Thing 147 Bunratty Dungeon

There're plenty of Things on this list that are quite "touristy" if such a word exists. In the coming weeks (when I'm feeling better - I'm as sick as a pig at the moment) Fine yesterday, a mess today, I'll be touring around the country doing all sorts of touristy bits. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Bun Raite, or Bunratty (or Funratty if you want to put it that way, which of course, I do) is an excellent example of a proper tourist attraction for the region. Plenty of history lessons, plenty of people dressed up as medieval entertainers, singing for my amusement, plenty good food. It's a real treat.

Got anyone staying in Limerick or Clare any time soon? Well worth a trip out.

Part of the novelty is the entertainment. Some excellent singing people who also serve the food. Part of their job is to get their guests involved in the action, which they do admirably. To do this, they appoint an Earl of Thomond from the guests. Also, during the evening's fun, well, someone ends up being thrown in a dungeon.

That someone? Me. Token Northy rang ahead and told them he wanted me thrown in. I party guessed something was amiss. I don't often get called a scoundrel fifteen times before dinner. So after much baying for my blood (Token Northy and The Canuck could be clearly heard screaming for my head to be chopped off - I was thrown in the dungeon.

Which isn't a dungeon. Which makes it something of a let down. But it's still part of the fun. I was also made to sing for my freedom when I was let out - what did I go with? Wild Rover.... tourists love that stuff.

Good fun.

Tourism in Ireland needs a serious kick up the arse. We priced ourselves out of the market. We've got some excellent stuff to show off here, but nobody wants to play with us anymore. Because we cost too much.

Maybe the recession will fix it, but something's got to be done.

Thing 146 Wine Opening

Physics. It's on your side more than you think. Example: Gravity. Mostly, it's your friend. Every day physics secretly helps you without you knowing it. It's like a ninja partner-in-crime, all the time trying to give you a leg-up without you ever realising. Basically like Brain the Dog for Inspector Gadget. Except more mysterious.

Having said that, he was a pretty mysterious dog. But I digress...

For Inspector Gadget nostalgia click here...

I've been getting a hard time, and rightly so, for being a spoiled pampered little princess of a man. I spent 24 hours outdoors, and that effectively meant nothing, since I was so well looked after. Ci Ci Do and Token Northy fed me for crying out loud. It's not like I had to fend for myself. Bear Grylls... not so much. Lloyd Grossman... maybe a little closer.

So the boys have been on to me to try a little more DIY. I've been told that wine's not a man's drink... Nonsense. Good wine is good wine no matter who's drinking it. Good wine is even better if you've opened it with the sole of your shoe. Yep. The sole of my shoe opening a bottle of vino...

For more information keep reading.

What I wanted was a means of opening wine that doesn't involve a proper corkscrew. Everyone has had that moment at their party where they've realised that a nice girl they just met wants her bottle of vino opened, and they've got no corkscrew. Typically the answer is cork the bottle, or break the top off it. I knew plenty of students, male and female who'd drink shards of broken glass so long as they weren't falling behind on the party. What we needed was an alternative to these equally crappy options.

First plan. Hair clips. Straightened out and bent into a U shape. No reason that they couldn't be slid in between the glass and the cork. Twist them, so the clip digs into cork, and then pull. No effect. Paper clips may have worked, but the flat edge of the hair clip worked against me. So that's a fail.

Then Pony Boy obliges with a piece of internet genius.

French people tell us how it's done... (not industrial action related)

If you've watched that and don't believe it's possible, then welcome to my club, if you've not watched it, then think "Two Girls One Cup" and then feel embarrassed that you know what that is.

Now to get back to the point: Physics.

Cork in the bottle can be displaced by repetitive force at the end of the bottle. Basically, you need to create movement inside the bottle, without breaking the bottle. A smooth, flat, hard surface to strike the base of the bottle. Something to absorb the shock, preferably something that will protect you in the event of shattering the glass.

Strike the base of the bottle (carefully contained in it's little shied, in this case, my shoe), against the smooth flat surface. Then your old friend physics comes in, and unsettles the cork, pushing it slowly out of the bottle. No way you say...

