Okay, you can all rest easy.

No more mopiness. In a much, much better mood (even though I have crappy class tomorrow). It's not like I was tragically running through the streets of London, listening to Morrissey or The Cure or something while wailing and gnashing my teeth (though that could be an interesting social experiment ...), but it's gotten much more fun to be here as of the last several days.

Friday was long. Holy crap. I got up too early, got some coffee, took a dumbass test, then finally got to hang out with people. We THEN got to go on a lovely death march around the Inns of Court, which wasn't really all that excruciating. I just enjoy complaining a lot. Afterwards, me and some of the girls went to go warm up and have hot cocoa, etc. After the three catholics (myself included) made clear that you don't spontaneously combust if you do not genuflect in church, we finally got to go to the London Eye. I was really glad we survived that - it is HIGH up there, and scary, no matter what people tell you.

Then was free dinner (FREE WINE) time. I need a sober sister to follow me at all times, because even though it's free, it doesn't mean I have to have as much as is humanly possible! Oof. That really made the evening entirely too much fun, though - I don't have idiotic pictures of myself and others, but everyone else seems to!

I managed to make it up to my friend Jeanyne's place last night to watch a movie with her and Liz. Since everyone's said I'd love it, I made them watch "Love Actually," which really made us geek out every time they showed a shot of London that included somewhere we'd been. We're idiots. But yes, after much drinking, tomfoolerly, junk food and girlie movies, the weekend ended on a higher note than I thought possible.

If I had an evil monkey who lived in my closet, I'd probably be yelling "I am in NO MOOD!" at it right now.

Meh.

I completely woke up on the wrong side of the bed; I've been in a funk since late last night, when I couldn't fall asleep. That sucked. I know I'm running on too little sleep (because I'm a baby), and the weather isn't helping much - it was semi-snowing this morning when I walked to my NINE AM class (to find, alas, that nobody was there, even though it was five after. We then proceeded to wait an hour for the professor to show. Awesome). AND the coffee place messed up my order for the third time in a row. I'm not a mumbler, so they're just dumb - that's my determination, at least. So yeah, kind of not in the best mood.

We also have our first final tomorrow. I want to punch something.

I remember what Rebekah was saying when she was in France, but her time over there was for a full year. I'm still getting the whole homesick thing, though, and it doesn't help knowing that I'm missing out on fun stuff. Not that anyone should put crap on hold for me, just that I wish I had people here who I could commandeer with my inane requests to go out drinking or do stupid stuff in general. Partners in crime are lovely things to have.

I also miss just leaving the house and driving around, a LOT (both the missing and the amount of driving, I guess). I never really thought about how much I'd just do that last year and this fall, especially when I was in a shitty mood. Having no car makes it annoying, to say the least, and I just don't get that same tranquility by sitting on the tube, sad to say. Heh.

In more fun news, though, I'm about to book a (far too expensive) ticket to Prague!! Also, we had the moot court dinner on Tuesday - not as delightful as the gentlemanly debate, I have to say, but free wine. Come ON. And our mooters did a great job; much better than I would have done if I'd been standing there, being questioned by a justice of some court that I don't even know, PLUS having to deal with English law. I see my head exploding in that situation.

I drank far too much wine, needless to say. I walked by a KFC the next morning and it smelled so. Good. Ah well. Avoidance is my policy over here, bitches, and I'm doing pretty well so far!

I don't think modern art is my thing.

[First off - godDAMN, Mo, you did NOT have to send all that! But thank you; you made my day. Especially after I broke a shoe this morning and was in no mood. :) Except now it's going to make me all fat, but it's not my fault since you're forcing me to enjoy it, heh.]

This might bug Thea a little, but I just. don't. get the modern art thing. I mean, there was a Rothko and some Soviet propaganda at the Tate Modern that I really liked, and some other stuff, but most of it? Man. I'm just inappropriately juvenile, I guess. At least we heard other people making fun of some of it, otherwise we could have been completely and entirely alone in our mockery. Out loud, though - my guess is that it's a 50-50 balance of those who come to appreciate the art and those of us who kind of want to understand it, but end up running around the giant display of white boxes like we're playing a spy game. So, in essence, it was fun!

