Thursday, October 30, 2003
Theatre lecture right this second. So very quickly:
Just wanted to note this: that I am so very, very glad to be living in a country where, when rifling my bag for a bookmark, the only thing I can find is a beer coaster from last night.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
I'm BA-ACK!
So I ran out of milk this morning. Not like I could have sworn there were about 5 quarts in that fridge last night or anything. Anyway, I ended up having to munch my X-Men 2 cereal (I shit you not; it was really cheap, €1.30 or something, and hey, I'm in college. Also they have Bart Simpson Eat My Shorts cereal, which is on my list) with something like ten drops of milk. I almost considered dumping my coffee in the bowl.
Following the weekend in Galway, sparse details of which will be related momentarily, I have become obsessed with frugality. I did this massive shopping the night we came back, Monday, and bought a week's worth of groceries for €50, which means I bought nothing over €3. I was very proud. This preoccupation arises from my serious misgivings about having spent €90 on accommodation alone this weekend, though I do not, of course, regret a second of it.
So Galway. The weather was lousy, nothing but sun and blue goddamn skies all day long. But the craic was class. We spent the first night at Mrs. MacCallion's B&B, which was perfectly nice, if a little less than chaleureux and welcoming. Though the missus did warm up considerably when I asked who played that fiddle on the shelf there (her husband). The advantage of that place over the next place (because we only stayed one night, as it had been already booked for the next two) was that it a) had a bathroom with toilet in the room, and b) it had a television on which we chanced to watch an episode of Bionic Woman, which is a fantastic show from the seventies, so brilliantly bad you can't take your eyes away.
The next night we moved over to another place, De Sota, right down the road, which, while having two communal bathrooms for 6 rooms (there were showers and sinks in the rooms, though), was nevertheless a lovely place, and the lady who ran it considerably more pleasant that Mrs. MacCallion. The breakfasts were all most welcome and abundant.
When we managed to get out, which we did with some, though not great, measure of success, we made it a weekend of Ceol agus Craic (KAY-ol A-gus CRACK), or Music and Good Times. Yes, that is almost all the Irish I know. It's ridiculously hard. You try pronouncing Taoiseach and Tanaiste (answers and definitions at bottom). The music in Galway is brilliant, some truly class trad sessions. Monroe's proved the finest for trad, as Taaffe's (yes, that is how it's spelled) turned out some very lackluster performances, and Tis Ceili was erratic, but the highlight was probably the noontime jazz 'n' blues band at the King's Head on Sunday. You haven't really lived until you've heard an old white Irish guy in a tracksuit play trombone and belt out bawdy blues in a Muddy Waters/John Lee Hooker voice. Outstanding.
I know whoever was on the theatre trip is reading this now and trying to remember the places I'm talking about. Ben, you never went to the An Pucan pub with us that night. On Sunday afternoon, though, when we went there for lunch, my food took so long to come that they brought me another Guinness on the house AND a bowl of soup for Marie, who hadn't even ordered anything. But maybe you remember that cathedral with the eerie lovely greenglowing dome? First stop we made. And of course we walked by the Kinlay House. I hadn't been there in three and a half years, but I found I remembered it almost perfectly. It didn't matter that our B&B was almost a kilometer out. Every morning we walked by the cathedral, the National Uni of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway, where Sarah Seltzer is now), the Town Hall theatre, where we all saw Loco County Lonesome that night. That theatre trip has turned out to have more of an effect on me that I'd expected: I find I remember virtually every single detail of it.
