Diary of An Irish Woman

musings of an irish lady now living in America.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Muppet Show - Mahnahmahna

The famous clip from the Muppet Show.- My twin Shelia sent me this. Also well know I cant pronounce M and N's together... Would love for them to bring back the muppet show..

Monday, July 17, 2006

My precious...

So discovered a new XBox game - myself and himself just happened to fall into Frys electronic store at the weekend... As you do.. Well we actually had a product in mind when we went into Frys- a new holder for our portable car GPS system.



The GPS is fantastic - Garmin340 GPS - but it has a sucker kind of thing to stick to inside your windscreen while driving . Its either crap or its now too hot here (today was 104) and the sucker don't suck no more (sounds like a retro 80's tune that. So when I drive after putting in the address of the customer I am driving off to see - suddenly it goes bang and the GPS falls off the window and usually at me.. It looks small but its obviously out to get me..



Banged my knee twice with the stupid thing and only the fact its cool and needed I would have thrown it out the window with my cursing over bruised body parts. I even tried sticking to the dashboard with gum in a vain macgyver attempt to no avail, well apart from the fact my dashboard now smells of spearmint and nail polish remover to take off the useless gum. So we went in to see what they had to offer. Not much in fact nothing in that department so will be an online search for us while I see if I can superglue to the window or myself - something easily done..

So came across XBOX games and decided to get one. I love video games but I don't like fighting ones so means that I have a rather limited choice. So got the Hobbit and its a lot of fun. There's fighting but since you're a Hobbit doesn't seem as bad - and also himself sits beside me and I yell fight fight and throw the controller at him and he fights them kills them in a very manly hubbie fashion and then gives back to me so I can now explore safely picking up jewels and working out the puzzles.

We played yesterday for a good well 4 hours. Not bad for us but I can see the obsession happening. I cant seem to just play for an hour like I can with TV - I get sucked in and my hand starts to cramp as I overplay my poor wee muscles



So can I understand Bilbos obsession with the ring - of course I can. Now I have a precious too....

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Zazzle...

Himself does amazing stuff. They have made it so easy to make products on Zazzle. And now when someone buys one of my tshirts I get royalty.

Not saying how much I've made but its a nice small bit of change. Especially for not having to do anything but design a shirt in 5 minutes using the famous Irish word feck and then others buy your shirts.. I love technology...

By the way - heres my product page - with scrolling pages

Himself is one of the lads redesigned their site and made the design product pages so very cool and easy to use .. Very fecking deadly..

giggle loop

Remember when you were 8 or 9 yrs old and you started to giggle somewhere inappropriate like mass (church) and you just couldn't stop - you got stuck in a giggle loop. Well Friday night myself and himself got caught in one and it wasn't pretty..

We went to the Lick Observatory Friday night - MountHamilton Lick Observatory


The observatory was built on top of Mount Hamilton by James Lick and all of it brought up the steep mountain over months and years by donkeys and carts and opened in 1880. Its where himself asked me to marry him last year so we were looking forward to the night.

Amazing beautiful place on top of Mount Hamilton here in San Jose, urge everyone to go see it just even for the view - about an hour drive and 4500 Ft above the city. During the summer they have music/science lectures. Being the geeks we love going so we got tickets for opening night. So there was a Celtic kind of band supposed to be playing plus a science lecture from an astronomer and you get to look through the 36 inch telescope.

Through the telescope we saw jupiter with all raging weather system and moons and the cats eye nebula - millions of light years away. Very very cool.


Anyway - the band Celtic Bough were all fantastic musicians - Celtic Bough I'll give them that - one of them played harp, flute, tinwhistle and bohran, the other guitar, mandolin, banjo and another lass the violin. All very well. Problem was their choice of songs and their singing.

They picked Celtic tales of woe, anguish and pathos - cheerful tunes like the Irish Famine... And then sang them smiling their hearts out which made it so so very wrong it was funny

They sang like this

"Isle of hunger, isle of tears... Come on everyone clap your hands, isle of hunger, isle of tears - while grinning and smiling like Barney on acid...

They asked who was Irish in audience - this is one of those times I keep my head down.. Its Irish Americans like that who make me cringe that I even like Irish music. Myself and himself started giggling then and of course that made it worse. Every time they sung a part like 'and he died......' they sang with a cheer and smile and of course that made us giggle even more.

Then it was onto more sorrowful songs like workhouse songs, immigrants through Ellis Island dying and coffin ships all while the harp player smiled and sang like a parody of a bad folk singer, winking nodding the head and smiling all the while. Also they would tell the story of each song, making it even funnier in process as they told you about the sadness and then burst into smiling sound of music happiness...

Himself is a bad influence, I'm sure I would have stopped giggling at the first song - well maybe - but he kept me going through most of their set. We went outside and watched the stars eventually, who were quiet in their dignity and laughed out loud, releasing the giggle loops from their prison... Its good to feel like a 8/9 yr old every now and then...