Do you think Pony Boy's face would lie to you? Mind you, I fairly made shit of the wine... It's a good thing I'm not fussy...

Genuinely amazed it worked. Everything seemed to indicate that this was a stupid idea, doomed to failure from the word go, but who'd have thunk it - you actually can open a bottle of wine with a shoe. Lads - next time, impress your lady. Screw the corkscrew... A shoe is the way forward.

Pictured: Fail. Fail. Neither one of these is a shoe...

Thing 145 Spelling Bee

First of all, irony is: the "w" has fallen off the "Welcome Home" sign, making it look as though none of us can spell "welcome". Cruel irony. Second of all: Token Northy absolutely hates losing at spelling to me! I love winning at spelling. I prefer winning at the expense of the Token Northy.

I'm an asshole like that. You can tell from the victory pose. Token Northy can be an asshole too. You can tell from his losers' pose.

Now it's important to note: I didn't think up this particular Thing. The Thief thought it up, I just added the beer part. It was her stroke of genius that made this possible, but then she got cold feet and was afraid to get into this tangle of heavyweight spellers... I won't lie. It was a vicious spelling bee from start to finish. She was probably right to stay out, but now we'll never know which of us can spell better.
So, I wanted to be in the Spelling Bee so badly that I had to beg Little Flower and Pony Boy to arbitrate. And what a job they did. Pony Boy couldn't resist sticking in a few tricks from the technology side. The laptop spoke the words if someone wanted to hear their word in a sentence. They also chose an excellent range of words...

Seismicity.

Hootenanny.

Hirsute.

Naphta.

Kudos to both of them. They also ruled the spelling bee with iron fists. Which seems odd. Little Flower is entirely too nice for that. Pony Boy on the other hand... ahem.
To be fair, most of the competition don't look like they're up to much do they? Big Red, Spoon and The Frenchman. Valiant losers... sorry guys. I'm a terrible winner.
Also competing; Lady Awesome Mermaid Elegance and Cat Lady.

There's a reason spelling bees appeal to me so much. I'm a grammar nazi. I can't abide text speak. I know it's very middle class and more than a little snobby, but I seriously loathe bad spelling, absent grammar and literary shortcuts in general. Plus, I read, a lot. And I've got one of those fancy English degrees that's worth absolutely nothing in real life, but stands you well if you're planning on holding a drinking spelling bee in your house.

Straightforward rules: First round, correct answers progress. Incorrect answers compete against one another to stay in the competition. But then that was taking too long, so we gave everyone three lives, and the last man (or woman) standing wins.

Last man standing? Me. So few and far between are my wins these days that I decided to do the dog on the celebrations... Little bit over the top. Hence the reason it's so late coming to you.

Sorry about that.

P.S. Thief... we've still got a reckoning coming. Me versus you.... it's coming and you know it is.

Thing 144 Sword Play

Kids; don't play with knives. They're sharp and dangerous. Or do. Whatever. I'm not your mom. Couple of confessions coming up here folks; I love fantasy novels. I'm not talking about pornography, you sickos. I'm talking about knights, and magic, and dragons and most importantly; swords. I like them so much I saved up two hundred euro when I was wee to buy a Roman Gladius, just to hang on my wall. Sadly, the store that was selling them went out of business. I guess it's for the best. Three-Finger-Mooney would have been a difficult nickname to get through secondary school with.

Sword fighting is an art. It's not just whacking the other person with a big sharp knife. It's about balance and dexterity and speed. When to strike, how to lash out without lowering your own guard. In our case, it's about slicing fruit. Because me and The Canuck are simply not responsible enough to have a swordfight in which neither of us will die or lose massive amounts of blood, we took the sword and chopped fruit with it. Except, you know, with force. Excessive force.
I mean, who needs their watermelon sliced like this eh? Me. That's who. I should add for the record, that this sword is technically a "decorative replica" and not a deadly weapon. Tell that to the imaginary bad guy, who was shaped like a watermelon, that I sliced up real good. This "Cutter" was a short sword, length of about a gladius (roman swords) with a curved head, which was heavily weighted. Most effective if striking downward, but looks way cooler if you're slicing sideways into an evil magician's head, that looks like a watermelon.