Not much else going on - the hand seems to be healing nicely, so definite bonus there. I've been sitting around most of the weekend just organizing myself - if anyone wants to give me a summer job, feel free. I have to say, olympics on British tv are much nicer to all the competitors, but it's great when they're talking about someone falling like "that's JUST what we needed! Not that falling is a good thing, but it totally helps us! Cheers!" They are also obsessed with curling, and since the women's team isn't doing so hot, the tv commentators are all mildly pissy at the moment. It's also strange to be watching winter olympics when it's very much not cold out - suffice it to say I would enjoy a little bit of snow right now (a LITTLE. Not a lot).

Notes from a cripple

The hand issue is preventing me from typing a lot, so this is gonna be short. I'm hoping just to avoid it getting dirty or anything, but I have this fear that I'll take off the bandage tomorrow and it'll just be one of those horror scenes from a movie, all "hey, what's tha - OH MY GOD, IT'S GROWING!! AND CHANGING COLOR!!! And BREATHING ON ITS OWN!!!!"

So hopefully it won't do that.

Tonight looks like I'll be hitting the Tate Modern (finally!) and then going to a "Mexican" bar. This may be somewhat of an adventure, seeing as how there appears to be no decent Mexican food anywhere in the entire city. I guess being blessed with hordes of Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants requires a compromise somewhere, but I'll just be aching for enchiladas when I get home, I can tell. Everyone tells me it's a good thing I've never had Taco Bell (save for a bag of chips, which so does not even come close to counting); I consider it an excellent thing I've never really had Taco Bell, but probably not for the same reasons they do.

Ow.

Yesterday started out pretty boring, but man - can't shake the early morning headaches. I knew it was going to be a boring weekend, so I successfully gathered the ingredients to make some roasted potatoes. I sent out a sad-sack email to everyone who was going to be in town to tell them that I'm looking for stuff to do, and went about doing whatever. My friend Liz texts me to say that they're watching "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and I should come over, so I make to finish my dinner and get the hell out of there.

You know what are good things to have? Oven mitts.

So as of now, I have a gargantuan blister on my left hand from where I grabbed the pan and was not paying attention to the paper towel coverage on the handle. It REALLY hurts, and I'm afraid it's going to burst when I go work out later. I was going to look up how to treat it on webmd like the wound-too-tight person I fear I am sometimes, but I keep forgetting. Maybe I should do that now!

So it's going to be very boring this weekend because my three housemates all went to Torino. It would have been nice to go, but (a) WAY too expensive, and (b) I don't think I'd really relish dealing with any extremely patriotic crowds of anyone at an olympic event, sanctioned or otherwise. It's weird having everything happen at basically real time, though - not that you'd be able to tell that from BBC coverage, though, since it's the same chippy, waaaaaay too cheery woman discussing how great curling is or something at 7 every night. *sigh*

The weather's been mostly the same here - not to sound whiny, but I really could make do with a large dumping of snow. At least if that happened here, I'd get to watch the Brits all freak out while I walked around in sandals or something. Hee.

Randomness

-They passed a smoking ban in London for the bars and clubs!!!! Unfortunately, it won't take effect until next summer, but damn. I get to leave my legacy of bitching about bar smelliness behind. If only they'd do this in Milwaukee ...(and sorry to my smoking friends, but you know it's totally the way to go. Come on!)

-Valentine's Day. Woo. I think the Royal Mail (faaaaaaaancy, I knooooow - it's really called that) tried to deliver something this morning, but I was really running around the place and didn't know if it was MY room or someone else's that buzzed. It could have not even been me, and if it WAS for me, it could have been non-valentiney goodness. I'll probably find out tomorrow morning at like 8am when they come back and buzz my room while I'm totally trying to sleep, yay.

-I'm tempted to cut my hair even shorter. Thank the lord I don't really have enough money to do that right now.

-Do you know what's even better than salt and vinegar chips? Salt and BALSAMIC vinegar chips! Oh. Sweet. Jesus. Yes.

-I miss having people (mainly guys) who I can shoot the shit with, watch the OC (and other lovely television programming), and drink more beer than is normal or good for me. There's nowhere good to hang out here (the lounge does NOT count as good, trust me), and the people are nice, but not "gentlemanly" nice.

