Catherine > Recent Status Updates

“When you have some skills but don’t fully understand your environment, there is no way you can be a plus one. At best, you can be a zero. But a zero isn’t a bad thing to be. You’re competent enough not to create problems or make more work for everyone else.”

"One lifetime isn't enough to make all the trouble of which I am capable."

"Like, why did she choose me to be comfortable with, or whatever? Why couldn't she have just left me alone?"

"My wife has been a walking anachronism for years. Decades. Since she could walk."

"We wait for signs that we will be saved, or protected from future harm, or endowed with unusual good luck. And often, we find them."

"Passionate people create too many problems: they are reckless."

"...suddenly it was clear that building an opera house was a basic act of human survival."

"...all of those translucent cousins who looked at her like she was a llama who had wandered into their holiday dinner."

"...all of those translucent cousins who looked at her like she was a llama who had wandered into their holiday dinner."

"...all those translucent cousins who looked at her like she was a llama who had wandered into their holiday dinner."

"You hold this book, our story, in your hands ... now with considerably more pages on the left side than on the right. Like you, I've been there a thousand times. We both know, writer and reader, like the proverbial sand in the hourglass, the seconds on the shot clock, the story is over."

"... the Calgary Flames made it to the finals but lost the Cup to Tampa Bay, which may or may not be because of a bad call by the referees in the game where a goal was not counted but, in the instant replay, you could tell for sure it was over the line."
This book was published in 2005, but it's always so weird for me when there's references to events that I'm intimately familiar with.

"I believe the best the dead can hope for is to be conjured from time to time, through a note of haunting music or a passage in a book."

I thought I'd bookmarked some of the passages in this book, but apparently not. Even without reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I can't help but wonder how similar it is.

"Women don't really want candles and bubble baths — they want men to be present. They want to get on with the business of living in the world. Lasting contentment and home, rather than temporary bliss and escape."

"You're able to make sensible stories out of ... other people's messes."

"It's not a calling, but I think it suits my personality. ...It's very precise and technical. ... It's not the kind of job that many people think they could do. Not that they'd want to. Most people would find it boring."

"If she's doing something and is determined about it, she'll define determination, and if she wants something, she will pursue it with a passion and dedication that could bring a veteran grandmother of 12 to her knees."

"Y'is American?" they asked. "More or less." ... "Is it like here, then?" I thought about Emain Macha, about the competing cathedrals, the "Sniper at Work" signs, the mythic landscapes and neglected holy wells. "No," I said. "It's nothing like here." ,

"... accidental meeting which carried out the old adage of, 'turn a corner and meet your fate.'"

"What must it be like to grow up plying inside castles? Among towers and turrets?" In Cork, the graveyard next to our hostel doubled as a dog park and playground.

"The soup in question was, of course, vegetable." I can't explain this one, but it is absolutely a saving grace to vegetarians in Ireland.

"The waymarkers, I realized, were more congratulatory than purposeful."
The thing I enjoy so much about this book is that some things would sound so ridiculous, if I hadn't just experienced it myself.

"Now, there are, by my estimation, 287,042 different types of shower fixtures in Northern Ireland, no two of which are the same. ... They come pre-broken, I believe, to save time and effort. ... Having survived ... the dribble by tap that is an Irish shower ..."
Yup. The first shower in Dublin we had was crazy, but we didn't realize how good we had it.

Proof of how much was crammed into our heads in three weeks ... we heard this story of the warrior-poet Ossian, but I don't remember being told that he was the son of Finn McCool.

"I followed what I thought was a path but turned out to be just another sheep trail. It meandered through the heather awhile before simply ... vanishing as though the sheep in question had either lifted off or been sucked under. This was definitely sheep-swallowing territory, so I suspected the latter."

"No bears or snakes in Ireland, but the drivers were doing their part to keep things interesting."