What better way to blow off steam after a couple of night shifts in a row then to take a sword to some fruit? Honestly. I never thought I'd ever have the context in which that sentence would seem appropriate. Sweet.
Additional confession: I have a mild obsession with the Zombie phenomenon. Training for zombie apocalypse seems only prudent, and Cutter would have made an excellent addition to a zombie survival pack. Short, easy to handle, relatively light, excellent zombie killing weight.... Till the damn Canuck broke it. Apparently it's not enough to cut off the head of the zombie who looks like a water melon, smashing it into last week is the way forward... He broke our sword and ruined Cutting Day.

Pictured: Scorn.

Our watermelons were thoroughly defeated, but the other bad-guys Sir Pineapple and Lord Regular Melon still had to be vanquished, and The Canuck broke the only sword we had.

I think I'll go out and buy a new one. Like I say, there's something satisfying about chopping fruit with a sword, and catharsis is always good for one's brain.
P.S. I included this photo because it's hilarious to me. It's like Whack-A-Pony...

Thing 143 Giant Bubble

We're moving house soon. Gas bill came in the door this afternoon. NCT is due in three weeks, and the Gardai are expecting a vaild cert to be presented before the nineteenth of this month. Mr Binman subscription expired - no bins will be collected. I've a night shift tonight, after one last night. My credit card is maxed.

There's only one thing to do to get back on top of all of these important adult problems.

Make giant bubbles. Done and done.

Everything else can wait till tomorrow, hell even Monday. Today I got home, and Token Northy had gone out of his way to pick up a giant bubble making kit, so that I could add one more amusing thing to the list. I saw all the local kids outside, playing on their bikes and having fun. I looked at the Bord Gais letter. The sun was still shining.

What would you have done? Bubbles it was.
Bucket - half full with water, a mug of yellow fairy liquid, a mug of corn flour (corn starch if you're from Minnesota, or anywhere else in the US for that matter) and two table spoons of baking powder. Stir it up. Skim off the foam, as everyone who's cool knows, foam is bad for making giant bubbles.

Assemble contraption. Basically a long stick with a sliding arm that allows you to open or close a large loop of fabric.

Dip in bucket. Withdraw from bucket, allowing excess to drain away. Open the loop and turn... Voila. Giant bubbles.
Damn kids put me to shame though. It wasn't quite as easy as the box made it out to be, or at least that's what I thought. The local little people however managed to get some thoroughly excellent bubbles going. I guess it was more fun for them too.

Sometimes being a grown up is a pain in the ass.

Remember being small and leaving the house on a Saturday morning, disappearing till lunch, home to eat, get given out to for ruining clothes, out again, to ruin more clothes, home for dinner, and gone again before you'd finished the last mouthful of grub? That's way more entertaining than stupid a stupid NCT.

Kids cartoons on a Saturday morning. Bosco. Transformers cartoon. Skeleton Warriors. Sharky and George. James Bond Junior. Begging your ma to be allowed to watch one more episode of Captain Planet before homework... Beats the crap out of banking 365.

Wearing pyjamas and not getting judged (yes, I have PJs - no, I don't care if you think that's lame). Eating jam from a jar. 75p pocket money for all the jellies you could handle... Trumps recycling any day of the week.

I think more giant bubbles, and less bill paying from now on. Let's see how that pans out for a while yeah?

Thing 142 Wild Flower Picking

I didn't realise it until today, but I think Tiny Fairy might be my exact opposite. If everything in the Universe is balance, and I'm not saying it is, then Tiny Fairy might actually be the precise exact reverse version of me.

She loves this stuff. Loves walking around in nature. She's a herbalist, so she loves flowers and trees and walking around in the woods. She's content in nature. She makes potions and can heal herself with tea she makes out of stuff that's growing on a river bank. She's like a tiny wood elf (I know, the nerd references must be hard on you).

