hoo hoo hoo! ireland here we come!

so my dad gave my mother and i tickets to ireland for christmas again. I am so grateful, yet i also feel so sheepish. i just don't think i'm worth such a super gift, but on the other hand i'm certainly not going to refuse it or regift it!

so i just received word that there's room for us at the inn! We're staying at

the glen guest house;

it's a super b and b in Dublin 1, which is right around the corner from the busaras, and close to a dart stop also.

it's also a short easy walk to o'connell street, and you come out sort of near the GPO.

hoo hoo hoo! I just can't wait! i'm going to bring my resume so i can see if anyone wants to sponsor an american for employment!

this is a good site to visit to start yuor ireland holiday planning:

ireland online

and this is where the hotel is


it's just a few steps up gardiner street from where it intersects beresford place!


yay! yay! yay!

y'know, i really tried

i really tried to the best of my ability to keep this whole signing professional. i really did i was willing to say that we lost a baseball battle to the yankees and we lost an effective leadoff hitter. but i can't do it any more. Now i know, we surely didn't lose a spectacular centerfielder. and we surely have not lost an irreplaceable man in the clubhouse. and i can't keep it in any longer.

johnny damon is an arrogant prick and the reason he fits in so well as a yankee is because it takes one to know one. obviously keep snapping photos.

trimmed damon unveiled

pardon me, but fuck off johnny damon. you go take yourself and your rag arm and go fall down the steps at your new dugout. you better believe i'll keep snapping pictures of you then. Why should we continue to kowtow to you when you have walked into new york and essential slammed your former employers and your former fans? now we really see your true self, spineless.

have some fuckin stones and say you had a good experience here, you fucking sally. stand up for yourself and what is true, and tell everyone that it really was a magical year in 2004 and 2005 was magic too. that you are looking forward to life in new york is also true, and i would be ok with that if you weren't so dismissive of your work here in boston

All that you are now is another one in a long line of moronic zombies with glassy eyes and short hair. come on, tell the truth, it will take some adjustment to go from hands off management to an owner that wants to schedule your next shit. you fit in so well with the yankees, because you have no gumption. no stand up. you talk that talk about being your own person, and having a great idioc personality, but face it buddy, you buckled and you folded and you cracked under pressure. and now you look just like every other centerfielder who played at Yankee stadium. you have no originality whatsoever any more. there's a reason why nobody oustide of the 718 area code likes the yankees, because they are irritating, obnoxios, arrogant and dumb. and you are one of them now too.

so good on you man, sure. win your games with the yankees, you got more money and more of whatever you were looking for but make no mistake, you are nothing more than a yankee now. not a superstar, not a shitty player. you're simply a yankee. you're the same as all the other ones. whoopee.

So the gang of three

Really are like the three blind mice. Lets have a brief overview. We have no shortstop. We have one Major League catcher; we have no second baseman. We have no actual "this is my position" first baseman. Now we have no centerfielder. At this point I would take shitty players. Oh, and our rotation has question marks and our bullpen really isn't the shiny coin we all dream about. And that isn't even considering out batting order.

so it would seem that the sox management team (who knows how many there are or who calls the shots) really don't have a clue about negotiating a contract or running a team. For crimminy's sake, they couldn't even manage to come to an agreement with one of their own, how can they possibly think they are going to be able to deal with the hardball that scott boras plays. Clearly they had no idea what they were getting into.

We have made some spectacularly bad moves this off season, and personally (and this is complete speculation) I think that the next one out is going to be curt schilling. He isn't going to dig the idea of playing with half wits and guys culled from the scrap heap. And lets be real, nobody likes to work for dumb bosses either. On top of it, the gang of three really have mismanaged the media. As of today I've heard rumors that trot Nixon, bronson arroyo, kelly shoppach, and even tim wakefield have all been discussed for trades. Hello? Is there anyone home? Tim Wakefield? Trot Nixon? That's the sort of shit you keep secret!

it really is like an episode of the keystone cops. It just gets worse and worse. Here is a funny article by Dan shaughnassy, who generally is a prat, but today it's good.

