Random Tuesday Thoughts- What is this light??!?.....oh, its sunshine.

We are finally getting a Thaw here in Ireland. After nearly a month of record low temperatures the weather is actually warm enough to go outside without freezing your eyelids open. Unfortunately most everyone still has no water due to busted water pipes (not us though hehehe).

So my landlords son was just over- he actually owns the house we live in. (he got run over by a truck or something and got a ton of insurance money) And I was not expecting him to be so young, like my age. or so cute. I don't think James likes that either haha. (like I would ever even entertain the thought now people!)

So the banks here are closed for an entire week after Christmas. Does anyone else think that is F*%&$ing ridiculous. I do. Seriously an entire week??? People need to be able to have access to the bank. I think i wouldn't be so pissed if I could make deposits into the atms- here you can only withdrawal. Or the fact that I drove to BOTH of my banks today and they were both closed. seriously? an entire week? GRR. I also have a funny feeling the post office is doing the same thing. We haven't had any mail since the day before Christmas- we should have gotten junk mail at the very least. This country is damn ridiculous sometimes.

Christmas here was interesting. The entire holiday is completely centered around the Christmas dinner and drinking. no big surprises here. Christmas eve the pubs are PACKED full of people. Everyone else is going to all the shops that are still open and buying whatever they can like Armageddon is coming. Do you seriously need 10 packs of cigarettes for one day? no. People are insane. It also made working Christmas eve REALLY SUCK. Christmas was great though. Dinner was fantastic (they have really fancy Christmas dinners since its their only really big meal of the year- I'm talking several courses people!) and then the rest of the night was spent playing games, talking and of course, drinking. we drank until 6am. my liver was not my best friend the next day that's for sure. And the day after Christmas? that's also a holiday here- St. Stephan's day. I'm not sure what its all about, but I know people go drinking. that's pretty much all i know about it haha.

My husband did good for Christmas- minus the Danielle steel novel in my stocking. But you can't blame him for trying haha. I think some of my favorite things include:


And a paint by Number:This was such a great off the beaten path present for me. I usually get clothes or books or dvds, but I love this present. I have great memories of my sister and I sitting at the kitchen table across from each other doing paint by number of kittens or ponies or whatever we would do. I always enjoyed them. And it suits my type- A perfectionist personality to a T. I can be as obsessive as I want to be. and no one can do anything about it- nah nah nah nah na nah!

I'm hungry but nothing sounds good to me. Theres hummus in the fridge but I want wheat thins with them. They don't have wheat thins here. hurmph.

I had the strangest dream the other night- I kept on being tracked down by crazy I'm going to kill you random mafia guys. I got shot 16 times but i was still alive just playing possum. And then they left high fiving each other and I got up and turned into Bart Simpson to hid from these mafia men, but it just so happened that Bart was next on the hit list and so we were involved in a game of hide and seek in the middle of Paris.

Now that you all think I'm sufficiently crazy.

In Ireland they have TV tax. if they haven't found you yet, then you don't have to pay, but if they find you and find that you haven't been paying yet- you have to pay. The key to this game is avoidance. If you know the TV taxman is at the door you turn off the lights and don't answer the door. If they cant come in to check that you have a TV they can't tax you. We haven't been found out and some people haven't been found out in years. I'm sure it will happen, but until that day I'm happily ducking this tax. I think its ridiculous that we have to pay tax for channels that we don't even watch. (the TV tax supports RTE which is Ireland's version of BBC and is not all that great.)

Well I should probably root around in my kitchen to see if that is anything remotely worth cooking. what the hell am i spending all of my money in the grocery store on?