Ireland trip, Day 3

Today we drove through Dublin a bit more while getting a narration on the history and attractions as we went. We drove down the "Georgian Mile", visited the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail), visited St. Patrich's Cathedral and did some shopping.

Later we drove to a pub out in the country for a nice dinner and a show of Irish music and dancing. It was five hours, but it was so fun it flew by like nothing.

Ireland,s oldest pub,The Brazen Head, Est. 1198!

The "Georgian Mile" - houses built during the reign of King George

Fifi at the Kilmianham Gaol (Jail)

Inside the Jail


Some of the windows at St. Patrich's Cathedral


Shopping on Nassau Street


The uilleann pipes - similar to bagpipes, but much more complex

The step dancers were awesome

Somehow I got roped into dancing. Blah!
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Ireland trip, Day 2

We departed Chicago at about 6:50pm and flew away from the sun for about 6 and a half hours to arrive at Dublin around 7:30am local time. Everyone was very tired, but we couldn't check in at our hotel until at least noon. Our bus driver drove us around Dublin for a few hours giving us history and info all along the way.

After finally checking in a the hotel, we napped for a couple of hours then got up and walked around the city for a while. Just as it was getting dark we jumped on a bus for a nice tour of ghostly sites. Mostly graveyards and churchyards That had some sort of macabre history. Pretty interesting, but it might have been more fun if we could see the buildings, etc.

Waiting to board the plane from Chicago.


After arriving at the airport in Dublin.


Peggy at Phoenix Park in Dublin while we were waiting for our hotel room.


Our friend, Dana, and her mom in the hotel lobby (Fifi, too!)


The Pub where we had lunch, The Bleeding Horse. Right behind is our hotel.

The bus we took on our Ghost Tour.
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Ireland trip, Day 1

Well, we're off to Ireland...by way of Chicago.

We're spending a night here in Chicago so we can break our flights into two separate days rather than spend so much time on the plane all in one day. Coach class is miserable enough without having to spend all day sitting in that crappy little seat!

Anyway, here's some pics of our hotel, The Intercontinental O'Hare. I think I could learn to love Hotwire.com. The only drawback is you can't pick a specific hotel, just an area where you want to stay. The savings are awesome, though. CHeck it out...

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I hope Obama don't tax my windfall...

I went to work the other day and one of my co-workers had this in his truck for me. He said "take it or it's going to the dump." Uhhh...let me think...well, okay. It needs an engine, but what the hey, it was free!

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Lipstick on a pig . . . the Tird gets new lungs!

Well, it's pretty....

But does it run?

I don't know what went wrong with the sound, maybe low batteries or noise from the ignition. Anyway, believe me...it sounds good!

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Okonomiyaki!

Roughly translated it means "Cooked the way you like." Yummy! It's sometimes called Japanese pizza or Japanese pancakes. I've never made it myself, but I ran across a recipe on WikiHow and some YouTube vids showing how to cook it. I got the ingredients and then Klara and I experimented...

It came out pretty good, but it was too "gross" for Klara. Luckily, we cooked some pot stickers to go along with it, so Klara didn't have to revert to PB&J!


If you give it a try I recommend using a lot less Japanese mayonaise than is shown in my picture. I think it might have been even better without any at all. We used crab meat in ours, but if you don't want it to be "fishy" use a different meat (bacon would be good) and leave off the bonito flakes (dried bonito fish).

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Helmet Cam!

I've been dreaming of having a helmet cam for years. Well, for Father's day my wonderful wife hooked me up with a sweet one! (Thanks, Hon!)

In honor of Kevin's Birthday, here's a little clip from the helmet cam of him foolin' around.

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Fun with photos

I read an article last week on how to fake a tilt-shift lens photo using Photoshop. A tilt-shift lens shortens the focus range on a wide shot to give it an interesting miniature look.

Since I don't have the exorbitantly expensive Photoshop, I figured out how to get the same effect using a very powerful open-source (free) photo editing program called GIMP. GIMP is available for Linux, Windows and other platforms and it's free, free, free! Just Google it.

There are many plug-ins for GIMP that do helpful things. Most recently I installed the panorama plug-in to paste together some panoramics taken on the Parashant ride.

Anyway, below is an example of my tilt-shift experiments. This is the lobby at the Great Wolf Lodge. Looks like a dollhouse, doesn't it? Long shots work best (like landscapes, aerial shots, etc.) The bulky furniture and large-patterned carpet help the effect.

Make sure to zoom the picture for a detailed look.

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A Mafioso's Daily Chores

Something funny happened in my driveway this morning.

Yesterday I put a new Monte Carlo style stock on my SKS. When I inherited it, it had a pistol grip stock with a folding shoulder rest. The shoulder rest was gone and the point where it mounted was busted out. I don't like folding stocks anyway, so it just had to go. I put all the old parts in my little wastebasket by my desk.

Just at twilight this morning, before the sun came up, I was taking out the garbage . The last thing to go out was my little wastebasket. So there I was, in my pajamas on the driveway with a little wastebasket of old assault rifle parts sticking up out of it! I had to giggle - I just couldn't help to wonder if this wasn't happening all over New Jersey too.

Sorry, no picture. It would have been perfect if one of my neighbors had snapped a shot through their living room window!

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"S" Family Skills!

Gosh it's good to be one of "us"! Let me show you how someone in the "S" family gets a 400-pound engine block up in the back of his jacked-up truck when nobody is around to help...

My tires were due for an air change anyway!
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