Diary of An Irish Woman

musings of an irish lady now living in America.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Planning

Seems as soon as I stop planning one event I'm onto another

Irish Networks AGM Sept 7th at Ray O Flahertys pub in San Jose- I'm looking forward to stepping back from that one as I was basically alone doing all it during the year as president - we had a good few events but hard to get other items going when you're king of a molehill.. Not that I blame folks. I was involved for 5 years and everyone has life events that keep them from being involved. Hopefully with a new committee things can get moving again.
Open House for work - Sept 21st - last time we had 25 companies come so hopefully can do as well and not put my back out again :-)
Then theres the social events of friends coming over from Ireland for a weekend away and going away this weekend and of course Sept seems to be birthday month central for everyone (guess what we know what the folks were doing for Xmas and New Years :-)

Of course I love planning, so I cant complain too much so October has nothing planned for now and looking forward to it !

Now where did I put that spreadsheet....

Monday, August 28, 2006

Sad news

Talking to my Dad he told me there was a horrible accident and one of my old neighbor's from Donaghmede that lived across the road. Elaine(nee Bernie)Luthi's little 6 month old girl Paige Luthi was tragically killed by an SUV driver whose SUV came up on the kerb near there home here in the US.

The wee girl Paige was out with her Auntie Debra and her cousin and Uncle who were over from Ireland visiting her in Auburn (about 3 hours north of where I am). They were going into Longs pharmacy and waiting outside when the driver seemingly had a seizure and knocked down the stroller, the 12 yr old cousin and the Uncle while Debra had popped inside to the store. The baby died an hour later. The driver seems suffered from seizures - why he was driving I don't understand.

Words can describe how sad this is - the newspaper shows a photo of Elaine and her husband and Paige. Death that comes suddenly and violently is always heartbreaking and always the more when its such a wee one. Our thoughts and prayers to Elaines family and a prayer of support for them. I haven't seen Elaine in years since I came to the states but growing up she and Fiona another neighbor were a couple of years older but would always organize games for all the kids on the road and once did a whole sports day for everyone. They were natural Mums both of them and she was always kind to a much younger geekier me.

RIP Paige, may God bless you and hold you in her arms. Angels are sometimes only lent to us.



news report

Monday, August 21, 2006

Watercourse Way- and the best painful massage ever...

Himself booked us into the lovely spa place WaterCourseWay in Palo Alto that's located right beside his job for Saturday. (can you say Hubbie of Year award :-) Friday they were booked out and that was fine as we went for some beers and caught a movie "Little Miss Sunshine" (see entry below and why haven't you seen it yet? ...)

Anyway - we went Saturday night and first went to a great Mexican restaurant nearby - I had a chicken in sour cream sauce with chili sauce. Amazing dish and the waitress was telling us its her Mums receive. Lucky her.. Then after the carafe of margarita we went to WaterCourse way where we had a hot tub room for ourselves and he had booked us for a massage later... Again can we say Hubbie of the Year. Himself is so good as he's booked us in for this place nearly once a month and its a fantastic night.

Normally we just do the soak or a sauna and bring a wee bottle of wine snuck in and enjoy. I don't normally do the massages as I don't like them much. Yes you heard right, I don't like massages that much.

I think its because the fact I've had so many physical therapy massages over last ten years that my brain has interpreted them as not as pleasant as most folks. The rubbing and the fragrant oil and candles, well I can get at home :-) So himself was getting a massage from a therapist Jason who's very good at Chinese kind of massage - lots of accupressure and he needed it from all those computer hours. I was given Vasili lovely massage therapist from Romania who's being doing massage about 17 years and had a lot of experience.

First off as soon as I was on the table and face down under the sheet (Side note - he was amazed at my superpower of getting undressed so quickly under the sheet when he left the room but then again he didn't grow up with 4 sisters one brother and a one bathroomed house... Longer than 30 seconds in bathroom and someone would have been killed in our house..) Before he even started the massage he said you have a problem with your right hip and the tendons in your (well he used nice word for it but basically my arse..)

Normally massage therapists work a lot on my back and shoulders and I leave feeling well oily and smelling of lavender and that's about it. Not Vasili - he does the kind of massage that makes you go want to bite onto your hand as its hurts as he releases that knot in your calf muscle but you know its going to feel so much better afterwards.

There was no gentle rubbing of fragrant oils in front of my face and wafting of candles in the room . He's more like a doctor who happens to do massage. Cranial release was also part of it and the next two days I was still tender at where he worked on me (all over) but no bruises which I was surprised at as he was going so deep thought it would bruise but nope - he has magic hands and I was tender but a lot more flexible.

