Cycle4Life -- please sponsor me!

Hello, all readers of this blog, who may very well be only Mama!

I've decided to enter a charity cycling event on 19 May 2012. Please click here to visit my donations page, and make a donation to help sponsor my trek! All the details of the charity it's for can be found there.

The minimum donation is only 2 euro, and my goal is the 80 euro event fee. I technically have until 30 April to raise the fee, upon which time I have to supply the rest of it myself--but you can donate to the cause even up to a month after the event, according to the mycharity.ie website. There's no excuse for procrastination, however! ;P

Any and all who make a donation, if you email me your address (jamie.e.blair at what else but gmail) I will send you a postcard from Ireland!

I greatly appreciate the help. The course I'm taking will be ~70 km, or ~44 miles. I've comfortably done 40 km journeys before, so I know I'll be ready for this by the time it rolls around. I'll be wearing my club jersey for the event as well (leisurecycling.ie).

My knees aren't perfect yet, but I have a new bike that actually fits me. Rothar (pronounced ruh-hur) was way too big--so hello, Bike (pronounced bee-kay)! My surly long haul trucker. She's beautiful ;_; I also have a professional bike fit on the 3rd of May, so I shouldn't be having any biomechanical problems anymore after that.

Don't... don't ask me how much I spent on her DX

so yeah, think of the childrens and send me some money for the Temple Street Children's hospital! It's kind of close to my heart since it's right in my neighbourhood here in Dublin.

peace.

good friday poem rough draft

by me

the streets seethe with raw-throated cries of
CRUCIFY HIM
pilate fears the crowd more than the wrath
of a god he doesn't know except for innocence.
their hate blisters in this air
of febrile
blasphemies
brown fawn's eyes beneath a crown of thorns but i
am in the crowd neither screaming nor crying
only dreaming of dinner, of sleep,
which need for the distraction to end.
blood steaming from the jagged whips but
he isn't mine so why
standing in the midst of all these stinking bodies pressed
together in the dust
the sun is coming down--
. . . when's lunch?

lukewarm, spat out upon this rotten stony ground
i watch the naked man upon the tree.
except, i don't
watch him at all. just pass and glance at him,
toss him a passing afterthought
and wonder why this jostled, moaning, angry crowd
doesn't have more important things to do

Irish blessing

found in Rekindling the Flame by Rita Minehan

May the blessing of light

be on you, light without and light within.

May the blessed sunlight

shine upon you and warm your heart till it glows

like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may

come and warm herself at it, and also a friend.

And may the light shine out of the eyes of you,

like a candle set in the windows of a house,

bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

And may the blessing of the rain

be on you--the soft sweet rain,

May it fall upon your spirit so that all the little flowers 

may spring up,

and shed their sweetness on the air.

And may the blessing of the great rains be on you,

may they beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean,

and leave there many a shining pool where the blue

of heaven shines, and sometimes a star.

And may the blessing of the earth

be on you--the great round earth;

may you ever have a kindly greeeting

from them you pass as you're going along the roads.

May the earth be soft under you when

you rest out upon it, tired at the end of a day, 

and may it rest easy over you when,

at the last, you lie out under it.

May it rest so lightly over you that

your soul may be off from under it so quickly,

and up and off, and on its way to God.

and now may the Lord

Bless you and bless you kindly.

the walk to the wells

By Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB

Look!

I beg you.

Don't ever stop looking

because what makes the world so lovely

is that somewhere

it hides a well,

a well that hasn't been found yet.

And if you don't find it,

maybe

nobody will!

BABY HORSES

Here are some pictures of baby horses for my mother. (I have more, but these are the best.)

The pictures were taken on a lovely spring day at the National Stud in Kildare, Ireland.

 

[picture depicting a light-brown foal nursing from her dark-brown mother]

[ picture depicting a gangly grey foal chomping on some grass while his mother keeps a close eye on him nearby]

 

[closeup of the knobby-kneed light brown foal focused on something out of frame on the left, ears perked up in attention while her mother feeds in the background]

pax.

arrrrrgh

I think that my internet addiction is killing my ability to write. I spend too much time checking facebook, google reader, and various forums for updates. I find myself losing interest halfway thru articles I'm reading or anything particularly long. My attention span is shrinking. Most of the stuff on Google Reader is from people posting on tumblr.

I need to start writing again. I've had several adventures I meant to post about ages ago but, well, never did.

I'm losing interest in this blog post and am about to delete it and start over. HELP I HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN OF A DRAGONFLY

photography

I'm not a very good photographer. My pictures are often blurry, taken at awkward angles, or generally snapped at inopportune moments. I haven't gotten the hang of proper focus or zoom, and my equipment is pretty basic.

But I really like taking pictures like this:

[picture showing an old outdoor toilet, overgrown with ivy and thickets and obviously unused for decades, with a cute green door decorated with three little hearts]



...don't ask me why.


pax.