Home Sweet Home

Well howdy doody y'all!

It's been forever and a day since I've been on here but I'm back to tell y'all what I've been up to since the half marathon (a trip to the homeland happened)

Well let's see..

Went to Ireland

Millie on top of Toorsaleen mountain

Met my darling nephew 

and Godson Aaron (pronounced Ah-ron, not Ae-ron like the yanks say).

I have to say, it was very strange seeing my younger sister as a doting mamma. She's a natural :)

Introduced himself to the family.

I guess it's a big deal bringing a yank home to meet the family but he got on so well with them all and instantly became 'one of the lads'

Family wedding

Colm and Aisling were married and had the most beautiful classy wedding.

everyone looked damn fine (PS Aisling's dress was amazing)

Mighty craic was had at the wedding and the O'Connor men didn't even take their shirts off this time!! It was so great to have most of my relatives under the one roof, and for a happy occasion.

when you grow up in the middle of nowhere it's no surprise that your cousins become your best friends.. miss this crew

Best friend's wedding

Miss Claire Roche became Mrs Walsh!! Claire and I lived together for 3 years in college in Dublin and I'm so happy that although we've probably only seen each other 10 times since we graduated in 2006, she is still one of my peoples! Rochie sure loved a good par-tay and this wedding was a Claire-style wedding for sure.

just found this gem! good auld college days :)

A band were going table-to-table during the dinner playing requests.. If there wasn't food on the table they may have been danced on!

Sidenote: In keeping with my habit of oversharing, I have a funny story for y'all about my rush to make it to the church on time.. I know it's only the bride that should have drama about making it to the church on time but I had my share too!

We were late leaving the hotel...Claire's wedding was on 2 days after Colm's and I was feeling a little under the weather let's say ;) Then there was a 4-5 hr drive to get there and I didn't know where the church was.. somewhere on a country road in Kildare. I found out an hour before the wedding I was doing second reading.. uh-oh. My saviour Liz rang with directions, which was all good and well until we took a wrong turn (OK I) and were a bit lost.

At this point ''my water was nearly down my leg'' (I needed to pee REAL BAD) so I apologised to Mr Boyfriend (well I apologise now OK?!).. a roadside pee in my dress was essential. I pulled in off the road in the grass (I'm classy like that).. and would you believe it.. the car got stuck! The ever patient boyfriend got out and pushed (does anyone have a medal we can give him!) and we were on our merry way! 25 mins late but we made it for second reading.. phew!!

Gave Doug a taste of Ireland.

A pint of the black stuff at the Guinness Storehouse

Kilkenny.. so purty!

And of course no trip to the motherland would be complete without a) walk up to the top of the mountain (my family's mountain) and b) the ateing a feed of Sneem black pudding!

I was talking about it for weeks before I went home. If any of you haven't had it make a point of getting some in your belly. It's made by a local butcher in a village called Sneem in Kerry and there's nothing like it. FYI for the American's: it's not like a chocolate pudding, it's made of pig's blood but don't let that put you off. Doug loved it.

But, you know what Doug said was the best part of the whole trip? The people.

I know Irish people have a reputation for being friendly but Americans are friendly too, so I never really got what the big deal was. In America you hear 'have a nice day' all the time so I guess what sets Ireland apart is that people are generous with their time and genuinely curious and interested in you. Ask for help and people will bend over backwards to help you. I hope the Americans won't take offense to this.. the pace of life is just faster here (I think) and people tend to have all of their time scheduled to a T.

Honesty is a given with the Irish, be it a good thing or a bad thing! If someone doesn't like you, they just won't bother.  I love they way of speaking too.. Irish people have slang and ''sayings for everything''.. or is that just an O'Connor thing?! Suffice to say, I love my peoples and my country. And I was sad leaving. I wish I had had more time with everyone but we made the most of the time we had. Yea, I do love Austin and It's a really great experience to live somewhere so different but cheesy as it sounds.. home is where the heart is. Specifically is it on the top of Toorsaleen mountain with the dogs by my side and the wind in my hair on a sunny day (yes, we get sun once every year at least!).

Right, no more nostalgia for now.. time to live in the present sooooo let me introduce my new housemate, Mila!!

pretty lady!

I adopted Mila from Austin Pets Alive last weekend. She was rescued at 4 months, pregnant.. and the poor kitty is only 11 months herself now! She's lovely..I think we will get along well :)


Since I am not fundraising anymore and I don't want to hassle anyone who doesn't want to read my blog, I will no longer have this on an email list.. sooo you can follow the blog on my new facebook page ('like' me) .. follow me on Pinterest..  or subscribe by email at the bottom, whatever ya fancy.

