Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve updated. I’ve meant to a couple of times, but for some reason I just wouldn’t finish or I’d lose what I typed and just get fed up and leave. Quite a bit has happened, but it seems like I’m the same old Brian.

I’ve been living in Cincinnati for just over 3 months now and I’m loving it more and more everyday. It seems like everything I need is no more than a few minutes away and if the weather were nice, I could walk to a lot of places with no effort. There were many things that were nearby in Franklin, but you still had to drive to get there. The house is great. There are things that I don’t like about it, but I guess that’s going to happen no matter where we are. I still have a couple boxes in the attic at home (mostly stuff that is waiting to be thrown away.) and few things in the closet, but I’ll probably bring those with my on my next trip and be able to say I’m entirely moved out. I just feel like mentioning that Joe is still working on unpacking all of his stuff… haha.

Work sucks. That’s my biggest gripe right now, and calling it a “big gripe” is a bit of an understatement. With the exception of holiday weekends, I’ve worked every weekend since I’ve moved in. That’s just flat out too much. To top it off, other people have gotten the opportunity to have weekends off since then. There have been some weekends where we’ve had light nights and just didn’t need everyone, but on the couple of weekends I going to be off, the lab guy that started in October wouldn’t show up a few days prior, and I would end up being needed to cover the lab for a few days straight, including the weekend, screwing over my chance at going out and enjoying myself. It’s causing loads of stress to me right now and I’m almost to the point where I could end up quitting if I have to keep doing it. They are over-working us, too. Not only are we working a lot of weekends, but we’re working close to 50 hours during the course of the regular week, making each week nearly 60 hours (after working Saturday.) I don’t mind doing it every so often, but working that much in a physical job really takes its toll on a person. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to everyone before, having only Sunday off in a week doesn’t seem like a weekend at all, because technically you’re working at least part of a shift on every day of the week. You get home Sunday morning, go to bed, and wake up in the afternoon and nobody wants to do anything on a Sunday.

I got hurt this past Friday, too. I was cleaning a glass tube on a piece of my equipment when it shattered in my hand. A large piece of the glass sliced directly through my glove and into the palm of my hand, by the base of my thumb. Looking at it now, it doesn’t look too bad, but when it happened, it was bleeding pretty bad, so my boss, Mike, had me go to the hospital to have it checked out. Because I’m a bit squeamish about blood, I had to wait for a cab to take me there. Luckily, once it was wrapped, the bleeding subsided a bit. This was the first time I’ve been to the emergency room since I was an infant. Once there, a nurse did the usual checks and put me in a room after re-wrapping my wound with fresh bandages. I had to wait about 45 minutes until the doctor could come take a look at it. He said he had some patients that were critical so I told him that I don’t mind waiting as long as he needs. He had some nurses X-Ray my hand to make sure there were no pieces of glass left in there and then the nurses cleaned the wound to prepare it for stitches. While cleaning it, my squeamishness kicked in and I went pale, got dizzy and had to lie down for a little while before he could start stitching. He gave me a few shots of lidocane directly into my hand (which hurt) to numb the pain. I didn’t even feel the stitches go in… just a little tugging on my hand. I ended up with 4 stitches, and it was the first time in my life I’ve ever had to get them. After a tetanus shot and a drug test that was required by work (which is really hard to do without feeling in one hand) I called Mikey to come pick me up. I was given a voucher to cover the cost of a cab back, but they said it would be an hour wait before they could get a cab to me. I was there for about 3 and a half hours, which not mentioning the part where my hand had a hole in it, sucked because I had to leave work a mere two hours before they got done for the night.

As if work isn’t enough, I’m trying to finish school while working this much. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I come home, get a shower, and I get about 2-4 hours of sleep before I have to wake up and go to my co-op. It’s not going to the co-op that I don’t like, because that’s actually quite enjoyable, it’s that because they are making me work late and long weeks, I’m dead tired and I don’t feel like I’m giving 100% to my co-op. Luckily, at the end of this month I will have my college credits, and all that I’ll have to do is finish the job before I can go back to a normal schedule. The co-op itself is going slow right now. I’m at a point where I’m waiting for other people to do their part of the job before I can continue mine. Really, once they are done, it may only take a few hours before I’m totally finished. I’ve enjoyed doing this work, but I really just want to not dread Tuesdays and Thursdays anymore. I think that once that is done, that will make me a bit more accepting of the large work schedule I have.

I’d still really prefer to just quit and get some half-assed job where I can enjoy myself at least one day a week. The more and more I think about it, the more I’d just love to find a restaurant job for a few months while I’m working on getting a real job, just so I can be on a first shift schedule and have some time to enjoy myself. The only big downside to that right now is that I have a goal to pay off my car by the end of February, so I’m not going to be able to achieve that if my pay is cut nearly in half.

Now on to the sad news. In late November, Casey, my buddy, was put down. He started losing control of his body and his mind and my mom just couldn’t bear it any longer. It seems like things were a roller coaster ride with his health. He would be doing quite well one week and the next week seem like he couldn’t go another, only to bounce back for a few days. I miss him. I really wish I could just lay next to him on the loveseat one more time as he laid there thinking about whatever it is dogs think about.

Not soon after Casey left us, Mom found out about a real cute dalmatian that was for sale. In December, Cameron, who is no more than a few months old, joined the family. Except for some chewed -up electronics (which dad is not the least bit happy about.) he’s doing quite well. He was really timid at first and would run at the first sign of approaching him, but now I think he’s warmed up to people and is happy to come greet a person.

Thanksgiving and Christmas came and passed and were enjoyable. It felt a bit odd because I didn’t live at home, but I still stayed in Franklin on Christmas Eve so that I would be there in the morning for the traditional Fields Christmas breakfast. The week after Christmas I had off of work until the Tuesday after New Year’s. I was so excited to have this week off, and no more than a day into it I got sick and was miserable the entire time. I wanted to go out and enjoy myself every night, but I felt horrible that whole week, so I ended up sitting on my rump playing video games the entire time, which isn’t a bad way to spend a break, but I really just wanted to get out of the house and not feel like crap.

