Chaaaaanges!
Apart from the obvious (!) a lot of things have changed! I would like to extend immeasurable thanks to my best friend Toady of Neil Patrick Harris Fan.com (and other sites) for the new design of my website. It’s finally great to have something that is mine but not a layout that I just Google-d from a free Word Press website. I took the photograph in the header and you can find it on my Flickr page.
The content is the same so nothing in the way you navigate unnaturally red has changed, only how you see it! It’s a vast improvement I think! I really do love the layout and it’ll get me back up and blogging again. Hopefully kick-start some of the numerous projects that I have started but not finished.
Other things that are new include a new house and a new job as well as new hair. I shall start with the job!
After leaving data communications after a tumultuous few years I have started a new career with a very popular computer, software and electronics manufacturer. I’m really excited about the future and I can’t wait to get my teeth stuck into working here and moving up through the company with all the opportunities they have. I have joined the gym and the social club here at the organization and providing I have time at the weekend I will be going out to buy a pair of trainers so I can start the gym on Monday!
The new house is partially as a result of the new job. The other reason for the new location of Quinn is due to the Farmboy (briefly hinted at in a previous post “I’m Lovin’ Life”). We’re moving in together with friends into a shiny, three storey, and detached house on the Northside of Cork.
OK so it isn’t exactly shiny. The letting agency was a let down (rimshot) and the place wasn’t cleaned or painted before we picked up the keys. It was a blessing really as it meant we could clean and paint to our own standards. Photos will be incoming in future posts as I get the bedroom up to our desired standards. Alas nothing can be done with the God awful built in cupboards (maybe if Father Christmas is good to us this year we can afford to buy new doors for them), or the badly stained carpet but I have been informed that a good vacuum with the Baby Alien (my Dyson. We’ve talked about my need to name everything) has resolved that issue partially.
With the new job and the new life here in Cork city the past few weeks have been hectic, rushed and very stressful. We’re all going to be burned out by the end of the year I imagine but it will be a perfect time to relax and gather ourselves for 2011. I’m starting to think about my new aims for 2011. I can’t remember if I had any for 2010; I gave up Coca-Cola and still haven’t touched a drop since New Years. Shall I continue this for the rest of my life? I think so, it hasn’t changed me health wise, and I mean I haven’t seen any direct change in my health as a result. Probably not helped by the fact I replaced Coca-Cola with Sprite just to get something fizzy back into my meals. This New Years I’ll cut out all of those drinks. That will be a good start. Other things I want to change and improve on are my crafts (knitting, embroidery and painting among others) and my cooking. I can cook, I have cooked, but I just don’t cook.
Everything is down to change. I have a new job, I’m now closer to work so I don’t have to drive any more, and I’ve got a gym membership and a new home (and new hair! I’m bright red again!). I can’t wait to see what 2011 will bring in the way of change, good or bad. Since moving to Ireland in 2009 everything has been about change for me. Not just moving to a new country but how I’ve had to try and adapt to it. Back in York it was easy for me to just stay at home and be on my own. Out here, especially in Courtmacsherry, it was too easy to be on my own. I made an effort to make friends and be something other than someone who hid away. I certainly prefer it as I definitely do NOT get along with everyone but at least I can certainly put my finger on which person I do and do not like. I don’t have my countryside/seaside retreat any more but at least I do have places I can go to get rid of the necessity to be around people.
Change is good, and sometimes change is necessary, I certainly recommend it to everyone as a way to shake cobwebs off a variety of stale and unused things in your life.
Coming up next: Photos of projects getting resurrected.
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A Year Into The Future
This time last year I might have said to myself “Can’t time just fast forward to a year in the future?!”. It might have been because of some stressful incident at work, money issues or indeed, family issues. Every now and again I will catch myself wanting to be a year in the future. To at least let past me deal with the crap that was happening.
If I had written down then what I thought I might have been doing in the future when I had demanded it the last thing I would have written would have been “Living in Ireland.”
It has been a month now. Fairly calm and successful one at that. As an English woman I’ve not hit as many problems as I was expecting.
The mundane task of proving to the Irish government I was here legitimately and had a job was no more annoying as I would imagine it could be in the UK. But I will have to sing their praises – as I imagine it actually would be quicker than in the UK. Within the month I have got myself a bank account, internet and a phoneline and my National Insurance number. Oh I’m also tax exempt on my UK registered car and my car insurance is sorted. Not too bad, though I can only imagine what my phone bill is like.
The first month has had it’s ups and thankfully I’m yet to hit a down. Even though I thought the washing machine broke yesterday. I’m going along with “living in England” being the down, so hopefully living in Ireland is going to be at least 24 years of an “up”.
I’ve been quick to make friends and I’ve already had three hangovers. I’ve woken up twice in a strangers house and have had a lift home three times by three different people that I had known for less than 24 hours. Interestingly enough I have met more people from the UK than I have people from Ireland. Says something about living in Ireland, that there are more of the Brits over here than back at home.
I haven’t had TV since being here, and to be honest I don’t think I will go through the fuss of getting it. I have only one show I watch religiously and I will always find a means of watching that.
For now I will continue to go to the pub to watch some sport, and knit as I watch the tide coming in and out of Courtmacsherry Bay.
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