bookshoplaura

Just before the start of this month ( September) I stumbled upon an online fitness challenge and decided it would be interesting to try. I then decided it was a little too easy so I changed a few things and decided not to take a break every second day. In the end I had nine exercises to do each day and every two days the numbers went up. They were a plank, push ups, dips, v-ups, up downs , jumping lunges, air squats, mountain climbers , superman pull and leg raises. On day one I would be doing about 7 reps of each exercise (slightly more of mountain climbers, superman pull and leg raise) and about a 1 min plank and by day 30 I would have 2 1/2 min plank and around 40 of everything else. So far pretty simple, right? I even printed off a calendar of September so I could write down what I had to do each day and have the wonderful satisfaction of crossing each day off as I went. I will admit I did not actually foresee a scenario in which I completed all thirty days. I am a rat...

My boyfriend is always saying we should go somewhere for the weekend and I usually mutter something about not being to afford it and then we decide I am a fun spoiler and we go back to whatever we were doing. Apart from our trip to Edinburgh we have only stayed at my parents house for a weekend and their holiday home in Wexford so were not quite living the jet set life style. Nor are we likely to start doing so unless I magically start earning a lot more money. Next weekend we are going to Dublin to see The Riptide Movement play Vicar Street and we have known we were going to do this for weeks but somehow left it to the last minute to book accommodation. Anyone who knows me will know I am a meticulous planner. I like lists and a general idea of what I am likely to be a doing just a little in advance. So if money wasn't a restriction I probably would have booked somewhere to stay as soon as I had confirmed our tickets to the gig. Instead I kept letting it slide until we had less...

I should probably start with a disclaimer to save any poor soul who has accidentally wandered onto my blog in search of advice. I won't be giving any, the title is a misnomer. If you are a regular reader then you have probably already assumed this is the case. I am in the habit of doing this.  I am probably a little too attached to my own bed here in my apartment. I don't spend all day in it or anything, I am usually up by about 7 or at least awake at that time on days that I'm not working but I sleep better there than anywhere else. I was always like that growing up but back then it was my childhood bedroom I felt like that about. No matter where I went, I would look forward to coming home to the comfort of my own bed in my room that was filled with a quiet darkness at night.  I remember once staying in a cousin's house in Dublin and waking during the night looking for the bathroom but I was so disorientated by my unfamiliar surroundings that in dark, I climbed ...

It's not every Saturday evening that you find yourself hiking up the Comeragh mountains with a group of strangers (and my boyfriend) to watch a play.  I'm not sure if you've heard of the Comeragh's wild festival, I hadn't up until a few weeks ago. But it happens around now every year and its a series of events in the comeraghs to get people out into the countryside. Some of the highlights include guided nature walks, a chance to watch a movie up by mahon falls and my Saturday night plans the hike up to Coumshingaun lake to watch Lackendara Jim. The Lackendarra Jim tickets cost €20 for the walk and play or you had the option of paying €50 to camp up there. For a camping ticket they provided sleeping bags and mats plus you arrive at the campsite to find tents already assembled and some basic food, tea etc is also covered in the cost. It was all organized by Mountain zone with the play by rigout productions and music by Jordans Rigout.  Now I am going to be hone...

Last night was culture night across Ireland and in cities across the country people were flocking to different venues to see music and film and art. I however was stuck on the book desk until after nine pm trying not to claw my own eyes out with boredom. A Friday night shift in a near empty bookshop is pretty painful as it is but it's made more so when you're counting down a lovely weekend off after seven days of non stop working.  I had planned to central arts after work, I had a dress in my bag and tights on under my work pants but as the night wore on and last nights crappy sleep took its tole on me, I was starting to wish I could head home to my pyjamas and toast.  I pulled myself together after work in a sleepy hungry sort of way and headed over to central arts with my boyfriend hoping there would be seats because I really didn't think I had it in me to stand for the gigs. The first band were really good but I wasn't really able to get into it and found myself...

If I was to divide my social life of  recent times into two categories, before I met Stephen and the time since, you would notice a vast difference. The truth is I like all of the same things I've always liked so with the exception of the opera ( which I was pretty iffy about until I saw it and really enjoyed it ), all of the things we've been to are the kind of the things I'd be inclined to go to. That doesn't actually mean I'd have made it.  I find that much as I have always enjoyed live music, comedy and theatre, it proves to difficult to arrange such outings. You have to persuade friends that its a better use for money than that night out or sometimes the friend who would like to go don't actually live down here and a lot of the times what appeals to me doesn't exactly excite others in my social circle so yes I was missing out. Then I went and got myself one of those boyfriends that everyone is always raving about and suddenly I have tickets for more...

Here's something you might not know. I called my car Stella , not after the cheap Belgian beer but the character of the same name in the Tennessee Williams play, a street car named desire.  I think I was imagining some scenario where the car might break down and it would be raining and I would drop to my knees shouting stellaaaaaa like the iconic scene from the movie. It's funny because I've never actually seen a streetcar named desire.  That seems to be as good a segue as any to bring up the fact that tonight I am going to a national theatre live screening of a street car named desire. And all from the comfort of my local cinema. Just in case you're not familiar with national theatre live its part of an initiative to make the theatre more accessible by live streaming a number of plays into selected cinemas across Ireland and the UK.  The odeon cinema in Waterford is part of it but unfortunately they show about 4 plays a year instead preferring to show the...