The big question is why you would keep reading? What I will be writing about to make you want to read? Hmmm, well, a plan has hatched for what I'm mostly gonna write about for the next while. It will be something along the lines of ''12 months of experimenting''.. stay tuned for the deets! It's a few days in to this month already so I'll be back to y'all in a bit once I've got motoring on my experiment for this month!


Parting question:
Can you vouch for how good Sneem black pudding is?

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Trip to the Windy City

Howdy y'all.. man I really love saying that but I would feel like a fool saying it in real life! So howdy y'all! Hope you've had a good week!

I'm a bit all over the place so I'll give y'all a recap on what I've been at since I went on my trip! On Friday, I headed for Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Mr. Man is at.  On Sunday, we caught an early train to Chicago and checked in to our hotel. We were starving for lunch and upon the advice of my foodie buddy Rob (check him out at The Food Buzz), we headed to Lou Malnati's to sample Chicagos famous deep dish pizza.. it was mmmm good! 

Later at the hotel, food coma set in for Mr Man so I hit the gym.  0.7 miles into a run on the treadmill I realised deep dish pizza is not the best running fuel.. funny that! So I stopped and did 20 min hills on the bike followed by 15 min elliptical. Major stomach issues after but I was well enough to eat at a delicious tapas restaurant a few hrs later.. You have to check out cafe-Ba-Ba-Reeba if you visit Chicago, delicious! I love food, so tapas and tasting as much as possible without the danger of exploding suits me damn fine! 

Tuesday started off with a workout at the hotel gym. I ate yogurt beforehand so after nearly seeing my deep dish pizza for a second time on Sunday, I decided to hit the elliptical instead. Knocked out 30 min. So glad I didn't run.. An hour in to touring around town a bit later and my left foot was hurting at every step. Insert sad face here. I did make it to the top of the Sears tower though (now known as Willis tower)!

note the fool lying down.. and the other fool wearing slipper-like shoes in Chicago.. lucky I didn't lose a toe!

By the way.. it was so cold in Chicago.. I know you may have no sympathy for me since I was practically around in bare feet. But even if my foor wasn't sore, there was no way I was running on the lake, like I had hoped. W had planned on a walk there one day and within a block of the lake the wind got too much to bear and I begged for us to turn on our heel! Total wimp now that I'm living in Texas... have the lagging jacket ready for me when I go back home in August!

Anyways on Wednesday I worked on abs a bit.. Working on my plank. Those things are boring as hell but apparently effective. First thing I did was call to book a doctor's appointment. The fear is that I may have a stress fracture (my totally uneducated guess), since I haven't run in 12 days and its worse now and I'm kinda getting worried. Best to let the doc do his thing and figure this out. 

I also haven't mentioned the fact that I have a 10k a week from Sunday.. Hence the fear! I'll happily back off the running beforehand but I really really wanna do it! 

Capitol 10k is a huge one on the Austin running calendar, with approx 25,000 people running it every year. I joined Austin runners meetup group in January and there are a number of my Saturday morning run comrades running it too. Since I started CCFA half marathon training I can't run with them anymore (group runs also on saturdays) so I'm looking forward to seeing them again. A great friendly bunch.  Because the group is so big there's always 2 or 3 of us around the same pace so I'm hoping to have someone to run with. I also convinced my friends Jackie and Aileen to sign up sooooo.. the after party is gonna be too good to miss out on it!

Chicago had been a great trip; the past few days have been a welcome break from pushing my fitness and healthy eating. Back on the wagon I go! 

Thank you to all who have supported my goal so far to raise $4,500 for Crohn's and Colitis. By the end of May, I need to commit to running and therefore meeting my fundraising target. This is because the flights and hotel needs to be booked at that time. Sooo (trying really hard not to sound like a money-grabber) if you were thinking of donating, then it would be great if you could do so in the next few weeks. If you weren't or can;t afford it then no worries obviously. 

I have a few tricks up my sleeve to do some fundraising events in the next few weeks.. possibilities are a movie night, a barbeque, a bake sale and a raffle.  I also accept donations in the form of bright ideas! 

Just to remind you what it's like to have Crohn's disease, read the latest post from Ali, a Crohn's sufferer/ runner/ editor-in-chief of a magazine.. what a gal. I really didn't realise Crohn's was this bad.

A special shout-out to Jackie Ahmad, Tom Kane and Victor Trevino and Mike Murphy for your generous donations. If you would like to donate please do so here.

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