NorthDownMuse

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

The web we weave

Not long ago I started getting Yahoo Daily News stories selected "especially" for me. I never asked to receive this daily e-mail, just like I never asked for most of the stuff I get in my inbox and mailbox. Because my studies can be fairly tedious, I am

Lovin' Lanyon

I know I've posted a lot of photos of my favorite building, but these are Queen's photos [http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/StudyatQueens/UndergraduateStudents/Over160YearsofHeritage/] , which are better. They showed up on my Facebook page, so I thought I'd share them. 3-19

Four Phases of Kitchen

The only "before" photo I have of the kitchen is from the sales brochure. If you click on this link [http://www.templetonrobinson.co.uk/images/property/179/TRHTRH72690/TRHTRH72690-1.pdf] and scroll until you see two rows of pine cupboards, you are in the kitchen. Here'

Competition

So I know you are all dying to hear what I'll be studying during the second half of my second semester. Here's what I'm reading right now: "The Multiple Personalities of EU Competition Law: Time For a Comprehensive Debate on its Objective."

Boo-racracy

Apologies for my lame attempts at writing clever headlines. A downside of living in Ulster is the bureacracy. In the U.S. they'd probably talk of a nanny state. Two pertinent examples. Every year, you have to have an MOT inspection (I believe that is Ministry of Transport)

Ta-Da

Not a great photo, but this gives some idea of the chosen color. Above the picture rail are the color samples as I try to pick a second color. This photo didn't turn out well but it is of the next project: painting three rows of molding all

5.3 vs. 2.3

We went to a fancy Indian restaurant last night as part of a Meet Up event. There were 18 people there, allowing us to use those social skills that are at risk of atrophying if we don't get out occasionally. I spoke to a woman who--like many women

Decisions...

Picking a color is HARD. I live in a linear world that imposes order on everything I do. To select a color for the master bedroom, I first must decide what rug will go in that room (the pastel or the raspberry?). Once that's decided, I then must

Irony

Sometimes I'll go back and read something and be amused by my lack of awareness around the contradictions in what I've written (a nicer way of saying sometimes I realize what a hypocrit I am :-). Like yesterday I wrote that it would be a pain

Cats and tweets

Last night I facilitated a climate change discussion, acting as Ban Ki Moon. The teacher earlier required us to set up a twitter account (those of us not already tweeting away). What this meant was that I was tweeting comments about the exercise rather than being present during the exercise.

bus stop

My Belfast bus stop is next to city hall, which is in the middle of a big green rectangle and is surrounded by lovely old buildings. The bus-stop side of city hall (not the front): Across from the square is what was once the department store Robinson Cleaver: It now

Comber Greenway

Our morning walk with Maysie has been citified, just like our commute. The Comber Greenway used to be a rail line and is now reserved for cyclists, dog walkers, runners and strollers. It is a short walk from the house. I'm appalled by how many people don'

Slowgress

That's what you get when progress is slow. After three coats of stain on the master bedroom floor, the plan was to furnish it, set up the bed, organize our dressers, and live a bit more normally. Then we decided we should paint the wall behind where the

Michael & Faye

Here's a photo of our back garden. We didn't realise the property came with two goldfish, but it did. The heron is keeping an eye on them. The camelia bush has been blooming for a few weeks, as have the rhododendron bushes. I see my friends&

David & Stuart

When they had us over for dinner last weekend, David offered to come by to trim our rose bushes. He is a keen gardener and loves roses. So they came by this afternoon and I gave them a tour of our disheveled house. After which David went after our five

Billionare's club

Last night I went to a Q&A with Denis O'Brien, founder and majority owner of Digicel: "Digicel Group is a leading global communications provider with operations in 33 markets in the Caribbean, Central America and Asia Pacific. After 13 years of operation, total investment to

Chester, PA

Monday night I had the surreal experience of sitting in a classroom in Belfast during my environmental justice class, while skyping with someone in Hawaii who is an expert on environmental degradation in Chester, Pa. Our class read an academic piece on grassroots activism in Chester in the 1990s. Each

City life

There's a lot that's different about daily life in Belfast vs. Crawforsburn. Biggest is the commute. I used to drive three minutes to Helen's Bay train station, take the train for 30 minutes to Botanic station, walk seven minutes to Queen's (and