Marie and I are trying to juggle work and play, and play is winning handily. She has an absurd amount to do, and I really need to read Turn of the Screw and some Lacan by Friday, and that's just not happening. It's a pity because TotS is the first book I'm really pumped about doing. Tess of the Dooberheads is appropriately titled; my tutorial class, headed by our tutor (who's also the lecturer), spent the discussion period wondering, not debating, wondering (I've never participated in a wonder session in a class before; it was liberating) whether Hardy was a) an impossible genius, b) completely unacquainted with the spirit of woman, or c) just stupid. By the end of the period we were leaning towards b and c. The tutor, who is quite a good lecturer when she's not boring you to tears, was surprisingly contumelious of Hardy, which made me wonder if this book hadn't been expressedly selected as an example of how NOT to write about women. Sam, I mentioned to my class your comment that Hardy hadn't the faintest notion how to write about women, and elaborated that it had been in my head throughout my reading; it was of course emphatically seconded, not least by the tutor. I actually got about 200 pages through it, though a full 150 of those had to be read on the bus back from Galway.
Right now, Marie's tooling around Dublin by herself for the first time, because I had an 11am tutorial on the Essay (this is her first time she's actually gotten into Dublin during the day; the past two days she's spent working in the apartment while I've been in class). The assignment (the first written one for any class this year) was "Critique your own education." In 500 words. I said That's impossible. I said I could write a book on it. I said I think I will write a book on it. Or at the least a big old hairy essay. Then I will probably foist it on my beleaguered audience. Then I thought of doing an evil villain laugh, like, Bwahaha, but then realized it was like so totally trite.
We did get out a little last night, though. There was a party for Trinity Hallsters at this club, but when we all got there (6 of us came together), we found it dead as a dungeon, relatively. There might have been 50 people, max, where there should have been 300. It was strange. So Marie and I pretty much turned around and cut out immediately, as we'd already gotten in some decent partying earlier back at halls, where there was a shindig in the sports hall with free beer and pizza. I'll repeat that: free beer and pizza.
Once more. Free. Beer. And. Pizza. All together now: YES! OH, YES! WOOHOO!
I think I'll scarper off now, as I'm dying to get Marie into the old library, and then bounce around An Lar (City Center) for an hour or two before my 3pm RomRev lecture. I think it's Blake today. I hope it's Blake today, because that would mean that I have, for once, done the reading for that class.
I miss you so, meine lieblings!
Answers:
Taoiseach=TEE-shock (Prime minister--guy by name of Bertie Ahern)
Tanaiste (missing essential accents because Blogger can't deal with them)=TAN-ish-ta (vice prime minister--woman named Mary something, I can't remember)
Following the weekend in Galway, sparse details of which will be related momentarily, I have become obsessed with frugality. I did this massive shopping the night we came back, Monday, and bought a week's worth of groceries for €50, which means I bought nothing over €3. I was very proud. This preoccupation arises from my serious misgivings about having spent €90 on accommodation alone this weekend, though I do not, of course, regret a second of it.
So Galway. The weather was lousy, nothing but sun and blue goddamn skies all day long. But the craic was class. We spent the first night at Mrs. MacCallion's B&B, which was perfectly nice, if a little less than chaleureux and welcoming. Though the missus did warm up considerably when I asked who played that fiddle on the shelf there (her husband). The advantage of that place over the next place (because we only stayed one night, as it had been already booked for the next two) was that it a) had a bathroom with toilet in the room, and b) it had a television on which we chanced to watch an episode of Bionic Woman, which is a fantastic show from the seventies, so brilliantly bad you can't take your eyes away.
The next night we moved over to another place, De Sota, right down the road, which, while having two communal bathrooms for 6 rooms (there were showers and sinks in the rooms, though), was nevertheless a lovely place, and the lady who ran it considerably more pleasant that Mrs. MacCallion. The breakfasts were all most welcome and abundant.
