I’m back!

Did you miss me?

My uncle Packy is in Ireland for a couple weeks, so he and my parents came down Tuesday afternoon and hung out for the evening. Packy took off for Places Unknown on Wednesday morning, and Mom and Dad stayed to visit a little longer.

Wednesday I trundled in to the fair trade shop, where work was considerably more entertaining than it was last week, mostly because two other volunteer/worker people were also there. One’s Irish and her paying job is web design and she thought she needed to get out of the house (hee hee) and the other is Brazillian-by-way-of-France and may actually be working there for pay, but is here largely to work on her English. She speaks Portugese, Spanish, French and Italian. And more English than I have of any of those languages. :) So between my Spanish and the other girl’s French, we were pretty much able to translate anything the Brazillian girl couldn’t figure out how to say in English, so that all worked quite well, actually, and was a great deal of fun. It certainly made me want to study Spanish more. :)

When I came home, we had a CAR! Ted and Mom and Dad picked me up at the train station! It was AMAZING! :) Ted says his foot is all out of shape for driving. *laugh* But Wednesday the weather was absolutely pissingly miserable, so we didn’t go out and do anything else after that. It was nice to hang out and talk with Mom and Dad, though. :)

Thursday, armed with a new car, we drove over to Youghal (inexplicably pronounced “Yall”) and walked up and down the marina taking pictures. I’ve gotten used to the water in Cobh, which is in fact a cove (‘Cobh’ is pronounced ‘Cove’) and which is almost always very calm. Even when the water is choppy it’s relatively calm, particularly when you compare it to tht Youghal, where the Atlantic hasn’t had anything to run up against since France. :) It’s very pretty, but a completely different sort of pretty than Cobh. Much rougher.

I came home and slept for two hours, because I haven’t really gotten over this cold. I feel much better on days when I’ve gotten 10 or 11 hours of sleep, preferably by way of a nap. :P Also, I need about a week’s worth of massages, I think, because my shoulders are rock hard and my neck keeps getting stiff.

Anyway, photography class was last night, and I also wanted to go sign up for the yoga class, so we went into Cork a bit early and I found my way to the yoga studio, where I discovered the instructor had just filled the last space in the class not fifteen minutes earlier. He looked truly dismayed, since he remembered that he’d emailed back and forth with me, but, well, not much to be done about it. I got myself put on a list for a class starting the 31st of March, and at least now I know where the studio is. In the meantime I have told myself that we now have a *car*, so Ted should practice driving by driving me to the swimming pool 3 mornings a week. I haven’t told *Ted* that yet… :)

Photo class was pretty fun. Looking at the guy’s portfolio made me rather depressed about the idea of calling myself any sort of photographer, mind you, but it was fun. And now I know how to put together a portfolio if I wanted to put on airs and see if I could get a show somewhere. (*snort*) We went out and did night shots (here’s one), which I enjoyed a lot, and feel more confident about attempting on my own now. So that’s cool.

This morning I bought tickets to the Meatloaf concert and the Aerosmith concert this June. :)

miles to Dunharrow: 140