But really does the entire Dublin metro freeway system need to be under construction?!?! I mean I can learn how to drive on the left or I can drive through massive roadwork. Not both. And NOT on less than 8 hours sleep over 2 nights. A big thank you to those moms for letting their children run up and down the aisles and poke sleeping people - like me. Harumph
Had a bite to eat at the Ivy Pub. Now back on the road.
I feel like it’s 2:30 in the morning. In reality, it’s just 10:30. I’m tired, but it’s too early to go to bed. I’m bored, but there’s nothing on TV but repeats or politics. If I head to bed to read, I’ll probably fall asleep in mere minutes.
I should pack. But to be honest, I just don’t feel like it. Since nearly all of the hub’s Ireland clothes are new, just for the trip, packing shouldn’t be too difficult. Everything is in one place ready to go. My stuff is all stacked up in the bedroom. But we don’t have anywhere to lay out the two suitcases. So instead I just look at the piles of stuff that need to be packed.
The good news…tomorrow, all I have to do is vote, get my brows done, hit up the bank for some cash, and pack. Nothing all too major, thankfully.
So bored. Really. Even writing this didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Oh well.
Who knew that 8GB on an iPod just wouldn’t be enough? I mean it sounds like it’s plenty of room. Maybe it is…for other people. But it turns out I had to delete a good chunk of my iTunes library (mostly my husband’s stuff and it’s all in his iTunes library). On top of that, I still had to leave a bunch of stuff off the Nano’s play list.
Totally not what I was expecting. I still need to make a little room for some teleseminars and podcasts. I guess that’s the price we pay for such a modern convenience. I mean, if this was just 10 years ago, I’d have to choose between which CDs to take and let’s be honest, that would take up WAY more space. So I guess there’s no point in complaining.
I do feel better about what’s left to do. Turns out there’s not that much left. Tomorrow I’ll vote, get my brows down, pick up the dry cleaning and finish the actual packing. If there’s time left (I’m sure there will be) and I’m so inclined (no comment) I’ll also give a quick vacuum through the place. We come home to enough cat hair, no sense making it worse by not vacuuming up the old stuff, right?
I left figuring out our travel arrangements to the hubby. Looks like we’ll park at his office and then taxi to LAX. That should work out just fine, though it will be on early morning considering we have the stop the pupster off first thing.
And now, I really, really need to get that Press Release taken care of. later.
We leave first thing Wednesday (man is that going to be a crazy long day). Tuesday, being Election Day I figure the husband will be glued to the TV all night. Needless to say, I figure we have to basically have everything gathered and be pre-packed before bed on Monday.
Of course, there’s still stuff that needs to be done…
I think that’s it. It’s totally doable, just a pain in the ass. Funny how it’s always the little things that take all the time and effort when going out of town.
I’ve been off all week on my days. So if today is really Friday, then I’m ready for it. Of course I have a crazy busy day tomorrow with two clients and dinner with friends, but let’s face it, there’s not all too much of a difference between a Friday and a Saturday when you work from home and your husband is always working whenever he’s home. Needless to say, I’m still happy it’s Friday. And this time around I was smart enough not to make a lunch date and get stuck in that insane, mid-day, all day Friday freeway traffic.
So you know what I did all day yesterday instead of working? I read the Beaut.ie blog. Seriously, I spent the entire day reading an Irish blog about beauty products. So now I’m all ready to spending some of my vacation money on beauty products!! And tea, let’s not forget the tea!
Oh yeah, back to the beauty part. I’ve read enough fashion magazines and beauty blogs to know that when you travel to certain countries there are certain beauty products you should be on the look out for. So yesterday I gave my good friend Google the task of finding me what products I just might want to check out. This of course brought me to Beaut.ie. I took a moment to shoot Kirstie an email asking for some recommendations so hopefully she’ll suggest a thing or two.
And speaking of Ireland, I can’t believe we’ll be there in just THREE weeks!!! I finally ordered our coats and waterproof shoes. I decided that windproof and waterproof, as well as warm might just be worth the investment for this wimp. Now I just need to find the right gloves and a cute scarf or five, of course.
