Driving Test 20 years later......

I cannot belieeeeeeeeeeeeeve i have to do my driving test again !!!   20 years on from when i first sat it on the ever attractive roads of North Dublin, i discover i have to do it AGAIN !!!

Of course Soldier passes his first time with flying colours and proclaims it's a piece of cake. 

I failed my Irish one first time all those years ago and it proved very traumatic at 19 years old, to have to sit it again.  Now i have to go through the process all over, in a different country, on the other side of the road???!! Nightmare!

So i took myself and my forms down to the "DMV" (Dept. of Motor Vehicles... i think) Office.  What a nice, nice place that is to spend time, with some lovely people working there.  You only have to line up outside in the July heat for an hour or so before you get inside the door to get yourself a ticket, to sit in yet another line, on a hard plastic chair for another 2 hours............ at least !  There are lots of people complaining and moaning about the lines ranging in age from 15 years old (yes you can get a driving licence over here at age 15!) up to their 80's.  Some of those old agers are on walking sticks and aching just shuffling around, it was so uncomfortable for them.  In the corner of the cold, 70's style tiled room there is an ancient TV set playing just as ancient a re-run of Ricky Lake with the big 80's hair.  

After 3 hours i eventually got my place at the counter with the lovely middle aged lady who just asked me questions like a robot and worked my paperwork at a snails pace.  With my corporate background in Operations efficiencies and a brain that was surely washed with "do more with less and faster" type approach i felt like jumping the counter to take over and just speed her up.  As i was thinking about all this, my belly rumbling with hunger and frustration starting to turn into rage as i watched her, she suddenly decides to strike up a conversation with her friend on counter 53 about her daughters wedding !!!  OMG !!!! give me strength.

Anyway, eventually she took my mugshot and sent me on my way to complete the written part of the test.  Luckily i passed and re-inserted myself into the line to get my actual driving test appointment (yes i have to go back!).   

Overall, i came to the conclusion that civil service type people must be the same the world over.  It was certainly a day i could have done a whole lot more with, but i guess the roads in Texas will be safer and if nothing else, it certainly satisfied one of my past-times of good people watching. 

The Starbuck's couple !

I always like a cuppa after my dinner, ALWAYS !!! I guess it's like a smoker who just loves that cigarette after their meal.....

 

This, of course, is VERY normal at home. Here however, not so normal,.... and such was the case after a nice meal we had last Saturday night in a trendy Mexican Restaurant in our local village, if you could call it a local village?! .....more like a trendy purpose built shopping/eating area where some of the beautiful people of North Texas hang out, and a lot of nice families too !

Anyway as i was saying, the cuppa was required so i persuaded the Soldier to toddle round the corner to Starbucks.  The night was warm, there was a band playing outside on the street, Munchkin was dancing and everything was going swimmingly.  I sat there thinking "this is the life" and i could sense Soldier was feeling it too......outdoors, 80+ degrees and not a care in the world, except to decide what kind of Sunday dinner we might have. 

 

Right in front of where we were sitting a large black 4 x 4 had parked and i was admiring how shinny it was when suddenly this lady shouted out of the window "Hey, where did you get your stroller?" I looked behind me to see if she was talking to someone else but there was just a great big Starbucks window behind so it was me, and yes i did have my Quinny with me. I stood up and said "oh hi!" Yet again, an encounter with a friendly Texan! :-) I I didn't have time to answer when she started shouting at a guy who had just come out of Starbucks and walked in front of us "Hey honey, look, look, look, she's got my stroller!" and he gave us a big smile. "This one's come all the way from Ireland actually" i shouted back. "Oh" she said "it's just i have never seen anyone else with one, we got ours on line". 

 

He turned our way and produced a big smile;

"Enjoy your evening" he waved and brought the coffee to the car.

 

We thought nothing of it until about 10 minutes later, the black 4 x 4 appeared again, right back in the dame parking space in front of us.  He must have forgot the sugar i thought.

