it’s morning already?

I woke up at about 6:20 this morning. Blee. (Hi, Michael!) I wanted to be up by 7 so I could call Ted and Jenn, and my brain was apparently worried about oversleeping. I’d set the alarm. Foolish brain. So I lay around for a while, then got up and did call Ted at 7, and he didn’t loathe me for not calling last night. I’d just gotten in too late. He sounded pretty cheerful, so that’s good.

And I called Jenn, who was Very Awake; I didn’t even hear her hotel room phone ring before she picked up. :)

We had a good day yesterday. :) We went out for a proper Irish breakfast, and then I dragged her over to meet my family, including the little boys. Breic was fairly charming, and Seirid kept squeaking, but overall they were pretty cute. :) And we hung out for a while and talked, then trundled over to Dublinia, which is a history of Dublin museum next to Christchurch Cathedral, which we also went into. Dublinia was reasonably interesting, and the cathedral is properly imposing, as a cathedral ought to be. It was very pretty, though this morning it’s clear as a bell outside, and I bet the stained glass windows really glow when it’s nice out. :) However, the weather was predicted to be absolutely pissing miserable until Jenn left (really; that’s what the weather prediction said!), and then it was going to get quite nice. That appears to be true.

*laughs out loud* Jenn thought it was very funny I’d posted about Wednesday and that her friend Michael had read the posting and knew we’d been utterly unsuccessful in finding music for him. I mentioned it on our way out the hotel room door in the morning, which made her have to stop and go back and read my blog. *laugh* How geeky we are. Michael will be happy to hear that in the middle of the Dublinia tour, she suddenly turned to me and said, “I have a message to pass on to you,” and then, entirely out of the blue, said, “BLEE!” (I knew I’d been saying, “Blee,” a lot lately, because this has been a very blee-ful sort of month, but evidently I said it once quite a while ago and Michael picked up on it, but thought it might’ve been a one-time deal for me, as scouring the journal didn’t turn it up again. But then I started using it again recently and he was pleased about this. *laugh* I like people. *laugh*)

We wandered through Temple Bar trying to decide where to eat, stopping at The Clarence Hotel (Bono’s place) to look at the Tea Room menu, and decided that we kinda didn’t want to go somewhere quite that snooty, so we stopped at the tourist information place and asked them where we should eat dinner. They suggested a number of places, and we ended up at Elephant & Castle, of which we’d both heard, and which proved to be the best place I’ve eaten at in Temple Bar so far (I’ve only eaten at about four restaurants in there, but mostly they’ve been overpriced and only adequate as far as food goes, but this place was only *slightly* overpriced and the food was very good!) I ordered (among other things) their homemade ginger ale, which was really ginger soda, and once I got over the surprise of that, I liked it. Ted wouldn’t have. :) And we just had burgers for dinner, but Jenn ordered a Stilton cheeseburger, and it turned out to be a huge thick burger placed on a square of Stilton cheese that was over an inch thick and probably close to 3×3 inches square. It was absolutely *absurd*.

And we talked and talked and *talked*. About writing, about writers, about philosophies of life (which tied right into the writing and writers), interjecting it all with life stories and generally enjoying ourselves very much. One of the lovely things about European restaurants is they don’t rush you out of the place, so we spent over two hours at dinner, which was extremely pleasant.

Eventually we headed out, went back to Jenn’s hotel, asked where we might find a trad seisun, and were pointed down the street at the same pub we’d breakfasted at. It was not, in fact, a seisun, but a performer, which wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for. However, it proved to be a ridiculous amount of fun, in large part because there’s a massive rugby match this weekend and Dublin was littered with men in kilts last night. (I commented to Jenn while we were in Temple Bar that, “That looked cold!” and one of them turned and said, “It’s BLOODY cold!”) Anyway, 3 of the men in kilts came into Foley’s and the leader of the pack, who was extremely charismatic and having one hell of a good time, immediately joined in singing, and they were rolling their Rs and dancing around a bit, and the musician played a number of songs I knew (turns out Jenn and I know totally different trad music), so I was singing along and actually got complimented both by the singer and the three Scotsmen, which was charming and amusing. :) And the bar filled up and more people sang, and the Scotsmen continued to be funny, and we turned out to have a very fine time of it. :) Oh, and some poor bastard asked if the musician knew some song or other, and ended up up there singing it (not well at *all*, and he could only remember the first verse, and that not particularly well) himself while the musician got a beer. :) So yeah, lots of fun.

I walked Jenn back to her hotel, and she played me several songs from her must-hear list, and it was very late indeed when we parted ways! It was a great couple of days. :) :) :)

miles to Mou…wait, I did this last night. nevermind.