He recommends two hours for next time as he can spend 5 minutes gently releasing a knot - and my hip feels so much better then it normally does so I'll give it a couple of weeks for my tenderness to subside and go again to him.

Another wonderful weekend gone and why do they go so quickly but thats another post but at least get to share it with himself who got a zillion brownie points of course.

Best painful massage ever folks.... There's something you don't hear every day.

Little Miss Sunshine


Run don't walk to go see the new movie Little Miss Sunshine. Its probably the best movie so far out this year. Remember when you cheered at the end of a movie and laughed out loud and cried all in the same movie. Well this is one of them. Its brilliant and I'll be very surprised at any who don't love it. It has a fantastic cast and I'll probably go see it again as it was that good..

What are you waiting for - go run..

Little Miss Sunshine IDB link

Monday, August 14, 2006

Bread-holic

My Name is Sinead and I am a bread--holic.

For a carb-holic like me, any type of bread is a sugar rush of drugs to my head. I don't just love bread, I take my sandwiches quite seriously like a lover of wine or good cheese. The vintage sandwiches of coleslaw in Ireland, the melted brie and garlic on a soft French roll crust.. So its been quite hard coming off breads and learning to live without them.

So finding southern biscuits in BoJangles in North Carolina (himself had the car on direct drive to them as he's missed the taste of BoJangles so much being here in Cali) has me dreaming of bread all over again.

Now in Ireland biscuits are cookies, yes that's right and Jelly is jello, jam is your version on jelly, chips are French fries, crisps are your chips - keep up good people...

So American biscuits are, well there's no equivalent - we have scones - (in Northern Ireland pronounced s'gone - like he's gone..) but scones may look alike but are a different cousin all together. They tend to be sweet and also there's someone who's ruined them by throwing raisins or flies as my sister always referred to raisins. Biscuits are not scones, nor wee bread rolls, they are simply heaven... Soft, bread like but ready to crumble in your mouth. Touch of butter and you've scored.. BBQ sauce in NC also rocked my world. You could dip cardboard in it and think it tasty so pulled pork in BBQ even better... Hungry yet?

Going to be a problem living in North Carolina when we move there in a couple of years. I can see myself looking longingly at the biscuits as we drive past. Like a full size Garfield licking the window.. My name is Sinead and its been 12 hours since my last biscuit...

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

i can see your house from here


july2006028
Originally uploaded by SineadBorg.

from glacier point


july2006037
Originally uploaded by SineadBorg.
the same falls but from way up the mountains.. Dont worry - we drove up :-)

the falls


july2006076
Originally uploaded by SineadBorg.
we're like wee ants in comparison..

we live here...


july2006108
Originally uploaded by SineadBorg.
Some photos from our trip to Yosemite. It was my first time going and I was blown away by how beautiful it was. Himself brought me there as a birthday gift and we had a wonderful few days chilling at the Yosemite Bug - a kind of hostel/hotel - chilling on the porch with a pitcher of beer.

It was a scorching weekend - reaching 115 but in the mountains it cooled down as we hit the 9000 elevation. Clear skys all day and then the storm clouds rolled in and we watched lightening hit the domes.. I can't believe I never visited Yosemite before but then again I needed to meet himself first so he could show me the wonders of the world.

Monday, August 07, 2006

flikr photos - how cool is this!



www.flickr.com








SineadBorg's photosMore of SineadBorg's photos



We can rebuild it....

Himself rebuilt one of his computers at weekend - updated it so I could use it since my laptops a work one and has a whole whopping 20Gig of memory.. so nothing and crashes quite a bit. To make sure I don't lose my stuff and can play my tunes and keep photos he put a whopping 320gigs of hard drive in there - plus the external hard drive I have now as well has 80gigs.. I feel like Dr Evil ready to take over the world..

Its fun watching himself work on the machine, he kept disappearing to Frys our local electronic store and coming back with bigger computer cases and adaptors for power. It was like watching the 6 million dollar man rebuilt to life...

Then came trying to access iTunes on laptop but stored on other machine. Recovering it meant redoing registry values and all fun stuff that meant I ended up with about 7 copies of each song (as I had so many copies of iTunes folders from the disastrous way our laptops are set up to our server so getting them all off and getting the songs I had ripped from albums was a joy.. Not.)

Then himself went through my iTunes for me, deleted all the copies for me and brought me tea as well while we chilled watching the TiVo selection.. Last episode of Sex and City when Mr Big comes for Carrie (been so many times on rerun sure that's not a spoiler..)

Its the wee things like rebuilding a computer for me, going and deleting all the unnecessary copies of iTunes songs and bringing me tea that makes himself such a 6 million dollar man to me...