I was back at my rheumatologists office this afternoon for a follow up visit. The last visit in September found nothing funky with any of my blood work. However, in that two month period I’ve gained 5.7lbs! This is weird for me because I could never gain weight…ever! Plus in the last 3-4 months I’ve gained 18lbs. Again SO not normal for me. Could it be that going totally gluten free has finally repaired the years of damage I was probably doing to my small intestine? Maybe. But even the rheumatologist finds this to be odd.
So I knew the trip would end in a trip to the lab. But first and ultrasound of my left knee. It seems I have a few small pockets of fluid built up on my knee. Which means I’m getting a sweet anti-inflammatory drug to take for a while. Awesome. So my trip to the lab was for two things…hypothyroidism.
I could check off a few of those.
But wait for it…we’re also testing me for Lyme Disease AGAIN! Would it surprise me if I had it again? Nope, that’s just the way my luck works out people. Apparently I’m delicious. Good to know. That little two fold test will take at least a week to get back. I also think she’s checking for any other Lyme like diseases too. At least she’s covering all the bases for me. Which is good and why I like her.
In other doctor related news I’m going to see a new OB/GYN soon. Sad news is when I told my old OB’s office this they didn’t seem to care that a patient of 20 years was heading elsewhere. Felt a little like here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. But I just took it as a sign that is was really time to move on. So we’ll see.
The doctors appointment fun continues tomorrow with a trip to the opthamologist. Which means I won’t be able to see squat for a few hours after the fact. This also means I will no doubt be given an Rx for new glasses that I won’t be able to see. Hopefully I won’t pick out something like this…
I love my job…like LOVE my job! There are of course some things about it I don’t. But that’s for another time. Like in my memoir. Which is probably what I should have picked to write for my NaNoWriMo this year. I could easily write 50K about my life. Of course I say this now, but I’m still pretty sure I could do it! So there!
Be very, very quiet…I’m creating!
The good news with my NaNo novel – Ive written 35K and change. The bad news? Well, I’m basically at the end. So yeah that’s a bad sign. I have no idea where the hell I’m going to pull 14K from. NO IDEA!
But can I make it to 50K?
I’m at that point where i truly don’t love my novel. In fact I actually feel like I want to set it on fire and watch it slowly burn. But we’re fresh out of ink and I’m not burning my laptop. So I suppose I should stop putting off trying to eek out 2K tonight and you know go write.
But if you don’t hear from me in a few days…send bail money.
Ok fine the Stardate is apparently 91481.77. Who knew there was a calculator for stuff like that…clearly I didn’t until I was looking up how to spell out Stardate. So yay! Any way I know I haven’t posted in a LONG time, but I’ve been busy trying to write my second NaNoWriMo novel. I’ll be honest with you, it isn’t going well at all. As in I want to quit and go cry in a corner.
But I’m going to press on and hope I can hit 50K by the end of the month. I think I can, I think I can. This is currently my muse.
Sadly I just want to gawk at it and drool.
Right the whole Stardate thing. We FINALLY watched Star Trek Into Darkness and I must say Benedict Cumbebatch was mighty awesome! Of course the husband made me watch Wrath fo Khan before we could watch the new one. I told him that the new one’s are on their own dang timeline, but no we watched it anyway. There’s nothing wrong with the old one, in fact I like it a lot. I just turn into a hot mess ugly crier at the end. If you haven’t seen it I won’t tell you why. Go watch it. Like right now.
I do have one question about the new movie… JJ Abrams why for the love of the CumberCollective did you cut this out?!?! Yeah there’s some chatter before the scene I’m talking about, but just wait.
Also any chance I can get that on the directors cut? Pretty please with sugar on top? Right I should really go back and write a little…because this novel is clearly not going to write itself.
As you may have guessed I am working on my latest NaNoWriMo. The first week is almost behind us and I’ve already cleared 17K! Only some crazy amount left to go! But things are going well. I’ve even been better about leaving scenes unfinished if I get stuck and moving on to another. So yay for me!
A few people have asked if they can read what I’ve written when I’m done… the short answer is no. The better answer is once it’s been edited enough by me. Do I like what I’m writing? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it is anywhere near ready for prime time people. It may never be for that matter. We shall see. In the meantime I have a three day weekend which means I will be writing my little heart out! But before I started in on that this evening my office needed a good clean-up.
It had become the dumping ground for everything after our Ireland trip. But I found I get more written up here because there are less distractions. So it was past time to clean house!
Before…
A small space becomes even smaller…This was making me a little twitchy…Can you ever imagine I was voted most organized in high school?
