Did you miss me?

I made it back to the US without incident. The weather here is not as nice as the weather I left in Dublin, which is sad and funny at the same time. I had a GREAT time on my vacation, and am a little sad that I will now have to resume my normal life.

I’ll be posting some more stuff from my trip and pictures, but that probably won’t happen today. I’m sooo jet-lagged (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it).

Belfast

So I’m having a pretty good time here in the UK. Northern Ireland is lovely, and it seems that I brought with me unexpectedly good weather. Lots of people commented to me how unusual the warm sunshine was. You’re welcome, Belfast.

For the most part, the people I met were awesome. A lot of them were really interested to hear that I was from the US and genuinely wanted to know what I thought of their fair city. Many expressed admiration and apprehension that I was on my own, and I felt like I’d traveled to a city of my own relatives. The first night, I met three older guys who showed me the local bars and told me all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. One wanted to grab dinner the next night, but I figured that it would be silly to tie myself up with the same parties two nights in a row, and nicely declined. A word of advice to anybody going to Belfast: eat early. I guess I was still in New York mode and thought that leaving my hotel room after 10 would give me time to grab food and hit the pubs, but that was absolutely not the case. I struck out at all the restaurants I saw, and was lucky to make it to McDonald’s before they, too, shut down for the night.

The next night, I learned my lesson and left to find food at 8:15 (and even that was too late to get food at some of the local pubs that served meals). I had a good dinner, went back to the hotel and watched Dollhouse and the first episode of Cupid (I’ll talk about that some time later), and then went to a couple of local bars. The people in the first weren’t really as outgoing, so I left after one drink and ended up talking with Ricky and Ian, two nice guys who work at the Belfast Telegraph. We chatted for a bit outside, but they were smoking cigarettes and I was kind of freezing, so I told them to find me when they came inside the bar.

As I sat waiting for them, this old, super drunk guy who was actually sleeping when I first walked by awakened and started mumbling to me. I have discovered that it is nearly impossible for me to understand a Belfast accent when the speaker is under the influence, so I gave him a vague smile, told him I was waiting for my friends, and went back to reading on my phone. He had just asked me to join him at his table when Ian and Ricky showed up. He scowled at us and all was well until about a half hour later, when the guys went to grab more beer and I stayed at the table. Then the drunken fossil asked me how much I would charge to go back to his home with him. At first I thought that I’d misunderstood, but he said it again and I realized that he thought I was a prostitute.

I was really hurt and wondered what I’d done to give him that impression. Later, I realized that being a single foreign woman alone in a bar, who then ended up sitting at a table and talking with two local men might give somebody the wrong impression, if that person was inclined to think like a pervert. But, while I realized it wasn’t worth disabusing him of his incorrect notion, I simply said no and decided not to stick around for the pitch. I went over to the guys at the bar and told them what the old dude had said. They were touchingly offended on my behalf, and when we got back to the table, the fossil kept yelling vulgar things at use. Ian, the cute one who looked like David Wright (he’s never really done it for me, but add an accent and I can start to understand the appeal) got up, looking pretty angry, and headed toward the old guy’s table, but Ricky stopped him from going over there, and we ignored the fossil after that.

We stayed at that bar until last call, then went to another one. On the way, I somehow managed to lose one of my pretty new dangly earrings, which made me sad. I pulled out the other one so I didn’t look deranged. Even though we went to another bar afterward, we got there after last call there, too, so I helped Ricky talk to a girl he found cute. Things were going well until she told him that she was 24 and he told her that she looked 28. It was not untrue, but that lost him major points, and it took him a while to recover his lost ground, and a lot of that was due to me. I guess I haven’t lost my touch and still make a pretty awesome wingman. The guys and I parted ways in the cab back to my hotel. I got out to find my earring and had no luck, but I went back out the next morning before leaving for the airport, and found it with no problem! It was a little crushed, but I think that it can be bent back into shape.

I had heard that there wasn’t a lot going on in Belfast, and I scheduled my vacation accordingly. If I’d known before booking how awesome Belfast is, and how relatively sedate Birmingham is in comparison, I probably would have spent 4 days in Belfast and only stopped over in Birmingham for the concert. I definitely intend to go back to Belfast and spend a lot more time there!

The first Jason Mraz concert is tonight, and I’m a bit worried. I’ve heard from a person who went to a concert in Brussels, and he said it was blah, and that’s exactly how one of the free London dailies described the Mraz concerts in London over the weekend. Maybe a day off will allow him to rev up and be on his A game for Birmingham. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

On the QT

I’ve been really busy for the last couple of days, getting ready for my grand Irish adventure. I’m leaving tomorrow night, so it’s really crunch time. I’m ALMOST finished with these socks, which are coming out well. I’m actually knitting now, so chances seem good that I will not have to finish them and then mail them back from Belfast. All before, my “knitting” consisted of doing a couple of rows while watching a lot of tv, so now I’m actually knitting more than anything else and seeing the results really quickly. If I didn’t have to work right now, I’d probably be finished by 9:30. I have to do as much as I can here, though, because I still have to pack once I get home. Good thing I already finished my laundry!