With that he got out of the car and came straight up to Soldier handing him his business card

 

"Hey, my wife insisted we come back, i take it you guys are not from here?"

No of course not, the Scottish and Irish accent gives us away just a teeny bit.

"Well we know what it's like to be new in town so here's my card and why don't you give us a call for lunch or drinks sometime?  We moved here from Arizona last year"

 

I couldn't believe it!... and these guys are not even Texan!  She got out of the car, beautiful long blonde hair, typical of the American girl and was carrying a well cooked bun in the oven.   They chatted for a while and then re-enforced that we must meet up, got back in their car, and took off into the evening.

 

I looked at Soldier who was still staring at the card

"How nice was that?" he smiled at me in disbelief

"Not here a wet day and yet again we make friends, think i could get used to this life"i sighed as i sipped my lovely after dinner cuppa.

 

 

Dove Chocolate? OMG!

Oh my god, just having a cuppa, flicking the channels and there is an advert for ..... wait for it..... Dove CHOCOLATE !! So it's not just your average bar of soap or bottle of shampoo or body lotion, as we all know it, but it's now a Chocolate Bar !!! You have to hand it to the Americans! the advert was just as appealing, if not more so, as the ones for the creamy body lotion and soap.

And that's not all..... they have added their all reliable ingrediant - da de daaaaaa..... PEANUT BUTTER !!! Well i never. Must get one of those for a taste, although i never liked peanut butter, or do i and i just "think" i don't like it! It just was not the snack of choice in Ireland when i was growing up and still is not. It was Jacobs Cream Crackers for me, with a dollop of Kerrygold.

And i learned something new, that "P-B-J" as they call it, is short for........ have you guessed? Answers on a postcard to this blog LOL !

These are the things i would only hear on Sesame Street as i grew up, oh how i'm reliving my youth here :-)

Amazingly accurate Weather Report - Wow!

Unbelieveable..... so there is a storm comming, a proper Texas Rain storm with added effects of lightening too ! The Americans are brilliant with the weather update......i mean, there we are enjoying a leisurely lunch time and the Munchkin is watching Barney and this little pop up comes up on the corner of the screen saying storm warning !!! .....and then the programme breaks to tell us the storm will be in our area in 19 minutes, yes 19 minutes, not a few hours or later today but 19 minutes in our area.


And might i point out, our area means our suburb, not the city or the State. How accurate are they??? ......, 19 minutes later - hey ho!...the storm arrives blasting into the garden, needless to say the Munchkin nearly lost her life it arrived so suddenly "Mammy look at the rain!!!" she yelped.

It was proper tropical rain too. It came, it saw and it went. In 20 minutes it was all over. So the grass, trees and flowers got their drink and the sun came back out to brighten our day and warm us all up again. My kind of rain i tell ya!

Our first week !

So here we are just over a week now and settling in nicely, i think ! I have been to the US so many times, but always as a tourist. Now i am a resident, or "Resident Alien" as the wonderful people at the Visa office like to label at us. However, i do kinda like saying "i'm a Resident Alien". Has a certain "ring" to it, don't you think?

So how is it different now?.... well everything is bigger and even bigger, Bigger, BIGGER..... "Texan style". The latest Dallas modern motto is "Think Big, live large!", quite fitting i think.

 

 

I notice in particular the food portions are bigger! OMG we went to the Olive Garden (Italian Restaurant Chain) the other eveing and ordered 2 standard main courses and a pizza for the Munchkin and they give you free salad (a huge bowl enough to feed 4) and free refills on drinks !!! it just kept coming and coming. The whole lot was just $35. That's about 27 euro's - you wouldn't even get a sniff of a steak at home for that. And we were rightly stuffed i tell ya - the BIG plates of pasta just couldn't be finished. The salad would have been a meal for the Munchkin and i alone, that is.... if she ate bloomin salad, ha.... not a chance..... toddler feeding - don't get me started, maybe that's a post for another day.

