 weeks to no effect.

Add to that the pressure of finding a replacement apartment in a central location, of a similar size, of a similar standard, and with a car park (looks like I'll need to drive to work, so we may need a car), and for the same price, just so you can get a decent night's sleep and a hot shower or central heating.

And did I mention that people queue up to view properties, and it's intensely competitive, so you don't necessarily have a great chance of getting one, even if it does magically meet all your criteria?

So we're a bit stressed at the moment. Frankly, I don't know how David manages it - looking forward to yet another cold shower, dealing with an overtired and grumpy wife, plus doing all the usual work and home stuff. He's a star.

Right, off to look for somewhere to live. Otherwise, we may be homeless.

Labels: Dublin, Grumbles, Laura

Mostly the latter, with dreams of the former.

While our apartment is fairly quiet most of the time, there are some noisy ones. On Friday evenings, the bell-ringers at Christchurch Cathedral go a bit mad for a few hours. On Saturday nights, the bar up the road is pretty loud, what with the noisy (drunk) punters and the booming bass.

But on Saturday it wasn't the bar that woke us up. It was the punters (please feel free to substitute a more apt description of your own choice - my mother reads this, so I can't be too crass - hi Mum!) in our apartment building. Doors slamming, screeching and shouting, and general noise. Both David and I woke up, and finally after over an hour of it, I lost the plot.

I went outside and discovered that people upstairs were conducting a party in the hallway. The large, cavernous hallway common to all 40-odd apartments, which is all hard surfaces, and consequently an excellent conductor of sound.

Scantily clad, I stood in the hallway and bellowed until someone looked over. I told them that at 4.15AM they'd better end the party, as they'd had all night. (Okay, so I'm paraphrasing here, but I didn't even swear at them, I was so restrained.) They looked embarrassed, and in the ensuing 15 minutes, spent a lot of time shushing one really noisy punter. Finally they shut up, and while I heard a few people leaving later, it was quiet enough for David to go back to sleep.

If they do it again, I'm not going to wait an hour to scream at them.


We figured that Sunday night (last night) would be fine, though - everyone has stuff to do on Monday, right?

Wrong.

At 11PM, we noticed people queueing noisily at the bar. They were dressed up to the nines, clutching tickets, and I hoped fervently that it was a private gig - perhaps some jazz. I mean, it was after 11 on a Sunday, right?

Well, we were woken sometime after 1AM by the... feckers. (Sorry Mum, but it's commonly used here, even by mothers, so I figure it's not quite swearing.) Around 150 people had spilled into the street. The boys were smashed, and noisily attempting to dance and sing. It was not a pretty sight - nor were the incidences of public nudity, vomiting, and urination.

Honestly, the women with them must have had no standards.

The Gardai turned up finally. I was all keyed up, ready for some (well-deserved) police brutality, hoping the whole shindig would be shut down in a matter of minutes. Instead, they kind of observed with bemused looks on their faces. They did manage to arrest around 4 people, and their presence did help to disperse the crowd, but very slooooowly. By the time the last of the Gardai left at 2.45AM, there were still quite a few people left, but they were quieter.

How did it eventually end? Well, one guy jumped up on another to give him a hug, and the jumpee fell and hit his head. An ambulance came, checked him out, and left - as did the last people, finally.


Now, my guesses on both of these events are that they're graduation-related. It's May, the end of the studying year, and students are leaving. I've been a student, and seen what students can do. But I've never witnessed such thoughtlessness (in the case of the people partying in the hallway), or crass ickiness (the super-drunk ones).

On both occasions, I thought fondly of New Zealand. Of our former building manager who'd shut a party down in the apartment building; and of noise control, who actually controlled noise, and police who actually dispersed large drunken mobs rather than watching them and giggling.

So really, it was just mayhem - there were no murders. Not that I wasn't tempted.

Labels: Dublin, Grumbles, Laura

If patience is a virtue, I've been a very virtuous person up to now. But I think I'm about to lose it.

We are still waiting on our boxes to be cleared by customs. Until then, unless we go shopping (a pleasant thought, but one that involves spending lots of money, so we've both nixed it), I will wear the same clothes I've been wearing for the past two months.

Two months in two pairs of casual pants? Two months with a small, rotating wardrobe you were already sick of after two weeks? Both very annoying. Even though I know I'd probably end up wearing these clothes anyway, it's not having the choice that drives me mad.

Also contained in those boxes: books, knitting supplies, and general items designed to make our lives comfy and our apartment feel homely. I am really, really sick of waiting for the boxes. And every week of part thereof that we wait, we get charged an additional 50 euros for storage. Grr.


We're also waiting on the NTL cable tv/ internet people to come and actually hook us up. They've been out twice, but both times they haven't had the key to the NTL cabinet in the building. It's a cabinet that they put in and they lock, so that they control who accesses it, and thus who gets NTL services. Yet they profess not to have a key to it!

It will have been two weeks tomorrow. If they can't connect us this week, I want to go with a different kind of internet. Because NTL have a monopoly on cable internet here. Of course.


