bookshoplaura

I am having a tiny bit of a crisis. Its nothing life threatening but to be fair, I get stressed so easily that it doesn't need to be. I mentioned in an earlier blog post about going to Belgium for my 2 year anniversary and I had just paid a down payment on accommodation and booked a flight. You might be thinking so far so good but really that's around when everything started to go wrong. So I took responsibility for booking the flights with himself chipping in later, he's in the middle of getting a business up and running so it seemed like a fair exchange. Unfortunately because I do not have the high flying career I hoped for at this point in my life, this means I did not have a whole lot left in the budget for booking accommodation. Luckily for me the internet has a few options in store for this kind of thing and I went onto a third party hostel website that allows you to book a room in advance and only pay a deposit of 12-15% up front. I picked a hostel that seemed to...

After an 8 month sabbatical from Crossfit, I bravely decided to return to Crossfit Tipperary. I had more excuses for not going than I knew what to do with; In my new job my hours were incompatible, I couldn't afford to join a Crossfit gym closer to home, I was tired, I was lazy , I was scared of returning. Funnily enough it wasn't the weight gain that prompted me to return, although it certainly helped nudge me in the right direction, but it was that overwhelming feeling of being constantly exhausted and in my many months of doing very little I was missing that post workout feeling.  To physically prepare myself, I had the genius idea of dusting off my kettlebell and doing a small workout at home the day before. I was hoping it might help prepare me for the ordeal that lay ahead but instead it just alerted me to how terribly unfit I had become and sent me to the gym with legs of doom. It seems I had picked a bad night to return given that the workout was a nightmare combi...

As the date of our second anniversary looms, myself and my significant other have talked about the possibility of going away for a few days. I got asked to mind my nieces for a few days and like a lovely auntie I accepted so we said we would head off for a mid week break just before that. Because of my new job and fluctuating hours I haven't been on a proper holiday this year, in fact anything more than a long weekend away would be unusual so we got rather excited talking about where we might go. We had been talking about Berlin but when it came down to it we went with the cheapest flight, getting away was more important than the actual destination. When looking on skyscanner (it finds the cheapest flights by searching all airlines and travel sites for deals) it seemed Brussels was going to be cheapest. We had both been to Belgium before, myself and on a boozy college trip that was supposed to be educational and himself on a lads holiday but there was still much we had not seen ...

Last Sunday, It was with great anticipation that my boyfriend and I found ourselves out in Dunhill ready to see a play. There has been great excitement about Rigout Production's 'Raven's Watch' which was set on the Anne Valley walkway and we the audience would walk from scene to scene. Rigout Productions are a local collective of writers, directors, musicians, actors and artists creating original works of theatre and musical performance. Last year was my first time seeing a performance of theirs. I had the great pleasure of seeing Lackendarra Jim as part of the Comeragh's Wild Festival. While the play itself was fantastically put together, what made the experience so special was that it took place up high in the Comeragh Mountains and we hiked to the top to see the performance and down after it by torch light. The play itself was based on the true story of a man who have lived for several years in almost the exact spot that we sat watching his story unfold and it ...

Behold in their glory, a selection of images of me under the influence. I am certain that a much greater number of photos have been taken of me drunk, in college we only ever took a camera out if a few drinks had been had but I went through a somewhat self conscious phase post college and deleted a great number of unflattering( overly fat or drunk ) photos. Drunk Laura was someone I used to speak about in the third person in order to explain away my escapades and by Irish standards I was for the most part not a particularly bad drunk. It has at this point in time been 9 months and 8 days since Drunk Laura last made an appearance. The delightful thing in making New Years Eve the day you decide to take a break is that it makes it very easy to keep a clear record of how much time has passed. I think initially I was partaking in dry January. This is usually something taken on by people who had over done in December, which I don't really think I had but I was glad of an excuse to ta...

Lately I have been doing some more cooking at home and the boyfriend is my guinea pig. I have been doing more cooking lately because of work and it turns out I quite enjoy it but the trouble is I am not a very adventurous eater so my own dinners are unlikely to excite most people. At the same time I have been chastising the other half for the paltry amount of vegetables he consumes. So this is when I had the genius plan of cooking one big thing for him a week and putting it into foil containers so he gets a few portions of it. The idea is that he buys the ingredients and one day a week I made a big pot of whatever it is and then happy eating for himself for a few days after. He's still alive and in good health so I am not doing a terrible job of it. Plus he's still asking me to do it so unless he's a glutton for punishment, I can declare myself an okay cook.  I have always quite enjoyed baking, there's something quite soothing in the preparation and I find ...

With a not exactly overflowing social calendar at the moment, I have been telling the boyfriend we can go eat out some time soon. He was in the mood for pizza but there are two problems with pizza, one being that I always eat it much too quickly so not exactly a lengthy romantic meal out and the second is that I can't eat wheat. I should probably stress that the second bit is usually the most troubling for me, as you can imagine it some what limits my pizza eating capabilities. We usually head to a Milanos whenever we are in a city with one as its a chain that does a great gluten free pizza but sadly Waterford does not have one. I have eaten out in an Italian restaurant here that does a pretty decent gluten free pizza but they only make the bases on demand so you have to give them a days notice if you are going to be ordering one and quite frankly I don't always know that far in advance that I want pizza.  Burzza Restaurant opened in Waterford less than a year ago and caugh...

This week my parents handed over the keys to the house I grew up in and moved out. While their new house is much nicer, this moment is still tinged with sadness because it feels as though my entire youth is encased in those walls and now it will be strangers living there and making changes. It only hit me this week that I had not gone and said a proper goodbye to my old homestead before it was gone and honestly it feels weird to say I will never go back there. Unless I become like the weirdly passive aggressive old residents who turn up on their doorstep demanding to come in for a look around. And yet I wouldn't wish it on my parents to continue living there because much as I love the place it is cold and damp and pretty miserable during the 6 months of Irish winter. I went to view their new place yesterday and it felt strange to see them not at 'home' but I know it will be a better fit. When I sat there with the sun streaming in the kitchen window I could not deny they...