10 Questions About…

OK I’ve been terrible about maintaining the blog. Sorry! I’m hoping that I can get caught up today.

Last Tuesday we went to Il Primo – a new-ish Italian restaurant in town. I should start a step back… In Ireland there’s a TV show called Guerilla Gourmet where local chefs cook meals in unusual settings. We’ve seen two episodes. In the first the guy cooked and served a meal in the castle on the Rock of Cashel. In the other the show, Anita Thom, the chef and owner of Il Primo cooked and served a meal at Fossett’s Circus.

I have to give Patrick credit he remembered the show and got us into the restaurant. Their specialty is risotto, which really was amazing. I might ad chocolate cake to the specialty too though – as that was definitely worth writing home about. After the meal I happened to talk a little bit to the chef. It was on accident and really because the staff was so friendly that I did talk to her – but it was a tiny thrill. I didn’t mention seeing her on TV.

What was kind of funny was that she seems about as likely to be in a TV show as Billy (my brother the chef).

After dinner we ran down (literally) to the Abbey to see Romeo and Juliet. I think Patrick put it best when he said R&J just really isn’t Shakespeare’s best. It’s very up and down – the exciting bits are exciting (and were very exciting in this production thanks to rain on the state which is always a crowd pleaser) and the boring parts get long.

Also I think maybe it’s a sign that you’re getting old when you wonder why Juliet wouldn’t just marry the rich guy her dad set up rather than chase some guy who professed to be in love with Rosalind 20 minutes before he met Juliet.

Here are the videos from the Irish Film & Television Awards last night. Patrick helped me go through to figure out who everyone was. The girls were very good about sitting out in the crowd with us – but I figured when are we ever going to get a chance like this again? Especially since we scored pretty good spaces. That being said, CNN is not asking us for our video, it’s not that good.

Mel Gibson

Aidan from Sex in the City (& Bo Derek)
Aidan’s ral name is John Corbett – otherwise know as Ben Cornbett by the Irish Times (maybe they need to hire a librarian)

– also includes daughter from Fair City, an evening Irish soap opera

Rene Russo

– also includes Colm Meeney Neil Jordan

Jonathan Ryhs Meyers

Amazing dress. I just thought it was fun to see the real world experience of a great dress in less than great climate.

Sean McGinley – was in Braveheart and Marie Mullen who was in Druid Theatre’s Long Day’s Journey

Miriam O’Callaghan (RTE presenter)

Grainne Seoighe, RTE presenter (she has a ‘breakfast TV’ style show.)

Fionnuala Flanagan (TV, Film and theatre actress).

Someone from Prison Break

Kathryn Thomas (Presenter of the Year)

Ryan Tubridy (radio and TV host); Brian O’Driscoll (Irish Rugby Captain and his girlfriend, Amy Hubermann.)

David Kelly (Irish star of stage, TV and film).

Again the girls were out of school. Patrick decided we should go to the Georgian House Museum. He has a great interest in Georgian Houses; the girls and I don’t. We got to the museum and Patrick had to leave to tutor a class. So, the girls and I went through the house. They don’t allow pictures but we did take one outside.

Here’s what we remember about the house:

• The house was built in 1794
• They had 3 servants and they couldn’t read or write
• The people sat in bed instead of lying down (as we do) because of the prevalence on asthma – also they were afraid that people would think they were dead.
• The governances were young – so often once they ages they would be stuck for work or a home. They built two homes for former governances in Dublin.
• The wives didn’t go downstairs in the morning; they spent most of their day upstairs in their own parlor.
• They had bells to ring for the servants – each room had a different tone.
• The boys wore dresses – to disguise themselves as girls and lessen the threat of being kidnapped.
• Near the fireplaces women put boards in front of their faces o keep their faces/makeup from melting.

So I guess we remembered more than I thought. After the Georgian House we went to the National Gallery for lunch. At the Gallery, we ran into two friends – Robert Tynan and Eunan O’Donnell from Excaliburprima, Dublin’s top event planners.

We got the great kids’ packs and toured some of the art. Eventually Patrick met up with us. He noticed that Gabriel Byrne was in the coffee shop so we went back and sat near him. He is as hot in person as he is on screen. We chickened out and didn’t get a picture of him. I’m still mad at us for not snapping us.

Eventually we went home and had a pretty quiet night in.

On Monday Kate made her first confession. I offered to help compile her list of sins – but she decided to go solo. The service was nice. Confession services are always a little funny to me with the “I am sorry” banners and the songs aimed at 7 year olds about being sorry.

Aine enjoyed the ceremony – mostly she enjoyed singing with the fifth class choir. She didn’t sit with them or know the words or anything. She just belted it out from our pew. Kate was not impressed. She kind of reminded me of one of the Bay City Rollers singing with her new hair cut. (I’ll post a picture proving the point below.)

