Kate’s Rants

hey i think it’s been over a week since my last post. sorry everyone! i guess nothing really interesting has happened to me, at least not post-worthy.

but that never stopped me from rambling on before. weird. i suppose i’m in a non-writing mood.

well, i’ve been getting really excited about going to ireland. for some reason whenever i think about it, i think about the springtime. i think it will still be pretty cold when i go there, but i never daydream about cold-ireland. i daydream about sunny, green, summery ireland.

also, brad’s roommate daniel had a FANTASTIC idea! brad and i had been talking about renting a car for a couple of days in britain to travel around a bit that way. but then daniel said “why dont you guys just buy a cheap car in ireland?” which is SUCH a better idea! brad’s roommate simon is coming over as well, so we’d be able to split a car 3 ways. and i’ve already started looking into it, and there’s always people moving out of the country or selling their car for pretty cheap.

i also talked to a girl in the hostel who bought a car here. (she’s from australia.) she said it’s probably a bit different in ireland, but we’d have to pay some sort of road tax and something else in addition to the actual car. and she said she was able to just get individual insurance (i’m not sure what she meant by that…) but she also said if we’re splitting it 3 ways, it would be totally worth it. and she also said she travelled europe by car, and it was by far the best thing she ever did. travelling by train or bus is so restricting: you can only go to the big towns and the places where the trains or busses go. and you have to base all your travels around the schedules of the trains/busses. with a car, you have the freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want. AND you’d never get stuck sleeping in a bush.

anyway, that’s the most exciting pre-news i have. we’re obviously still thinking about it, and there are lots of factors that will affect our decision. like, if we have enough money to pay rent and buy food. but i’m sure it will all work out. and i’m really really looking forward to it. ALSO we’d be saving a huge amount of money by not buying train/rail passes. instead we’d buy gas for the car.

oh, today is Burns day. celebrating robert burns, a famous scottish poet. brianne and i went to a burn’s supper on saturday, which was all fancy and we dressed up and the guys all wore kilts and it was fun. we had haggis, neeps and tatties, in addition to soup, dessert and a cheese plate. we also had a ceilidh, or traditional scottish dancing. that was good fun but unfortunately the ratio of guys to girls was small, so the girls had a play the part of the guys a lot. oh well. there was also a funny little quiz about how much we knew about scotland (kinda) and our table WON! (i dont know how we won, because when they were reading out the answers, it seemed like we got most of them wrong! haha) anyway, we got two bottles of wine for the table, so we each had a couple of glasses. we didn’t get any whiskey for free, but there was a bar where you could buy some if you wished. i didn’t wish to. but since today is burn’s day, the hostel had some at reception and gave me a little shot of some. it wasn’t very good, but man that stuff warms you up. they also served haggis (haggis pudding actually, which is deep fried haggis and looks DISGUSTING) at the cantine at work. i decided to skip that, since i had good haggis at a fancy hotel on saturday. i can only eat so much animal insides.

tomorrow i’m going to:
-get my laundry done (yeah, it’s free for longtermers in this hostel! woo!)
-go to work
-buy my BUNAC IRELAND ticket/packet
-buy a bus pass
-find out about ferries to dublin from scotland
-probably join in the going-away/birthday party for some people in the hostel.

saturday i’m going to:
-sleep in ahhhh.
-maybe go buy some new work pants
-go watch curling with jenna?

curling: some weird scottish sport that sounds hilarious. we signed up to play in the edinburgh decathalon, but we don’t have enough people for a team, which is a bummer, so we’re probably not going to play. but it would have been SO FUNNY because it’s like giant shuffleboard on ice. and yeah, none of my work friends or i have ever played it, so we’d be even sillier.

but jenna and i decided that if we dont play, we might go watch. cause i really want to see what we are missing. so we’ll see if that happens. maybe we can convince lynsay and lucas to come watch with us. and then we can all go out on the piss. hahaha i’m turning british. (not really though.)

anyway, that’s about all i have to do or say.

the end.

i like feeling needed at my workplace. i felt very needed at freeborn, and i felt like i contributed a lot to that place.

but here, i havent felt like that big a part. my job is basically useless. ok it’s not useless. it’s actually a vital link in a chain that helps things run smoothly. but it’s a link that shouldn’t exist, and i’m not really explaining myself very well. but i did post about my job so you can go back and read about it in that post.

anyway, i havent felt like i’ve contributed much to this job. i just print emails and give them to people. it’s really boring and dumb. however, awhile back i drafted a whole little plan to eliminate my job and make the office i work in a more efficient and better place. “my” plan was actually the whole plan the managers thought of before they moved everyone into that one office and then discovered their plan wasn’t working and thus created my job.

anyway, i kept telling my boss they HAD to transition into this other way of doing things before i left, otherwise they’d never get rid of my position because it would be easy to just keep it the way it is. (even though it’s TERRIBLE the way it is!)

well today i found out that they ARE transitioning into the new way of doing things! and i’m going to take credit for convincing my boss that it is time to do so. i’m just so persuasive.

so i’ve contributed a little bit to Edinburgh. i’m helping make their homecare office run a bit more smoothly, which in turn will enable MORE people to get the care they need, which will make everyone happier.

wow, i’m such a good non-citizen.

ps: i feel better. yay!

if you live in a hostel, there is no way to avoid getting the germs that everyone else has. for one thing, we don’t have paper towels in the bathrooms, we have cloth towels. so if people wipe their hands/faces on those, and then you do, there it is. even if you both washed your hands first, i’m sure some germs spread that way.

also, drying dishes is done with cloth towels that everyone uses, and everyone uses the same plates, forks, cups, etc.

close quarters = easy to catch germs.

and that’s that. so i got the flu that has been going around. i tried to use airborn when i was feeling it coming, but i was too late! the bug had already settled in. so on monday i felt awful and left work early. and stayed home on tuesday. i went to work today, but left early again. and i’ll probably have to stay home tomorrow and possibly friday as well.

this is good because work is boring.

this is bad because i wont have any money!

but hey, i gotta get over the sickness, so i’m just going to keep on taking nyquil, sucking on throat drops, and resting.

send me some happy thoughts!

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yay for new years! we had a good time. bri and i tried absinthe (those pics of cups with spoons on fire… that’s the absinthe…) it was crazy! just very potent. but there were no hallucinations going on, so no biggie. but it was cool: our friend greg got it in prague and shared with us. he put sugar in a spoon, soaked it in alcohol and lit in on fire to melt the sugar, then mixed it in the absinthe with a little water and voila: excellent drink.

the street party got cancelled due to bad weather, which was a bummer. but we still had a bunch of fun hanging out with the crazy hostel people. it was good times for all.