Remember the incident where I was hit in the Bigg’s parking lot only a few days after moving in? Well just this past week my car FINALLY started being repaired. At first, the father of the girl that hit me wanted to handle it without insurance, but after their non-response for a month, I sent an estimate via certified mail that they didn’t respond to, so I finally got angry and called their insurance company. After a couple of days, they told me that the next step was to contact the other party and they’d call me back when they did. After a few more weeks, I ended up having to call them to find out that they had approved the claim, but didn’t bother calling or anything. So, aside from the pain in the ass the company repairing it caused by not scheduling a rental car like they were supposed to, things are now going smoothly and I should have my car back in a week or so. They didn’t give me an idea of how long it would take, but it for some reason it took more than a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t mind because I’m driving a nice 2005… black Nissan Sentra.

So if I took the time to tell each and every thing that happened… this post wouldn’t be too much longer! Haha. Not that much goes on when you don’t have the time to let it go on.

But for now, I guess that’s enough to read. I’ll try to updated more, but I guess that’s more a matter of how busy my work schedule is, and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up the near future.

See ya.

I know. All of my loyal fans never get to read much about me any more. It’s a habit that comes and goes.

But really nothing has changed. It should have, but hasn’t.

I finished school. There was a whole mess where I never really got registered for my co-op, but Jason fixed it up and basically just wrote the class off, so I’ve been waiting for it to be confirmed by the school that I’m done. I’m still taking a class just for the fun of it. I signed up for flash 2 originally because the co-op made me wish I knew more about flash, but now I really just want to get it done with because I’m sick of perpetually being a student. Yeah, I’ve learned a bunch at college, but I first started college over 5 and a half years ago. It needs to be over with.

So now my quest in life is to get a new job. I had one prospect that started out promising, and just went downhill from there. I responded to an ad in the classifieds for a Graphic Designer for a outdoor sign company, which, although not the dream job, would be a decent start. I got a call back the following morning and the call went something like this:

Him- So how well do you know Illustrator, scale of 1 to 10?
Me- Probably an 8 or 9… good enough that there really aren’t boundries.
Him- Okay… so the position starts at $10-12/hr, but you could work your way up, is that okay?
Me- (not really, but it’s not a factory job, might talk him up to $13)… I might be able to swing that.
Him- Well, the job would be about 40% design, 40% making the signs, and 20% doing installs
Me- (Well… that’s not really a grahic design position… but still better than factory work.) I can deal with that.
Him- Okay, now here’s the problem, I need someone by next Sunday because I need them on a plane to dallas for some training.
Me- No big deal. (free vacation, I guess.)
Him- Because we’re paying for the plane and hotel, it’s unpaid.
Me- (Uhh, the plane, hotel AND time down there are a result of your company.) I don’t know if I can do that.
Him- Well, we might be able to work something out.
Me- (Humor me.) Howabout an interview.
*mutal agreement for Monday at 9AM*

His phone skills… horrible. At one point he was yelling to a co-worker without taking his mouth too far from the phone… then he had to answer a phone and forgot who he was talking to when he got back on the phone with me… but I figured I’d at least see what we can work out. I figured that if I got him excited about me, I could talk him into paying me while I was in Dallas and upping the pay to $13, which I could deal with. It would be an extra 50 minutes of driving everyday, and that extra dollar would basically foot the bill for fuel usage. Seemed fair to me.

So this morning, (SATURDAY, for reference), I was downstairs for a bit, went back upstairs and had a voicemail waiting…

“yeah, this is xxxxx from yyyyyy… I may be wrong, but I thought we had an interview scheduled for 9 this morning, it’s 9:30 now, so gimme a call if you can.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The other stuff I could put up with. It could get better. But it’s apparent to me that this guy would be a terrible, unorganized boss. I could just imagine at the points when I should get a raise (that with that wage, I would NEED) that it wouldn’t happen, or he would forget that it would be a certain amount and make it smaller.

He had to come to the site to get my resume, so I hope on Monday he sees this post. Maybe he’ll understand why I didn’t come for a Saturday interview and why, even if called and reminded him of the right day, I won’t be showing up for a Monday interview.

I know entry-level jobs can be kinda unfavorable, but that was just plain dumb. I’ll take my chances on passing, even if it means a few more weeks… even months… at Cast-fab.

So I guess it’s official. I woke up today, went downstairs and saw today’s mail on the table. On the top of the pile was a cardboard envelope from Cincinnati State with the words "Do Not Bend" on the front. I knew what it was before opening it, but I still grabbed it and ran upstairs with it right away.

Sure enough, my degree is now in my posession. I guess there’s no denying it now. I figured I would get a letter saying "blah, blah, blah, congratulations, etc. etc.", first.

So whoo-hoo! It was a nice topper to a good day.

I stayed up until 2 or so today. I’ll probably be tired as hell tonight, but at least I enjoyed myself for a little while.

I have a habit of seeing how far I can push my car when the fuel light comes on and I’ve gone as much as 40 miles with it on. On my way home from school it came on… so I figured if I was only going to work and back it would last at least until the weekend.

Today Mike and I were going to meet Joe for lunch, so I figured I would have to stop and get gas before getting on the highway. Within 1000 feet of the gas station, it finally happened. I finally pushed my car too far and I ran out of gas. So Mike hopped in the driver’s seat and I pushed it the rest of the way. I want to say I’m stupid for letting it happen, but I actually think it’s pretty funny, and was somewhat entertaining… it was also a hell of a workout! haha!

I went looking at Bikes today. I really want to get a bike so when the weather is nice I can have some good motivation to go outside and do something. I went to the bike shop on Oakley Square today and talked to one of the guys there, who gave me some good info on how to choose a bike and such. I wish I could afford to buy one of their bikes, but their cheapest one is more than I want to spend for some casual rides here and there.