 

 

Anyway, so BIGGER is where i was going with this. BIG cars for example too. So we needed a rental car while we settled in and the smallest the Soldier could get from our buddies at Hertz was a Toyota Camry, jaysus !! I saw it and immediately said to him, "you have to bring that back", he said "I can't, it's the smallest they've got, we're in Texas now baby!", he was only short of the Cowboy hat on his head to go with the big grin on his face. So i got in and gave it a go, was dead nervous, had never driven automatic before, but it actually went OK, and there were no domestics in transit either. Munchkin was in the back and just kept saying "Mammy's driving, Mammy's driving", so cute ! As for the left foot, it's bye bye clutch for-e-v-e-r! When i get back home, i'm immediately changing over to automatic, my god what was i doing all those years when i could hav ebeen relaxing in a "bumper car" navitaging Irish roads and traffic. Hilarious! :-)

First trip to the Supermarket

I went food shopping the other night to have a nosey. It was a Saturday night too, wow how life has changed in 10 or even 5 years. My Saturday night highlight is a trip to my new American neighborhood Supermarket!

Well, the Munchkin was snoozing her head off in bed. Soldier was busy hanging pictures to make our apartment more homely and there was nada on the TV so i thought, it's open 24 hours, might as well and go to avoid the rush ! ;-)

So there i was with my trolley, better known as "cart" over here moving  up and down the ailes with a fine tooth comb to detect if brands i know maybe have different packaging and yet the product is still the same. Badly need to find some Barney beans or Dora beans or even Shrek beans for the little Munchkin, but do you think they had them? Not quite, but something similar and i got away with it yesterday when i gave them to her for lunch.


I learned that the Fruit and Veg section is better known in these parts as the "Produce" section.  And low and behold, as i'm driving the cart round the Produce section what happens but a wonderful spontaneous water fall, all over the greens - cucumbers, kale, cabbage etc.   Yes at regular intervals the automatic sprayers come out (did i say waterfall) to pour a nice fine mist on the fresh food.  Great idea as long as you don't get your nosey head caught under it.


Was also looking for Chicken and White Wine soup that i buy all the time in TESCO, well they had 50 million different types of Campbell's soup but do you think they had that flavour? No sireeee, so had to settle for just Chicken or just Mushroom to make my old favourite......"Chicken in White Wine Sauce".  Of course i can just throw in half a bottle of white wine for flavour - YUM! Problem solved :-)

I made a friend - already !!!!

I think i made a friend..... already ?!?! Was lingering in the Apartment Leasing Office with Munckin, (not even 24 hours since we have landed) trying to stand up straight as i dealt with jet lag removing my shades from my eyes and waited "in line", yes we don't say "queue" over here! I was commenting to Munchkin about a truck that just pulled up outside with a beautiful German Sheppard sitting quietly in the back, open top, you know the type of truck you would probably never see in Ireland, cos anything in the back would just get wet from all the rain we get. Well, a lady got out and came into the office and immediately started talking to us, attracted to the cute Munchkin of course, sure who would be looking at me?!?! She asked the standard questions like "how old is she?", "what's her name?" and then of course the third question was directed to me as she stared straight at me with a curious smile - "oh, where are you from", of course hard as i try to add a little American twang and talk slower (Soldier and i talk ridiculously fast - we are an Irish Scottish Union after all) the flat Dublin accent just comes right on out.

"We're Irish" i state.
"Oh, how fun" she replies..... and with that i'm next in line.
"Apartment Number" Mrs. Offical Leasing Office woman sais to me
"1314" i reply
and with that nice German Sheppard owner jumps in and sais" oh we're 1315, we're neighbours. Maybe my boys could play with your daughter some day?"
"Sure" i reply, "that would be nice" and i go about my business in the office, bid her goodbye and she leaves a wonderful, lasting smiling impression on my mind.

No doubt our paths will cross seeing as our front doors are 4 inches apart. Not bad for my first human Texas engagement!