Blogcoven » moving

The new arrival

dixie — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:29:07 +0000

My kitten has decided that he’d prefer to sleep in his kitty bed this evening, freeing up my lap for pursuits such as knitting, web surfing, job hunting, hotel searching, and blogging. It’s a busy life, this being a woman of leisure.

To sum up, things remain good with the sole issue of still being jobless and beginning to worry about when that will end. I still love the rain, I have warmed up to my new flat, I am knitting so much it astonishes even me, and I haven’t been kicked out of my Vampire game.

Also, Bane (the kitten) is made of cute.

That was him a week ago. He is larger now, but just as cute.

Found another excuse

dixie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:46:13 +0000

While attempting to set up an Irish bank account, I remembered another crucial piece of official documentation I needed but had completely forgotten about: the PPS (Personal Public Service) number. This is akin to the American Social Security number, and like a SSN, you need one in order to do most things having to do with money (like get paid). While you don’t need one for a bank account, you do need proof of address, and the kind and helpful teller pointed out the easiest and fastest way to get such a thing is to get a PPS number.

Of course, you need proof of address to get a PPS number too. They recommend using a recent bank statement. For a moment, I thought I was in a classic Catch-22 situation. Upon a moment’s quiet reflection and a quiet reminder that Ireland is a good and reasonable place, I stumbled upon a solution.

The Social Welfare office will not bat an eyelash if you show up with your passport, residency card, and your Irish spouse’s proof of address. I brought my marriage cert to provide the crucial link between me and my spouse, something I considered necessary given we have different surnames, but the civil servant waved it away and said “We don’t need your marriage cert, this is fine.” Apparently being able to place your hands on a piece of mail is both necessary and sufficient for proving one lives in Ireland.

Then again, it might have been that the mail I chose was a confirmation letter regarding the wire of money from my American bank account to the Wanderer’s Irish one. Wires are serious business, as was the quantity of money being wired. (Pro tip: If you’re wiring money abroad, verify the receiving bank can deal with foreign currency and wire the money in your home currency. The rate will be better. Free money is a good thing.)

The stars have been aligned for me this week. Registration was painless and almost enjoyable. The weather has been sunny and mild, even straying into Angelino levels of lovely. And when I showed up at the Social Welfare office armed with hours and hours of knitting, expecting to queue behind hundreds of dole/welfare recipients signing for their cheques, there was no one there save a cheerful civil servant who watched me take a ticket, then called me over. The entire PPS number application process took about ten minutes, and that was only because I took the time to fill out the form in legible block capitals.

Now I really don’t have an excuse for not finding a job.

Return

dixie — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:54:20 +0000

I’ve neglected my corner of the blog so long I’m surprised there aren’t colonies of spiders and layers of cobwebs blocking my way in. The sad truth of the past year is that I’ve had nothing I wanted to share with the Internets: grim accounts of thesis writing, power struggles with my PhD advisor and committee members, panic over table formatting in LaTeX, terror in the face of overwhelming evidence of my own incompetence, and the eventual resolution of pretty much everything.

I could have written about the optimal use of 5 Hour Energy for fun and profit, or how to get a snake out of the US and into Ireland (hint: the latter is easier than the former). I could have liveblogged my commencement. I think someone live tweeted my defense. I certainly gave a blistering account of my flight(s) to Dublin over Twitter. But nothing seemed interesting enough to blog, and I certainly didn’t have the wherewithal to report in anything more involved than 140 character chunks. So the blog has heard little from me.

Leaving LA for Dublin presents a new set of blog-friendly circumstances, however: I am unemployed and full of observations. Last night saw my happy Dublin debut, in which I forgot where Cassidy’s was (if indeed I ever knew), met up with people I haven’t seen in quite some time, found myself a game, and had my first decent pint(s) in years. The process of legalizing myself may take a little time, especially if the international banking system fails me and decides to hold my vast riches hostage, but last night assured me I will not want for things to do in the meantime.

I first took it into my head to leave the States when I was 15, and every large decision since then was based at least in part on that goal. While I certainly have new ideas and plans, it’s strange and disorienting to finally be here, clutching two hard-won things, looking out towards new goals that are lovely but lack the timeworn substance of those promises I made to myself so very long ago. Luckily, there’s quite a lot I need to get done. By the time things slow down, the short-term plan should have crystallised appropriately.

Mixed nuts

dixie — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:01:19 +0000

Many popular and well-loved bloggers occasionally resort to posts of random miscellany. I poked around in the Way Back Machine yesterday and found some of the earliest Cobweb posts, as it appears the good folks at the Internet Archive are better at holding onto our posts than our old hosting company. I used to blog every day, and most days I found something interesting to say. (Even if it was only about the damn coffee grinder.) It boggles the mind.

Things are a little different now, and it’s not just the templates and the truncated archives.

I can’t stop making jokes about Bertie Ahern’s resignation, probably because he’s the only Taoiseach I’ve ever known. Yes, I’m familiar with names of previous ones (Charles Haughey springs to mind as one I’ve read a bit about), but Bertie has held the improbably spelled office since before I even considered Ireland as a possible place to study during college.

Naturally, my first thought was “Geez, he found out the Wanderer was back in the country and hightailed it out of there.” Isn’t Bertie from the Wanderer’s district?

It’s been a turbulent week. The annual group meeting looms large on the horizon, and while I have most of my slides done the talk still isn’t ready. There are a few reasons for this. One, I found out this morning I should get slides from other people in the group, so I can offer a broader picture of the methods rather than stupifying the audience with picture after picture of butoxamine structures. Two, it’s still not clear how long the presentation is supposed to be. Last time I checked, it was scheduled for 15 minutes, but it might go down to 10 or up to 20 or 25.

I have 26 slides of my own, and that was without trying very hard. I’m going to be delivering this presentation like the Micro Machines guy.

Meanwhile, the house is shockingly empty. Without the computers, paints, and Penny Arcade books strewn about, there’s a chance the place will be clean and tidy once I manage to get home and hoover. Once that’s achieved, I’ll start packing the essentials (books, wool) and throwing out stuff I don’t really need. (I have office supplies from the mid-90s that have been carried from dorm room to dorm room for nearly a decade.) The Wanderer and I learned it costs an eye-popping $80 to send a modestly sized 18-pound box from LA to Dublin, which means a lot of stuff is going to have to go.

As a long-time packrat with a terror of waking up one morning and needing something I once had but threw away in a fit of decluttering, this will require a significant amount of willpower.

Speaking of willpower, the New York Times writes a little on it in the context of “If you have to cut down on spending because of the recession, you’re probably going to gain weight because you just don’t have the willpower.” They include a list of activities that “deplete willpower:”

Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone.

No wonder academics are such lushes.

Personally, I’m handling the recession by sending half the family off to earn euros. That’s what everyone else would do if they could.