I like nature. It's fun to look at. From a distance. Preferably on a nice comfortable seat. With my ipod. I like walking around in the woods - with a pellet gun, in camouflage, hunting Token Northy or sniping at The Canuck. I'm at war in the woods. I need constant stimulation. Trees are lovely to look at for a few minutes, but unless they light up and play music after that, then I'm getting bored. I do not make potions. When I get sick I rely on good new fashioned western medicine. If it's got more syllables in it than you can count, and contains 80% of the alphabet, then I'm betting it'll heal me. Drink your nettle tea if you want - it's not for me.
Pictured: Wood elf

I guess the fun thing about The Project is doing stuff I'd never normally do. For example. On a Thursday evening with nothing else to do, and a night shift to hit by midnight - it's coffee and the xbox. Episodes of Friends I've already seen sixty thousand times (Chandler still cracks me up, but Ross has to be the funniest thing about that show). I'd certainly never be walking around a small woods by a river picking wild flowers...

It's nice to see how wood elves live.

Tiny Fairy made me eat leaves she picked, and some of the berries. she could point me in the direction of stuff that's okay to eat, and stuff that'll poison you. I was determined to learn, but I've the attention span of a gnat's fart, so....

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Flowers.

I'm pretty sure that she could survive in the wild on berries and leaves alone. Which is an awesome trait. Not one that I'm ever likely to pick up.


I know they don't look like much. The little bouquet I picked is in its entire glory up at the top there. I gave them to Blond Boss and Clo Bear, because they used to be my old housemates, and it seemed like the Thing to do. Plus I'm not sure PonyBoy, Token Northy and The Frenchman would have appreciated the sentiment quite as much. But it was nice to get out and do something that I just would never have considered a pastime before. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Thing 141 Knit Something

First off; I didn't knit all of those. That photo was a hook, to reel you in. Look at all the knitting is what you must have been saying. I bet you feel used. Those were all knitted by The Knitting Circle, who've got their own weekly "Stitch and Bitch" session in O'Connell's of a Wednesday. I like it because it rhymes and describes (roughly) what they're doing with their day.

Secondly; everyone keeps telling me that I definitely knitted (knat? Is knat a word? Froodie said it earlier, and I like it, so I think I'll keep it) when I was in Primary School. I've no recollection of ever knitting anything. And I certainly never finished anything - since if I did knit, I couldn't have done it for longer than ten minutes. I also broke a lot of bones when I was small(er). Not as many as Thorny Wire, but still a good few. Maybe I was in a cast or something. Anyway - I don't ever recall having knat anything before.

That there folks, is a picture of success. Now I know what you're thinking: That hat is too small for a person, but I'm cool with that. Here's why: Click on this bit. Basically, for every tiny hat you knit, or have knat, Innocent drinks are giving money to Age Action Ireland. I get to knit something, and a worthy cause gets a few bob. I suggested this to The Knitting Circle and about two days later they've got dozens of them Rasta hats, fruit hats, fruity hats, hats with faces... They're awesome. No doubt about it. Froodie, Fantazey, Lady Lou (with a little help from two highly amusing Little People). I take my hat off to you ladies... (get it? Hat off? Get it? I slay me...)
The first problem is of course, that I don't know how to knit. Froodie tells me she can bang together one of those amazing little hats in forty minutes. Prizes for guessing how long it took me to get it done? If you're thinking of a number under three hours, you're wrong. Now, Froodie tells me that Stitch and Bitch works because knitting allows your mind to be free for chatting. Personally, I think that me and Big Red were so focused on our knitting, we looked like we were trying our hands at complex long division - Lady Lou says it takes "muscle memory". I was able to get into a good rhythm for a while, but as soon as I let my concentration slip... Well, suffice to say it's a good thing knitting needles aren't sharp, and I should never be trusted with anything pointy in the first place.
Look how smug Big Red is with his. I know the feeling big man. I'm just as impressed with myself.

It's funny how many of the Things are turning out to be fun alternatives to drink. I'm forever giving out that there's nothing to do in town if you're not planning on a session, but Stitch and Bitch is an absolute winner. Relax with your friends, while actually building something with your own hands. Result all round I think.

Give it a shot. I dare you.

Also, if you're already a knitter, give The Big Knit a look. It's a properly worthy cause and it's fun, and it wont break the bank, and you get to make tiny little hats...

Here's the link again.. LINK!!!