She who hesitates…

I knew knew knew that I wanted to go to Jason Mraz’s Birmingham, UK concert this coming April. I already have a ticket to his Dublin show, but I thought that I might as well see him a couple of times while I’m in the UK and Ireland. I’d even gone so far as to amend my hostel reservation in Dublin to allow me a stop over in Birmingham. So why didn’t I just buy my ticket??? I mean, I bought my Dublin ticket a couple of weeks before I got the plane tickets, so what possible excuse could I have? Today I tried to purchase a ticket, and the concert appears to be sold out. Bother! Now I’m left hoping that 1) new tickets will become available through Livemaster (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days), or 2) I can find a reseller whose prices do not make me feel scalped.

Even if I’m not able to get a ticket, I think I’m still going to head to Birmingham. I read a lot of good things about it online that make me think it will be worth visiting, and that will be something, right? Plus, there is a chance that somebody might be selling reasonably priced tickets outside of the show, although I need to see what the law in the UK says about buying/selling in that situation. Wouldn’t want to run afoul of the law on top of everything else!

My knitblog is now located at http://aimlessknitter.com. I have nothing but fondness for Google and Blogger, but Dreamhost was having a sale that was too good to pass up. I got the domain, plus two years of hosting, for a grand total of $22. Can’t beat that.

I’m on vacation this week, and had actually considered going somewhere, before I realized that I just wanted to relax. Yeah, right. First, my nephew’s school was unexpectedly closed yesterday, and I was the only adult not working, so I got to hang out with him. We actually had a blast, and went to the American Museum of Natural history, but relaxing my day was not.

Then, today, my brother needed me to go to his house and stay while the gas people installed a new boiler. Did I mention that I had to be there by 7:45? That’s earlier than I even awaken on those days that I am working. Un. Fair. Then, depending on who you believe, he may or may not have informed his girlfriend that I was going to wait for the repairdudes, so she was there and had intended to stay. So I probably didn’t even really need to be up and over there so early.

The best part of boiler installation is that it involves turning off all heat for two and a half hours. They did have space heaters there, but that place is like an obstacle course, and it wasn’t worth risking my life to locate, extricate, and plug in said heaters. The repair was over around 1, so I got lunch, went home, and promptly turned up my own heat to 74 (just for a little while).

I spent this afternoon warming up and taking all of my pictures off of Google’s server and bringing them over the to new domain. I refuse to pay Google for more storage, so I’ll do anything to save a few megs (of course, I could take smaller pictures, but I haven’t gotten that desperate yet). I’ve already created on extra gmail account to get more picture space, but now that I have MobileMe and a pro Flickr account, I don’t expect that I’ll be jumping through many more hoops regarding photo storage space. [Although it may seem counterintuitive to pay for Flickr and MobileMe, but not Google space, it’s just the principle of the thing. I have a gazillion unused gigs in my Gmail accounts, and Google still expects me to fork over cash to have a place to store my pictures? No way.] While in a photo-manipulating mood, I also uploaded several albums to Flickr and MobileMe. I must say, I have accomplished more this vacation than I have on some genuine work weeks.

Seems like somebody is listening

Happy New Year, folks! I just got back from a lovely, frigid, relaxing vacation in Vermont, ready to have 2009 sap my newly restored will to live. I just found out that my nephew’s school won’t be opening tomorrow and that he’ll be spending the day with me, so I’m guessing that the sapping will commence pretty much immediately (kidding! I missed my little man when I was gone and am really looking forward to spending some time with him tomorrow).

I was messing around with various programs on my computer, and discovered that 1) I’ve either had another happy accident with this alpha version of Opera, or 2) they’ve actually made it work with Multiclutch. It’s too soon to say for sure whether the problem is permanently fixed, and since I’m so tired and traveled 250+ miles today, I’ve decided not to press my luck by completely resetting Opera and starting from scratch. Still, since I’d previously posted on how unhappy the lack of compatibility made me, I’m going to take this perceived progress as a shout-out. I’ll test it tomorrow, I guess, but I’m stoked that it has worked this well. In addition, I’ll upload some of the pictures from my vacation soonish.

I also registered a new domain tonight and set up the corresponding web site (why? wouldn’t you like to know), and will be talking a bit more about that later.

Best bug ever

I brought my iPod on vacation so that I would have something to listen to. While we really enjoyed listening to Puerto Rican stations, sometimes we needed a break. We listened to both Rodney’s and my iPods, but mine mostly, since his only holds 1 gig of music. I quickly learned that my general inclination of alternative stuff wasn’t really anybody else’s favorite, but that R&B/hip hop and pop were usually good choices. When Jess was in the front (which was 90% of the time, since I really enjoy the solitude of the back seat), she was good at finding songs on my iPod that I’d never listened to before. One such song was “If I Never See Your Face Again” by Maroon 5. They also did a version of it with Rihanna, but I didn’t have it then.

I downloaded it as soon as I got home, and have been playing it since then. I put it on my iPod and put it in a playlist that I made this morning. The playlist seemed funny thought, because it kept playing the Maroon 5/Rihanna song, even though there were a bunch of other songs in the list. Then I looked at the screen during the fourth time the song came up, and even thought that’s what was playing, it said “Babylon – David Gray” so then I realized that there might be something wrong with that track, or my iPod. If that’s a bug, it’s pretty much the coolest bug ever, and I’m not going to kill myself to fix it.

Puerto Rico!

I love Puerto Rico. The weather is nice, and I’m not really expected to do anything other than veg. Being with other people means that said vegging is a mite more coordinated than I might prefer, but we’re having a great time together. More when I get back!