Tag: Irish pub
A Photo an Hour: 9 November 2013
Yesterday, I joined up with Jane from Is That You Darling to take one photo each hour. Here are the results.
10 AM ~ Waking up
11 AM ~ A cup of tea and some cross stitch, while I wait for the washing machine to finish
12 Noon ~ Lunch time! The remaining bread was a bit stale, so I decided to make eggy bread. I had it with another cup of tea, of course!
1 PM ~ Getting dressed after my shower. Yes, so late. Don’t judge! 😉
2:30 PM ~ Cheating slightly because I had no hands to take photos in the supermarket. Coming home with the weekly shop.
3 PM ~ Wrapping a birthday gift that I bought while in town.
4 PM ~ Repainting my nails… silver this time.
5 PM ~ Waiting for Jan to finish getting ready so we could go out! I wasn’t actully doing anything at this point, so I resorted to a selfie…
6 PM ~ Time for whisk(e)y tasting at my favourite Irish pub. Here’s my sheet for writing down what I could smell and taste in each whisk(e)y
7 PM ~ Roughly an hour into the tasting. On our third whiskey… so far, I only liked the first one!
8 PM ~ Still at the Irish pub. Running out of ideas for photos. Here’s a random ship that was hanging above our table…
9 PM ~ Still at the Irish pub! Here’s a photo of a candle…
10 PM ~ The whiskey tasting included a three course meal. Here’s dessert:
11 PM ~ Still at the Irish pub! Mind now blank! I took a photo of a beer mat…
12:20 AM ~ Cheating again because I didn’t want to take yet another photo at the pub! So I waited til we left and took one on our way home.
1 AM ~ After all that whiskey, a large glass of water was in order before bed.
And there you have it. Apart from the whiskey tasting, that was a pretty normal Saturday for me. Waiting for the washing machine… shopping. The only thing missing was a photo of the hoover (because I didn’t bother with cleaning yesterday!).
Friday letters
It’s been another loooong week, It started off slow… so slow, in fact, that I was pleased my colleague was off ill (well, not actually pleased she was ill… but you know what I mean) because it meant all the work that came in was automatically mine. Beats trying desperately to find some other work to do! Monday and Tuesday still dragged though. Then on Wednesday things went crazy and I spent the rest of the week trying to get everything done and find people to proofread things as said colleague remained ill for the entire week…
Dear boyfriend. I’m happy that we’ve booked our flights to England for Christmas. No getting ill this time please!
Dear Irish Pub. Celebrating your 5th birthday on Wednesday was fun, but I swear next year I’m taking the following day off! Tired isn’t even the word for my state yesterday…
Dear Austria. Can’t wait to see you in two weeks!
Dear Amazon. I almost cried when I saw the total price for my order the other day. And none of it was even for me! Yes…. Christmas present shopping has commenced. *Sigh*.
Dear dresses. Stop being so pretty! I’m not supposed to be buying any more clothes this year…
Dear Christmas. I’m convinced you get more expensive every year! Why are none of my family easy and inexpensive to buy for?!
Dear readers. Thank you for all the compliments on my sun-kissed hair. You inspired me to make that photo my header!
Dear weekend. The weather forecast seems to indicate that we should be seeing some *gasp*… dare I say it?… SUN! I feel like I should do something to celebrate this. Day trip perhaps?
Have a great weekend everyone, however you’re spending it.
Birthday shenanigans
No weigh-in Wednesday today. Instead, I am going to tell you all about how I celebrated my 30th birthday yesterday.
As you already know, the day started off well with sausage and bacon sandwiches, provided by Jan. YUM! My friend then turned up bearing cupcakes with candles on them! For the record, I suck at blowing out candles… and there weren’t even 30 of them!
Jan and I then drove to Strasbourg (one of the great things about living where I do is that I can very easily just pop to France for the day! We walked around a bit then went and ate cake at a place called Christian’s, which is apparantly famous. Here are the cakes:
We choose two different cakes and halved them both. And because I am so dedicated, I even took a photo of the insides for you:
On returning from Strasbourg, we both went for a nap, then it was time to hit the pub. First we went and ate food at another place then we headed to the Irish pub. It was (mostly) great fun. I was given a bunch of flowers and a CD by my wonderful friends. Then I drank wine and waaaay to much whiskey – none of which I ordered or paid for myself. Then in a drunken state, I started telling people about my blog (mostly because our waitress is someone I originally knew through blogging). Despite me telling them it’s not particularly interesting, they all wanted to URL. So, that was the fun stage of drunkennes…. then the whiskey really kicked in and the tears started, as I told Jan he doesn’t care about me and I’m doomed to die alone and childless while all my friends get married. NOT pretty… and I’m sure I made one or two people very uncomfortable. If any of the people who were there last night have decided to read this, I hereby apologise most sincerely for my behaviour last night!! I don’t really remember most of the journey home. I ended up walking back with my neighbour, wailing and complaining at him all the way, then he came in with me because Jan wasn’t back yet. At some point, I decided I felt sick (classssy!!) and went into the bathroom, then I got a text to say Jan would be home soon so I sent the neighbour away and Jan arrived to find me sitting on the bathroom floor. I never was actually sick by the way, but it was embarassing nonetheless. Alcohol is evil people!!! Avoid it!
So that was how I turned 30. A good day surrounded by lovely people… until I ruined it all by being a drunken mess. But I wasn’t a mess until after midnight, so technically my actual birthday was all good 😉
Birthday plans
If you’ve been reading my blog for longer than say a week, you’ll probably have noticed that I have a birthday coming up (and if not, I applaud you on your superior selective reading skills!) As that birthday is, in fact, a week today, I thought it was about time I started figuring out what I want to do. Here’s the plan:
* Obviously I shall be ignoring all healthy eating plans completely. Birthdays do not come with calorie limits! So for breakfast I plan on having a nice fattening sausage sandwich with brown sauce. I might even shove some bacon in there too. Yum!
