Oh, Tannenbaum; or, Maryland, My Maryland

I now have to adjust to Katherine going off to work every day. It's only for four or five hours at a time, but it's four or five hours when I have nothing to do and no one to talk to. As I write it is raining outside, so walking around and desperately looking for new "help wanted" signs is not too attractive.

The internet is, of course, the main way to apply for jobs these days, even in Ireland. Despite work being as rare as hen's teeth, folks try to give helpful advice. My personal favorite (and this has happened at least five times) is when an Irish person says, "You know, you should really have a look at IrishJobs.ie, they have a lot of work postings." This is like saying to anyone with a computer, "You're trying to search for something on the internet? You should try Google.com, they have a decent search engine." But it's the thought that counts.

My drill is to scan the new postings every day, with the hope that I'll find something that doesn't require fluency in Dutch or Swedish or extensive experience in the lady's fashion industry. Speaking of the lady's fashion industry, in our wanderings a few nights ago we came across a storefront with a help-wanted sign for part-time seasonal retail work. I figured "What the hell?, I'll go in tomorrow to see if they'll hire me." I entered the store the next day only to realize that they sell only women's knitwear, and that I was the only male out of about fifteen people in the room. I turned around and left. This pretty much sums up the reality of retail work in Cork. And it also might help explain why, in the middle of the workday, the pubs are busy serving an all-male crowd of patrons.

The job descriptions should include caveats such as "extensive retail [or serving, or bartending] experience required. Unless you're a cute little thing, in which case all training will be provided."

Good Brews

To celebrate Katherine's new job we went out and spent all of the money she earned on her first day. The first stop was the Bierhaus, which has the largest beer selection in the city. I had a bottle of "Chimay Blue," a dark Belgian porter that really packs a punch. Nine percent alcohol content...goes straight to your head and is very tasty. We then stumbled to the Franciscan Well, Cork's justly famous microbrewery.

Finally, we have decorated our Christmas tree. As you all know, the tree itself was criminally cheap. It definitely doesn't meet the State of California's flame retardant standards. And Katherine came up with another brilliant idea to keep costs down: decorate the trees with colorful paper gift tags, which come in packs of twenty for €1. Throw on a fifteen-meter string of lights (€6), and we're in business:

As you can see, the tree is accented by the exquisitely ugly rose picture. We are lucky enough to have a copy of that photography in every one of our rooms. And each copy is listed as inventory in our lease, so we can't even do future tenants a favor and destroy them.

Anyway, other than Éire Apparent being an obvious cure for my downtime, I have ideas for how to stay busy. I might do some volunteer work for the History Department at University College Cork. I might do what I do best and find some archives and see if there's anything interesting to write about. And, to be sure, I'll stay optimistic that something paid will turn up.