Hilary’s Blog

I am not sure if this is sweet and romantic on a very laarge scale or just plain weird….?

Our new house has a small lawn out front and small garden at the back. This has encouraged us to try some gardening. First steps in this direction were for me to plant some sunflowers and some herbs in seed trays and see what happened.

J’s mum helped with repotting them last week. I didn’t realise they would need repotting so soon and didn’t have pots and generally wasn’t prepared. The next step will be to plant them in the garden, so J mowed the lawn the other night (very domesticated isn’t he and next we will have to find the perfect spot in the garden for the sunflowers. For now I think I will keep the herbs in a pot so I can move them indoors in the winter; so I will need a bigger pot.

I also have a large flower pot on our front porch – a present for my last birthday. It came with a red currant plant in it, which is growing quite fast (I’m proud of this fact). So in a few weeks it will be too big for the pot, and I will need to find a spot for it in the garden!

In the meantime though I have added some mini trailing petunias to the pot to give it some nice colour (bedding plants rock, you just plant them, and you have instant flowers, all the hard bit is done).

My brothers girlfriend gave me a cutting from a money plant – I’ve always loved these. I have put it in a nice pot (thanks to J’s mum, again). So we are working on developing green fingers, although I am sure I will have to tell you of all the disasters that will be fall us (andmore importantly our plants) soon.

We moved house about 4 weeks ago; we are now renting a lovely 3-bed in Riverstick, Co. Cork. We do like our new house, but more on that later.
For various reasons (getting eircom to connect broadband, travelling) today is my first day working from our new home, in the little dedicated office in the box room. It’s quiet here and I’ve been settling in and getting on with work. I’ve just discovered, though, that this is the time of the day our next door neighbour likes to start up her sewing machine. It sounds like she might come through the wall. I’ll let you know!

I was reading a blog this morning and the owner had recently posted about how his blog was about to be 1 year old and what should he do to mark the occasion. Well this got me thinking about how old my blog is…. 4 yrs, 1 wk and 2 days since the first post.

I remember what started it. Jamie had been blogging for a while and was constantly trying to convince me that I should do it too. I couldn’t see a reason for this, what would I write about? I mean Jamie has his techie thing and he spends his life on the internet so he always finds weird and interesting articles to show people. I don’t really do that; and as soon as I start to think about writing about anything that’s happened to me, it suddenly doesn’t look/sound interesting enough to put out there. Also, I thought it was just for geeks (am i wrong?). Anyway for my 26th birthday Jamie got me a digital camera (he’s great, really!) and told me that I could take pictures wherever I went and then blog about the pictures. As it turned out I don’t take much pictures, hence you haven’t seen alot of them. Plus the ‘Photos’ section is down (Jamie!) so I can’t point out any of the few pictures I did take. But still, here we are!

And how has it been? Well it can’t have been much fun for you. I’ve read some old entries, no I have never checked my spelling before I publish! Plus what can be of interest in the life of a woman whose most interesting coversation of the day is with the two border collies she walked at lunch time? You know probably the most interesting thing to happen here is that some crazy kids kept mistaking me for Hilary Duff. And that could only be becuase the photo section is down!

I always say I will blog more/better but it never happens. So i’m not even going to try to say that now. What I can promise is that entries will continue to be irregular and of little interest to anyone. That way, no pressure on me to write it and no pressure on you to read it. See we’re all happy with the status quo!

It’s not really a Manic Monday but I saw the Bangles song listed on a naff 80’s compilation album in Virgin at the weekend and now I have it in my head. It is actually quite a dull Monday.

Jamie headed off for his first day of his new job this morning, understandably a little nervous. Since PhDs don’t count as work (sorry to all the PhD people I know) Jamie hasn’t held a real job in 3 and half years. Actually, because Jamie doesn’t consider his time in MLE a real job, he’s counting it as 5 and a half years. It’s going to be tough for him to settle into the routine but I’m sure he’ll soon come to hate it as much of the rest of us .

Work for me is quiet today (watch: I’ve just jinxed myself and I’m going to be up to my neck in it in about 4 minutes). This is the first time I’ve been in the house totally alone since I started working from home. It’s weird, I always work better when there is background noise – total silence distracts me. I am forcing myself to stay in my office, and occassionally actually sit at my desk

As many of you will now be aware we have moved to Ireland. This was about 7 weeks so it is really old news.

However, in the last 7 weeks Jamie has found a job and found a place for us to live. This is great news, but unforunately I was not present for either occurence. I was out of the country when Jamie got his job and away again when he found our new place. I find it a little depressing to have missed out on some of the major changes in our life but I was lucky enough to keep my job when we left England.

It’s a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand we still have one salary while Jamie was looking fora job and we set ourselves up. On the other hand the travelling part of the job keeps me away alot and I am missing out on all the good stuff that is happening.

I guess it’s cos we’re newly married that I feel it’s more important that we do these things together. But I don’t think that anyone (except Jamie) sees that it is so hard to be away so much, when there is so much changing at home.