After…
Ooooh….Aaaah…floor!And yes, yes I WAS voted most organized in high school.
I finally got my act together and got everyone’s name into Random.org for the giveaway! I’m pleased to announce that Tori B. was the winner this time.
There you have it!
So I’ll be heading out to pick up some of my favorite things to pass on to Tori as soon as possible. One of my favorite shops keeper has been out of town, so I wanted to wait for her to come back so I could pick something up. Plus I haven’t been to Troy in a while….ok I was there last week, but I wasn’t there for a buying trip…just a little time travel.
Eat your heart out Michael J. Fox…I make a pretty good McFly if I do say so myself.
Now it’s time to get back to my NaNoWriMo novel. Which is going. It’s too early to tell if it’s going well.
So when last we left off we were off to Kilronan Castle. Which turned out wasn’t in the town the GSP or itinerary said it was. Oh no it was one town over and 5 miles off the GPS directions. Thankfully some lovely folks in town pointed us in the right direction. We has finally arrived. Once problem, we were two and a half hours too early! All I wanted was a NAP at this point. But the front desk staff was good enough to point us in the direction of eats in the Drawing Room.
Nom, nom, nom!
We were greeted by a young man named Michael who promptly took our order. Tea and the house seafood chowder for me. The Hubbins went for his first Guinness of the trip. This MADE Michael’s day…he’d seriously been waiting to serve someone their first Guinness in Ireland since he’d been working there. I have to add this made us feel pretty awesome, even if it was a bunch of Blarney!
The one thing that disturbed me about our eats was my tea. It was bagged! Those of you who know me know that I really dislike bagged tea. Sure it will do in a pinch…but I try to avoid it at all costs. So I was a little surprised when my tea came and there was a tag from a tea bag sticking out of it. Sigh.
We ate, drank, and checked our Facebooks and Twitter while we waited for our room to be ready. We also chatted a bit with Michael when he had a moment. It was interesting to learn that most people don’t stray far from home when they get jobs. Yes, he’d been away from home, but not to Dublin or to Cork. In fact he lived in the next town over. This was a theme we noticed throughout the trip. We thanked him and headed to check in…our rooms were finally ready! Once inside we napped for an hour. I was trying to avoid messing with my sleep schedule as much as possible.
After a much needed shower we headed back down to the Drawing Room for dinner. I was our 3rd Anniversary, but we weren’t feeling very fancy and pub food did us just fine. I also enjoyed my first of many Bulmer’s Ciders and a Bailey’s Coffee. Sleep came very easy that night!
Day Two found us heading toward County Mayo. But first a few photos from the castle.
I met a friend. He/She seems to have adopted the castle some two months ago…When can I move it?
Seriously, I want to live here…
We stayed….there!The Hubbins made me take this one. 😉
Off to County Mayo we went. The drive was lovely and SO green. When they say “the grass is always greener on the other side”, they may have been talking about Ireland. Once we entered County Mayo we began to see signs that read “Go Mayo” and the like and had no idea what that was all about. So when we arrived at our B and B for the night we asked the owner. Turns out…Mayo and Dublin faced one another two weeks before in the All-Ireland Football Final. Which was awesome. However, they lost by one point, this was not so awesome. It also seemed that while no one in the county wanted to talk about it…they didn’t want to let it go either.
Anyway, once we were settled in we opted to head up to Westport. As our B and B owner told us we just had to have a pint in Matt Malloy’s. If you like The Chieftains well you may know who he is. If you don’t, well you should give them a listen.
Yes I had a half pint of Guinness. How could I not?
We had a grand time in Westport. The Hubbins bought himself an Irish sweater. I on the other hand wanted to wait a bit to find the right one for me. We wandered town a bit until we came across Matt Malloy’s. Which I will tell you was awesome! One of his boys served us our drinks and also informed us that we’d just missed his Da by a day! But we were able to see a few of his awards behind the bar. Sadly I wasn’t allowed to hold them. I did snap a picture. I was pretty sure my Mom was going to be mighty ticked to find out we had a drink in one of her favorite bands Pubs. But she’d just have to come herself one day.
Yes!
After a bit more wandering around the town we figured we should start heading back to the B and B as well as get some eats once we were there. We had also learned we were not fans of driving in the dark in Ireland. We arrived at dusk and left the car behind as we went in search of food. I was too tired to head off to a local pub with the Hubbins so he too went back with me. Not wanting to go it on his own. Can’t say that I blamed him really. But we still had a lot of time left to chat up the locals in a pub.