-I really cannot wait to get back to the States and buy stuff knowing that it pretty much can't get cheaper than it is unless I were to buy it in a third-world country. Or Canada. Fucking exchange rate.

That's all I can think of, but I know there was something else I was going to write about. I blame it on lack of sleep.

Yay fun.

So ... I've found a class that is COMPLETELY more boring than anything Grenig has ever taught. EVER. It's called EU Law, and it's hellish. I'm in it right now, and really have nothing to say other than she's discussing a case we've talked about at least twice before, and she's covering the same damn things. Cassis? I know all about it. I don't need to know anything more about it, but apparently the professor thinks otherwise.

I appear to have missed a chunk of the Scotland trip in my narrative. Bri was making friends at the bar the first night we were in Edinburgh, and Matt came back to tell Heather and I that she had a "winner." Apparently our looks of shock when the guy walked into the room must have been hilarious, since Matt just busted out laughing. We deemed the offending male "sweater boy" - at one point, he took it off and tied it over his shoulders (thank god for button-down shirts, that's all I have to say).

Seriously, this is so boring. That wasn't even a good trip excerpt, but I had to find something to do during this class. I may go and buy the largest cadbury egg known to man today if I have to cheer myself up/nothing exciting happens, but we shall see. If I DO, there will so totally be a picture of it.

You Guys, I Totally Ate Haggis.

For real. Wasn't the most delicious thing, but it was mainly a texture issue. Ugh.

Aaaaaaaanyway! Scotland was great. We took the train to Glasgow after our classes on Thursday, one of which was cancelled, which gave us time to buy our train wine. Whee! So we get to Euston Station and get our pre-ordered tickets, at which time we realize we're morons and are completely not sitting together. Well, the four of us managed to be relatively near each other, and by two hours in we were able to sit somewhat near each other. Finally, Bri finagled a table with four seats, so we proceeded to eat a dinner of Pringles and wine (and some nasty cider, in Matt's case) and play spades. We are kickass.

So we get to Glasgow and are, shall we say, underwhelmed. It's great that we were traveling as a group of four, because we were able to get our own room in a hostel for a beyond-decent price. Matt, Bri and I went out to find out what was happening - apparently, not much on a Thursday night! We found a wine bar with not-too-bad prices, so we got even tipsier before we finally headed back to the hostel.

Friday, we woke up and headed to the Glasgow cathedral - very pretty from the outside, but we didn't have the time or means to really make a major tour of it. The cathedral also seemed to be the only major old attraction, which was sort of depressing. We made it to the car rental place, got our car, and proceeded to have Matt shift while Heather tried not to stall (yes, it was a manual. Yes, Heather was on the insurance. No, she did not know how to drive manual. Oops). Surprisingly, that ended without any injury, and we only got a little lost on our way out of the city (and I would like to maintain that although I was the navigator, it was totally not my fault that we went the wrong way because someone turned where he wasn't supposed to, I think. That's what I'm sticking to).

We drove out of the city and headed north toward Loch Lomond, with me playing the role of mom and handing out food to everyone in the car. It was a gorgeous lake, full of swans and general prettiness. We drove around for a while, stopped at a little tourist center, got dangerously close to the end of a pier, took ridiculous photos (um, in my case), and got the best soup EVER (again, just me).

I moved to the backseat after that and immediately learned that windy roads + me + no direct view of the front = not so awesome. After that, we headed toward Stirling, where the William Wallace monument is located (and, more obviously, Stirling Castle). The town was incredibly cute, but we kind of got there a little late to actually DO anything besides troll the gift shop for bagpipe-related paraphernalia. Disturbingly, they were selling haggis in boxes. Ew.

After that, it was a smooth (and kinda short) drive to Edinburgh, where we ran into the fun that is rush-hour traffic. We had an adventure navigating the streets, managing to arrive at the rental car place at 5:58. No kidding. One of the employees clearly understood that we were ridiculously disoriented American students and offered to give us a ride to our hostel, which was WAAAAAAY nicer than he needed to be, for real. We made it safely there, trolled around the city for a while, ate dinner (which included my aforementioned haggis experience - only a bite, and nothing that I need to repeat) and learned that Edinburgh probably contains more Irish boys than the entire country of Ireland does.

