Its CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

oh i love christmas!!

Unfortunately this year is a little bit different, as for the first time I had to actually be an adult and..... sniff...... WORK!! I think it's just sad that there are people who have nothing better to be doing on christmas eve and st stephen's day than to wander around an outside shopping centre freezing their ninnies off and paying waaayyyyyy too much money for overpriced "quality" brand goods. They should be at home with their families getting excited about the arrival of the big guy.

Speaking of the big guy, he went very high tech this year with the help of NORAD. They tracked Santa's journey around the world, twas such a brill idea, I was very impressed.

Anyway, after a fantastic nnight out on thursday with the work mates in Kildare, and a pretty severely hungover troop in work the next morning, I headed home to slightly tipsy parents who decided to drink while cooking the christmas dinner. (You see my dad was working today so the Dalton family did christmas last night). The dinner was amazing with a capital A. Nothing in this world can beat my mom's made froms scratch christmas stuffing. When we finished off the dinner we took ourselves and the Rose wine into the sitting room and opened up all the pressies.

Santa really outdid himself this year, the presents were completely economical but really are what I need and use. Got 3 Ross O Carroll Kelly books, who I completely adore, but I gotta say to anyone who reads this, if you aren't familiar with Dublin and the stereotypical rival between North and South of the city then it will just sound silly. But for lil me from the South side it is frickin hilarious!!

Now, for today, I havent gotten outta my pjs all day, and am spending my time watching movies (Scrooged at the moment, cant beat Bill Murray) and eating left over turkey and lots of "After Eights" :-) Also I got the sister "Just Dance" on the wii, and i Highly recommend it. Its a complete howl drunk or sobre (except if you'e the Sis and accidentally hit yourself with the remote when attempting the charlston).

Anyway, Happy Christmas to everyone, and I hope you all have a great day with the ones you love.

Movies and Memories

How amazing are the old movies?? They just done make them like they used to.

I have recently found the magic of the TCM channel. At the moment I am watching Easter Parade with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, I mean how could you get better? Amazing dance routines, fantastic singing, and men who were real gentlemen, what more would anyone want? Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, My Fair Lady, you got any others?

Ye I have to say, the 3D movies are mind blowing, Avatar was superb and such a leap in movie production. But you gotta look at the celebrity culture to see how talentless some celebrities are. I mean what disearnable talent does Paris Hilton have? Or the Playboy Girls? You simply have to look good to be famous thes days...... (oh I sound so old....).

Anyway onto the memories aspect, there is this amazing advert on Irish tv at the moment for Dennys, who are an Irish company who do cold meats and feed such as rashers, sausages and pudding (perfect for a sunday morning). But anyway it shows a family at christmas, take a look at the link below. Just press watch, I dare anyone to not well up a little bit at the memories of their christmas with their parents or children.

http://www.denny.ie/real-people.aspx

When I watched it I started to think back to my christmas with my family. When I think of all the presents i used to get, the sitting room was a christmas wonderland for me and my sister. We were spoiled rotten really. And of course there was always one big present. I remember a bike I got one year, it was purple and just perfect, and another year I got a pram for my dolls, again purple..... I had a thing for purple lol.

Its amazing how things change. No special man comes to the house anymore, sniff, and our Christmas Day is spent in pjs watching movies and eating left-overs from the christmas dinner the night before (dad works christmas day now so we have it the night before now). Its different but just as good. We get to spend time together, and christmas becomes more about thinking about your family others who have less rather than presents, I quite like it like that.

Anyway, 8 sleeps til christmas morning. Hope everyone enjoys their christmas week :-).

The Thaw Is On!!

Finally, tempatures are startin to rise, and I got my first glance of grass in about 2 weeks this morning. The water is pouring out of the gutters as the snow from the roof is starting to melt, causing a bit of a duck and dive experience when trying to go outside the patio door, but its all part of it right?