for sox, a little off the top

besides the loss of Damon, he goes to the effin evil empire. So we really look like country bumpkins. Remember when Nomar found out they were shopping him from espn? Well, lucchino found out about Damon from them too. Exactly why wasn't that cell phone glued to his ear with boras on the other end? I'll tell you, because they are not good at being general managers.

the whole thing simply smacks of inaptitude! So now we see that it wasn't the number of years Damon wanted, it was the money. A skilled GM would already have realized that Johnny Damon is as shallow as a puddle of spit and conceited and greedy. For crying out loud, we all knew that, how did management miss it? How could they possibly have been ok with the idea that no news is good news?

we are in deep sneakers for next season. The only silver lining is that Johnny Damon is never going to have an assist on a put out at his home field for the rest of his career. It's roughly seven miles from center field to second base at Yankee stadium, and he can't throw out the trash.

it's really a good idea...

to stay sober at your company holiday party.

so i was at my work holiday party the other day. and there was beer and wine. some of my coworkers indulged a bit too much shall we say. here's the thing, it really puts your coworkers in a moral dilemma and conundrum. how do we react when a member of staff is dancing like julia stiles did in 10 things i hate about you? (please note, Julia Stiles is, after all Julia Stiles. when she dances to the Notorious BIG it's sexy. when coworker does the same, let's say it hasn't got the same charm)

how does one expect their coworkers to deal with the fact that they are clearly bombed. Do we try to cut the person off? Do we drive them home; miles out of our way(in this case two hours out and back)? do we stick our head in the sand and hope to hell they get home safe and don't kill anyone?

Asside from those quandries, let's move along to monday morning. Assuming they've recovered from the superstar hangover they must have had on sunday. Now the level of respect between coworkers has declined substantially, just for the nights foolishness alone. But to ice that cake, we all know they drove home drunk.

at the risk of being a wet blanket, just stay sober. at least then you'll be able to make fun of people, you won't be the butt of the fun. it's like that beer ad i saw in rolling stone a long time ago. when you are sober, you get in on 100% of the fun, and 0% of the bar tab.

If you can't handle your booze, or if you know you like it a lot, then skip it all together.
Stay sober. don't drive drunk.

think this will work?

ok, so i tried to like the pdf to my yahoo brief case, but i have to be a premeir member to make the briefcase public. i'm not a premeir member yet, and i haven't decided if i want to go that route, but in the mean time i'm going to see if blogger opens large photos in another window at full size.

let's see....

ok, so blogger will link to a larger picture, and that is a start, but when your download it and print it, you'll have to enlarge it somewhat. so print it to start on legal paper, then bring it to your local kinkos (or your local work copier) and monkey about with the settings til the measurements fit the actual size.

I'm still working on an actual pdf that's printable at 100%, but i need to figure out a way ot post it publicly. more on that later!

so i'm trying to figure out

how to post a pdf for download on this site. because i want to offer you a pattern on how to make these super bags i made.

they are tote bags that i made for my friend sofia and ana for their trip home for the holidays. thay have a 5.5 hour flight ahead of them, and that can be slightly boring. so i'm going to put fun entertaining things in there. spin magazine, tootsie pops, cheeze-it's, a bottle of water, word finds and things like that. i'm also going to put a nice zipper pouch like the ones i posted before in there with a wash cloth and face soap and lotion and a toothbrush and toothpaste.

there really is nothing nicer than getting up right before final approach or even after you've landed when the rest of the passengers are going mental; and washing your face and cleaning your teeth and putting your contacts back in. that is one of my favorite travel rituals. sometimes i do it in the airport sometimes on the plane.

where was your worst cup of coffee?

so over the past few days i have been drinking coffee away from home. and i have to tell you, i have a list of places that make terrible coffee. and i'm going to share them topping my list- starbucks. for all they think they are so smart, and are looking to take over the world; they make horrid coffee. not only do they use two tablespoons when one is sufficient, they burn it. i don't go in for the super cute status symbols, i just want a cup of coffee with cream. how hard is that? the starbucks on route 9 at the lyman streeet intersection gave me the most awful cup of burned, yet cold coffee i have ever drank. it was so bad.

fast forward to yesterday. i was at the alewife T station. the dunkin donuts got the coffee and cream balance correct, but the coffee was just old. it was burned. i wonder if the coffee palaces realize just how profund and distinct burned coffe taste is, and how easy it is to achieve. it really doesn;t take long for a pot to turn into 10w-40 motor oil.

