Snoring Doggies, Pride and BBQs!

First of all, this is my dog Roxy snoring like an old man:

(video after the jump)

Tulips in the window!

€3.99 in Tesco, sure where else would you be going with these beauties? I put them on the windowsill yesterday, the buds were closed but within an hour of being in the sun they opened out fully to greet the day. Simple, uplifting and gorgeous.

Cooking Adventures

I've decided to give you some pictures of the stuff I make at home sometimes for myself - I'm out sick from work at the moment so I have to entertain myself somehow, so rambling on this blog seems the best way to remedy my boredom.

So I made some springs rolls last week. I'm a coeliac, and I'm allergic to eggs, so a lot of the time I have to improvise and be creative about making things that are traditionally packed full of both, eg springs rolls, pastries, cakes, various pasta creations. Also really bold things like onion rings etc. It requires some creativity and a willingness to eat creations that turn out kinda gross now and then - but I love that, and there's nothing more fun for me than being up in the middle of the night experimenting with batters and cakes that I can eat!

Baby Animals being cute

Not to be too fluffy bunny or anything...but these photos and videos make me happy.

I remember reading the Run Swift, Run Free book series as a kid about a family of foxes and far from making me want to make sure foxes were kept safe, I really wanted to find an injured one and make it mine.

But here are pictures of baby animals:

Baby Animals Being Cute

and here's a video of some baby sloths in an orphanage - they're bizarre looking creatures aren't they? They don't look real, they remind me of something from Labyrinth.

Sloth Babies!

Sometimes I feel guilty I'm a meateater - then a big tasty lamb chop lands on my plate and the guilt disappears. Om nom nom.

Ack!

I have been a terrible blogger lately - the truth is I had these great intentions of posting up pictures of my cooking adventures. Unfortunately I kept forgetting to take photos of the finished products because the second thy were out of the oven or the wok I started eating them.

Here's a photo of some lovely flowers I put up in my house last week when a special someone was visiting me - look how pretty they are! I love the little vase also:


My next post will have pictures of home-made spring rolls - I also bought some tofu the other day so I'm going to try some experiments with that. If any of the 2 people who might possibly read this within the next 10 years have any tips or tricks or yummy recipes with Tofu let me know. :) I'm looking to expand my veggie repertoire!

Cycling on roundabouts and other such extreme sports

I attended a cycling safety training course this morning and then almost got squashed under a car while cycling home, because I didn't look over my shoulder on a roundabout - how beautifully ironic that would have been! I cycled for about 3 hours in total, with some breaks, which is the longest I have cycled and I didn't keel over at any point so yay me I say! :)

I'm also having more fun than I ever imagined possible with the uklele - I'm playing a few songs now already and trying to improve my strumming and that. I'm not very co-ordinated, I'm quite clumsy actually so I tend to lose the rhythm of the strumming very quickly once I start singing along. However, I'm having so much fun while learning it doesn't really matter! :D

The uke is here!

It arrived yesterday, and I can play (badly) On The Radio, Creep and 5 Years Time. It's such a wonderfully happy instrument, I could strum away on it making no kind of musical sense for hours!

In other news, I went to the gym last night and went for a lovely swim, I can feel the difference even the last week of healthiness has made on my body already, more energy and strength and even feeling the need to go to bed at a healthy time now and get a healthy amount of sleep. It's great :)

My impoverished status because of iphones (and ukeleles) means I also can't really afford to buy crappy food or go out so it's all water and gym for the next few weeks anyway!

Savage. :)

Weekend of loveliness - fishing, BBQs and fake tan!

What an awesome weekend - I grabbed a lovely sushi lunch with a friend in Jervis Square on Friday, attended the Trinity Ball that night and then headed to Cork on Saturday morning (quite unwell it must be said).

That day we went fishing off the pier in Ballycotton. All we caught was seaweed (and Chlamydia...as my friend Ash kept saying....) but it was so gorgeous out there, I could have stayed all day optimistically casting off.


We then headed to Ballymona beach which is quite near Ballycotton, lit up our bucket BBQ and roasted sausages, burgers, lamb chops, some chicken, turnip (??) and I ate paté on cucumber (I'm a coeliac and had no crackers with me so I improvised!).

It was such a lovely day, with lovely people and lovely food. Factor 50 suncream meant I didn't get a sniff of sunburn or sunrash, but today I made up for my whiteness with some fake tan - my new love. I'm lovely and sunkissed but not orange. It's a bit of a novelty for me!

In other news, I got my bike lock replaced. Hurrah!