The hens and ducks thought all their birthdays and christmas's had rolled into one with being able to come out of their houses without the tips of their beaks freezing. They have been pecking around in the one little patch of visable grass all day.

As for the other animals of the house, its a bit of a nightmare at the moment.

Belle (the wild slightly sadistic kitten of the family) has taken to slowly pulling the christmas tree apart one decoration after another and placing them all under the kitchen couch. My mom is slowly going insane, and starting to loose her voice screaming "Bold Belle" at the top of her lungs while she skids across the wooden floors trying to get them off her, in vain of course.

Suki (my 4 year old fat cat) defied all our expectations with regard to her weight problems and caught a little bird. Now my mom again freaked and managed to get it off her (this is simply down to Suki's inability to run as fast as Belle, again due to the excess fat). Mom then brought it in her hand, shaking and slightly tweeting, into me as I was hard at work at a bugger of an English essay, to ask what she will do with it. It ended up in a shoebox full of shredded paper in the greenhouse. It soon gained its consciousness back and flew off happy.

The christmas holidays are beginning as the tins of biscuits and boxes of "after eights" are starting to enter the shopping. Also my English course is finished for the semester, so only three day weeks!! Means though I have to start studying for the exams in January. They are going to be really tough :-(

Positive thoughs, christmas!!

Budget Day

So, I was asked by someone across the pond to explain a bit of the situation that Ireland finds itself in in a historical context sort of manner. I believe by this, they mean to explain Ireland's situation at the moment from the people who are living through it rather than through the eyes of the very dramatic if slightly detached Sky News.

So simply put, we are in the shit (but im sure you all knew that already). Pretty much what happened was during the Celtic Tiger the banks gave out loans to people. For example, Mr X would enter a bank, say "Im a builder and I want a loan to build a heap of houses down in Cork", and the bank would say "here is 3 million euro for you to build your houses, and now make sure you give that back to us, but no rush on it really".

Then, as with all things that go up, the mad demand for houses dropped, and the builders were left with these houses and no people to buy them. So they went back to the bank and stated that they didnt have the money to pay back the loan, and the bank had no way of getting back all the money that they carelessly loaned them.

So now, the banks are broke (yet still paying their big boys in the high places crazy amounts of money), the government have had to bail them out which is costing the country (ie all the people in low paid jobs, not the builder who got the loan) BILLIONS of euro, and also we are now getting a loan from the International Monitary Fund (the EU) which we not only have to pay back, but we pretty much gave back our freedom to make any decisions for ourselves. Considering Ireland only gained freedom in 1941, the thoughts of giving it up again does not go down well.

Ok, now down to the position of the ordinary people, and what we think. Well, put simply, we are completely fed up with bailing out big cat bankers, the people who owe all the money are now getting all their debts cleared because they are bankrupt, while if the ordinary people dont pay their annual TV licence (which doesnt pay for your channels by the way, its just a tax for owning the tv) they get sent to jail.

They say that "everyone was irresponsible during the boom times", thats crap! The mojority of normal people saw no increase in wages or income, they plodded along like they always had. Only a minority of people made money out of the boom times, but by god they made a fortune. Everyone else worked their asses off to make ends meet, same as now, only now its gonna get a lot worse.

People cant feed their kids, thousands of people have lost their homes through not being able to pay their mortage because they lost their jobs, tens of thousands are getting their electricity cut off, and Brian Cowen is still on more money than Barak Obama!!! Not only that, but we cant even get an election because some smart guy about 60 years ago decided that only the leader of the country can call an election, therefore, since Cowen doesnt want to loose his job, he wont call an election, and there isnt a thing anybody can do about it.

They are also planning on cutting the lowest earning people's wages, raising the tax income for the middle to low earners, and the high earners will still be living in their big houses and getting all their child benefit and things will be fine for them. Their fix for the banks is to change the nameof the bank!! The big guys will still have their jobs, nothing will change. Its a disgrace, and the irish people are so disheartned with what they see, thousands are leaving on a monthly basis to try and make a life somewhere else, its  a nightmare.

