on a scale of one to ten

I have a new colleague at work. He's a youngster - only just 25 or so - and filled with enthusiasm for life, as young men are.
He recently got himself a new pet. A lizard, called Steve. From his description it sounds like Steve is more of an Iguana than a lizard, but the Irish don't know a whole lot about reptiles on account of they're not native to the place - being cold-blooded and all they tend to not survive here very long in the wild.

I'm finding that Steve the Lizard is a source of much entertainment for me.

A few weeks back I arrived at work to find an email from our boss that was something along the lines of:

Hi Terri,
G is going to be late to work today because his lizard is sick.
Regards,
P

Now there's one you don't hear every day...!

Anyway it turns out Steve's diet consists primarily of crickets. Simple, right? Only trouble is, crickets are also not native to Ireland. I don't believe I have ever seen or heard one in the 7 years we've been in this country. So my young colleague has to buy them from the pet shop, by the box.
When I heard this I just started laughing - his bloodshot eyes said it all. The first night, he had the box of crickets in his room, right where Steve lives.
Those of you from warmer climates will know why I found this funny - I remember it was bad enough, living in South Africa, when there was just one cricket somewhere in the house. For their size these are really noisy bugs (and sneaky, too - you could never find the damn thing to shut it up, either!). So there is this young buck with his boxful of crickets all announcing to the world a large how much they like the darkness - he didn't sleep a wink!

Lesson learned, the crickets were promptly moved to a remote area in the shed, or something, where they couldn't disrupt his sleep.

Until last week when his sister brought them in to feed Steve and accidentally dropped the box, scattering crickets everywhere... did I mention how sneaky these things are?
My colleague is learning a whole lot about reptiles and bugs at the moment.

He's a bright lad, though. Not to outsmarted he finally bought a box of noise-less crickets.
Noise-less crickets??? I'm thinking maybe genetic engineering may have found its niche; until he told me that on closer inspection the reason the poor creatures are noiseless is that they have had their wings removed. Am I the only one who finds this cruel? At the same time, though, can you believe that not only are there people in this world whose job it is to catch crickets, but there are also people whose job it is to pull their wings off??!!!

It seems like an awful lot of fuss to keep a pet lizard. I can't help thinking he shoulda got a rabbit or something, rather.

Who's been a naughty Dictator then..?

I overslept this morning. Not because I was tired, although I was tired but that's not why I overslept. No, I overslept because I was in the middle of a conversation with a Russian dictator when my alarm went off and it was a Very Important Conversation, which I felt it important to finish. So I killed my alarm and continued with what I was doing.

He wasn't actually Russian, to be perfectly accurate. He comes from one of those small countries on the border between America and Russia - you know, where their borders meet over the top of the globe, where the ice cap isn't. The name of the country on the map is somewhere between the names 'Monrovia' and 'Armenia', I forget what it was exactly. I got there because I was looking at the map and I jabbed a pencil at it and the next thing I was there, surrounded by what I can only assume was some sort of peace-keeping force, judging by the beige jeeps and army tents, but lack of weapons.
I often travel to places in this manner at night.

So we were looking around the place, in this big warehouse full of artifacts and treasures from this Dictator's reign, safe in the knowledge that he was far away somewhere in hiding. But then when I stepped into the bathroom to change my clothes (no, I don't know why, I just knew I was the only woman there so I needed to change behind closed doors), well there, trying to keep as quiet as possible, was this Dictator. He was afraid of being found and not at all scary, contrary to his reputation. He explained that he just wanted his son back, and if America gave his son back (which it couldn't, really, since his son was there of his own free will, studying at a university so it wasn't actually their place to give him back) then he would stop being a Dictator. I tried to explain all this to him, and that he was only hurting his people and his country by being a Dictator, but the silly man wouldn't listen.
So I just turned my back on him and ate my hotdog, which was really nice; all filled with tomato & onion relish that was dripping down the sides.
And when I'd finished my hotdog, I woke up.

After all, I really needed to get moving if I wanted to get to work on time.

technological advancements

I've had some technological woes just lately. I think it probably started when our TV died but that actually turned out to be a good thing as we're now the proud owners of a fancy-schmancy flat-screen LCD TV instead.

