mandolin | "Back to life... back to reality..."

Well, got my car back in good shape (Plague, thank your dad for recommending the body shop - Jewel looks great, drives great and I didn't get ripped off!) and am back at work trying to get caught up. Have half an hour til the development status meeting, where I'll have better luck figuring out where the heck we are, so it's update time. (Edit: Okay, it's after said meeting now and I'm still in the dark. So let's continue.

A moment of silence for the Evil Parakeet of War. No, seriously, the psycho bird died last week while we were in Ireland. War, you may be sick of condolences by now, but we're all going to miss Tweety.

Anyway, those who peruse my friends list will have seen the lowdown of our trip that War posted (

jennies in LJ land), so I'm not going to rehash her itinerary. Rather, some additional thoughts. (Note: Added a few notes I forgot to Day 2.)

Day 1: 29 August 2003

Lesson of the day - Low blood sugar and two nights of 5 hours or less sleep is a bad combo for Mandi. Robyn, Sara and Jen had to put up with my bouts of dizziness and me being even more out of it than usual that first day. I didn't fall off the Cliffs of Moher or anything, but I literally fell asleep while waiting for our food when we stopped for lunch at a nearby family restaurant.

Thanks to tptigger for the advisory on knocking oneself out on plane trips: had I not taken some allergy meds to knock myself out on the plane Thursday night, I wouldn't have been able to stand up.

I have decided I don't like Guinness, but I discovered it's great when used in the stock for beef stew.

Overheard on the way out of Shannon:
Jen: "So the left lane's the slow lane? Good, we're in the slow lane."
Sara: "Jen, I can't believe I heard you say that."

"Adventure driving" term was immediately coined by Jen. So I was highly amused this morning when I was perusing neonhummingbird's Ireland entries from May and saw the same term appear there. Great minds think alike? :)

Loved Galway, really, really did. Ironically enough, have no photos of Galway, because I was too busy taking everything in to remember I had my camera with me. Duh.

Day 2: 30 August 2003

Slept like the dead 10 hours, but was still groggy in the morning due to readjusting, which prompted the following discussion about me being the only non-morning person.
Jen: "I forgot, you're a rattlesnake before noon."
Me: "That's giving me a bit too much credit."
Jen: "All right, you're a pit viper before noon."
Me: "Yeah, that's closer."
- Fortunately for everyone involved, I was better on the following mornings when only getting 7 hours sleep.

"The Quiet Man" was filmed in Cong, where we saw the abbey and Ashford Castle. This fact was pointed out by many, many signs and made me think that my uncle Dan (a big fan of the Duke) would have liked to be there. And now I'm somewhat curious to go see it. (Robyn, I believe, suggested an Irish film festival of all the movies we heard about being filmed in places we visited. Not a bad idea.)

The views from Lough Cong when we went out on the boat were awesome. We didn't even need to enter Ashford to get some great views.

Returned to the Vista to discover that the lights had been left on and the car wouldn't start. It had been about two hours, and we got a jump from the nearby petrol station. A lot of cars about the same age as the Vista would start up after only a two-hour drain, but then again the car had been abused by tourists galore. This put us a bit behind schedule, so we hopped in the car and got moving.

Got slowed down, however, while going through Ballinrobe - seemed we managed to pass through town when the races were starting. Some kids were trying to hitch rides to the race track. We jokingly considered giving two younger boys a lift. (We didn't.) When we passed by some older boys trying to thumb a ride, we wrote them off because they didn't meet the "cute factor."

Lunch consisted of the apples and the soda bread we'd picked up at the Super Valu. Wish I could get bread that good at the supermarket at home...

Because of the delay in Cong, we couldn't stop in Westport and settled for driving through town. Bit of a shame, since it was a nice place, but we didn't miss out on anything major.

Interesting adventure when getting into Murrisk: there was a bar over the entrance which allowed clearance for 1.8 m.
Robyn: "Can we make this?"
Us: "Sure!" "Yeah, it'll fit!"
(Cue scraping sound as we just get beneath the bar.)
Jen: "Well, we made it!"
Turned out the scraping sound was the antenna. :)

Croagh Patrick gave us one hell of a view, and the "coffin ship" memorial across the road was really something. I have been reminded by this trip that perhaps my walking workouts should incorporate less flat land and more hills, so maybe I'll be able to go farther up next time.

The Connemara mountain range was just breathtaking, and I'm kicking myself for not asking what was filming when we passed through the valley. (There was a lot of film equipment and part of the road was blocked off, and I've been searching with no luck to figure out what they were shooting.)

Lesson for today: Always ask right off the bat in a pub if they serve food. We tried to stop before Galway, but managed to find a village where neither pub served food. Oy. :)