I have just been criticised for the poor quality of my blog! No surprise there, but it should be noted that I come from a long line of people who believe constructive criticism was just an excuse to start a flight – usually at the end of a wedding/funeral when someone says to the bridesmaid/widow: “did you not take a look in the mirror before you came out?” And there will always be one gentlemanly soul to jump to her defense, thereby starting a classic punch-up which brings the whole event in question to an end.

But the criticism is doubly cruel because it comes from one of those young, hip people (basically anyone at the other end of their 20’s is young and hip to me – as I draw closer to the ‘age that cannot be mentioned’ I find myself referring to everyone under the age of 28 in this way). These young people (phht – I spit when I say it) surf the net with the attention span of a retarded gnat and can decide in milliseconds if your site is cool or shite and then they’re gone. These are the people whose opinions inform marketing companies of what we all want to buy/see on our telly/listen to on the radio/wear next season – god help me but 3/4 length tousers, mini-skirts and yellow have never and never will look good on me but thanks to the young, hip people (phht!) they’re the choices I’ve had for the last 3 seasons!!! Screw you, whatever happened to jeans and a T-shirt? Spandau ballet? Refresher bars?

This blog was Jamie’s bloody idea anyway, to draw me into the world of geekdom. And I fell for it; anything for a pretty face. I mean I don’t have a life to speak of and no one would be interested anyway. Every once in a while I surf the net and find other peoples blogs and I think “hey I’m more interesting than that!”.
However, I have been reading this blog – to try to understand where the criticism came from. Mother of divine sorrows, I cannot believe I wrote about counting and re-boxing my prescription medication (it obviously wasn’t having the necessary effect). What total weirdo thinks that’s interesting to anyone.

It is plainly clear that there is no one left reading this blog at this stage, the insanity has gone too far. So I can say what I want. Stay tuned, it’s not about to get any more interesting!

Before I go off line for the holidays I just wanted to say to everyone that I hope you have a happy, peaceful Christmas and a very happy New Year.

You can tell there’s not alot happening at work for me at the moment, as I seem to have time to write more posts. Notice also, that the posts don’t get more interesting, just more frequent.
This post is mainly being written so that in a few weeks when I’ve forgotten what has happened I can refresh my memory as to how strange I can be sometimes.

(J thinks this one’s a doozie) I am currently on some prescription medication (no comments please) and had to get a refill yesterday. There are 84 tablets in all, and the first time I received 3 boxes with the tablets split between them. The nice thing was that each strip of tablets had 4 tablets each and this was handy cos that was one daily dose. Yesterdays lot came in 5 boxes of 15 and 1 box of 9; each strip had 5 tablets, except for one with 4. 15 is not an even number and strips of 5 tablets don’t help a person keep track of whether they have taken the right dosage or not. So, I emptied all boxes onto the table and repacked them so that there are now 4 boxes of 20 and 1 strip of tablets with 4 tablets. This is much easier to manage, I have one days worth on a strip and then each box contains 5 days worth. Much more sensible.
J had to laugh; apparently OCD is alive and well!!

There’s a guy at work who used to make fun of me because of my Irish accent and specifically how Irish people say certain words. For a while this guy was stuck on how Irish people say the wrod ‘film’. Repeatedly, for weeks, he would ask me to say ‘film’ and I would respond and say ‘film’ – sometimes to be cheeky I would say ‘movie’, see I’m not that funny. Anyway, last night we were going to the cinema again and after dinner I walked out of the room and said to J: ‘Our filum is starting in 20 minutes’. I stunned myself. When put on the spot I have the concetration to say it right but when talking naturally it seems that I fall into the sterotypical irish way and I say ‘filum’. Can you see the difference? Can you see what I’m getting at?
I guess I should be proud, after 3 years in England I have managed to retain my Irish-ness and I still sound like a spud-gobbling, cabbage-eating bogger from the arse-hole of nowhere

This one has nothing to do with my strange-ness but I feel I need to warn everyone who might go to see The Holiday in the Cineworld Southampton. There is a part in the movie where Jack Black is singing in a video rental place. Anyway, just before he gets to his big crescendo the sound goes for a few seconds and when it comes back, right at the moment of the big crescendo, the volume comes back but MUCH louder and you get Jack Black’s booming voice at its loudest ear-bursting best/worst (depends on how you feel). Anyway, I feel the warning is necessary since after this moment you may never hear properly again.
As an aside the movie is only ok.

Personally, I would never pay any attention to a movie review from me. I will pretty much watch ANYTHING; I do not have what can be described as discerning tastes.

That said, I do think that Deja Vu was pretty good. I tend to like Denzel Washington movies. While the basis of the story was a little unbelievable (being able to watch the past happening), if you can put that aside, there was a story which had flow and of course there were explosions. I like explosions

Anyway, for an action packed 2 hours, go see it.

BTW, did anyone else notice that Jim Caviezel was cute? well, i did.