And on that note of cute scarves, I’m going to head on over to the more chichi of the local malls and see if I can find this great black and grey scarf I saw at Macy’s and see if they have the Shiseido Think Pink lipgloss. I shouldhaven’t have to worry about the boys (not that I do); the cat is getting stoned on some catnip and the itchy pupster is having fun with a peanut butter kong (hasn’t had one of those since he was a wee little pup).
Happy Friday Y’all!
Turns out my migraine didn’t exactly leave the other day. After getting back from the dreaded dentist (where my Xanax didn’t work nearly as well as it should have!) I basically crashed for like three hours. And you have no idea just how much I’ve slept this weekend. Really, I’m not sleepy at all. I’m feeling crappy and groggy and achey, but not sleepy.
Even now I kind of feel like I’m in a bit of a daze. I have no desire to do my pile of dishes (we’re out of forks and cat bowls) or to write my work articles for tomorrow’s newsletter (guess I’ll be taking advantage of some stuff that others have written and made available).
I also have to figure out a little business prioritizing here. I had this brilliant idea to pitch for some giveaway product via HARO. My goal was to do a giveaway a day on my site for the entire month of November. On top of that, I’ve been pitching individually to some of my favorite products. And well, it worked. Some might say it worked a little too well (if that were even possible). It now looks like I’ll be able to start my giveaway a day in October and probably run straight through to some time in December. And while this will be coller than cool, I dread the future post office trips and the post office costs to fulfill the sweepstakes.
Now on top of all that, I’m also going to be taking on a newsletter for my new site highlighting blog posts, contest and giveaways (all while still writing my regular business blog and newsletter). Which means that for the next three months, my main focus will be on my site and not on my business. Such a switch for me.
And on top of it all, of course, is our so awesome trip to Ireland in a couple weeks. The paperwork is in it’s totally 100% booked and official. I just need to finish shopping, prep and then pack for that. I have a feeling things might get a little busy and slightly frazzling in a couple of weeks.
Wonder if I can talk the hubs into picking up dinner tonight….hmmmmmmm
As for Ireland, we are booked!!! Finally!
It was hard as hell finding a place both in Kinsale & Dingle (both are smallish towns) since it turns out many smaller, family-run inns and B&Bs close down in November. So basically, it was pretty much just as difficult for us to book rooms in November as it would have been do book rooms in the middle of the tourist season in the summer. Go figure.
Interestingly enough, in Dingle as it stands right now, it’s just us and the owner. Now that should be interesting. I guess the good news is that if we’re the only guests, we might be able to get breakfast served later since we’re such late sleepers 
I’ll assume that since Galway is a college town, it wasn’t nearly as difficult to book our rooms. But even then, I only had two places two chose from (I went with the 4 star location over the 3 star since there was only a $20USD difference for the night).
So now the travel agent just needs to confirm Dublin and Belfast, neither of which are small hotels, so I don’t forsee any challenges. That puts us in three B&Bs in the smaller towns and two nice hotels in the city. And lucky for the hubs, he gets WiFi in all locations so he can keep tabs on all the post-election coverage. Won’t he be excited?
All I need now is for the winter clothes to start showing up in the stores and all is good. Such a relief. Now I can just focus on worrying about my dad, his stopping heart and the pacemaker surgery on Monday…as if that’s not enough.
Real fall or at least the sort of fall that we get here in LA. I’ve my crave-able pumpkin spice lattes twice now and well, 1) they’re just not as enjoyable when it’s 80 degrees out and 2) they just don’t seem to taste quite as good as I remember.
But the real reason I’m waiting for fall is that we still have clothes to buy for Ireland (the hubs has NOTHING short of a couple long-sleeve tees to wear). So of course, now that I need those sweaters and warmer attire, nothing is hitting the stores. Which is odd. I remember wearing a sweater to school that first day back because it was new (only to die from the heat of Indian Summer in Jersey), yet short of ordering online, I can’t seem to find sweaters anywhere. What’s up with that?