So I think I need some more sleep… so for now…

See ya.

So, my quest for a job continues.

My responsibilities have been reduced to 1, which is non other than work. No classes, no projects, no nothing. I’m free for a little while and I’m already noticing a difference in my ability to sleep more and have more time to loaf around, which is good.

I participated in a weekend film project at the begininng of the month, and it was super-rad. My role wasn’t that big (I gave some flare to the closing credits.) but everyone seemed to like what I did. I felt kinda bad at first because I had to work until it was about 1/3 over with, and I went to school where a few people were to work on it right away… but I ended up not really being able to do anything until about 8 or 9 hours before it was due. I wish I could have had more time, but that’s why it’s a weekend project. We’re supposed to be doing an extended version because we had to chop out a few minutes of it to meet the maximum length, and I hope we don’t flake on that because we had to cut out some good stuff. I still mostly need to get my hands on a copy of the film project version, at least.

PUT CAPTAIN RUMSFELD IN THE CARGO HOLD!

The showing of all the films was last weekend. There were some good ones, and some awful ones. Our’s was pretty good, but it didn’t win. Oh well. Award or not, it was rad.

So that came right after finishing up flash class, and now I have no real responsibilities and plenty of time.

So I’ve resumed my job of watching movies obsessively and playing video games when I’m not doing that and it rocks.

See ya.

So it’s about damn time.

As usual, nothing has changed.

Probably the biggest news is that my family has decided to go to Ireland in September. I’m so freaking excited.

At first my mom and dad said they were going, and I had wanted to go since forever, so they were cool parents and let Joe and I in on the fun. It’ll be our first family vacation… probably since I’ve graduted high school or so.

This past weekend I participated in the 48 film festival. I was part of a HUGE team from school that was loaded with all-stars. I didn’t find out until Sunday, though, that the films are already playing this week… and I don’t have off of work to go see them. Truth be told, I’m a little bummed out about it because I spent my weekend at school to try and help out as much as I could. They asked me to do some things which I got done with plenty of time, and then asked me to change them at least 3 times, and then ended up not using them. Once again, one of the things I did was the credits… only this time I only got to do plain text credits, which seemed like a waste to me. We were allotted 60 seconds for credits, and they chose not to use that 60 seconds. Their loss, I guess. They want me to do graphics for an extended cut of the film, but I’m hesitant to for fear of wasting my time on more work that won’t get used.

I think I’m going to get rid of the flash header on the page. Microsoft got sued for some dumb crap where someone else developed the idea to autorun scripts or something… which includes flash animations. So now whenever my page loads it annoys me to see that the flash animation is clickable. I’ve got a neat idea that I’ve been wanting to do for a little while but I just need to find the time to stop doing other things and do it.

All good things must come to and end, though.

This past week was shutdown week at work. So from Saturday morning until tomorrow night, I haven’t done any work. I’ve done a great job of playing host to some well deserved laziness and fun times.

Last Saturday, Doug, Joe and I went to Emily’s birthday party. (Emily is one of Kristen’s roomates) and we hung around there for a while, got some good drinking on, then moved along to a bar at Newport on the Levee. I wasn’t a big fan of it. But they had alcohol and that was neat. I took plenty of pictures and made new gallery because it’s been over a year since I made one!

The following day I woke up just in time to go to the Reds game. The Reds played the Indians and boy was it hot out! Going to the ball game is always fun, but in the end it turned out kinda cruddy because the Reds lost and I got sunburnt really bad on my arms and face. More than a week later and my face is still red! (Thank God it doesn’t hurt anymore, though!) And again, I took pictures and made a gallery. It’s not as exciting, but who gives a crap?

I came home from the game and hurt so much that all I did all night was sit downstairs on the couch with my laptop, cruising the internet and writing a small script to help me make galleries much easier.

That’s pretty much how the next day went, although I tried to play some video games to help take my mind off of how I wish my skin would grow quicker. On Monday night Joe and I went to spend the night in Franklin so we could enjoy a little time with Mom and Dad, then go to breakfast with them the following morning. Mom’s birthday is on the 4th, but so is Kristen’s neice’s birthday, so we went to breakfast with mom so Joe could go to Dinner with Kristen’s family.

So for dinner, I went over the Bertels’ house with Mike, Doug and Brownie. Mike got the news about 3 or 4 weeks ago that they are moving to Kansas, where they are orginally from and where Mike was born… so it’s quite possibily the last time I will see Mr. and Mrs. Bertels for a while. I know Mike is sorta bummed about the whole thing, but he knows that this is what they’ve wanted to do for a while.

So Tuesday night we all came back to Cincinnati, and we wanted to stay up and enjoy some drinks, but we all were worn out, so we crapped out around midnight. I feel kinda bad because Brownie came down just to go to bed and hang around for a little in the morning.

Wednesday, I played video games most of the day.

Thursday, I played video games most of the day.

Friday, I played video games most of the day, then went to dinner with Mike and Max and Erma’s because Doug is awesome and shares his “food allowance” with us. Came back, waited on Mike to go to a bar, but he was playing a video game until Joe and Doug got home and wanted to go to a bar, so I played video games until then, too. We went out for a couple of beers. I went to Animations bar for the first time… and I have to say I really don’t want to go back. I don’t mind the environment, but by the time I was done with my first drink, the smoke was so bad that my eyes were burning. Then the guys wanted to stay for another one and play a game of pool. It was torture.

Saturday was some more games… and in the mid afternoon, the Emen all went to the Ritter family event known as “Pondfest”. It was lots of fun. The Ritters have a very beautiful house with a large pond in the back. They have some small boats and plenty of yard space for all sorts of outdoor games. Joe flipped the kayak and fell in the pond. Then Mike overshadowed it by doing it himself no more than an hour later. I guess the kayak is bad news. If you know the Ritters, then you know they enjoy some spirited joking and do it quite well… so it goes without saying that Joe isn’t going to live that down for a couple months.