I tried my luck at au bon pan on berkeley street yesterday afternoon. nothing doing. the coffee was so strong and acrid that it curled my hair. acrid is a good way to describe it. like when you get that beer you aren't expecting to be so bitter, and you make that funny face. so i shelled out a total of 7 clams these past few days and got swill in return.

on the flip side, the best cup of coffee i've had in a long time was at cumberland farms on central street. go figure that the gas station coffee would be the best. but you can add the correct amount of cream, and nuke it if it's too cold. and they don't even make it too weak anymore. weak coffee is as bad as super strong coffee. but lately they've not been so skimpy on the gounds. Honey Dew on washington street also makes a first class cup of coffee, always. very dependable.

what about you? where is your favorite java? and your horror stories?

my first quilt

and it's not even a very challenging one at that. But the problem is that the ideas just keep coming, and I have to try them out before they vanish, so that means that projects sometimes have to be set aside. Then regular life takes place, and my weekends free for crafting and sewing are taken up by more mundane things like putting snow tires on the car, going away on vacation (which was one of the greatest trips i've been on) and before i know it, months have gone by.


so this is the whole thing, it's for my college roommate's little boy. I'm pleased with the fabric choice. It's cushy flannel on one side, and on the other it's flannel-y calico that looks like river weeds, like where snakes and tigers live in Africa. The piping around the edge gave me a few fits and the next one will be better I think, but I think that he'll like it.

This is a detail of it.

I'm quite pleased with it, even if it did take me months to actually complete it and ship it to him. hee hee hee

medicare and me

So as a type A personality, I have been spending lots of time mulling over this Medicare Rx. Now I know, you're thinking, what do you care, you're only 30? well, I care because the only way this is going to work is if people try to understand it. That and the fact that soon enough Mary Mary and my dad will have to start looking into it. Add to that my employment at a pharmacy, and people expect us to be knowledgeable in it.

So the inherent problem is that there are private companies involved. Just as Geroge Bush wants us all to be in charge of our govt social security plans (a clever ruse to get us all to unwittingly funnel money to people he has associations and interests with) he wants us to figure out the prescription plans as well.

This is fine, really, it makes sense that we should be the masters of our destiny, BUT, the selection is simply too large. It's daunting. Add to it the fact that the plan companies are marketing it, like sales items. This too is ok, but as we all know, there is far less truth in advertising than we would like. Not to mention the fact that the tools that can be useful in figuring out the plans are not really easy to find online, and, they are not readily available in person. So unless your gran is a fairly advanced web user, she's in trouble.

So I have done my best to figure it out and break it down into manageable steps.

1. Calculate the cash prices for current meds.
2. Determinte the total cost of the current Rx Plan (include premiums, deductibles, and copays). Also be aware that some of these items are only charged if the plan is used.
3. Be sure you know the duration of current plan, and if it's likely to change.
4. Review the Medicare plans available in your area and compare their benefits versus their charges. keep in mind that each plan is different, and that plans may include premiums, deductibles, and copays. They also have specific formularies, or lists of drugs they will cover and not cover.

The trick of course is tracking down the participating plan information. Webmd has a good medicare page.

WebMD Medicare Page

and a Medicare Rx Tutorial page too.