To wake up every morning, at 19 years old, and know that you will have to move to another continent as soon as possible in order to make some money and get a job, and leave all your family and friends behind, with very little hope of ever returning, all because of someone else's mistakes, is sickening. I bet Cowens kids wont have to leave to do that.

People believe, and rightly so, that we are no longer living in a democracy, but we are living in a dictatorship. Its hell on earth, and there isnt a thing we can do about it.

Back to life, finally

After being stuck in the house from last Tuesday to Friday, it was so good to get out of the house. I had work over the weekend now, but lets face it, an hour and a half drive (which usually takes a half hour by the way, minus the ice and snow) is not the nicest thing to face, so forgive me if I wasnt jumping off the seat to head to work. Dont get me wrong, i like doing my job, but shuffelin hangers for 4 hours and sucking up to incredibly rich and stuck up people is not my idea of an ideal weekend.

Anyway, back to college i went today. The roads werent great, but drivable. The lil micra put up quite a fight getting up, and when a little ford (07 by the way) got stuck in the college car park, my lil micra (which is a 97) zipped past. Pretty happy about that I must say.

Had four lectures today. I must say, I find my Early Modern History module to be extremely interesting, even though I am terrified of the exam next month, lots of information to deal with. But anyway today we were hearing about Malthus and his take on the Natural Laws. Without going into too much detail (simply cause i dont remember it, but shhhh) Malthus said that nature rearranges the world and its population when it becomes out of balance. For example, Malthus says that if a population is poor and they cannot feed themselves, one should not take pity on them and try to save them from their predicament, as not only does he believed that they got themselves in that position through a lack of logic, but he believed that nature itself would sort out the problem through means of natural disasters. He said that it was the world's way of evening out the balance of population and food supply. He believed that God, instead of playing a big part in the goings on of the world, simply set the pendulum of nature in motion, leaving it to govern itself.

Now that sort of thing would evidently cause a major amount of controversy in these times, yet you may be surprised to hear that this wouldnt have been too much of a big deal in the 15th century, You see the Catholic Church, in order to gain more taxes from people, asked people not to give to the poor, but instead to give to the Church, which they said would distribute evenly (take a wild guess how well that went). There was also a lot of propaganda which portrayed the poor as lazy and greedy. So therefore giving to the poor and being sympathetic towards them was something that was not common.

Thinking of the people sitting in the cold in Dublin City on cold nights such as these, with no home to go to or people to care about them, its kinda hard to understand isnt it?

(By the way, sorry if I have any of this wrong, simply trying to remember what I was told. If I am wrong just leave a comment and explain)

"its beginning to look a lot like christmas"

well, like the title aptly says, its finally here.

Larry Gogan (Irish institution/ radio pioneer DJ) officially started christmas in Ireland this morning when he went onto the Ryan Tubridy Show to play the first christmas tune of 2fm, which is a pretty big thing every year. He appropriately chose the beautiful tune "Let it snow", which is pretty much what the whole country is saying as we all sit in our warm sitting rooms looking out onto the 7 inches of snow that has covered the country (or at least my garden anyway, which is really the most important place ;-) ).

He went on to play one of the most beautiful versions of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" I have ever heard, sung by Dublin born and bred Imelda May. (link below, even though the one on the radio was accapella, but i couldnt find that one, sorry)

http://bit.ly/e3Jisp

So, christmas has officially started, and along with the snow all we need is the christmas tree up, which will hopefully happen this weekend. Now i leave that to Mom and Sister, as 1. im working. 2. i get bored puttin the tree up and I usually end up with a camcorder trying to look like Im busy, and finally 3. I GET BORED!! ha.

So roll on the cheap Lidl mulled wine, turf fires, lovely xmas movies, and the traditional family party :-). Oh i do love christmas.