And then there was my new laptop. I wanted to love it, I really did. It's all sleek and shiny, and really quiet - you hardly hear it running at all. And it's fast, too. I no longer have time to boil the kettle and make coffee decaf while it boots up, and my email opens in a flash.
But...
I've had intermittent problems, mostly surrounding the wireless broadband / internet. I noticed that sometimes the internet was really slow - I was genuinely surprised that I actually got my photos of our trip to SA uploaded to Flickr the other night. I almost just gave up.

The night before that I was ready to throw the "bloody new-fangled thing with all it's fancy new bits and pieces" out the window because the wireless broadband just would. not. work. And it wasn't the router, because young Cinderella had no problems with her connection... using the wireless card from MY old laptop (how annoyed was I?!). I even uninstalled Norton Internet Suite because I thought it might have had something to do with the auto-update it had run the night before, but no, it was just not working. The fact that the LAN connection worked fine should've given me a hint but by that stage I was too far gone to think straight.

But then on Thursday night I switched the offending machine back on and started from scratch and chose to follow my favourite motto:

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.^[1]

And when I found the e-manual and browsed to the "Wireless Networking" section, the first thing I saw was a diagram. Item 5 was labelled "Wireless Networking on/off switch".
D'OH! I must have unknowingly flipped it to Off when I was putting the machine in it's bag... a quick flip of the little sliding button about 2mm to the right and hey, presto! My wireless net began working again.

Terri - 1
Technology Gremlins - Zero!

So that was one problem solved.
Today I decided it was time to look at this intermittent performance issue. I reinstalled the Norton software because honestly it didn't make a noticeable difference and I don't want the cyber-aliens abducting my data and performing nasty experiments on it when I'm not looking.

I searched all the settings I could find in both Firefox and the Norton stuff. I downloaded IE7 and checked all those settings too. Luckily it made no difference whether I used Firefox or IE - they were both dog-slow. I couldn't even open my own blog - how bad is that??!
And then something went PING! in my head^[2] and I went back to the wireless network settings that I had spent so much time looking at during the week. Sure enough, there it was - one little slider that I moved from "min" to "max"... the one that controls throughput vs saving battery life. Screw the battery - gimme Megs!!!
So this message may pop up a little (?!) sooner than it did before. I can live with that.

Terri - 2
Technology Gremlins - still Zero!

You may applaud :-)

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^[1] Yes, that really IS my motto. I hate reading instructions - I'm a true Techie at heart.

^[2] Not literally, of course.

older and wiser

I was chatting with a couple of colleagues this morning - the conversation went something like this:

[Terri] "Hey, L, can you give me the name of the people who did your attic conversion? They did a great job and we're thinking of getting ours done."
[L] "Sure, it was (xyz) - they have a website so you can look them up. They're very professional."
[W] "You know, ladies, this is a very middle-aged conversation you're having, hahaha!"
And we all laughed.
And then I asked (still chuckling), "OK so what is middle-aged, officially?"
[W] "Well I suppose mid- to late thirties."

Uh, back up here. Are you trying to tell me I am officially Middle Aged???! When da hell did dat happen?!
I suppose the fact that young Cinderella turns 17 tomorrow should have given me a hint. That and the fresh crop of grey hairs over my right temple (why only the right?!) which I've been steadfastly convincing myself are actually blonde, not grey. Ahem.

However, I cannot really complain about growing older, as my wisdom apparently has no bounds... [insert raucous laughter here]...

Hubby and I decided that since this past weekend was a long weekend we would take a drive down to County Cork. You may recall we have made numerous trips to Cork to visit our good friends in the past. Well those good friends went back to SA a couple of months back, but as if on a relay system, Hubby's sister and her family have taken the plunge and moved over to Ireland - County Cork, to be precise.

Welcome to Ireland, guys!!!

So on Friday evening we packed the car and after several false starts ("Forgot the camera!", "Forgot my phone!","Forgot the directions to their place!") we hit the long and winding road to Cork.
Some of you may also recall that last summer, on our famous (though as yet un-written-about - sorry 'bout that!) bike trip around Europe, we occasionally took a wrong turn. This prompted Hubby to declare that life was not complete without a handy little Sat-Nav / GPS thingy. Having bugger-all imagination when it comes to gift-giving, I bought him one for Christmas. My position as Family Navigator had been usurped but who am I to argue? Even I must admit defeat; after all, Paris and Brussels are indeed nowhere near each other.