Tuesday was Kate’s birthday. She is 8 years old now. She got a bunch of great presents – a Pixel Chix, Webkinz, clothes, markers and stuff. The present from Grandma and Grandpa arrived on her birthday. She requested carbonara for dinner and we all got to eat chocolate cake despite the fact that it’s Lent because Lent is not a good reason to cheat someone out of a full birthday celebration.

We might go to the Leisureplex in Bray to celebrate some more.

We woke up today to great fog. The big girls and I took a picture. Aine is slow to get up so she was running behind us. She kind of misunderstood was sad not to see a hog on the way to Montessori.

Finally our big news is that we finally tracked down a copy of the Dun Laoghaire Gazette – Lily and Kate were on the cover and the picture gallery from the winter event at the People’s Park. (The Dun Laoghaire event is a weekly neighborhood newspaper.)

Sunday we went to Dundrum Shopping Center with Patrick’s mom and Uncle Fearghal. We had lunch at MAO, which is a restaurant that we usually like. I don’t know that Irish Grandma will be their best new customer – it’s Asian food.

Then we trekked about the Dundrum mall. It’s new and nice. We got a few things.

Today has been a long but good day. I’m tempted to put it in order of highlights lowlights, as it’s been one of those days.

Lowlights:

• Aine cut her hair. It’s not quite as bad as the time Lily cut her hair when she was three and a half – but she did more than trim.
• Aine left her jacket in town. (Special thanks to Patrick who walked back into town to get the jacket from the place we thought it might be while the rest of us caught a bus home.)
• The fruit and veg market Patrick wanted to visit was closed.
• It’s Lent so all of us would kill or die for a treat.
• My boots are cute but not very comfortable – especially after a day walking in town.

Highlights

• We went to the Chinese New Years celebration in Smithfield today. (Smithfield is in town – but on the North side of the Liffey.) It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be but it was fun. We saw some martial arts demonstrations, ate some spring rolls and drank Chinese drinks. (Well the girls were adventurous; I has a Diet Coke.)
• Lily was asked to pose for a picture with two police officers and a girl who was possibly Chinese. The photographer is a freelancer who will try to sell the picture to the local papers. So, we’ll keep an eye out.
• We saw the old Jameson Distillery (outside, not in). We walked around the shops on Henry Street.
• We found a cheap place for haircuts and had Aine fixed up and got Lily’s bangs/fringe cut. The young, helpful Turkish women in the barbers suggested that we keep Aine away from the scissors.
• Spring has sprung and there were fun. Good buskers in Grafton Street again.
• Eddie Rockets serves Diet Coke in a big glass!

The videos below do not include us – that may be a bonus! One is from the Chinese New Year event; the other is from Grafton Street.

Thursday night we went back to our new favorite place, the Science Gallery at Trinity. There was a panel discussion on innovation called Bright Ideas.

Here’s the description from the program:

David Edwards, Terry McGuire & John Herlihy
What are the factors and conditions that contribute to innovation? How are important problems found and solved? How can insights from the arts, science and creative industries be leveraged by business to develop an innovation environment?

The Science Gallery presents a unique opportunity to discuss the next generation of idea-environments with
David Edwards, founder of Paris’s Le Laboratoire and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University, John Herlihy, European Director of Online Sales & Operations at Google and leading Irish American venture capitalist Terry Maguire and facilitated by Irish Times technology columnist, Karlin Lillington. The talk coincides with the launch of David Edwards’ new book ArtScience: Creativity and the post-Google Generation (Harvard University Press 2008). The talk will be followed by a book signing.

I found it so interesting that I thought I’d write up my notes for the interested minority: Continue reading →

After our super busy day, Patrick called a friend from school who was meeting at a pub with Joyceans (James Joyce fans) who had been at a James Joyce conference celebrating Joyce’s birthday. (While I was with the kids at the Hugh Lane Gallery earlier in the day, Patrick was at the conference.)

So we met up with them. We met at the Davenport hotel, which was pretty empty. The group was funny in the way that any group who is really into something is funny. At one point they joked about playing James Joyce charades. At which point I realized that I no longer had to apologize for any party where the punch lines are in UNIX.

So it was pretty sedate. Luckily I was sitting by someone’s girlfriend, who had just attended the conference because her boyfriend was giving a paper. She had never even read Ulysses, so I can only imagine how interesting the conference would have been for her. She was a doctor and very nice.

Most of the crew left so we went with Patrick’s friend to meet up with his girlfriend and her sister at a night club.

Patrick’s friend is a couple years younger than we are, his girlfriend is a couple of years younger than he is, her sister was younger yet. So yes, once again I found myself at the end of the night (way too late at night) with someone who much younger. I’m thinking she was 20 – maybe. But it was fun to talk to her. She’s from Lincolnshire, she lives in a hostel, she works a temp job, and was trying to persuade Patrick to join the Socialist party.

I realized that I’d rather be in my shoes than working a temp job and living in a hostel – although she seemed to enjoy it – as both were opportunities to meet lots of people.