We had a complete 30 minute or so fireworks show at the end of the night, too. It was loads of fun and a big thank-you goes out to the Ritters for giving everyone such a great evening. I took some pictures, but my batteries died and didn’t get enough to warrant a gallery. I suppose I could make a small one. We’ll see.

After pondfest we went to bar simply because we could. Mike and Doug had to work around 7ish today, so we pretty much were all in bed once we got home, although Me, Joe and Brownie hit up Skyline after the bar. Afterwords we were once again exhausted and pretty much crashed.

Today was pretty much another lazy day. I had lunch with Joe and Brownie, played some games, and had dinner with Mike and Doug. Mike, Doug, and I went to Dewey’s for dinner, and a cool Italian guy bought a round of drinks for everyone to celebrate Italy’s world cup win. Go Italy!… and cool Italians that buy me a beer!!!

So now here I am. I’m trying to stay up late to offset my schedule again but my bed is calling my name. Living a first shift life was really, really great. I hope it gets back that way soon. I just know I’m not going to enjoy tomorrow because I’ll just keep thinking about how long it will be until I have to be at work. Boooo!!!

Peace out for now.

See ya.

I’M IN IRELAND!!!!

Yeah, that’s right. I’m not in the United States and you probably are. It’s awesome. It’s my first time out of the country. It’s mostly surreal. Like, I know I’m not in the USA, but I have to stop and think about that every so often. I guess the kicker is that is doesn’t seem TOO different from home. I mean, it’s a totally different lifestyle, but driving down most roads, you feel like you are driving through the backroads of Kentucky or something.

It’s mostly farmland, and you pass through a city every so often that isn’t but about a quarter mile strech of connected buildings, and then it’s right back to farmlands. It’s weird because their houses are about 20 feet at best from the roadways, and in America, any house right along a major roadway would be set back at least a hundred feet or something. Their roadways are very narrow, but so are the cars. The only SUVs on the road are ambulances. Their drivers are much better, too. They are so much more courteous and attentive to their driving. You can go to nearly any town and be told that there are only a few dozen traffic incidents with fatalities in the past few years or so. It shows, too. I don’t think I’ve seen a single car with any more than an occasional door ding or something. I haven’t seen one traffic accident, whereas on your normal American vacation, you’d hit at least one traffic jam on the part of a wreck just driving there. Instead of traffic lights, they have a lot of roundabouts. They are confusing the first couple of times, but really, once you get used to them, they seem so much more convienient than your average traffic light. For one, you don’t have to sit there staring off into the distance for 30 seconds if there is no oncoming traffic, and two, the people already in the roundabout have the right of way, so you never have to worry about that… which also eliminates people being asses and running redlights and such.

So I guess my goal here is to tell a bit about trip so far so that by the time I get home or to a place where I can type it all up at once, I haven’t forgotten the details. Then when I find internet access I can just post big chunks of it until I’m home and can post the final piece. Let’s start from the beginning. We got the airport super early, and security was about what I would have imagined. I guess because we were there at 11am in the middle of the week, the lines didn’t take so long. We were through in about 30 minutes, so we had to wait about 2 hours before we even thought about our flight being boarded. There was a Max & Erma’s in the airport so we grabbed lunch there then looked in some of the shops before going to our gate. The flight was fine. I guess I don’t have much to compare it to. For the first experience that I can remember, it wasn’t bad. I guess now I really see what people mean when they say that flights are cramped, though. I thought I’d have enough room to screw around on my latop, but I didn’t even have enough room to open the lid all the way! The I dozed off for about 10 minutes of the flight from Cincinnati (CVG) to Atlanta (ATL). Once we got to Atlanta, we had to move what seems like from one end of the airport to the other, and we really only had to wait about half an hour before they boarded our flight… but that also accounts for the fact that we had to taxi to an open gate, turn back and find a new one… twice, while coming in from CVG. I’m pretty sure we left the gate well before the time we were supposed to leave. I guess everyone was onboard and accounted for. It took us about 30 minutes to an hour of waiting on the runway before our flight could leave though, but I expected that after it took a while once we landed at Atlanta to get a gate to stop at.

The flight from the States over was alright. It felt a lot longer than the 7 hours or so it took. Quite possibly because again, it was very tight, and we left when it was light outside, and flew through the night and landed when it was light out… because of the time change it just seemed longer, I suppose. Oh, and the lady in front of me was a bitch. I managed to sleep what I think was an hour or so on this flight, although I wasn’t paying attention to a clock at all.

We arrived in Shannon, and stopped outside the airport at a McDonald’s to figure out where we wanted to go first and to get a quick snack and something to drink. It seems, so far, that McDonald’s is the only place in Ireland with free wireless internet. My observations have taught me that Ireland is somewhat behind the times when it comes to electrical innovation, but I guess you can chalk that up to it being very rural. In America, you can go to any minor city and find at least one place that has free wireless, and I imagine that in a few years, it will practically be a standard. I’m not really bummed out that I can’t get on the internet or something, I just wish that during downtime, or something I could pop on and say “hey” to people or read the news. We were all sort of jammed into a small European Chevy something-or-other… it was strikingly similar to a Ford Focus. Dad was sort of pissed because he had reserved a minvan and didn’t get it. I can see why, because getting our luggage in was a chore, and usually entailed some of it being on our laps.

