Georgian spring

It was spring, glorious and sunny, all week while I had to be inside in a nearly windowless office. Now it's Good Friday and rain is here. Let's hope this is a meteorological manifestation of pure Catholic spirit that will end tomorrow.
I am at work, for I was very German and assumed that something that is not an official holiday will require me to be at work. That is incorrect: It is not an official holiday but we didn't have to work anyway. Riiight. Oh well, so I save this free day for later. Now that spring is over, that seems less of a loss.

Cats as productivity enhancers

It's late. I'm at the office.
That's not too horrible, considering I had a moment of inspiration, and spent a bit more time than usual during the afternoon honing my foosball skills.

However, thinking back to Monday last week, what I really miss is a cat eyeing me from behind the screen, rubbing against my shiny Macbook (the cat certainly has good taste in gadgets) and occasionally forcing me to take a break by trying to conquer the space of my keyboard. (I also had a few moments of malicious joy when I saw it battling balls of hair when it currently sheds like MAD - pet it for 5 minutes and you will have a mountain of cat hair next to it that roughly equals the original cat in size. Sadly, the cat owner does not allow me to test hair-prevention ideas like some friendly attention with the vacuum cleaner, or a full-body suit that can be emptied out once a day. Not even if I volunteer to knit that suit.)

I still think that cats are good for productivity at work. Nothing like doing repetitive tasks to the sound of two snoring kittens, nothing like the sudden sound of feline vomiting to wake you from the post-lunch sleepiness. I really think we need office cats.

(Not cat-related, but: I would like to give credit for my desktop background picture, which has been amusing me as well as office passers-by for some time now. You can find it, among with a nice selection of desktop background and icon sets, at pixelgirlpresents.com. Here's the direct link to my background, "Monstruitos".)

I want to flyyy awaaay (yeah, yeah...)

I just got back from vacations (in France) and I'm almost gone again (to the US). Wheeee!

France was good (pictures to follow in future posts) - the seagull in the picture is one of the happy creatures that get to fly around the airspace around Mont St. Michel, lucky not to have to wade through the Disneyland-ish masses on the Mont itself. (As pretty as it was, it was TOO CROWDED. It might help things if they introduced some kind of system like Granada in the Alhambra, and only allow a certain number of people in at a time. It might also help small dogs and children to survive the experience.) We decided to skip the actual abbey on top of it because the queue looked like it could take well over an hour to set foot inside, and there, I imagine it would not have been any more peaceful or empty than on the narrow streets leading up to it.

More pictures of Mont St. Michel to follow, but for now, I mostly want to remind the world of my theory on the origin of the species as far as seagulls are concerned:

Let me point something out

Arrows are overrated! Use more hands!
But I actually wanted to point out something else. I realised a while ago that my name for this project was misleading: I called it Poladroid and felt very original about it. How wrong was I! Turns out there is software by that name out there (free and pretty nice - get Poladroid here and turn your pictures into virtual polaroids, much like that one above).

My friendly little virtual polaroids, however, were made using the only Android app I have ever paid for (and went through some trouble to do it, even: It required borrowing a German sim card for my phone because Ireland, absurdly, does not offer paid apps for Android yet) - but I digress! What I really wanted to say is: If you have an Android phone, get Vignette. It is an awesome camera application that lets you tweak the picture right on your phone (like, for example, add virtual polaroid frames), but for those less amused with this than me, there are lots of other lighting options. Tilt-shift photos! Colour filters! Really, I obviously like it a lot or I would not be writing promotional copy here.
Also, thanks to Tomek for first telling me about it (visit his excellent Wroclaw photo blog too).

All that to say that I am now renaming my idea to "polandroid". I'm not sure I'll stick to the polaroid frames forever, but for the moment, it represents the fact that I have neglected my blog horribly but tried to find my way back into that habit by taking, well, instant pictures rather than dedicating time and effort to photoshopping and other such time-consuming enhancement techniques.

Back to work (but not for long)

Hm. Good intentions, and still this blog went quiet - let's get back to work! (In the meantime, I even took pictures, and travelled to Spain and Cologne, just the updating suffered... I might sneakily backdate and update and make the gaping hole seem less dramatic.) That is, until next week, when I go on a two-week vacation to France, hopefully without falling victim to the poisonous algae in Brittany.
But for now, it's still office life for me, with a view of the weather that is now just as Irishly moist as advertised. But the desk is dry, and my Penguin of Death (as a greeting card behind the link) by Edward Monkton seems to enjoy himself tremendously. Or maybe he's just plotting someone's death. I can't be sure, his smile is rather enigmatic.

West Side Story

Ballsbridge presents a rather posh face to the world - and yet, catching glimpses of back yards, I can never quite help feeling like there might be some drama of West Side Story dimensions happening right behind it all.

Funky flora

Four years have passed (precisely! It was also during the World Cup), and I still miss my little balcony in Berlin. It was tiny, but big enough for two chairs and a table, or one IKEA Poäng armchair, and, most importantly, it was home to my four large flower beds. I had decidedly maternal feelings for all my plants, monitored every new passion flower and nasturtium bud and many unnamed other blossoms with pride, and it improved the view from my bedroom remarkably.

Since then, that hasn't happened again. My remaining indoor potted plants didn't seem to like Hamburg much. Only three survived and accompanied me to Poland, and then, the transport back to Germany in winter temperatures killed them off in the end. (I'm still mourning them.)

In my new Dublin home, I only share my bedroom with a potted plant named Colin (he's growing well so far). But I miss growing flowers from seed.

I do, however, observe all the flora that I pass on my way to work. The mild and wettish Dublin climate does seem to be good for front garden plants, and apart from an enormous amount of fuchsia bushes, there are also huge roses, and some funky things by the canal that I cannot identify (but captured on virtual polaroid). Yay for summer flowers, balcony or not!