NorthDownMuse

Gilnahirk

Continuing on this theme of reduced carbon footprint. If I walk four minutes downhill from the house, I arrive at the Gilnahirk shops: My silly MacBook camera reversed everything but what you are seeing, right to left, is a barber ("For lads and dads"), a baker, a butcher,

Imelda's Ghost

Great name for a novel, right? Here is my confession: I have a bit of a shoe fetish. I don't really know how many pairs of shoes is excessive. But I'm embarrassed to report that I have 48 pairs. I have lots of rationalizations for this:

EZ Veg

Our local grocers make it easy to be vegetarian. Marks & Spencers, Tesco, Lidl (Aldi's in the states) all have great vegetarian frozen items. My favorite is roasted beetroot and manchego pearl barley risotto bakes with beetroot and orange sauce and walnut pieces. There's also the

Irish humour

We went back to Crawfordsburn the other day to walk along the coast with our old friend Noel and his very old lab Finn. Except Finn was gone, replaced by a perky little puppy named Tilly. Finn has gone onto his canine reward and Noel's wife, who has

Cleaning house

We have less storage here than in America--no garage, no basement, a long crawlspace instead of an attic. I was pretty aggressive in getting rid of things before I left the U.S. I was linked up with a domestic abuse survivor in Coatesville who inherited two beds, lots of

TGTO

Thank God That's Over. I passed my driving test!! It took David four tries back when he was a teenager--not uncommon. I had 34 years of driving experience on him, however that isn't necessarily a positive. A. I was on the other side of the road.

Before

Just before. I'm in the middle bedroom working on commentaries and this is what it looks like. I usually require total order before writing. But I had to give that up. Our poor Maysie dog woke up this morning and was shaking and unwilling to walk. We took

Driving me mad

We had beautiful weather Easter weekend and took advantage of it by cycling down to the Lagan River (maybe 20 minutes from the house) then cycling along the towpath. It was gorgeous--amazing to cycle along a lovely, wooded river so close to a major city. Monday we took Maysie to

Kitchen, done.

Well almost. We still need a floor and we need to paint the walls and the stools haven't arrived. But we're almost there. Before. Before part two. And after (remembering that I'm taking pictures backward on a MacBook Air so I can't

Shop till you drop

I spent Friday shopping with our friends from church, David and Stuart, mostly looking at furniture. I have a learner's driving permit so I can't drive unaccompanied and they had offered in the past to go shopping with me, so off we went. I found a

Unintended consequences

The U.K. has made it increasingly difficult to be a smoker. First retailers had to make cigs less accessible. The latest is that cigarette packaging must not reflect a brand. Everything must be plain brown. I doubt this will have an affect on smokers, but there it is. What

Drum roll please

Before. Scroll through the brochure [http://www.templetonrobinson.co.uk/images/property/179/TRHTRH72690/TRHTRH72690-1.pdf] until you see the kitchen then the bathroom. After the bathroom will be what the master bedroom looked like when we bought the house. And then demolition began. During. One more: Drum roll and

Tour d'Ireland

After studying at Queen's, I went to city hall to catch the bus home. You never know what you will see downtown. There was a brass band playing and over 100 little race cars parked around city hall. Apparently Europe’s top rally drivers will compete in the

The joke is on me

Here's my April schedule: Tomorrow: 1500-word methodology paper due. Next week: 16 fund commentaries due as part of my freelance job (hours of poring over spreadsheets). Take 45-minute driver's test. Following week: 9 more fund write-ups due, including one file that covers 19 funds. Following week:

Three memories

"In this chapter we have emphasized that every theory, to be worthwhile, must have implications about the observations we expect to find if the theory is correct. These observable implications of the theory must guide our data collection, and help distinguish relevant from irrelevant facts." I'm

Settling in

Today I unpacked three out of five suitcases that I used to move here from Crawfordsburn (David very nicely let me use all the luggage to move while he used garbage bags--he doesn't care much about clothes). I'm trying to blend the packed clothes with the

Deck the halls

We spent the weekend painting the hall in the foyer and on the first floor landing. I still can't find a charger for the camera battery so I'm showing only before pictures. We took the wallpaper off to reveal what was all the rage back in

Decorating disaster

We were in a shop today talking to Simon about getting a runner made for the stairs. We were talking about pattern repeats and he told the tragic tale of the Brinton butterflies. I had seen the very carpet [http://www.brintons.co.uk/view-in-room/873/] he was talking about

Wild Tales

Pedro Almodovar has a new film out--Wild Tales--about revenge. He has a very dark sense of humour so the experience of watching the film is that guilty feeling of laughing at something that is actually kind of horrible. I loved his film Talk to Her, which I don't

Anti- antitrust

My first paper of this semester is due tomorrow. I've been at the library all week researching and writing. I have to evaluate the theoretical framework used in a legal academic article. I chose one on antitrust law and here's one of the things I'

Appeal-ing

One of the things I love about the U.K. is the habit of giving generously to any number of causes. Comic Relief has just wound up its events, raising over 78 million pounds this year--more than one billion pounds since its founding in 1985. It was founded by a

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today's my mom's birthday. I was thinking of her Sunday when I walked along the beach in Holywood. She'll be visiting this summer and this is one of many places I want to take her. Photos from David's phone: She grew up

Sleeping around

I haven't found the camera battery charger yet and I'm not sure I know how to upload photos from my phone. Otherwise I'd have posted photos of the coast yesterday and of our bedroom today. It's done! We finished painting and moved

One-year anniversary

I've been here a year. It's been a weird mix of falling in love with Ireland all over again and dealing with high levels of stress around being a student; finding, buying, and fixing up a house; living out of suitcases; constantly learning new things (phone,

Boggles the mind

Skip this if you have no interest in how law interacts with multiple discourses, making it difficult to interpret the effect of transplanting law into a new system. In other words, if the European Union requires Britain to import some aspect of EU law, how will that law evolve in