Pluckety pluckety plinky plonky

I bought a ukelele - isn't it adorable!



The red colour and the dolphin just seduced me the moment I saw it. I'd imagine this will end up abandoned in a corner in a few months but for while I'm trying and failing to learn beautiful songs on it it shall keep me entertained!

Beautiful!

UCC is beautiful. I was walking up into the campus today from the gym, stepped under the arch and into the quad, and was just blown away by its beauty. I had no camera on me, and the iPhone's one just didn't capture the gorgeousness of it. The evening sun was glinting over the trees in front of the Boole library, there were blackbirds pecking the grass and only a handful of people were walking around its perimeter. So lovely and peaceful, I'll miss it when I have to leave.

Back in January when the snow was around, I took the following picture - what an amazing day that was!


In other news, I had to cut the lock off my bike myself this evening. The fact that I spent 20 minutes clipping off my bike lock in the middle of a busy thoroughfare in UCC with not a single person stopping to ask me why I was, for all intents and purposes, stealing someone's bike does not reassure me about the safety of my bicycle in the future. Halfords shall also be getting an angry e mail re: broken bike lock. It's new, it shouldn't be breaking that easily!

...........I smell....

of suncream!

Oh the delights of sunshine once I have Factor 50 plastered all over me. I can almost forgive it for hurting me so when I see everyone looking so cheerful and eating ice cream, playing football and cycling around!

Life is full of puppy dogs, lollipops etc! :)

Bad food and bike luck!

Bike lock is jammed and it's trapped at work for the moment, the sushi place is closed on Mondays and I made an utter bollocks of BBQ rib by making a rookie mistake of not soaking the bodice before baking it. It was so salty it actually burnt the inside of my mouth! What a doofus I am!

On the plus side, the move to Dublin is getting more exciting, and I'm heading back to the gym to do some more training tomorrow after my evening meeting. :)

The cycle I'm doing is a 70km charity cycle from Dublin to Arklow for Womens Aid, a charity that work to stop domestic abuse and protect women and children who are caught up in that cycle. It's a brilliant charity and as soon as I have the money to register (oh the poverty) I'll set up my charity page and start getting moneys togehter for it! :)

I'd like to add a nice happy picture to counteract my little rant above about the food, so here's a pic of the puppies I go home to every weekend in my parents' house!

Dirty looks begone!

Ì have cycled to the gym, did some running and some exercise biking, stretches and whatnot, and have returned on the bike. Betty the bike is incredibly happy. As is Rebecca, owner of said bike.

The gym was odd today actually. I plucked up the courage to wear shorts for the first time ever in the gym, and for some reason everyone else took the opposite tactics and were covering more flesh than I've ever seen covered. There was even a woman in a burqa.

Things I didn't expect to happen today:

1) Actually managing to cycle to the gym and back
2) Seeing no shorts in the gym except mine and instead witnessing a birth in popularity of the gym burqa.

What the frikkin frack? Great session though, I forgot all about my pasty little legs wobbling back and forth on the exercise bike and got right into it.

Of course now that I'm back, all I can think about is eating something incredibly unhealthy, but the homemade lasagne waiting in the fridge to be reheated is keeping my willpower strong.


I really feel great, hopefully I can keep the momentum going. :)

Who knows where the gym is?

So I bought a bike a few weeks ago, with the intentions of doing a lovely charity cycle in May. I was doing well in terms of training etc but between being away for work and feeling a bit sicky I've been a bit shocking the last 2 weeks or so.

So I've decided today's the day I'm going to cycle down to the gym and do a bit of exercise and hopefully manage to cycle home (I've a feeling I'll end up face down on the pavement, but at least I'll be toned and embarassed).

Here's the bike, I love her very much. She's currently sitting outside my room throwing me dirty looks:

Daffodils in a student house

Note the innovative use of a Heineken glass as a vase. So beautiful, so cheap - Daffs cheer any house up :)

Not really sure...

...What to actually blog about really. It all seems a bit self indulgent to have a corner of the internet just for the random thoughts in my head.

I suppose it's different when you're a teenager and you feel like everything you think must be original and interesting, because it is to you. Eventually however, you run out of thoughts, or at least you start noticing the same patterns in them - and you even start to bore yourself with your hysteria and pretension.

See unlike marvellously talented and wonderful friends of mine (www.maevekeane.blogspot.com) I don't have lovely items to show off or random bits of art or cookery. I just have me and a keyboard and a lot of ranting.

But sure....we'll see how it goes. :)