WebMD Medicare RX Tutorial

They also have a link to the feds plan lookup tool, but here it is also

Rx Plan Lookup Tool

A columnist on boston.com said it best, the new plan is called Medicare Part D. D says it best; D stands for disaster.

half.com

i like half.com. i think it's very affordable. and dufflebag.com too. i like buying used music, and tough on the record company. it is too bad the band might lose out on money, but the simple fact of the matter is that i don't want to pay the full price.

so over the weekend i went shopping and blew through too much money, and i stopped at newbury comics, a good place to get music on the east coast. i purchased two weezer albums, an old bad religion album, the lost in translation dvd, and a cd by a guy named butch walker. do you remember him? he used to sing for a band called marvelous 3. they were quite good in the 90's. you know when we were getting overrun with the terrible sounds of spin doctors, sara mclaughlan, the indigo girls, ugh, and hootie and the blowfish and bare naked ladies, Marvelous 3 was a breath of fresh rock and roll air. the stinky, sweaty jump up and down kind that you get drunk and flirt shamelessly with strangers to. it was fantastic.

But then the record company turned terrible, as frequently happens, and they split up just to spite the execs. so then he went solo, and has since released two albums. i just got the most recent, Letters. it's full of great songs, though i must confess, one sounds EXACTLY like everlong, by the foo fighters, but what do i know? so what i like about marvelous 3 and walker's stuff is that the lyrics seem really heartfelt and emotional. it could be that i am a romantic, and i have a wild imagination, but the songs are really like poetry; rockin poetry, but poetry none the less. sometimes they are silly, but sometimes they are really profound. really!

so i just purchased Math and Other Problems from someone on half. they better get on the stick and send it out already!

on line communities

i am a member of an online crafting community. i was slightly nervous at first, what if i didn't have anything to contribute? but it became apparent soon enough that of course i have something to contribute, just like all the others do.

i like it very much. one thing i think is very interesting is how you get to know a person online. you get to know a little bit about their likes and dislikes, their personal philosophy and of course their talents. Also in this community you get to know who is a control freak, and who is more laise faire about crafting. it really is interesting to see the two interact and converse.

i find it very remarkable, also that people can be so alike and yet still come from very different cultures. for instance, there are knitters in every corner of the globe. facsinating. of course there would be, and why wouldn't there be? knitting is not for a specific group of people, americans, austrailians, or portuguese; rich, poor, or median incomes, it's just for knitters.

yet there are also differences, the colors, the yarn or fiber, the culturally favored patterns. i think that is so interesting. it's like an anthropology thesis just waiting to happen.

i wonder if i could do that, be an anthropologist.

how does that sound?
hi. i'm kristine, i'm an online anthropologist.

i think it has a good ring to it.

bollocks, that!

bugger all! manchester united beat chelsea over the weekend. i love chelsea. Forgive me if i am just a silly american with not too much knowledge. I try not to jump on bandwagons just for the sake of it, I love watford too. that is a no no, i know, to support two clubs, but that is the luxury of being on the outside. english people can watch the red sox and also follow the orioles (never the yankees); but sox fans are sox fans, and that's just how it is. (not unlike supporting a football club) it just seems to me that man utd are the yankees of the FA. and bollocks to the yankees, so you can imagine my view on man utd.

one nil. i haven't read who scored, so i don't even have my facts straight yet, but this is terrible. Bah! Darren Fletcher scored the only goal. Darren Fletcher? who the hell is he? he's only got one goal all season! fooey! I hope he stubs his toe.

here is the report.

chelsea/manutd report

egads, look at all those yellow cards awarded.

I'll have to keep a closer eye on the tables from here on.

i am an organized person!

i simply cannot believe that my dad doesn't think i am organized! i'll have to work on that. i'll have to clean my house and my desk properly this weekend. and my car with 100,015 miles on it (it clocked over the day after i posted that post. i guess i drive more miles in a day than i realized).

I like being a control freak. it's comforting. i am nothing if i am not planning something. i do try to roll with the punches, and not be cranky if i don't get my way, but i like to plan for every possible scenario in life. for instance i am currently planning my christmas shopping. i am going to get Easy Rider for one brother in law, and music from the TV show Globe Trekker for one of my sisters.