And when are all the cool scarves, hats and gloves going to hit the stores? Even online there’s just not much available. So we rush the holidays (yes, Halloween stuff is already up), but we stopped rushing the winter clothes? Well that’s just not acceptable. Give me my thermals and cashmere scarves now please! Or at least over the next couple of weeks so I can consider ourselves ready for Ireland already.
On that note, I will be shooting out last minute confirmations to our B&Bs and Ireland will be officially and finally booked! Hell yeah!
But first, man, what a PITA planning this trip seems to have been. At this rate, all the travel agent did is book the flight and our hotels in both Dublin and Belfast. I’m researching and booking the entire rest of the trip. Oh well, I’m sure we’ll have fun and that’s what matters.
We’ll start if all off by flying into Dublin and driving 3.5 hours to Kinsale in County Cork for two nights. This will give us some good food, pretty sights and the Midleton Whiskey distillery. Kinsale is actually considered the gourmet capital of Ireland. And well, I’ve heard that Midleton Whiskey is great (and that the distillery is authentic and doesn’t feel as “fake” as the Jameson one in Dublin - we’ll visit there as well).
From there it’s one night in Dingle over in the Ring of Dingle for some good music and pretty sights. I hear that the Ring of Kerry is crazy busy (maybe not in November, but still) and that most folks that have done both rings enjoy the Ring of Dingle much better.
Next it’s up to Galway for two nights (might just go with the Jury Inn since it’s in the heart of the Centre and has wifi - that husband of mine will NEED his wifi). We’ll finish things off with two nights in Dublin, one night in Belfast and then one last nigiht in Dublin again. We have to do it that way since one of the reasons we’re going is to see Herbie play in Dublin on his daughter’s birthday, with his daughter and his manager.
So now I just need to send out a bunch of emails to the B&Bs in Kinsale, Dingle. I still have a couple emails out to B&B’s in Galway that I’m waiting to hear back from in case we decide to go that route. In the meantime, I’ll have the travel agent send over some boutique, family-run hotel suggestions for Kinsale & Dingle (though I’m pretty certain Dingle will be a B&B since it’s so small).
I expect we’ll have things finalized (no, REALLY finalized) by Tuesday or Wednesday the latest. At least now, I know where we want to go and why we’re picking the locations we are. This puts us miles against our original, early planning stages.
I’m so frustrated! The travel agent shot me an email and it turns out the hotel in Killarney that I wanted is no longer available. Well, I really don’t like any of the other options. I really wanted something small, family run and walking distance to the pubs and nightlife.
I’m okay with that most of what we wanted wasn’t actually IN Killarney anyway. And it was pretty expensive compared to the other cities. As someone once said in a review…there’s a reason Rick Steves doesn’t mention Killarney in more than a couple of sentences. Turns out it’s a pretty major, touristy sort of place.
And well, I’m not going on vacation to Ireland, land of the very hospitable and courteous, family run inns and B&Bs to stay in some highfalutin (my wording), luxury hotel to attend the spa and eat in the actual hotel. Not quite are thing, so now I have to rethink everything.
I’m thinking either Cork and a B&B in Dingle or Kenmare and a B&B in Dingle. Or something like that. Then we’ll just do Jury’s Inn in Galway. I’m just bummed that I have to do still more research. There’s a reason I decided to use a travel agent…to save time and not have to do the research, but it turns out I’m still spending the time and doing the research.
So frustrating. I’m a bit bummed. I’m sure it will all work out for the best, but still. I just wanted to vent. Feel free to pass along any suggestions. I’m open to anything at this point. Yikes, it’s only 6 weeks away!!!
Totally unrelated, I found out that one of my girl crushes, Samantha Brown has a new Passport show out. How did I not know that? More importantly, how did I not know she was here in LA not too long ago and has also recently been to Santa Fe (drinking margaritas, eating enchiladas with green chile and hanging out at my all time favorite spa..ever!) How do I miss these things?