So, from McDonald’s, we decided it would be best to tackle going to Blarney Castle. We couldn’t think of anything else in that area that we wanted to do, so being only a few miles away we thought we should go there and then call that part of the Island complete. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, and was actually quite fairweathered. (When we first got off the plane, it was pretty cold.) It took probably an hour or two to get from Shannon airport to Blarney. Even though it wasn’t me doing it, driving was an experience in itself, for the afformentioned reasons and many more. We made it to Blarney, paid the entrance fee to see the castle, and walked a beautiful trail to get to it. I snapped plenty of pictures even before we started ascending the castle. There were enough people in line to kiss the blarney stone that it took about an hour to get up the line to the top. The trip up was incredible. The castle, while many of the original portions don’t exist anymore, was an engineering marvel. Everything from a spirial staircase made entirely out of stone to the rain gutters up top that even had a spout to move the falling rainwash away from the castle to prevent erosion. Blarney castle in itself was actually quite small, and didn’t seem like it had the care given to it that other castles got. It mostly seemed like a tourist spot rather than a history lesson. Once you get up top, you are only a few minutes from kissing the Blarney Stone. Kissing it is kinda crazy. Most people know that you have to kiss is upside down, but most people DON’T know that you have to kiss it upside down because it’s akward location only allows for that. You actually have to hang over the edge of the castle where, thankfully, a couple of bars have been places to keep you from falling, bend backwards while laying on your back about a foot down, and learn towards it to kiss it. If they hadn’t also installed handrails to hold on to to help you bend backwards, then I think I would end up wedged in the safety bars. The actual term for this type of hole in a castle floor is called a “murder hole”. They are usually positioned directly above the front gate so that when intruders would come to break in, the residents of the castle could dump a number of things on them, usually hot oil, burning animal fat, or just plain ole’ rocks.

After descending the castle, we walked through the trails in blarney for a bit before we made our way to the exit. It was beautiful enough that I could have walked there all day, but we just didn’t have that kind of time. We were going to make our next stop at Cork to just meander around, but once we got there, we realized we didn’t know where anything was, so we kinda just kept going. In America, cities are planned in the way that you can say “go to this area for shopping and food” or such… but in Ireland, it seems like everything is just kinda wherever they can put it. Best I can tell, their streets really don’t have names, at least not well planned ones. All the places tourists go are marked at occasional intersections simply telling you in what direction to head. I guess it’s no wonder that you can really only find city maps for Dublin. So, after our short drive through Cork, we decided to go check into our lodging and figure out what we could do from there. We got about halfway through, got stuck in a traffic jam in one town, made the decision to go around and find another way after waiting 30 minutes, and once we got out we realized there was a traffic jam because that was the only bridge across a river in at least a dozen miles in either direction. So we turned around again, and started the line to make it across this bridge again… and an hour and half later, we got though it. The second we got on the other side of the river, traffic was clear as day, and there was a line of cars stuck in the opposite direction. From the jam, it took us about 45 more minutes to get to our lodging, in a place called the Glen of Aherlow, just outside the town on Tipperary. This put us at about 4:30 local time.

I fell asleep after watching TV for a little bit. Mom and Dad snuck out at some point and made their way to a grocery store to get some food for breakfast and some snacks… for snacking. Mom woke me up around 7:30 to go out to grab some dinner, but it took us until about 8:30 to find a place that served food that late. Most of the pubs will stop serving food around 3pm. Doesn’t work out too well for tourists, but whatever. I guess the average Irish family just expects a home cooked meal every night. We managed to find a small pub that was still serving food, and enjoyed a couple of beers and some hurling (field hockey) during our meal. Once again, we went back to our lodging and crashed.

Saturday we all woke up around 10am… even Mom and Dad… reigning king and queen of being up too damn early! We had a bite to eat then headed off towards Waterford in the Southwest of Ireland. One of the big things my mom wanted to do was to go see the Waterford Crystal factory. Supposedly regarded to be the best and clearest Crystal in the world. A lot of championship trophies are made by them, as well as the famous Times Square New Years Ball. This, among their wide array of vases, glasses, sculptures and other similar items. I have to admit, I wasn’t too excited to see this, but I figured it would be interesting nonetheless. Indeed it was. The first part of it was interesting to see and compare to the process of making iron. The crystal is kept in a furnace just slightly cooler (and cooler is probably not the word to use) than we pour iron at), and although I’ve seen iron flow like water, it was weird to see the molten crystal be played with like silly putty, then quickly cooled and hardened to be completely shiney. The glass then moved on into the various cutting areas where people with a decade of training cut the various patterns into the glass. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty cool to see, but in the end where they corral everyone into the store, I guess you have to be a female to appreciate this stuff. My brother and I were just kinda like “What the crap? Do… do we buy something… or uh… what?”… and my dad just sorta held things for my mom.

Afterwords, we stopped at a McDonald’s again and I hopped on the internet while everyone else decided where to go. The consensus was to go to Kilkenny Castle. It took a little while to get there, and once getting to Kilkenny, we didn’t have a damn clue where to go. At one point we were going down a narrow stretch of an alleyway wide enough for about a car and a half. We stopped to ask for directions twice and finally found our way. Kilkenny Castle was much, much different from Blarney Castle. Not only in the sheer size of it, but in the fact that it had been repaired, restored, and renovated through the years. This was definitely a castle in the sense of what the average American thinks of it as. Large rooms, well decorated with art and designed for royalty to be served in. One castle wall had been destroyed over the years and it had been opened up to a large, sweeping field that it seemed a lot of people were just spending the day in. Some playing games, some just socializing, and some just walking by enjoying the day, I suppose. They didn’t allow pictures inside and the only way to go through was in a guided tour, which was definitely interesting and informative, but I did manage to get some lovely pictures outside. By the time we got through the tour and on our way, it was going on 7pm… I think? It was hard to tell because the sky was a bit overcast. I remember they closed the castle up to visitors at 7, and it was looking pretty desolate on our way out.