The following morning we said our goodbye’s and headed off toward Galway City. Which in a way was out of the way from where we were staying that night. But we figured it was best to try and see that as there wasn’t much out near Recess (our second castle of the trip). Galway City was HUGE and busy when we arrived. It seemed a lot of folks had the day off or something. We stopped into one of the Museums to learn a bit about the history of the city. We also wandered around and stopped into a few shops. It was while we were here that I found my sweater and St. Bridget’s Cross. Plus something for our friends who were tending to our cats while we were away. All in all a very successful trip.
We did stop off for a bite before heading out to the second castle on our stay. Then “enjoyed” fighting the traffic out of the city on a Friday afternoon. On our way to Recess we noticed that a great deal of the English translation on the traffic signs had been scratched away. Turns out we were in the part of Ireland that prefers the old way of speaking to the “new”. Hence all the scratched out English. Thank you again GPS for leading the way!
The only other problem we had on our way to the castle involved sheep! Yes, the sheep were EVERYWHERE! Plus they had no concept of timing. In fact as we were on the final road to the castle one just hopped up and figured he’d cross the road and didn’t really care that we had the right of way. Stupid sheep.
Ballynahinch Castle was very cool. The castle was built by the Martin family (sadly no relation) and is more of a stately manor home rather than a castle. But seeing as it was huge and lovely I for one was not complaining! That night we had dinner with a lovely couple from Sligo celebrating their 1st Anniversary. Their names were Lilly and James and I should have asked if their last name was Potter. But I just couldn’t. We joined them for dinner as there wasn’t much in the way of tables for two when we both arrived.
We chatted and enjoyed dinner with them for close to three hours. It was great. But I think we may have tired them out. James and Little were a good ten to fifteen years our Senior and seemed to want to call it a night and get to bed. Or who knows maybe they had a game of Parcheesi to get to? I won’t judge! The Hubbins and I also called it a night as we had a very long day ahead of us as we were planning our journey toward Cashel in County Tipperary in the morning by way of the Cliffs of Moher.
That’s all for now…more of our travels in Ireland to come!
No, this isn’t Part Two of our Trip to Ireland. I’m working on it. But I’m also working on laundry, reading Ender’s Game, and things! But it is coming. Today I bring you a few “Did you know..?” things that may or may not make your head explode!
1) Today is Slap Your Irritating Coworker Day!
I’m not really sure this is a thing…but they made a Somecard about it and there are rules. So I guess it could be a thing…
Not a fan of the language…the the idea amuses me.
The Rules for said day are:
* You can only slap one person per hour – no more. * You can slap the same person again if they irritate you again in the same day. * You are allowed to hold someone down as other coworkers take their turns slapping the irritant. * No weapons are allowed…other than going upside somebody’s head with a stapler or a hole-puncher. * If questioned by a supervisor [or police, if the supervisor is the irritant], you are allowed to LIE, LIE, LIE!
Now, study the rules, break out your list of folks that you want to slap the living day lights out of and get to slapping!
So there ya go…I guess.
2) Remember the lady who spilled coffee on herself and won millions?
Check out this link. You will be very surprise by what you see. Be warned it gets a little graphic around 5 minutes in.
3) Happy Mole Day!
Yes, I’m a nerd. What of it?
4) If you happen to be in the Saratoga Springs area this weekend the Head of the Fish is happening. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Google it!
5) Troy Night Out – Halloween edition is happening THIS Friday from 5-9pm! Which means I shall be attending and shopping for the giveaway! Rumor has it if you dress like a Zombie you can score discounts at local merchants shops!
7) NaNoWriMo is coming….I’m still torn about what to write this year. Do I take the “easy” way out and write a Fan Fiction? Or do I try to write another of my own stories? We shall see I have little time to get it together. If you are looking for a writing buddy feel free to add me xFunnyFacex is my handle over there.
That’s all I’ve got. Mostly because I’m needed in helping making the eats…Kung Pow Chicken is on the menu tonight!
The time has come to tell the tale of our travels in Ireland. So go on and pour yourself a pint of the good stuff or prepare an Irish coffee (with Jameson’s Whiskey), or perhaps a Bailey’s coffee and tuck in. This one might take a little time.
We left last Tuesday October 1, but yet I kept posting…yeah those were all scheduled posts. I don’t like to do that, but didn’t want you all to think I didn’t care while I was away. I also didn’t want anyone looting my house. So there we are.
So we flew out of JFK last Tuesday and even THAT was an experience! Our train out of Albany was fine and I was even able to sleep…no thanks to the woman who was apparently a hot shot real estate agent. Upon arrival in Penn Station we headed for the street and hailed a cab to the airport. What a ride. Yes, I know NYC cabbies know what they are doing…but it is a little scary watching them do it. The Hubbins had to close his eyes a few times and I was right there with him!