So there we were, happily driving along on the big N8 road down to Cork, and Mr SatNav in all his wisdom decided that we should take a left. Personally, I would've elected to go straight but sure, it's a clever little piece of equipment, right? Perhaps it knows something we don't. Besides, we weren't heading for Cork City, but for a (much) smaller town on the coast, east of the city.
The roads narrowed, then twisted. We didn't mind - it was really pretty and we had made good time so far. We were happy to take the road less travelled. It began to rain, but we weren't too concerned, after all, life is an adventure, right?

And then as the road steepened and narrowed even more as it climbed a mountain I confess I had no idea existed, the windscreen wipers sort of ground to a halt.

We stopped at a lay-by to see if there was anything obvious like a loose wire and of course while we were staring blankly at the Audi's engine compartment a Local in a van pulled up and with a smirk at our smart car and blank faces, asked if we needed a lift. You could see he was thinking, "Eejit Townies, stuck out here in the back o' beyond and not a clue how to fix their fancy car."

THIS IS WHAT THE BACK-OF-BEYOND LOOKS LIKE
FROM THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN
IN THE RAIN

We smiled and said no-thanks, shut the hood, smoked a cigarette and continued along our not-so-merry way. The road continued to worsen, as did the rain. I left the radio off - somehow in the gloomy, misty half-light in what can only be described as Deliverance country, music seemed out of place.
I was making like the co-pilots in the rally cars... "Sharp left in 5-4-3-2-1... Mind the sheep!"

Eventually we neared civilisation again, I turned on the radio and the rain lightened up. And the car screamed at us in it's peculiar electronic voice, causing me to almost dive for cover. Hubby grinned and pulled into another lay-by, confidently telling me that he'd been expecting this.
"This" turned out to be a low-on-coolant situation but being the boy-scout that he is, he had a jerry-can of water in the back. Apparently the water-pump has a minor (?) leak.
So we topped up and set off... and about 2km down the road the windscreen wipers suddenly creaked back to life. By the time we reached our destination they were working as if nothing had ever been wrong.
El-GPS, however, had been well and truly abandoned for a good old-fashioned paper road map, which yours-truly used to ensure we stayed on main roads for the rest of the trip.

Pah! to these new-fangled electronic gadgets, I say!

And on the subject of weather - this is what our Irish summer looks like from the side-mirror of our trusty (?!) Audi...


Sunscreen, anyone?

take me away from all this

I'm going to Paris!!!
Again :-)
I know it's my 3rd time but I really do love the place, and this time I'm taking young Cinderella with me.
Perhaps it'll make her feel better after some @*#%! assholes went and stole her scooter yesterday, poor thing.
She loved that scooter. It didn't go very fast - just a little 50cc effort that sounded like a sewing machine on steroids - but it was her very own motorised transport. And now it's gone.
I got the call from Hubby when I was on the train yesterday, that he was on his way to fetch her from where she'd parked it - chained to a gate, nogal - only to find it gone when she wanted to come home after school. I thought she was actually at the school. But lo and behold, there I was sitting on the train when it stopped at the station near her school - two stops before my own - absentmindedly staring out of the window and cursing the bastards who would steal from a 16-year-old girl, when something bright yellow caught my eye. It was a police vest. Standing next to my girl-child, who was in tears. I virtually climbed over the woman seated next to me to get off the train, and dashed down the platform and over the bridge to where she was standing in the parking lot. Poor thing, she was trying to be strong and give the cops all the info she had, in between racking sobs. It wass enough to tickle anyone's maternal instinct! Hubby arrived shortly afterwards and by the look on his face I'd say the robbers are lucky they hadn't been caught because he looked ready to murder.
So sadly, our little motorcycle gang has been reduced from 3 to 2 again.
And I'm left marvelling yet again at how we left crime-ridden South Africa for a better life here in Ireland. Did I ever mention that the house we were staying at our first week in this country was robbed while we slept upstairs? And then there were my precious wind-chimes that were stolen but weeks after we moved into our new house last year. And my canvas bike-cover that mysteriously disappeared earlier this year.
And now this.
Anyway, it's done now; nothing more to do but hope the cops find it. I suppose that's the difference - at least here they make an effort to try and recover stolen goods, unlike South Africa where they just provide you with a case number so you can claim from insurance.

But back to the Paris trip. We're going for 3 days at the beginning of June and it's all booked. I can't wait! Now it's just the simple (?) task of getting Cindarella's visa sorted...