I used to quite like pizza in that it was one of the few things I could eat out at a restaurant and then I had to give up all things wheat and out went pizza. In recent months I have been delving into the heady world of gluten free pizza even since an article in the Irish times mentioned how milanos are offering one and my previous liking for pizza has turned into a mild obsession. I had sort of made peace with the fact that I couldn't eat pizza. I kept my resentment to myself when everyone else tucked in. I ate other things and just got on with my life but now I get a little bit too excited when the possibility of pizza arises.  So far I have been lucky because I know a gluten free base is pretty tough to make and it's not quite as tasty as a normal pizza but its close enough to keep me happy. Now you are probably wondering if this pizza is so good then why am I not having it every night and that's an excellent question. Milanos offers amazing pizza but they only offer...

I don't know if I'd call it a policy as such because that makes it sound far more deliberate than it is in reality but I am in the habit of not winning things. Okay calling it a habit makes it sound like I am doing it out of principle and I am not. I'm not very lucky, I never have been. I don't find that things come easily to me so it would be surprising to have someone describe me as being jammy. You know those people who have life just line up for them, the right opportunity comes  a long just when they need it, they are always in the right place at the right time, yes well I'm not one of those.  Now I am not exactly a prolific contest enterer. I will enter the odd online competition here and there usually with the mindset that someone else is going to win it because I'm so positive like that. I don't buy scratch cards, I never have as I am the type to be annoyed with myself for wasting the one or two euros when I inevitably don't win anything. I d...

Today I was off work and down in Clonmel for the day. Usually I'd have gone to the gym but I'm battling a head cold/cough/flu type thing that feels more like consumption  than your common head cold and I was finding standing up right to be a bit much of an effort so I gave a class a miss and was heading up to my parents place for a lie down when I got a sudden burst of energy and decided to go for a walk up the road. My parents house is up a slip road, the kind of road that's narrow enough that you dread meeting another car especially because these days all of their neighbours drive like lunatics. The road itself stretches upwards for a mile and we ran up it and were dragged up it many times when I was younger so it felt funny to be willingly taking myself for a walk in the autumn sun, just clearing my head and realising quite how many memories I have on this little stretch of road. There's the field next door to our garden where our neighbour houses his cows, whe...

So most people will be aware that yesterday was the all-Ireland hurling final with Kilkenny playing Tipperary and its kind of a big deal. Especially if you're from one of those counties. Funnily enough I am from Tipperary and I wont say that I didn't know about it but I can readily admit I didn't care regardless of the outcome. I only knew it was happening because of Facebook, It's hard to avoid the big stuff when you're frequently checking in on social media. It's just as well I am bombarded with those sort of updates because otherwise I would go on living my life blissfully unaware of the biggest sporting event of the year. Well in Ireland it was. In case you are wondering the match ended in a draw and this means they will have to replay in a week or so. All terribly exciting stuff. You will find me nowhere near a TV while all of this is going on. Yesterday I actually forgot about it. I'm told that had I been home in Clonmel that would have been imposs...

The last few days I have gotten into the habit of going for longish walks, sometimes with my boyfriend, sometimes alone. I don't think I'm going to get any slimmer from doing this as my diet of late leaves a lot to be desired but it's sure doing wonders for my mental state.  I've mostly been walking out the road near where I live or somewhere around town because its getting darker earlier and somehow a walk in the dark doesn't have quite the same appeal. I did decide that for the weekend I wanted to do something different and get out somewhere a bit more scenic. It's funny really because it's the sort of thing my parents have been urging me to do for years and bar the odd reluctant stroll, I have fought against it.  Let's not tell them that long walks are my new thing and then they won't have the opportunity to gloat. Anyway Saturday was one of those days where I left work exhausted and with a headache for a number of reasons. All of the bad fo...

Friday is one of those days where I should have loads of free time in the morning, at least on the ones that I'm working, and yet I don't. It's a mystery where time goes. I have been up since 7 this morning and soon it will be time to be rushing to work, my morning has been whittled away and I haven't really achieved anything at all. To make it all much worse, I am currently in the middle of a book that I am really enjoying, so much so that everything else feels like a rude interruption. You would think given that I work in a Bookshop that I would be given time out to read. After all it is good for business but technically it doesn't count as working. I started reading Sarah Waters 'the paying guests' yesterday and I am already thoroughly engrossed. I have made it beyond the half way point and I am determined that I will finish it tonight. In fact I would finish it now if I could but silly things like work and life keep getting in my way.  I don't kn...

I am not known for my positive thinking, in fact I think 'stop being so negative' is a phrase I've heard far too often. But after too long of feeling down, I've been taking steps to change this. So far its going okay, not amazing or anything but unless you count the night I watched the fault in our stars, I haven't been crying so that's a definite plus. So here's what's been happening in the world of Laura amid my devious plot to seem like a much happier person in the hopes that it will make me a slightly happier person. I have been doing the 100 days of happiness for nine days now. Tweeting something that makes me feel happy every morning. I'm not going to say it has me like a disney princess on the way to work, I haven't been pausing on the quay to sing to the swans. But it has lifted my spirits a little bit so I'll keep going for another 91 days and see where it takes me. I have also started a 30 day challenge just three days ago. Ad...

I know most people make little of the notion that you could be addicted to sugar and will happily trot out that line about everything in moderation. That's all well and good depending on what your definition  of moderation is and if its possible for you to live by that rule of thumb. I happen to have a complicated relationship with food, its sort of my thing and sugar for me has been more than an additive in my food. It's more like an awful boyfriend who makes me feel like crap but who I keep returning to for those few seconds of loveliness. It's no secret that I had quit sugar ( I think to date I was on attempt 3) but unfortunately it seems that I have not quit it for life. I'm not sure what the culprit was but it was possibly the combination of other sugars that I would allow myself on occasion that caused me to teeter so close to the edge of sugar eating that it was only inevitable that I would eventually fall. The om bars with coconut sugar or the stevia sweeten...