Saturday was our "wander around the town" day, and we also met up with Amber, who made it early that morning. We made it to Edinburgh castle, which was lovely, then a little windy, then a LOT windy, then "kill me with a slap to the face" cold and windy. It was fun! Afterwards it started drizzling, as you do in Scotland, and we ran around to different shops. We checked out the House of Parliament, which is ... not so formal-looking as you would expect. It was windy as HELL, so we decided to hike it back up to a pub and watch the rugby (this week it was England v. Italy). Everyone in Scotland hates England, and an Irish guy kindly introduced himself to me, commandeered the conversation, was impressed by my slowly improving knowledge of rugby, and explained why England is so hated. It was also fun! England, of course, won.

After that we headed for an "Edinburgh Ghost Tour" - cheesily lame at the beginning, but the tour took us into the city vaults, which (a) freaked my shit out and (b) was just generally creepy. After that we found a nice Italian place and stuffed ourselves silly, which led to us all going back to the hostel and Heather, Matt and I watching the Family Guy movie - be proud, everyone who wanted me to do that.

Matt woke up early and wanted to hike to Arthur's Seat and watch the sunrise. As it was cloudy and we were all tired, we all crapped out on him except for Amber. Once we finally got up, he'd gotten back, and we all went out to go to the museum. Of course the museum was closed, so we wandered around (again, but Edinburgh is actually an excellent city for doing that). Bri, Matt and I made it to an *incredible* chocolate place, where we had quite possibly the best hot chocolate ever. I also bought four way-too-expensive hand-painted truffles, which I'm completely afraid to eat.

We managed to make it to our 1:00 train on time; Bri, Matt and I finagled seats that were relatively close to each other. Unfortunately, Heather had to sit in her assigned seat, but she was the only one with real reading material, so it probably worked out best for her, heh.

So, that's Scotland - gorgeous, kind of cold (but already had flowers growing, so totally not as cold as Wisconsin is right now), varied weather, an incredible amount of historical buildings, and haggis-filled. I am not eating that stuff again (but they DO make vegetarian haggis, which ... not so much, I think).

Guinness!

Guinness!
Originally uploaded by good_noodle82.

This is what I did this past weekend. I am awesome.

Hopefully I'll have some sort of whiskey distillery tour photos to show from this COMING weekend, but we shall see. A girl can only be so lucky, you know.

Ireland! (this is hecka long)

I'll probably have to edit this continuously, since I'm tired and all. Yay!

So we got there on Thursday night at about 10:00. Let me tell you, Ryanair? It was a fucking cattle car. No joke. We made the grievous error of sitting in the last row of the plane, which meant we couldn't put anything under the seat in front of us for "security regulations." "Security regulations" my ass, those stewardesses were bitches. And it was THE most clown-car of flights I've ever been on, which is awesome, yet frightening.

So we got there, all took out our Euros, and I dorkily pointed out exactly where my friend had met my brother and I when we visited (hi Al!) - I'm cool like that. Actually, even before that was the friendliest customs guy ever - may have been hitting on me, given how often that shit happened during the rest of the trip. He asked me why I came there for a vacation, and "because I like it here?" must have been a good enough answer!

We got into town, got to our hostel (Isaacs Hostel; not too bad, but a bit out of the centre and north of the Liffey) and kind of had an awkward meeting with the Eastern European mother and daughter who were in the same room. The mother's main communication method seemed to be angsty sighs and conversing in whatever language, but clearly about us. "Americano" just translates well. That was the point when my friend Liz said "oh, it's okay. We're not American, we're Canadian." The mother suspiciously stopped mentioning either Americans or Canadians after THAT lovely statement, heh.

There was also an Asian girl who was dead asleep, but who had made the grievous error of taking one of my compatriot's sheets. Man. That did not go over so well with said compatriot. Anyway.