We drove back as a little bit of rain started to hit and stopped in a town called Cashir to look for a place to eat around 8PM. We found a little restaurant that had a wide array of foods, from pizza, to pasta, from burgers to chicken… most importantly… it was open! One of the cool things about Ireland is that just about any place you can get food, you can get a beer. There was even beer at the cafeteria in Waterford Crystal! They totally pimp the Guinness, as one might expect. Just about every gift shop in any town has Guinness branded gifts. After our meal, we drove back to Aherlow house (where we were staying) and rested a little bit before walking up to their bar and having a few drinks. We talked to an older Irish couple of a little bit about some ideas on what to do tomorrow, and they suggested seeing the Castles in Cahir and Cashir. We drove by both of them yesterday, one on the way to Waterford, and one in the town we stopped at for a bite to eat on our way home, and figured that would be a cool idea. At the bar, I think Joe and I gave dad a good buzz. Cool! Even my mom had a little bit to drink. By 11pm or so, we were all bushed… perhaps too exhausted to drink more, and we walked back to the room. We watched a little TV and then I headed upstairs and started typing up a little bit of this before going to bed.

So yeah.

Sunday morning came and the Fields family all went to church in Tipperary. The church itself was actually similar looking to St. Cecelia, the church Joe and I have been going to in Cincinnati. Just not as colorful. The service itself was the same old service, just with thick Irish accents. It didn’t take all too long and we were back at Ahlerow House to grab a bite to eat before heading off to Cahir Castle.

Cahir Castle was more like Blarney castle, but a bit more kept up and less of a tourist hotspot… more of what someone thinks of when they hear “castle” too, although still primitive. We were free to roam this castle, which was fun. But there was a brief portion that was guided that just pointed out some of the history and features of the castle. I managed to get some good pictures of the town of Cahir from the tower, but I was hoping the skies were a bit more clear. I was actually afraid it was going to be a total mess once the tour started… the castle is mostly uncovered and it started sprinkling as we got started. It seems within minutes though, it stopped and the grey in the sky turned to white.

We enjoyed some time in the castle after the tour, then watched a short video on it, and after popping in a couple of shops, we left to go to Cashel. Cashel is HUGE. It’s pretty much a giant hill, with a wall at top, and an array of cathedrals and a couple other buildings on top. We explored pretty much the whole area, but then took the guided tour to learn more about it. We found out that it wasn’t actually a castle, but it was guarded by a wall to protect the higher ups of the church and the relics inside.

At this point I was a bit pooped of the castle thing, so I just wanted to go back and chill a little bit before dinner. We had reservations for the restaurant at Aherlow House. It was set up as a fancy dining sort of deal, but quite frankly, the Fields family isn’t that keen on proper etiquette and stuff, so we just went with the flow. For reference, if you ever see “black and white pudding” on a menu, it’s a sausage like meat. The black portion seems like the white… just burnt… or something. I was later informed that it is pretty much sausage, mostly byproducts of meat. The black pudding is black because it’s soaked in blood, which is where the irony-metallic taste I got come in. I couldn’t decide whether it was good or bad. It seems like in every Irish restaurant we go to, their menu is pretty much “choose a meat and we’ll take care of the rest”. Americans are spoiled with their menus. We have 4 page menus divided into what type of meal you want, and then about 4 or 5 different ways of doing it. In Ireland you order steak. In America, you can choose the size of the steak, what you want it cooked with, what you want on the side… no dice in Ireland. That, or I’m going to all the wrong places.

After dinner, nobody really wanted to do anything, so we just went back and watched “Mystic River” on TV and chilled for a bit. I think we were all in bed by about 11pm. We planned on getting Dublin tomorrow as soon as we could so we could do two things instead of just one (before everything starts closing down), so we thought it would be good to get to bed early and get up early.

We could have done better on the getting up early thing. We weren’t on the road until a few minutes after 9. We made it to Dublin shortly after noon and our first stop was the Guinness Storehouse. It was pretty cool to see the process. They didn’t take you through the actual factory, which was a little bit of a bummer, but they did a good job of showing it in a recreated sort of manner. To set records straight, with the tour admission, you get about a pint and quarter of Guinness. You get a free pint at the end, and then in the middle of the tour, you get about a quarter pint when you are learning about Guinness taste-testing. Rather than expecting you to remember how to sample a Guinness, they just give you some right there to learn how. I guess if you were desperate, you could just keep grabbing the samples they put out and tossing them back, but I figure the guy pouring them might notice sooner or later. The lounge known as the “Gravity Bar” which is the last stop on the tour… where you get your free pint… offers a beautiful view on Dublin. We were fortunate enough to have it stop raining while we were up there and see a rainbow form over the city!

At this point it was already 4pm or so, seeing as most places closed at 5, we didn’t have many options on what we could do besides go and find a hotel. The problem lies in the fact that the Irish don’t label their roads very well, so except for major highways, we have no damn clue where we are going. It’s sort of the highlight of the trip where we spend 30 minutes figuring out where we are going to go, 30 minutes bitching about the fact that we don’t know where the hell to go, and then just settling for being pissed off that we wasted so much time getting there and crap.

We stopped at one hotel, but Joe wasn’t happy with the price, so we kept on moving, and as it stands, I’m typing this portion up a shitty Travel Lodge where nothing works right, and everything is about a cheap-assed as you can get. Personally, I’m really bummed because I wanted to stay inside the city when we got to Dublin so I could actually go out one night rather than spending a night in the hotel wishing I wasn’t spending my time in Ireland at a hotel. Whatever. Tomorrow Joe and I go to Scotland, so I’m sure I’ll get a night out there. It seems like everyone is just more excited to go to sleep than enjoy actually DOING something than go to castles.

I really just hoped that things would go smoothly tomorrow, and that good times would be had in Scotland.

