2009-06-21 11:18 pm

My week

So last friday had meeting up with [profile] ladyschrapnel with much talk and coffee. Twas fun.

Saturday had work

Monday had going back to work slightly under the weather to make sure the holiday transition worked.

Tuesday had work followed by training in Trinity with SWETS, the company we order magazines through.

Wednesday had work followed by training in disability awareness.

Thursday had a late day.

Friday was a full day.

Saturday had coffee and chat with [profile] mirp, [personal profile] arkenthell and [personal profile] ceindreadh which was fun, I think I missed my round but I'll make it up another day. Next meetup is for August 22nd; July is a mess for me.

Today had going to Newry with the intentions of buying a new lighter weight bike jacket in the Hein Gericke shop there. That was full of FAIL! I am now an easy size 14-16 UK (US 12-14) i.e. pretty average. There was 1, count it ONE jacket that fit with any degree of comfort. It was more meh than must buy. [profile] grutok failed to find anything either of any goodness really. It failed to impress I wanted a jacket to enable me to swap out the one I have occasionally so it would stop getting kinda reeky. Yes Leather was kinda the plan but pretty was also a consideration. I also would have liked a little colour without having to resort to PINK. I so would like a dark brown leather jacket with light brown highlights; or maybe purple in either leather or fabric, or two tone blues with possible fluorescent light panels.

I'd also like to know why it is jackets don't have the ability to zip the fluorescent thingies to it, rather than have to zip up the jacket, possibly involving zipping up the inner too and then zip up the outer layer, this is counter-intuitive. ONE set of zips please. Dammit but there needs to be a minor revolution in the design of these jackets. There is the major hurdle of form versus function that seems to be prevalent. Many people bye bike jackets for the image, not visibility or washability. Waterproof is important and visibility patches tend to get dirty and jackets don't tend to be very washable. Liners tend to be more for warmth than liners that you can launder so as to keep the sweaty funk down. The liners seem to be usually made of synthetic materials which really don't help wick the sweat away, in fact they seem to add to the problem.

I must admit to having the broad shoulders, short chick with hips and waist problem. If it's big enough in a male size in the chest, often it doesn't fit over the hips (as I'm the pillion I like having a bit coming down on my ass, I like my back to be warm) and the sleeves are too long - putting the armour in the completely wrong place.

I can't be the only person like this. Anyone know good biker jacket brands? That do larger sizes than 8-12 (gah)
2009-06-03 12:15 am

My trip to London: food

some minor notes

Pret a Manger do naked sandwiches, no bread, quite useful. I managed throughout the holiday to avoid getting ill, this may or may not have been helped by the fact that I was also on antihistamines all the time as well.

The hotel was adequate, nothing more, clean but the TV had about 5 channels and all of them had some interference and there was no real internet access. I piggybacked an open wireless network once during the time there. There was also no lining on the curtains so one thing we had to get were eye shields to sleep, as the light came streaming in at about 5:30. Breakfast was a choice of two cereals (neither of which was rice crispies - some sort of muesli and sugared corn flakes if you really want to know); Orange Juice; Instant very strong coffee (there was also tea offered) toast, and an English Breakfast consisting of egg, sausage, mushrooms, beans & bacon. After four days of eggs and mushrooms by 9:30 I really wanted something else. Neither of us could face breakfast by then on Sunday so we slept in and tried elsewhere, which is when we discovered Pret!

Wagamama's was twice (I happen to know they can cope with coeliacs and I'm good at reading their menus)
We went to an Indian once, the waiter didn't understand what I was talking about but when he explained to someone more senior he "got" the gluten allergy thing. The food turned out not to be good but excellent.

I'll edit this again later to add more details.
2009-06-02 10:11 pm

Back

Arrived back in Dublin at around 8:30pm. Now to catch up with mail.
2009-05-25 06:41 pm

Weekend

Well the house is still here. We went to Galway for the weekend and while I might be a bit biased I would recommend going there in the next two weeks. It's mad there but great fun! There's food, stalls, boats and music. It's running from early in the morning till late at night.

Made a sauce to go with some lamb involving some of Bulmer's new pear cider, which isn't half bad (neither was the sauce)

I got a t-shirt - Woman Warrior - Mac got a few t-shirts, we got a green dragon and had great fun, even if we didn't see them come in. My brother got a very good view from a boat in the bay. He's involved with the Galway Bay Yacht Club and when he came to visit the folks this morning he looked quite tired.

My other brother is busy watching Film shorts in preparation for the Film Fleadh and trying to get his thesis simultaneously.

Tomorrow will have some laundry, packing, some shopping and generally getting organised for London.
2009-05-08 06:17 pm
Entry tags:

New Journal

I'm debating whether this is going to be an occasional place to dig deeper into my psyche or to both dig deeper and mirror my Livejournal