[EDIT!!! So I forgot one of the stupidest/most awesome things!!! We were wandering around the first night after we got falafel (mmm) and came across some club with paparazzi outside. We just stood there, then saw some cars and some lights flashing something about the Irish Music Awards. We asked the guy next to us what the hell was happening, and he said that it was the post-party for the awards. We decided to stick around for a while and see what the fuss was all about, and then this car pulled up and the paparazzi got all antsy. These guys get out and flashes abound, and we're all kind of thinking "that guy looks like Bono." Well, it wasn't, because we're dumb. It WAS Bono's friend, though, and some other guy from an '80s band (The Velvet Prunes? We don't really remember what the guy said). So yes. We saw NotBono, and possibly some other famous Irish people that we didn't at all know were famous.]

We woke up the next morning and did the "full Irish breakfast" thing while I gave the old Bewley's site a little salute (in my head). The breakfast wasn't bad at all, but was a bit more meat than I'd eat at breakfast. Ever. After that, we walked the 2937592384752 miles to Kilmainhaim Gaol, which was excellent to see. Honestly, I'm damn glad I didn't go there with my brother, because it's definitely one of those "we're all Irish history nerds, yay!" things that just needs to be done in similar company.

After that, it was off to the Guinness brewery (again). I had a moment of panic when I saw that they had a new room where they were doling out tiny tastes of beer, but I asked and was reassured that these were just so that you could taste it as part of the process. The Sky bar was still upstairs and still giving out the precious free pints, yaaaaaaaaaay.

Sadly, I am lame and could still only drink half of a pint. There are probably photos of me wincing somewhere, but I sure as hell am not going to tell you where to find them.

(Also, whoever wanted a "Guinness for Strength" poster? I got you one. Just remind me who you are (and I *think* I know who, but whatever.))

Hmm... after that, we made it to Burdock's fish and chips, which forever be in my heart for its chips with salt and vinegar deliciousness. I don't do the fish. We then walked around a bit more and made it to a really far-too-costly for us restaurant where we had traditional Irish food. Brown bread and butter has a hold on me, damn. Also the cider. Yay Bulmers!

Next day we decided to skip the whole Belfast plan and drive straight to Galway. Of course, we managed to get lost getting out of the city, but pretty much straightened ourselves out quickly. The roads are definitely something else, but it's a pretty drive. It was NOT so pretty when we were thinking we were going to die due to some not-so-amazing driving, but the only damage was when we hit a parked car's side mirror, at which point I apparently said "keepgoingkeepgoingkeepgoingkeepgoing" - no harm, no foul - I think that mantra works (and both mirrors were still attached and unharmed; we checked as we were speeding away).

Galway was ... cloudy. I can see the attraction; the problem was that it was just so dank and cloudy that it wasn't really conducive to walking around outside pleasantly. It's definitely a cute town - reminded my friend Wynnie of a ski village-type place the way it was laid out. We definitely had fun trying to find a parking spot, and by "fun" I mean "nearly five simultaneous heart attacks." The main square was heavily under construction, which sucked, but we managed to park a 5-minute walk away and found our hostel. We walked around the town, I bought shit I don't need, and we had tea with the BEST SCONES EVER. I wanted to go to the counter and buy the others that were sitting there, all waiting to be eaten. I'm such a fan.

We then found a pretty nice bar where we hung out for a while, and then old lightweight me had to go get some food, at which point we found yet another fish and chip shop. Excellent. Seeing as how the bars were kinda random and maaaaaaaaaybe-sketchy, we decided to go back to The Quays, where we had been. Well. It got crowded! With aggressive guys! The only real cute one was the bartender, however, so we just settled and overheard an Irish woman telling her friends that yes, she'd been to the US; yes, New York women were like all American women; and all American women want to do is get an Irish husband. Right. The Irish men WERE grabby, however, which was not ALL bad (well, a lot of it wasn't great, but not horrid).

After that, I had no more Euros left, so we went back to the hostel, at which point we found out it was directly above the bar next door. The bar next door, incidentally, was heavy into the pulsing techno dance music. That was a fun night of sleep.

Next morning we woke up bright and early to take full advantage of the day and drive to the Cliffs of Moher and Aran Island ferry! Yeah, except we get to the street and see a GODDAMN BOOT ON OUR MOTHERFUCKING CAR. It turns out that one of our party had miscalculated how long the ticket would cover, and we were just under an hour short. Oops. Thanks to the extreeeeeeeeemely nice guy at the tourist information place, we were able to call the number, then the Garda, then the number again, and then get the boot off and pay the 80 euro fine. Woo!