We woke up around 8am, showered, and were on our way stuck in traffic by 8:30am. We made our way to Trinity College by 10am, which is about what we expected, and took an extra 15 minutes to find a place to park. Let me just say that car parks in the US (at least in Cincy) have it easy. This car park was so confusing and awkward, that we actually got lost on our way out by following the signs that said “exit”. Anyhow, when we got up the library housing the Book of Kels in Trinity College, we were greeted by a Guarda (police officer) who told us that we would have to come back around 11. The exhibit was supposed to open at 9:30, but he told us that some kings and queens were visiting and that it was not going to be open to the public until they were gone. He suggested a place to grab some coffee or something, so we went and browsed through a few of the shops and then had a cup of hot chocolate, which put us right up to 11 o’clock. The book itself was pretty cool, but because of the delay to get in, there was such a mass of people wanting to see it all at once. You could barely read the signs in the exhibit on the way to the Book of Kels. For those wondering, (and as I found out) the Book of Kels is basically one of the earliest copies of the Gospel, finely decorated for its time. It was written in, if I remember correctly, 600AD. The book itself, like most documents of its age, is behind a few inches of glass that have so many people crowded around it that it’s hard to get a good look.

After viewing the book, you are led to the “Long Room”… named this because it’s the longest room in Ireland (we saw the second longest at Kilkenny Castle earlier in the week). The Long Room is an old library, housing many old, first copy, and hand written books. Just walking into the room smells like old books… if you’ve ever been in a place where you may know that smell from, this is one of the defining places of that smell. It was wondrous. You couldn’t touch any of the books, as the shelves were roped off, but we were told that the students have access to the books under careful supervision. However, it’s not too often that a student has a legitimate reason to read them, partially because most of the information in them is now readily available on the internet, and because the majority of the books are written in latin, which most people don’t speak anymore, let alone read. It was yet another place where I wished I could take pictures just to show people how beautiful it is, but I guess people will have to settle for the descriptions and make some internet searching.

It was cool to see, but I don’t know if it was worth the price tag of roughly $15 for that short show. I’ll chalk it up on the list of things that it’s worth seeing once in your life, but never necessary to see again.

We left Trinity College, got lost in the car park, then got stuck in traffic to get out of the city, and got a little lost but consistently made our way towards the airport. To our surprise, once we got to the outer edge of the city, there was no traffic in our direction! Whoo! For once!! The Dublin airport was pretty much a parking mess, which was no surprise considering the rest of the city’s knack for being that way. It didn’t help one bit that the Ryder Cup, a huge golf tournament, was taking place that week. We got in, grabbed a bite to eat and then got our boarding passes. Joe and I parted ways with mom and dad, and then made our way to our gate. We only had to wait about 30 or 40 minutes before we were called to board.

We were flying Ryanair, which is the Irish equivalent of ValueJet or so. So on other airlines, you have the tunnel way out to the plane directly from the waiting lobby. Ryanair does things old school style. You walk out to the plane and up a stairway at either the front or the rear. Sounds strange, but it was actually kind of cool. Their flight attendants are also old-fashioned (… and mostly cute.) they wore classic skirts with matching blazers, came to certain points of the aisle way during the in-flight safety instructions and did the classic pointing out the exits and such… that again, was actually kinda cool. On the two Delta flights I’ve had so far, they just show everything on monitors that are easy to ignore.

The flight was quick. It seems like it took us about 10-15 minutes once we left the ground to get up to cruising altitude, and then we spent 15 minutes in the air before they gave the announcement that we were going to start our approach descent, which took another 10-15 minutes. The flight was fast and easy. I think waiting for the baggage claim took just as long as the flight did… haha. Conveniently, thanks to the whole European Union thing, we didn’t have to go through customs when coming from another EU country, so we bypassed all the lines and went right out once we got a hold of our baggage. … Even if we weren’t supposed to do that, no one stopped us, so whatever. haha.

Alex and a sleepy looking Niall were there to great us. We changed some money over from Euros to Pounds Sterling and then got a bus into Edinburgh. Man, it was so nice to have that whole thing coordinated and go so easy for once on the trip! On the bus into the city, we got to know Niall and Alex as they pointed out some of the things about the city and talked about what we might want to do that night. We hopped off of one bus (because it was strictly an airport bus) and grabbed a bus over to Alex’s place. Edinburgh is an amazing city. At the center of the city for everyone to see if the castle. This castle blows all the castles we’ve seen away. Thank goodness it wound up in a lot of pictures, because trying to describe it just wouldn’t do it justice. Basically, it’s perched above a tall hill with very steep walls. The hill was started as a pile of volcanic rock, later shaped by weather and then fortified by humans. While you can tell that some of it is very recent, a lot of the buildings fit right in with the castle. They lead up the street going to the one entrance to the castle, and wind up and down all the hills around it. Edinburgh, in a nutshell, is old looking buildings on loads of hills, topped off with lots of wind and flash weather situations. Alex said that if it’s not windy, it’s rainy, and not many days go by where it isn’t overcast at some point. It could be bright and sunny one hour, then heavy snow the next. We relaxed for a little bit at his place, then we went out to hit the pubs.

The pub scene in Edinburgh was exactly what I was hoping for the whole trip. I can only wish that I had a similar experience in Dublin. We stopped off for a pint at one pub, then went along to the next where we had a couple more then stayed for a late dinner. Ian came to join us and enjoyed a fine piece of cake in lieu of alcohol. After we ate and gave ourselves some time to shoot the bull, we walked for a little bit, caught a bus and stopped off to get a couple of drinks for back at Alex’s place. I played Guitar Hero for the first time, pretty much sucked at it. (not bad for a beginner, I guess… after all, Ian DID jump me up to the medium, then hard difficulties after one at the previous levels.) I think I’m addicted to it already. It’s in the plans as being one of the first purchases to make when I get back to the States. Time flew by and by 1pm we were all ready to hit the hay. Ian and Niall parted company, and Alex was kind enough to put Joe and I up in his living room for the night, which I can’t thank him enough for, as it saved us a bundle on a hotel. I do seriously hope I get the chance to return the favor.

Joe and I were surprised by the fact that we didn’t wake up until after 11am. I’m usually lucky to sleep 8 hours, but I guess all the days where we wanted to be up early to see the sites caught up to us and we had a great night of sleep. Once again, Alex was really cool and he made a quick breakfast for us and we were out and about by noon. We met up with Niall at a place called Prince’s Square… I believe? and the first place we went to was a store where dropped off our luggage and they would would hold it so we wouldn’t have to go all the way back to Alex’s to retrieve it before catching the bus to the airport. After that, we started climbing the hills up to the castle and walking up a street filled with lots of Scottish-focused goods. Everything from jewelery to liquors, from swords to kilts.