I mean just because i shreded everyone's paycheck and none of my cd's are in the correct jewel case, doesn't mean that i am not organized. just because all my laundry is still in baskets doesn't mean i am not organized!

ah, perhaps all these things do indicate a lack of organization. i guess i'll start getting my to-do list for saturday ready now.

midlife crisis!

so my car has 99,962 miles on it. i expect to break 100,000 before the end of the year. maybe even before the end of november.

this is having a more profound effect on me than turning 30 did. I have a car that has 100,000 miles on it! when did it get so old? i won't even be able to trade it in an get one with fewer miles on it, because i'll need to keep it after the loan is paid off, to save some money! oh gaah! what a revolting development!

it's a very good car, it's a pickup truck, and the only bad thing about it is that i need concrete blocks and snow tires in the winter. but that's ok. people with mustangs do too. it's dark blue. when i've washed it and vacuumed it and used armour all it's a very nice looking car. shiny and blue.

what i would love to have is a bmw. a black one. hard top. two door. tan interior. if this were a proper midlife crisis, i would go and get one, but it's not, so i can't. i'll just have to dream about my beemer, and make plans for what cd to listen to first!

zipper pouches!

these are three of the zipper pouches i made for a co-worker.



i have lots of the cherry and sleeping cat fabric left over if you would like one. the price for one of these great pouches is a bargain at only $7.

they are 7 x 4.5 and the bottom is 2" wide. you could give one to your girlfriend, or one to your mom or grammy. they are perfect for holding makeup, or a notebook and pen, or a package of crayons and a small drawing tablet for children.

they are also good to use for a little craft kit, if you need one of those for a gift. you put a few skeins of embroidery floss and a sewing needle or two, some small scissors, and a little square of cross stitch canvas, and you have made a gift that is sure to score you some points with its recipient!

Post a reply if you're interested. I'll post some more as they become available!

what a busy weekend!

well, the weather men all said it was going to rain all day on saturday, so i decided to sleep late. it was very nice. but also i had a super long list of things to do. chores and all that fun shit. i had to take the garden out before it took over the world, and harvest the last few stragglers of gourds. then i cleaned the fridge. what an adventure. i live more and more like a bachelor every day. i eat nothing but crap, and there are socks all over my apartment. but i cleaned everything well and truly, and i'm going to give it a go to be less bachelorlike. also, i cooked a proper dinner for myself for the first time in months. barbeque pulled pork and smashed potatoes and cornbread!

but it's beginning to be evidendent that i am in trouble in the cat department. whilst i was clearing away weeds, there was a gray furry thing that sneaked back into the brushes. i shrieked like a little girl! at first i thought it was a ferret; but then i could see that it was another cat. a little tiny one. perhaps two or three pounds. this one is much more wild. very scaredy cat. can you believe he spit at me and took a swing? dopey thing! i think it's one of the striped cat's kittens.

see the thing is there are getting to be too many cats. one cat is nice. two cats are bearable, but three cats? too many. and besides, there are probably more kittens to go along with mini stripe. so i'm going to have to enlist the aid of a cat rescue league i think. they can't stay ot next to the river all winter, and they can't stay with me.

it's too bad, because i like cats, but i don't want to be that old lady with hundreds of cats!

woo hoo...The Foo

so matt and I went to the foo fighters show two weekends ago. Firstly can I just say that the guy from hot hot heat needs to keep his hair shorter? The crazy curls just aren't cutting it. He looks like the guy from that awful band firehouse.

Then next up was weezer. I have to admit; I wanted to not like them. I have never been a weezer fan and I was slightly disappointed when I saw that the Foos were going out with them. But ok, what can I do. So we paid 45 clams for the tickets (more than a 100% increase since the last time the foos were in Worcester, but ok) so I wasn't going to skip the openers. I wanted my money's worth dammit!

Well. Did I get my moneys worth. Weezer was so good. So good. They totally rocked. They played all the songs I knew, and the songs I didn't were bearable. And even my most unfavorite song; the sweater song was super! The lights were tremendous, and they didn't screw around with talking or being funny. They simply played great stuff, and they played it loud. They even played a bit of Blur's Song 2, also a favorite of mine. Really good. I was really pleased with them.

