The Weekend

The weekend was a pretty good one. Nothing too exciting, but nice all the same. Friday night I had soccer training on the astroturf at 9pm. It's a weird time for training but the astroturf books up pretty quickly so we take what we can get. It pretty much eats up your whole evening though - so that was it for Friday.

Saturday I got up and went for a run. It was kind of warm and not raining so I wanted to take advantage of it while I had the chance. It's not often I'm home while it's light out and I can run the road without fearing for my life... Then it was off to Dun Laoghaire for lunch and shopping. I met up with Axel, a friend of my cousin Alex (no - that's not dyslexia), for lunch and we walked around a bit until we found a nice little pub with a fire and the games playing on TV and nice seat next to the window. Lunch lasted almost 2 hours and it's always fun to get another American's perspective on life in Ireland. He's over here for a month doing some work and lounging around a bit - living as a local of sorts in Dublin city. Cool guy - I'm glad I got to meet up with him while he's over.

After lunch I was off to the homestore for that wedding gift I've been too pressed for time to buy. I couldn't help it. I had this one perfect bowl in mind and I was SO glad they still had it. That taken care of, I took the time to grab a vanilla latte on the way out. There's a coffee chain called Insomnia that's very Starbucks like. I can say that one thing the Irish don't excel at is making coffee. I can see why they stick to tea. Insomnia pulls it off pretty well though.

Then home for a quiet night of watching movies and drinking wine. Well, I ended up watching the Discovery Channel, really. They were featuring my old company on Construction Kings. then The Deadliest Catch was on and I've become strangely hooked on that as well. Go figure. Maybe it has something to do with being on an island... all the water surrounding me... I don't know.

Sunday I was up early to head to my soccer match. Well, not really early. The match was at 11 and it takes about an hour to get to where we played so I only had to get up at 9.30am. It was late enough that I didn't feel as though I were robbed from sleeping in on the weekend. Our Wexford matches are about the only time living as far south as I do pays off. It puts me about 30 minutes closer than everyone else and I can sleep in.

We lost. We do that a lot. We aren't as bad as that makes us sound though. We're great at getting the ball up the field. Shooting isn't one of our strong points though. It's good fun and we have a few laughs and it's something to keep us all a little more fit. I'm feeling the 90 minutes of running around today though. I feel more like I was in a rugby match than soccer... When did I get so old???

The weekend was capped off with watching 'My Super Ex-Girlfriend'. Not the best movie by any stretch of the imagination but I nearly spit my ice cream out when Uma Therman (the superhero, G-Girl) threw a shark through the window and it chased the ex-boyfriend all over the apartment. I was laughing so hard. Gotta love mindless Sunday evening fun.

Oh!! I almost forgot to tell you about my favorite part of the weekend. As I was watching The Deadliest Catch on Saturday night, a bit before midnight my mobile rang and I looked down to find my old roommate Sion's name on the screen. Very strange. So I answer it and it's Sion. Wasted. Hilarious. He had just gotten off the phone with our other old roommate Shane, who now lives in Australia (the phone bill ought to sober him up, if nothing else). Anyhow, Sion (pronounced Shawn) lives in London and was calling to check in and say 'Rach, I'm so F*&KED!!!!' over and over again, in between begging me to come over and bribing me with 6 Nations rugby tickets. I lost my breath I was laughing so hard. He was always so much fun as a roommate. I'm going to make a serious effort to get over there in the next 2 months. He's got a great St. Patty's day weekend planned. Plus, I met his girlfriend when they were over in the fall and she was good fun as well. The more fun the better, right?

Now back to another Monday at work. Is it Friday yet? ;-)