if it's something major, it's on my pager

I didn't ask for a shrink - that must've been somebody else. Also, that pudding isn't mine. Also, I'm wearing this suit today because I had a very important meeting this morning and I don't have a crying problem.

ahhhhh, a favorite quote of mine from punch drunk love.

we are in the seventh inning stretch o the day. a tennessee preacher has been found shot dead and his wife and three girls are missing. cnn.com has reported a newspiece involving a "droopy pants suspect" who was chased by car and foot by the LAPD. a 24-year-old woman who has been missing since age 14 was found two blocks away from her father in the home of a middle school crossing guard.

meanwhile, in holland, the sun is shining and i'm barely awake. lately i've been thinking what fun it would be to go to summer for a long weekend getaway. oh god summer unhhhhhhhhh iloveyousomuch. please hurry. oh yes and please let time turn back so i can be a kid in school who doesn't do crap during the warm months. or please give me a teaching certificate.

"that reminds me, they weren't dead, but i saw 3 deer at the park yesterday."

of course, i'm quoting the great christine chambers, my own mother, who spoke that brilliant piece on the phone when i told her about some roadkill i saw on the freeway.

things are going well. i was able to enjoy a beer at founders the other day and it wasn't even after 11 p.m., it was a decent hour. that means work is becoming more bearable and i'm in generally better spirits than i have been the past couple of months. also, spring is on the way, which never hurts anything, unless it's an arm and your name is peter. (i hope you feel better soon).

this weekend should be a nice change of pace. i anticipate lots of fun, some cheap tacos, maddy and fatty and franny (my cat). some sleeping in, some needed downtime.

i told a man at the zeeland 7-11 for no reason and in no context this morning that i had once been to a barn fire that killed 300 piglets. his face became a little rumpled and he said, "there must have been a lot of squealing." i said, no, i didn't hear anything, to which he replied that fires do sometimes roar and it probably drowned them out. and i thought that was a good response. he never did ask why i was there. wow, come to think of it, that was a gruesome conversation. sorry to drag you into that.

turn your head and scoff

ahoy! i'm back and i'm a slacker apparently. (this next sentence is dripping with sarcasm) you try spending an entire week FIVE HOURS AHEAD and see what you can get done two weeks after you get back. a roll of the eyes, and i'm on to other subjects.

ireland was great. i saw bar fights and prisons and bullets holes in the pillars of the dublin general post office left after the 1916 easter uprising. i saw drunk irishmen and scottsmen in kilts and rugby matchings in freezing rain (on the tv) and one drunk irishwomen taking cell phone picutres of her breasts, one at a time, for a gentleman nearby. i mean, in a situation like that, do you offer to help? "oh, here, let me take a picture with all of you." i just turned red. she probably could have used the help - those couldn't have been good shots.

now, it's back to work - that's where i am right now. it's 1:30 p.m. on a sunday and i've been at work for a couple of hours and will be here for several more. blaaaah.

did everyone have a nice st. patrick's day? it seems to be one of those holidays where - da da da - the heat is on, the heat is ah-hon to have a good time, and it's like too much pressure because you end up buying some asshole green shirt that says something like "irish girls know how to have fun" or "piss on me, i'm irish" or something equally clever and biting and everyone just devolves into little green-tongued piles of lameness and all of the guys at the bar look the same and damnit you didn't know you were going out and you're wearing glasses and a maroon sweater and people think you're uptight and so like MAYBE YOU ARE, OKAY???!!!!! someone has to drive everyone around, OKAY!!??!!!

needless to say, the night was awesome!!!

no, i'm just kididng. i acutally did have a nice st. patrick's day. i went to scott and amy's around 4, and amy and i had a couple of cocktails and watched emmet and katie color and whatnot, and then fatty showed up and the party really started to get crazy. i had to work yesterday though so obviously not too crazy. i'll probably never go back to the chicago pub sober though, that's for sure.

i'm thinking of having a party at my apartment next weekend. you have to rsvp via my blog though. gosh, technology has changed EVERYTHING! but i always say that.

a portion of an email i sent patrick

disclaimer: because i'm a little too tired to recount this all again in new and witty language, here's a brief description of what i did today as told to a mr. patrick revere (minus all the dirty bits).

today, we took a train to cobh (pronounced cove) which was kind of a sad little seaside village. very beautiful, but a lot of misfortune and sad history there. it was the port from which 2.5 million irish emigrants left for america and elsewhere during the potato famine. it was also the town from where the titanic left for its fated voyage, and is also the town closest to where the lucitania was torpedoed. whew! it was really pretty, but there was this massive, ominus byzantine-style catholic church that was built DURING the potato famine, which makes you wonder.. why spend the money on a big gothic church, when people are starving at your doorstep? there also seemed to be a lot of vacant storefronts, like there were more shops than people. it was a pretty little town because of its location right on the ocean, but there was really something overwhelmingly sad about it. (plus, the museum had a diorama of what it was like for irish emigrants to be on the ships to america during the storms at sea, and one of the mannequin irish gentlemen had rubber vomit coming out of his mouth).

i'm roaming cork on my own this afternoon. i'm about to go get some coffee, and i just walked through this huge really cool market with every kind of food you can imagine. there were these massive wooden bins with tons of olives - mountains of olives (i like olives).

____ stop email

i'm having a great time, we're all getting along really well, and i'm not spending nearly as much as i was afraid i'd have to spend. tomorrow, it's back to dublin for the weekend (scotland v ireland rugby match of saturday is apparently quite an event as you might imagine) and then home on monday.

i hope all is well back there, have someone you love give you a hug for me, please.

p.s. irish stray dogs love me and i mostly love them

this trip is magically delicious

and a bit cold and rainy. i haven't been warm or dry since i arrived, but dude it is great here. we've had some raucious nights out, some gorgeous sight-seeing and a some nasty hangovers but no one has been robbed or injured. SUCCESS.

it's going quickly, this trip. it's been wonderful so far. we've gone from dublin to cork and met some fabulous and not-so-fabulous people. this is a place that i feel could absorb you easily.

lots o fun stuff to report, i'll do it soon when i'm not being charged £1 per 10 mins.

see you all sooner rather than later...

a mustachioed man has hijacked my will to blog

actually, that's not true. but he does have a rather thick head of hair, and he has decreed that no employees may post to their blogs while on computers at the xy sentinel. my neighbor's unlocked wireless connection is dodgy at best (the bastard!), hence the lag in posts.

so how are you darlings? savoring these last precious weeks of winter, i hope. i'm leaving town for similar climes in ireland monday. does anyone need any oirish knitwear? you'd better let me know soon!

let's see.. what's new... i am now the official city reporter. my brother is on a cruise. my mother left 12 mixing bowls of water and kibble for our two very elderly cats on grosse ile when she turned her back on them and went to arizona. i had to deal with that scene last weekend when i went home to get my passport. the cats probably could have lived for 5 years on what she left behind. it was pretty funny actually. you'd go to make something and there were just no mixing bowls in the house that did not contain whisker lickin' kibble. maddy and fatty and i went to ann arbor to check out the hands-on children's museum while we were back on the east side. they've probably more than doubled the size of that place since i was there as a lass, but my favorite exhibits were STILL all the ones i had remembered from when i was a kid. just goes to show - don't f*** with what works, you know?

well, hey. have a good week. i'll try to post from the emerald isle, but don't hold your g-d breath o rabid readers.