Workweek with a Paris Chaser

UPDATE: CONGRATULATIONS SARAH!! (I just opened my mail and found the baby news!! what an exciting time in EPI's Materials nook! I really REALLY wish I were there---no, I wish you all were here!!!!)

NEW colour scheme! Let me know what you think.

Aw sweet! I can’t wait to sit on a sunny café veranda and people watch like the Parisians do…

Oh hold the phone. It’s frigging cold rain all weekend in Paris. AWESOME. It’s as though this crap Irish weather has plans to follow me anywhere!

Well, so I had a 2-coin in my pocket this morning and I decided to treat myself to a little drinkey treat. I was headed for a coke when I decided to change it up and go for something a little more euro, a little more exotic. I got a club rock shandy, and……its disgusting. But it made me realize that I should do a little number on the many splendid thing that is Irish “bevys”, or drinks.

Teetotling (aka "non-alcoholic")
Club: Citrus soda, comes in lemon, orange, pomegranate and some others
Lucozade: Nasty syrupy “energy drink”, which is code for sugary version of Gatorade
H2OH: Water with headache—I mean aspartame—in it
Rock Shandy: Orange juice and lemonade together. Club does one that’s fizzy
Dr Pepper: Categorized as a “fruit-flavoured beverage” over here.
White and Red Lemonades: Lemonade, usually used as a mixer. Red has food colouring in it.

barf

Irish (aka "alcoholic")
Harp, Smithwicks and Guinness: The Guinness Brewery trifecta of beers
Beamish: Fronts like its Guinness, but it’s not
Shandy: Beer with a mixer…
Lager Shandy: Half lager (usually heinekin or harp), half white lemonade
Diesel Shandy: Half lager half coke
FUN FACT: Shandys are kind of girly. So much so that “ginger beer” is cockney rhyme for “queer” or gay.
Jameson and Bushmills: The two big whiskeys. Historically, Jameson was drunk by rich Protestants, Bushmills by country bumpkin, poor Catholics. Irish whiskey is spelled with an ‘e’.

Also, when you buy a mixed drink here it’s served with the alcohol in the glass, the mixer on the side. So if you ordered a vodka tonic, you’d get a glass with a shot of vodka and ice and a teeny tiny bottle of tonic that you yourself pour in.

FUN FACT: Tonic water is blacklight sensitive.

Well so that’s that. And if for whatever reason you find yourself in Dublin saddling up to a drink, you better have rang me up to join you!

Overheard in Dublin of the Day:

I was walking through UCD when I heard a guy and his girlfriend
chatting:

Guy: "I feel like a pint, do you wanna go for a beer?"

Girl: "But it’s only half past one!"

Guy: "Yeah, but I’ve been up since eight."

Ahaha. Irish people drink frequently.