We made it to the castle gates and contemplated taking a tour, but we decided against it because it was a bit pricey. Instead, we found a cool tourist spot just before the castle that had a great view of the city. They had a sort of camera at the top that allowed for a 360 view of the city compliments of some lenses and a mirror. However, it wasn’t good enough of an image to photograph. Luckily, we got plenty of great photographs from the balconies before viewing the camera “show”. After the “show”, we left the 5th floor and we stopped off at the floors in between where they had a small museum of optical illusions and such. It was pretty sweet. It was almost like an exhibit you’d find in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum. We probably spent a good hour or so in there which is quite an achievement, considering how small the place actually was.

Upon leaving, we thought it would be a good idea to grab some lunch. We stopped off at a small cafe/deli type place for what we thought was going to be a small meal, but it was actually very filling. The food was very good, too. First time I’ve ever had bread with sun-dried tomatoes in it and it was fantastic, especially with some ham and brown mustard on it. Also the first time I’ve had a rocket and Parmesan salad, and there’s a good chance I’ll be whipping one up when I get back to the states.

From there, we headed downhill and visited the Scottish Parliament. We actually got to sit in the viewing balcony as debates were taking place. Of the 80 or so seats, it seemed like only 20 were filled. They were discussing the health care of the elderly, so I can only imagine why people didn’t find that exciting enough to show up for it. They were very proper about the people observing, too. You were allowed to have a closed drink, but you weren’t allowed to drink it while someone was talking. You also weren’t supposed to get up and walk out while someone was talking. That was pretty cool to experience. Despite that fact that it seems very boring from the outside and really doesn’t concern me, I think I could have sat there for hours listening to the debates go on. But considering we had a deadline for the day, that would have been a pretty big waste to spend our last hours in Edinburgh doing that. So we trudged onward and uphill again. This time the hill we climbed was long and steep. Just when I thought my legs were going to break down and collapse under me, we reached the summit. Again, another spectacular view of Edinburgh, and plenty of photos to go with it. On one side, you had what looked like an old museum with some serious overgrowth around it and doors shut tight. On the other side you had a sort of monument with an ancient Roman look to it. I don’t know if it was, indeed, very old, or a re-creation of the Roman design. I don’t remember what the name of this place was, but it seemed like it wasn’t in use anymore, and was mostly just for people to do exactly what we did.

The walk down seemed much shorter… and likely was, as when we came down we were back on one of the hills en route to the castle, I think. We thought it would be a great idea to stop for a pint and give our legs a rest. We actually stopped at a bar called “the Black Bull”, where the opening scene from “Trainspotting” was filmed. We spent about half an hour in that bar and then moved along on to prince street and into the gardens where I got some more great photos. Spent a few minutes down there, and continued on for a final pub crawl. At our third pub, which was the same as the first pub we went to the night before, we grabbed a meal and thought it would be best to pick up our luggage and head towards the airport. We got to the airport with at least an hour to spare, stopped off at the bar and we all enjoyed a glass of scotch. On the big list of things to do that I’ve been checking items off from all week, I can also check “have scotch in Scotland.” We took a picture of us all, finished up our drinks, then parted ways. Alex and Niall showed us a great time and were very hospitable, and again, I can only hope that we get a chance to return the favor.

Joe and I made our way to our gate and 10 minutes before the plane was supposed to start boarding, it hadn’t shown up yet. There was no announcement of a delay or anything, and then an airport security guard came in to the lobby and said “Don’t Panic, but I need everyone to get up and move to the next lobby over”. Naturally, people don’t panic, but they do get a little frightened. After waiting with passengers from the only other flight left for the night, an announcement came on asking all the passengers of that flight to move to a different lobby. So again, naturally, our only instinct is to get more frightened. They kept us in the dark about what was going on, and it didn’t help for us to know that our plane hadn’t shown up yet. Bundled with the guards walking around chattering on their radios, and then two armed guards moving through the airport in full tactical gear and submachine guns, you don’t get a very good impression. An announcement came on that the other flight won’t be leaving, and that people can wait for their baggage to be unloaded or have it sent to their address. I GUESS this was good news, because it meant that our flight should be in the clear. However, it was 20 minutes past the time we were supposed to leave the airport and we still hadn’t seen our plane! They moved us back in to our original lobby and everything thing seemed to be in order now, and FINALLY, 35 minutes past our departure time, the plane shows up, has a speedy unloading and 10 minutes later, all the passengers are on board.

We were supposed to arrive at about 10 til midnight, but ended up getting off the plane around 10 till 1am. We had our baggage by 1 or so, and then it was time for us to figure out what the hell we were going to do. Our original plan was for us to grab a room at a local hotel and leave by bus in the morning, but the problem with that was the same with the cause of all the traffic we had before leaving Dublin. The Ryder Cup Golf Tournament was still going on, and there wasn’t a single room for miles available. A bus wouldn’t leave until 6am, and because of our excessively delayed flight, we couldn’t get the last one out of town, So we thought maybe we could rent a car and just catch some sleep in it before leaving, but the last rental car booth open closed up right in our face. Can’t blame them for wanting to get home, but talk about crappy. So our final option had been chosen for us. We now had to spend the next 4 or 5 hours in the airport until the bus terminals open up for passengers. I was tired, but I’d prefer to stay up and sleep to avoid the paranoia of someone lifting my laptop from right next to me, so Joe caught some Z’s and I just hung out trying to keep myself occupied. It’s one of those things that I never thought I would do, but at the same time it’s really cool to have the story to tell. Part of me just wished that there was a store or something open so I could grab a snack… soda… anything.