* Jan has taken the day off, and he suggested going somewhere. I’m not sure what he has in mind, but wherever we go, I will definitely be tracking down some cake. You can’t have a birthday without cake!
* In the evening I would like to go for a meal somewhere – I don’t do cooking on my birthday! Then I shall ask my friends to join me in the Irish pub for drinks. It’s like a birthday ritual!
*My real celebration will then (hopefully) take place on the Saturday after my birthday…. if Jan actually books the place, that is. If not, I guess the party will be at my place.
So there you have it. Not too bad for a mid-week birthday.
German… or just plain rude?
An early post today because I’m currently unable to go to work. Our servers went down yesterday and still aren’t working, so I’m waiting to phone again once the IT guy’s been to see whether there’s a point in me going in…
Before reading this post, those of you who haven’t before (and don’t know me in real life) need to go read this post about my awesome boots (note: the pictures there are terrible. In real life, they’re much more red).
So, last night we were walking home from the Irish pub when suddenly, as we were passing a hotel, a woman jumped in front of me and started pointing at my boots. Getting right up in my face, she started shouting “What are those? Where are you coming from… Fasching?” (Fasching is the German version of carbival or Fat Tuesday). My initial reaction was baffled silence, so she continued: “Those boooots! They are for Fasching!!” My friends chimed in at this point, saying they were awesome boots. Ignoring them completely, the woman piped up again. “But where are you coming from? What are you? Are you Red Riding Hood?”. By this stage I had recovered my voice. “Red Riding Hood wears a red cloak, and anyway these boots are amazing!” This carried on for a little bit, with the woman continuing to be entirely unable to understand the concept of wearing red boots when it isn’t Fasching and my group being utterly stunned by her small-mindedness. What a boring life she must lead!
Now, my question for you, dear readers (especially those who live in Germany). Was her behaviour typically German or just plain rude? Personally, I’m going with the latter…
Charlie goes quizzing…
Just because we’re back from Ireland now doesn’t mean Charlie the Horse is allowed to go into retirement! Last night, he made an appearance at the pub quiz. Here he is just chilling at the pub:
I must say, he doesn’t make much of a good luck charm! We only came 5th.
As soon as Charlie came out, so did the smartphones! People from another team were taking photos and one woman gave the horse head a stroke on her way to the loo. People obviously think he’s some kind of tourist attraction 😉
Jan had originally said he wanted to leave relatively early as he goes away today until Friday and still needed to pack. But then we got talking to the quizmaster and his son, and Jan ordered another drink… so once again we were there until closing time. It was 2 a.m. when I got to bed and I had to be up at 6! If you’d seen me this morning, you might have thought I was still drunk… which would be quite a feat seeing as I wasn’t particularly drunk last night. Actually, I just lack coordination at the best of times, and this morning I was too tired to concentrate – hence why I hurt my arm walking into the doorhandle. Because it’s not like I’ve lived in my flat for 3 years now or anything…
Out again tonight… the quizmaster (also a musician) and his son are playing at the pub. I feel another late night coming on…
How hard can it be to find a date?
Very is the answer to the question above judging by the trouble I’ve been having doing just that. I was going to have my charity teaparty on the first Saturday in July, except it turns out a seminar we’re having for work is being held on that day. This weekend I have visitors who I’ve promised to show round Karlsruhe and the following Saturday there’s a live music performance in my local Irish pub that I really want to see. It starts at 8pm and I’m planning on holding the tea party from 5pm (the five o’clock tea stereotype, remember?) which rules that date out. A tea party that has to end after three hours isn’t a real tea party! So it’s looking like I’m going to have to postpone things til further into July… but not too far in as towards the end things get busy again with Das Fest (Karlsruhe’s big music festival) on the weekend of 24th July followed by another trip to England the weekend after that for the next wedding. I’m not sure where I would fit in time to bake in among all that, never mind hosting the actual party! So another date shall have to be sought. In the meantime, I’m still collecting ideas for stereotypically British tea party food. All suggestions welcome! Recipes too, if you have them…
Plans and potatoes…
Despite all my promises to get back to regular blogging, once again it’s been over a week since my last post. That pesky little thing called life has reared up its ugly head and got in the way again! So what have I been doing that’s kept me so busy?
~ Learning Spanish! Jan and I started another Spanish course recently (our third), so now that’s where we go on Monday evenings. Each lesson is an hour and a half and let me tell you it’s hard work! Hopefully it will be worth it in the end though!
~ Socialising! Last Saturday a friend of Jan’s who moved to Frankfurt was back in town for the day, so we met up with him and went to Stadtfest. Then in the evning we met up with friends for “Dirty Old Town”, the annual event in which all the pubs in Karlsruhe’s old town have live music all night. And on Wednesday our favourite Irish pub celebrated it’s 2nd anniversary, so of course we had to be there.
~ Cooking Sunday dinner! The meat was fried pork steaks, so it wasn’t a real Sunday roast, but my roast potatoes were absolutely perfect. Crunchy on the outside and lovely and soft in the middle. Luckily I made extra so I get to enjoy them again for lunch tomorrow. Mmmm.
~ Making plans! We’ve decided to go to Edinburgh for new year as we only got such a short time there (one afternoon!) during our trip around Great Britain this summer. And since we’ll be heading to the island anyway, it makes sense to spend Christmas there as well this year. So we’ve been looking at flights, trains and B&Bs and have finally come to a decision. We’ll be staying at my dad’s for 9 whole days! My little brother won’t know what’s hit him – he’s never seen me for that many days in one go!
Confuzzledom 