The Second Entry

15 July 2008 (Happy Birthday, Darlene!). It's Tuesday. It's easy to forget what day it is. The weather is overcast, although early in the day you can see the sun. It's been so amazingly humid that nothing has dried. I did some hand laundry and it took four days just for something to get noticeably less damp. Not dry, mind you; just dry-ER. I didn't notice until yesterday, when Lisa and I went to Midleton and did the Jameson's distillery tour. We would come out of the buildings into the sun and everyone would go "Whew! it's warm!" And the humidity was very noticeable. Bleh.

The tour was fun. The (Dutch) tour guide asked for eight volunteers to do a whiskey tasting between Scottish, American, and Irish whiskey, and of course my hand shot into the air and I was #1 on the list. When we got back to the pub, where you get a complimentary glass of Jamesons, we eight each had three small glasses of different whiskeys and got to taste and smell them. I couldn't really tell the difference between the Johnnie Walker and the Jamesons, although the distillery information had made a big deal out of the fact that the barley for Irish whiskey is dried in kilns fired with anthracite, and therefore without direct contact with smoke, whereas the Scottish barley is dried over peat fires and the smoke is piped directly onto it, giving it the distinctive smoky taste. But when they said that the American whiskey was Jack Daniels, I knew I'd tell the difference, because I hate Jack Daniels, and all I did was prove it's still true. It's very raw. I didn't know that this is because American blended whiskey is only distilled once and uses new oak barrels, where Scottish is distilled twice, and Irish is distilled three times and uses different types of used barrels. I'll need to get Gretchen to take me on a Scottish distillery tour so I can see the differences between Scottish and Irish methods. (The Irish monks were the ones who taught the distillation methods to the Scots, "a fact sometimes overlooked by the descendants of those first distillers".)

Did you know that the word "kiln" is an Irish word?

After the tasting, we each got our own measure of Jamesons, and the woman across from me and I nearly gagged. It was so different from the one we'd been tasting. I told her it was because they'd watered the ones we'd been tasting, but the Jamesons guy standing there said they were the same. She and I both agreed, after numerous sips from both glasses, that they were different, and he finally went off and asked, and it turned out I was right and they'd watered our tasting glasses 20%. I was surprised at the difference it made. But at that point I didn't really care about anything other than the fact that I could no longer feel my back teeth. When I stood up to leave, I could tell from the way that I unfolded and leaped to my feet that I had absolutely no pain or stiffness in my knees, meaning that I was truly sozzled, and either I was going to have to get some food or Lisa would have to drive home. I spent inordinate amounts of money in the gift shop (obviously part of their plan) and we moved down the street (Lisa patiently holding me up as I babbled about what a wonderful painkiller Jamesons was) and found a chip shop where I had some really good fries with melted cheese. After that I felt in control enough to drive back to Cork, where we met Anne and had dinner on me at Luigi Malone's as my gift for their hospitality. (No, that hadn't been the drink; treating them to dinner had been in the plans all along.)

By the way, you will see "gluten-free items available" signs all over Irish restaurants because celiac disease is more common in the Irish (and other Brits) and Scandinavians than any other ethnic group. Anne is celiac, as well as being vegetarian, and nearly eliminated the entire menu before she found something she could order, and even then she had to make some substitutions. Interestingly, it's not just wheat, but also oats and barley (no beer or whiskey) that are a problem. What a dent in one's diet.

Needless to say I slept really well last night.

Today Lisa and I went to a local garden centre and wandered around, and then I came back here to the cottage while she went to a dentist's appointment. I've left the door open so the cats can come and go as they please, but the bees and horseflies are also coming and going as they please. The bugs eventually find the door again so I'm not too put out. Lisa and Anne have three cats: Max (the old boy), Sushi (the girl) and Smudge (the obnoxious kid). They're not related but they are monochromatic. Max and Sushi are black-and-whites and Smudge is all black. They're all great cats.

The dining area is being used as the guest room as it is exactly the size of a queen-size bed. Lisa's got a curtain across the bottom as a privacy measure but it does tend to fall down if I rub up against it too much. I don't think I've ever seen Lisa in a finished house. Her place in Miltown Malbay was never finished, and Eucalyptus Cottage is also a work in progress. There are exposed rafters, dangling wires, and floors that are concrete covered with rugs. I like it because I don't feel like I'm going to make anything dirty or break it. On the other hand, it's a small place, and I normally tend to spread out. I'm being very careful to keep things in and around the suitcase, which is on two dining chairs at the foot of the bed. The MacBook had to sit in the living room for a while -- Lisa found a transformer with a three-prong American socket, so that's what I'm using to power the MacBook. But the only available British socket was in a power strip near the TV. It's also the best place to get the wifi connection, since the cottage has the typical thick stone walls, so of course I'm typing this on the kitchen table with a big zero signal strength. If I have to, I'll disconnect the power cord and wander into the living room to transmit this entry when the time comes.

The cottage has the bedrooms upstairs, the lounge and box room downstairs, and the typical extension with water laid on for the kitchen and bath. It's clumsy in that you have to come downstairs and through the kitchen to use the bathroom, but my place in Summerbridge was the same, and you get used to it. The extension here was built really badly and Lisa has finally decided that it's not worth putting much effort into except to replace windows and insulate. Someday they will tear it down and build a different extension to make a protected courtyard where they can grow things like fruit trees. But that's well in the future.

The car is behaving itself except for the heat shield that was replaced and is now falling off. I took the car in to complain about a rattle, they said it was a damaged heat shield (wonder how that happened, since the last thing that was done was them tightening a heat shield that came loose after they did the suspension work...). I got it back and it had the original two rattles with a third added on, which has steadily gotten worse. I haven't had time to stop into an Irish Ford dealer to ask them to check on it but that's probably just as well as this country is every bit as expensive as the UK. Well, it's already booked in for Monday for a trim strip to be replaced, and I'll just give them a piece of my mind about the heat shielding and see if they can fix it correctly this time.

But the engine has smoothed out and sounds really good. It does need a long trip every so often.

Hey, the sun's out! What a gorgeous day. I think I'll take the (noisy) car and go for a drive. Tonight will be my last night; tomorrow I'll leave for Rosslare, hit the Waterford factory for Gretchen's crystal, and spend the night at the Best Western Rosslare again. The ferry leaves 0845 on Thursday morning, and I should be showing up at the cattery at about 18:30 to get my two. I do miss them.

So: more later, perhaps. I'll see about the vouchers at the hotel, but if it's ten Euro for ten minutes, I might pass on it.

By the way, I noticed that the plural of "euro" is "euro," at least according to the media. "It's only ten euro!"

See you.