When we managed to get out, which we did with some, though not great, measure of success, we made it a weekend of Ceol agus Craic (KAY-ol A-gus CRACK), or Music and Good Times. Yes, that is almost all the Irish I know. It's ridiculously hard. You try pronouncing Taoiseach and Tanaiste (answers and definitions at bottom). The music in Galway is brilliant, some truly class trad sessions. Monroe's proved the finest for trad, as Taaffe's (yes, that is how it's spelled) turned out some very lackluster performances, and Tis Ceili was erratic, but the highlight was probably the noontime jazz 'n' blues band at the King's Head on Sunday. You haven't really lived until you've heard an old white Irish guy in a tracksuit play trombone and belt out bawdy blues in a Muddy Waters/John Lee Hooker voice. Outstanding.
I know whoever was on the theatre trip is reading this now and trying to remember the places I'm talking about. Ben, you never went to the An Pucan pub with us that night. On Sunday afternoon, though, when we went there for lunch, my food took so long to come that they brought me another Guinness on the house AND a bowl of soup for Marie, who hadn't even ordered anything. But maybe you remember that cathedral with the eerie lovely greenglowing dome? First stop we made. And of course we walked by the Kinlay House. I hadn't been there in three and a half years, but I found I remembered it almost perfectly. It didn't matter that our B&B was almost a kilometer out. Every morning we walked by the cathedral, the National Uni of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway, where Sarah Seltzer is now), the Town Hall theatre, where we all saw Loco County Lonesome that night. That theatre trip has turned out to have more of an effect on me that I'd expected: I find I remember virtually every single detail of it.
Marie and I are trying to juggle work and play, and play is winning handily. She has an absurd amount to do, and I really need to read Turn of the Screw and some Lacan by Friday, and that's just not happening. It's a pity because TotS is the first book I'm really pumped about doing. Tess of the Dooberheads is appropriately titled; my tutorial class, headed by our tutor (who's also the lecturer), spent the discussion period wondering, not debating, wondering (I've never participated in a wonder session in a class before; it was liberating) whether Hardy was a) an impossible genius, b) completely unacquainted with the spirit of woman, or c) just stupid. By the end of the period we were leaning towards b and c. The tutor, who is quite a good lecturer when she's not boring you to tears, was surprisingly contumelious of Hardy, which made me wonder if this book hadn't been expressedly selected as an example of how NOT to write about women. Sam, I mentioned to my class your comment that Hardy hadn't the faintest notion how to write about women, and elaborated that it had been in my head throughout my reading; it was of course emphatically seconded, not least by the tutor. I actually got about 200 pages through it, though a full 150 of those had to be read on the bus back from Galway.
Right now, Marie's tooling around Dublin by herself for the first time, because I had an 11am tutorial on the Essay (this is her first time she's actually gotten into Dublin during the day; the past two days she's spent working in the apartment while I've been in class). The assignment (the first written one for any class this year) was "Critique your own education." In 500 words. I said That's impossible. I said I could write a book on it. I said I think I will write a book on it. Or at the least a big old hairy essay. Then I will probably foist it on my beleaguered audience. Then I thought of doing an evil villain laugh, like, Bwahaha, but then realized it was like so totally trite.
We did get out a little last night, though. There was a party for Trinity Hallsters at this club, but when we all got there (6 of us came together), we found it dead as a dungeon, relatively. There might have been 50 people, max, where there should have been 300. It was strange. So Marie and I pretty much turned around and cut out immediately, as we'd already gotten in some decent partying earlier back at halls, where there was a shindig in the sports hall with free beer and pizza. I'll repeat that: free beer and pizza.
Once more. Free. Beer. And. Pizza. All together now: YES! OH, YES! WOOHOO!
I think I'll scarper off now, as I'm dying to get Marie into the old library, and then bounce around An Lar (City Center) for an hour or two before my 3pm RomRev lecture. I think it's Blake today. I hope it's Blake today, because that would mean that I have, for once, done the reading for that class.
I miss you so, meine lieblings!
Answers:
Taoiseach=TEE-shock (Prime minister--guy by name of Bertie Ahern)
Tanaiste (missing essential accents because Blogger can't deal with them)=TAN-ish-ta (vice prime minister--woman named Mary something, I can't remember)
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