So Jeanyne, Liz and I were dropped off by Jeanne and Wynnie, who went to the Cliffs of Moher (and TOTALLY saw the castle that Conan O'Brien visited in possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen on his show. I was disappointed I'd missed seeing it personally, no joke). The three of us caught the ferry to Inis Mór, where we got off and remembered that it was Sunday in a Catholic country. Excellent. We ended up catching a tour that was surprisingly entertaining, and we managed to see most of the island. We ended up at a pub near the ferry, watching Six Nations Rugby (Scotland v. France) and a football match involving Manchester United, I believe. Of course local oldish man came in and started speaking Irish to us, then English, then apparently hitting on me. I had my back to him and was kind of three sheets to the wind on two glasses of cider (I do NOT know why this happens), so I had no clue, but I guess it was walking that fine line between hilarious and "we have to leave here NOW NOW NOW," so that's always going to be a fond memory.

Got back to the mainland, then managed to drive back relatively unharmed to Dublin. We heard some most interesting Irish rap on the way, and we all decided that having news on the hour is not our favorite thing, at all. Also, decent music is rare way out in the west. Anyway, we made it back to Dublin by about 10, parked, got to Isaac's, slept for four hours, woke up at 3:30, got to the (ticket and boot-free!) car, drove to the airport, waited forEVER, hopped on a much nicer and tamer Ryanair flight, and managed to end up safely in London not twelve hours ago.

Oh, fuck. As I write this, they're showing an "insider's guide to Dublin" on tv. Too late, assholes.

But yes - the trip involved much cider, fish and chips, being ogled, having guys think I was Irish and trying to get me agree to revolt in the store that was playing a Celine Dion song, walking a LOT, saying "Bratislaaaaaaaaaava" in a heavy accent far too often, almost dying due to a loaf of bread being in the road to Galway (what? I know.), and my falling in love with all of the furry cows on the Aran Islands. Good times; can't wait for Glasgow and Edinburgh this coming weekend! :)

Euuuuuroooooos!

Only like, one person will get this - as I was digging through my pocket for a euro coin to feed the interweb machine, I got "Pocket Full of Euros" in my head, and it was awesome. Also, we are having way too much mulletary discourse, which is just plain cool.

Had some adventuresome things happen today - will write a much more detailed and generally agreeable account tomorrow when I'm back in London, but suffice it to say that hearing the Irish rap on the drive back from Galway was kiiiiiind of a highlight.

Bravo, British food preservative people. Bravooooo.

It occurred to me today (as I was in the kitchen eating my 23457th piece of bread with a delicious peanut butter/nutella melange (shut UP)) that all the crap food here lasts for-fucking-EVER, while the good food goes bad in, like, two days. It's so aggravating. I ate some pomegranate seeds today, and, well, not my favorite. It could be because they were "use by" January 31 (but, doubtful), or it could be because I remember them much more fondly when I had them last. In 4 year old kindergarten.

It's also EXTRA bothersome because I cannot. stop. eating. I'm really glad that I have all this walking to do, because if that wasn't the case, I'd be in a hell of a situation. These stupid digestives (cookies, basically) are the worst (I LOVE THEM). Add Nutella (which normal people should not do, but as you all know, I am not normal) and it's like gingersnap-chocolate-hazelnut party in my mouth. Good God.

And then I go to wash it down with some skimmed milk and realize that I finished the carton a day ago because (a) it is sized for a wee person who is lactose intolerant and wants to test the waters and (b) it probably expired the day before that.

The mystery kitchen monster has gone through a full third of the gargantuan pasta bag, and has purchased several pork chops and a bag of potatoes that s/he thoughtfully threw on my yogurt in the fridge. Unless this person is a 7-foot behemoth, we're gonna end up having words someday. Fortunately I will avoid coming to blows (at least with that person) this weekend because I'm going to Dublin tomorrow! It's supposed to be a bit warmer there; I'm definitely looking forward to hitting up all the places I didn't get to see when I went with my brother, and we'll be renting a car and driving to Belfast. Photos will be here once I get back, unless I act like the dink I know I am and forget my camera charger or something equally necessary.