Not About Houseboats nor About Exercise

See the "Next Blog" link above? Blogger puts it there and takes you to a random place in the blogsphere. But, it tries to take you someplace you might find interesting. I don't know what the algorithm is, but it looks at the blog you are reading and tries to find another, similar one.
Last Summer when I kept writing about my training schedule it would take me to blogs where exercise nuts had pictures of cast iron stuff they found in junk yards and were now training themselves to lift with as few fingers of their left hand as possible. Last week, when I wrote about houseboats, it took me to Mom's pages with the latest advice on how to decorate your house and garden for Valentine's day.
This week, I wanted to write about my washing machine, and I fear the worst. That's why I gave it a misleading title and will write about exercise in a minute. We'll see what google's similarity algorithm does with that.
My apartment has a great, albeit a little small, washer/drier machine (above). You stick your clothes in there, and they come out clean and dry. I have no clue how it works. But it is fascinating.
There is no lint catcher, for one thing. (Lint should trigger a whole bunch of interesting blogs above. Maybe I should throw in the word bellybutton as well and emphasize it!)
It took me a while to get the machine to do what I want it to do, but it is still a mystery on how it does it. It takes for ever to wash and dry your clothes: four or five hours per load. When it is in the dry cycle, it keeps adding water all the time. You hear this high pitched whine like it is spinning at hyper-sonic speeds, but the drum inside the window is barley turning. Then you hear a slow rhythmic whoosh-whoosh, making you think of rocking chairs, but the thing is spinning at escape velocity.
When you take your clothes out, they are wet. You shake them once with a snap, and all of a sudden they are dry! You can't touch them; they are burning hot, even on the lowest dry setting. If you touch a zipper or the rivets on your jeans, they will leave burn marks on your skin! The leather flap on the back of your jeans that says whether they are relaxed fit or straight, and what size your belly is, is soft as rubber. As it dries, it curls up, and you can't get your belt in anymore, and the waistband feels weird back there with this wad-up knot of a leather label.
I've been meaning to look up the technology behind this process before I wrote this blog. But it is time to reveal the existence of this mystery, even though I cannot explain it yet.
About exercise: I didn't do mine today. I did taxes and FAFSA. But, I started on a program to do 100 push-ups and another to do 200 squats. I'm on week four with my push-ups, even though I started last August. I'm doing better with my squats and have another week to go; i.e. sometime later this year.
Despite the setbacks and interruptions, the exercise schedules actually work and I am making progress. You should try them and then, just for fun, click on the "Next Blog" link above.

Houseboats

Even though Arun suggested it, I don't think we'll be living on a houseboat anytime soon. I was nearby a place today where a bunch of them are moored, and thinking of his comment I could not resist taking a picture of one. Traveling with one of them through Ireland involves going through locks like the one below. Most places you have to operate the lock yourself, since there is not enough traffic anymore to employ full-time lock wardens (or whatever they are properly called).

I was near the lock and the houseboats today because it was on my way to go look at a house for rent. I took the bus to Castlenock and the train from there to Leixlip.

See? ;-)

Unfortunately, one of the tenants had gotten sick and they would not allow visitors today. It would have been nice for them to call yesterday, before I went on this journey, but at least I got a few pictures and another blog entry out of it!
Of course, then I had to come back again:

See? ;-)

By the way, Dublin bus now has a phone app that shows you where the buses are and how much longer it will be until ones arrives at your stop. This improves life greatly.
I have seen the above bus before (I didn't actually ride in it). I guess you can rent it, if you'd like to have your wedding in a Dublin bus; or at least move your guests around in one. I think I'd prefer a houseboat!

House Hunt

This week Lee Ann was here. We rented a car and spent some time driving around trying to identify neighborhoods and towns we would like to live in, where the cats and kids would be happy, and finding houses large enough and with enough bathrooms to accommodate guests. It's time consuming and difficult to satisfy most, let alone all, constraints. The picture above is from a place a little bit North of Dublin. We like that area a lot, but the affordable places are far enough from Dublin's center that commuting would be a problem.
There are trains going into Dublin, but they are not very fast or very frequent. We don't know yet where Lee Ann will work, but city center is a high likelihood. Driving in there and parking is a nightmare! I wish they turned the center into a huge pedestrian zone and established park and ride spots around it. Then the buses would become useful. Now as it is, the buses get stuck in rush hour traffic just like everything else.

This house in Skerries is not for rent but it is typical for that area. Walking distance form the town square, the ocean, and a number of restaurants and shops. It's really not that far from Dublin, but we would spend 40 minutes in a train or in traffic.
We'll have to spend more time looking and exploring. It helps to know what the neighborhoods look like and where they are so that when a house becomes available, we can pounce. It seems the nicer ones that are affordable go fast, and sometimes don't even get listed on daft.ie.

There was a house for rent near the Skerries Mills, but it was too small. Europe is freezing, but Ireland is nice and balmy (relatively speaking ;-) Unfortunately, it was also raining quite a bit this week. We still have long dark Winter days which makes house hunting even more depressing when you can't find quite the right thing.

I have also started investigating getting a car and Lee Ann and I spent Friday afternoon looking at a bunch and test-driving a couple of them. Sometimes I think maybe we should just get a boat. The coast is nice and there are plenty of rivers and canals. Maybe the commute will be a little longer, but a lot more fun!

We parked near one car dealer and on our way to the store we walked by a building that had the statue below in almost every window. Some of the figurines were painted or were dressed, but they were all the same, and lots of them. After we drove away from that area we saw more of those ladies in windows.

Found here

It was a little surreal and we were wondering what the reason behind that window decoration was. What do they mean? We are not the only ones wondering. On this bulletin board there is a long thread of people trying to guess where these statues come from and why there are so many in the windows.
Part of the answer comes in the form of a short video documentary. The film won a price at the Dark Light film festival in 2010. During the making of the short film, the maker asked for help finding windows that had the statues on display. People responded and created a Google map of lady sightings.
It seems to me that this is something like those pink plastic flamingos on wire stilts everybody used to have in their front yard for while....