Some of you will know approximately where we live in Ireland, so I am sorry to tell you that this story is locally germane:
Post mortems due on County Wicklow bodies
They were our neighbors. Not the kind you’re close to, perhaps (though they were close to many others), but they were the kind you’d always wave […]

Posted in Hobbyhorses and General Ranting, Home life, Ireland, Medicine, nursing, health, Psychology / psychiatry 1 Comment »

It’s good to take a challenge every now and then. From over at Daily15, for today’s challenge word, which is “solstice”:
Invictus
In the dimness he woke and knew it was too late. Morning never came so late unless the world was ending.
Fortunately, he knew what to do about that.
He blinked and ruffled his feathers, looking around. […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland, Writing No Comments »

“Lots and lots and lots of heart.” …Well, one anyway.
Our local craft butcher is sufficiently old-fashioned and down-country that the less commonly seen meats still make a strong showing — remarkable (in the older sense of the word) in this time when Ireland is prosperous, and many people are turning their backs on memories of […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 2 Comments »

You didn’t disguise your identity as thoroughly as you may think you did. I will have my revenge.
Meanwhile:
1.What is your favorite Christmas carol/song?
“Fairytale of New York”, the Pogues.
2.White lights or multicolored?
White.
3. Do you have a cut tree, live tree or an artificial tree?
Artificial.
4. Eggnog, mulled cider, or hot chocolate?
Eggnog. And only one possible recipe, the […]

Posted in Home life, Humor, Ireland 2 Comments »

“At the dead of night, two noble planets, Tarva and Alambil, will pass within one degree of each other. Such a conjunction has not occurred for two hundred years.” (Dr. Cornelius in Prince Caspian)
Irish weather strikes again.
We had a tight conjunction of Mercury, Mars and Jupiter this morning. When I went to bed the […]

Posted in Astronomy, Home life, Ireland, Uncategorized 1 Comment »

(sigh) I was going to be up bright and early this morning to watch the golfing proceedings start…but in the wild post-hurricane weather of last night, power lines went down all over eastern Kildare and northern Wicklow; with the result that we lost our electricity about eight-thirty last night, and it’s not back up yet. […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland No Comments »

I’ve been thinking about the redesign of EuropeanCuisines.com for a while now: while there’s a lot of data there, the site’s started to seem very static in terms of what other food sites have to offer. So we’re starting to make some changes.

We’ve started a new version of the site based on the open-source content […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Ireland, Online life No Comments »

It’s about to start happening — that most gloriously seasonal of desserts. The tree in the paddock is so loaded down with Bramleys, the branches are bending halfway to the ground. Gotta do something about that while other work is going on.
The tart dough comes first. The basic recipe is Swiss: they do the best […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 1 Comment »

(Greetings to all our visitors from BoingBoing, StumbleUpon and Digg!)
You may have seen the cool posting in BoingBoing some weeks ago about the hummingbird hawkmoth. If you did, this short video YouTube version of a short video from our garden might amuse you. Before we went away to CopperCon, Peter caught a few seconds of […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland 3 Comments »

The Independent has turned Comet Swift-Tuttle into Comet Swift-Turtle. Twice.
(Not only a typo, but an oxymoron…! Nice going, guys and gals.)
Oh well. Hope it clears up a little so that we can see the Perseids…
Technorati Tags: astronomy, science, Perseid, meteor shower

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Home life, Ireland, Note to self 1 Comment »

The branch of Domino’s Pizza in Tallaght, Co. Dublin, sells more pizzas than any other Domino’s branch on Earth.
(And this in a city which contains both the Gotham Cafe and its sibling spot Independent Pizza, joint homes to the best thin-crust pizza in these two islands? Feh.)
(It’s late, and strange quotes drift up from […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Ireland No Comments »

I can’t believe I’m watching “Krypto the Super-Dog” dubbed into Irish. (As gaeilge: Krypto, an Madra Iontach.)
Thank you, TG4…
Technorati Tags: Krypto, Krypto the Super-Dog, DC Comics, Irish, Irish language, TG4, as gaeilge

Posted in Animation, Comics, Ireland No Comments »

For those of you who may be interested:
The Irish recipe pages at our European Cuisines website are constantly getting search-engine hits from people asking “What do Irish people eat?”. With that in mind, we’ve put a new page up that talks about the subject — in very broad strokes — and links to a Flickr […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 1 Comment »

We’ve already had several days of truly gorgeous weather — temperatures in the 80’s Fahrenheit, not too humid, blazing sun — and at least a couple more are expected. For Ireland, this is most welcome: too often summer here is mostly gray and in the 60’s. …Down at the pub, I heard one […]

Posted in Ireland, Science No Comments »

Ireland Is Lost Island of Atlantis, Says Scientist
And he’s serious, it looks like.
(headclutch)
Technorati Tags: Ireland, Atlantis

Posted in Fantasy and science fiction, Ireland, Uncategorized No Comments »

So about an hour ago we brought home the beautiful and much-awaited Beemer.
She was nervous about letting go of the kind ISPCA lady who’s been taking care of her for the past month. “If you decide you don’t want her…” the lady said, sounding wistful, and trailed off. But I’d say there’s […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland, Writing No Comments »

So…back home once more.
As we left LA, Peter gave up the silver rental Jag with some regret and considerable affection. He’d always wanted to drive one: now he’s had his chance (and interestingly still holds that the Mercedes we rented to do some errands in a few months ago was a nicer car). […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland, Travel No Comments »

But here’s something much more interesting than news about the state of my upper respiratory system. We haven’t even left on this trip yet and I can’t wait to get back, because as soon as we come home again, we get to have a new kitten.
We don’t have a car any more: we […]

Posted in Home life, Ireland No Comments »