But we arrived with plenty of time to spare before our 9pm flight. Or so we thought. Turns out that flight was delayed until 1am! Which meant instead of arriving around 8am we would get in closer to noon. It seems our plane had been hit by lightening! But the luck of the Irish was on our side…there was a 5:30 flight. Bad news we would now arrive in Dublin at 4:30am!! Yikes. We made the flight with 20 minutes to spare after we needed to clear TSA…always a joy.
Well, TSA was easy for me. I went right on through the scanner with no problem at all. While the Hubbins opted out and had to wait for a male TSA person to do the pat down thing. I respect his wishes, but now we had no time to eat. I hoped there was food on the flight! There was….and sadly it was nothing to write home about. In fact it was down right disappointing. I hoped there would be afternoon tea on the return flight. I tried to sleep on the plane, but that didn’t happen as there were some awesome shows that I could watch on the way over. You’ve already read about those….
Much cooler than US monies.
Upon arrival in Ireland we headed for our bags and FINALLY scored a stamp in my passport!! This makes me super happy. Nerdy I know, but there you have it. We also exchanged a bit of cash for Euros. I wish our monies looked as cool. Seriously. Plus it’s all different colors and sizes so at least were you say visually impaired you could tell what you were giving out. Just pointing that out US Mint!
So money exchanged and bags collected it was time to gather the car. You know the car we would be driving in on the wrong side of the road (to us) for a week. Now the butterflies started to gather in the Hubbins belly. I was fine as I wasn’t driving. That is until I was dubbed navigator. This would probably not end well.
Thankfully it did once we got the hell out of Dublin. The highlights of driving in Dublin included hitting the curb and driving down (a thankfully empty) pedestrian only street. But having the GPS was super helpful and we soon found a place to part the car so we could get something to eat in Dublin. Which meant Irish Breakfast: poached egg (not my favorite), back bacon (again I passed on this as the week went on), black pudding (not as gross as you might think), white pudding (awesome), sausage, fried tomato, and toast. The breakfast we had in Dublin was kind of meh, but we were hungry and ate it. Then we got lost on the way back to the car park and then got the hell out of there. Once on the highway we felt more comfortable driving. We were headed west toward County Mayo.
Me with our great little car at a stop off the highway.
We stopped at a little rest area complete with showers in the rest stop…which was weird. We picked up some water and soda…which I might add they use real sugar in their cola. This I found to be awesome. Tasted a little weird, but I preferred it to the crap we have here at home.
As you can see I look super goofy in the picture here, but I’m ok with that. Seeing as I’d been up since 7 the morning before. But we had finally made it! We were IN Ireland! I should also mention we’d made it driving in Ireland for more than an hour at this point. So we were feeling pretty good. Plus the Garmin had finally decided to remove it’s head from it’s arse and start working. So we were well on our way to our first castle…Kilronan Castle in County Roscommon!
Ta-da! A rest stop!And the Hubbins!
Next time….I’l cover days 1-3 in Ireland…stay tuned.
Thanks to a friend of mine I’m now addicted to the show Whitechapel. The basic idea behind this BBC show is to follow the detectives in London’s Whitechapel district as they deal with murders which replicate historical crimes.
Yep the shorter of the two is the cabbie from Sherlock.
The first crime was that of the notorious Jack the Ripper. I won’t tell you if they caught this copy cat or not. You’ll just have to watch if you are at all interested. I will tell you there is a bit of gore in the episodes after all this is the BBC. But the weird part was I was eating my nuked omelette, toast, and tea while I was watching. Strange right? I mean I don’t know many people that can sit down to a meal while watching this kind of thing.
Does this make me a horrible person or has society just made things like this more easy to swallow so to speak?
That’s right I promised you all a giveaway IF the Facebook page got over 100 ‘likes’. Well, it did just before I left on vacation. So another giveaway it is!
YAY!!!
But, in order to enter you have two options. Good news…if you already ‘liked’ the page on Facebook you are already entered! Don’t have a Facebook account? Not to worry. All you need to do is comment on this post with which of my past 80+ post you liked since I started up this new blog and why you like it. Of course IF you have liked the FB page you are free to comment and get an extra entry! Be sure to leave me some means of contacting you!
So what will be in the giveaway? More of my favorite things. Possibly including something from Ireland. Who knows? I can tell you there will be at least one BIG item like a t-shirt or set of something. So go on then, get to entering!
Oh and if you live in Canada or say the UK you too can enter.
You have until November 1st to enter! So hop to it.
Gal In The Grey Hat 