Also trying my patience? The job hunt, of course. In Ireland, "immediate" means "some time in the next month or so". The daily grind of getting up, looking online, calling people, selling my soul/ myself, sending my CV through, having a follow-up phone interview... It's getting to me.

Everyone reminds me it's only been a month, things take time, I'm getting some interest, at least I get some leisure time... Yes to all of those. But I'm over it. Job hunting is hard at any time, but especially so when you don't have a job to move from. I'm bored and lonely and sick of it all. The only way to stop the cycle is to actually get a job. So I keep looking.


And in the meantime, one of the things keeping me sane - or at least keeping me from complete raving lunacy - is my knitting. Here's a picture of something I'm making at the moment. I'm not telling you what it is, because it's for someone I know reads the blog.

But you'll see the finished object in all its glory soon enough - and in a decent photograph. You'll just have to be patient.

Labels: Dublin, Grumbles, Knitting, Laura, Work

I'm siiiiiiick.

How sick? Quite sick, as it happens.

Sick enough to reschedule an appointment with a recruiter, because after a nauseous night of not-sleep, I'm exhausted as well as sick.

Sick enough to not want to make the 40-step trip to the living area where the tv is, because it's comfy in bed and the light out there is so bright it makes my head hurt (more).

Sick enough to have plain toast for breakfast.

Too sick to read my only unread book, because it requires concentration that I can't muster. Too sick to mend my beloved vintage denim jacket, whose seams are rapidly disappearing as the thread crumbles into nothing - even though I wear it almost every day. Too sick to go yarn-shopping so I can knit something (anything!) to keep myself occupied - and let's be honest, too sick to search the Interweb for a pattern to knit up.

I miss health, our apartment in Auckland, TV in the bedroom with lots of channels, lots of easy-read books, and knitting.

I'm over it. Would the good-health fairy please make a house-call?

Labels: Grumbles, Laura

What happens when the you exceed your monthly bandwidth cap?

Your interweb speed slows. Really, really slows. Sloooooooooooooooooooows.

Makes it hard to sneak a quick interweb break in between packing boxes. I'm just saying...

Labels: Grumbles, Laura, Moving, the Interweb

Should not be allowed to use computers, and especially email and auction sites like TradeMe.

I'm all for the democracy of the Interweb, I just despise my personal interactions with electronic dunces.

(Professionally I love the dunces, because they prove that nothing is as simple as developers and marketers tell us. But in my own time, I have better things to do.)

People: check your emails. Read things through twice. Delete carefully. It isn't that hard. Really.

Labels: Grumbles, Laura, the Interweb

Do you remember your last injection?

Probably not.

Me? I remember my last four injections. In great detail.

Last year I got a Hepatitis A boster, since I only had 95% immunity. It was a very unpleasant experience: intense pain that lasted for 10-15 seconds, and that culminated in me declaring that I was about to pass out. And then I passed out.

Injections 3 and 2 were last week: polio and typhoid. Not pleasant, but not terrible. I did lie down after the first one, just to be safe, but I was fine. The injection sites were sore for awhile afterwards, but it was a fairly decent experience, with a great nurse.

My most recent injection was today: a tetanus booster with diptheria. Because you can only get them as a package deal now, apparently. And my experience? Tetanus HURTS, people! It hurts A LOT!

To be fair, it was a very short burst of pain, which is what kept it manageable (and me conscious). But what sucks is that my left arm is now really sore. It hurts to use it for lifting or carrying things, and it still pulses with small, sharp bursts of pain every now and then.

All this is in aid of 2 1/2 weeks in Goa, India for part of our honeymoon. And all I can say is: it better be worth it!

If you could see me sitting here typing, you'd laugh, because while I'm trying to type in my customary manner, I'm also trying to keep my arm immobile so it doesn't hurt. My typing style is unusual at the best of times, and I am sure I look even odder now.

But it HURTS!

Time for some ice cream to numb the psychic pain. Better to eat it before my final dress fitting tomorrow, than afterwards...

Labels: Grumbles, Honeymoon, Laura

Late last week I decided that I did need a diary this year, after all. Relying on Lili being by my side to keep track of all my appointments is... well, a flawed plan to say the least.

So we looked for my diary. Small but not tiny, attractive, not hideously expensive.

And we looked. And looked.

I was perfectly willing to pay full price (for a change), but could I find a decent diary? Hell no! All the diaries that remained from the post-New Year's diary sales-orgy were ugly, impractical, and odd. Not to mention still a bit of a rip-off.

Stores (and Whitcoulls, I'm mostly speaking to you here), please stock a small range of attractive, non-bog-standard diaries for the stylish people about town who may have neglected to purchase on earlier. You'd do very well in sales I'm sure.

I did get a diary in the end - a lovely (and expensive) pale blue model from kikki.K. Bless you kikki.K for stocking something so lovely!

Moral of the story: buy your damn diary before the end of January if you're a discerning diary-buyer.

Labels: Grumbles, Laura