So then the foo fighters came out. Rock on. The title track from In Your Honor has concert opening song written all over it, and so they did, and it never looked back from there. They had super cutting edge screens and lights, I mean from a design standpoint they were really good to look at. The Centrum is a small stadium, large enough for Farm System Ice Hockey, but the sound is terrific, and it wasn’t so big that we couldn’t see the bands. We had floor seats, but I am a short person (bollocks) so we have to stand kind of far away from the crowd so I can see. Well, that's ok, because in the middle of the set, doesn't Dave Grohl run through the crowd to the back of the floor and hop up onto the piece of scaffolding I was leaning on? Yes, he does!



Security was going mental; You can see me scurrying away from them. I’m the one turned around in the blue tee shirt over by the fence on the left. Matt is the one in the gray and black tee shirt between the two yellow shirts. That was so cool when he did that! He slapped high fives as he went by. He’s not really that tall either. But he is skinny and rock and roll looking, so that’s good.

They whole show was just so good. It had the energy of Avalon, but with 10 times the number of people.

$45 clams was a bargain.

my latest bag

here's the bag i made last night. it only took a single fat quarter for the outside, and the lining was leftover fabric from my sister's house. i need to start making things with the supplies i already have. i really have to stop goingt othe fabric store and getting things that take my fancy, because i have so much fabric that it is taking over my life.

I am interested in unloading some of my wares. if you are interested in purchasing one of my bags, post a reply!

On reading

i sometimes wonder if reading is the same for other people as it is for me. i love to read. i just love it. I don't usually read anything of real validity, i mostly just read murder mysteries. but occasionally i'll read something romantic or funny. my favorite books include the Bourne Identity, No News at Throat Lake, Eureka Street, nineteen seventy-seven, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Neverwhere, Maise Dobbs. All of these books i could read over and over again.

notice that most of them are mysteries of some sort. but not all of them. throat lake is just a hysterical book about a Guardian journalist who splits his job and moves to a tiny village in ireland to write for the village paper. and Neverware is about a London man who gets involved in a surreal underworld based on the underground system, it's such a clever book. Masie Dobbs is about a woman detective shortly after the end of WWI and it's heart wrenching. it really is. Jacqueline spears has written three masie dobbs novels and they always make me cry.

Currently i am reading a book by victoria blake. it's called Bloodless Shadow. it's kind of an ugly name, but it's a fabulous book.

I like to read and imagine all the characters, and what they look like, and how they act. i love it. I love to imagine the location and the weather and the smells. some times of couse you get to know the characters and then you can empathise with them, and other times you get to know them and they are just awful people. i love books like that. i just love them.

sometimes i wish i could just read all day. i would like to skip work and finish my book. wouldn't that just be so great?

a funny thing happened to me at work the other day:

i shredded everyone's paychecks.

but it's not all my fault! it's only mostly my fault! so now to set the background, i work at a retail store. We recently switched over management. our previous management used to make us sign for our paychecks. our new management doesn't make us sign, and neither do they hand them to us. they are left in the office until we come and get them.

now, i get paid with direct deposit. so i don't actually need to get my check, because it's not a check. so i am hopelessly delinquent about going to get my check- even the previous management had to seek me out to sign for my check. the company pays weekly. i haven't gone to get a check for weeks. i mean weeks. possibly even as long as this new management has been on board. i would guess somewhere around the first or second week of august. so the checks for me have been piling up since then.

so when i got in to work on friday, a coworker said to me, oh, kristine, your checks are here. and there was a pile of them at my workstation. i don't keep those things, they just clutter my life, while i know that is bad financial practice, i just can't stand the dumb things. so, i shred mine. well, i figured the whole pile was mine, and i shreded the lot of them.

WELL.

you can imagine my dismay when i found out that the entire department's check was there. i called my friend from work and said: oh my god! samantha, i am in so much trouble i could puke right here. Elizabeth hates to work with me, she thought i was dumb to begin with, and now she's sure of it. what'm'i'gnnu'do?" all the words slured in to one.

it was very funny after the fact and after i sorted out with my manager who gets D.D. and who needs a reissued check. but at the time i wanted to quit. i just wanted to go home. i was so embarrased. i turned so red. it was terrible. but i have learned from this disaster.

no matter how busy you areat work, you shold only go as fast as your brain can allow.

sigh. but at least my drawer balanced at the end of the night.