we have net!

The man came yesterday and he gave us a phone and internet! It is amaaaaazing! I have ordered our groceries on the internet. It is amaaaaazing! Tomorrow someone will come to fix the washing machine that broke! It is amaaaaazing! They *claim* someone will be here this week to replace beds and cookers, but I’m rather dubious about that, so it’s not so amaaaaazing.

Yesterday I got up fairly early and went and got on a bus and sat there brainlessly for four and a half hours. Actually, I sort of napped the first couple hours and then read THE SPOOK’S BATTLE, which is the fourth in an ongoing series of books by Joseph Delaney and which are the books that people should be reading instead of Harry Potter. They’re utterly charming and delightful and scary and wonderful. :) Anyway, I arrived in Dublin safely and thought I’d walk down to the docks (having been sitting for 4.5 hours), and I thought it was a couple mile walk, and that would be fine.

Three and a half miles later I was becoming very concerned that at some point I would find the ferry terminal and it would turn out to not be a passenger terminal at all, and that Emily would in fact be somewhere else entirely and that I would have to walk four miles *back* into town because there would be no *bus* if it wasn’t a passenger terminal and it would take over an hour to walk back and Emily was going to be LOST and ALONE and MEOW and finally I reached the terminal and was looking around worriedly wondering if I’d missed her and then less than two minutes after I arrived, Emily did. So in fact it all worked out just fine, and I sure did get my exercise. :)

While we were in Dublin, we stopped by the Forbidden Planet, where Emily discovered Mira Furlan (Delenn) is going to be doing a signing on Sunday, so I believe in the Grand Tradition of Things Involving Emily, we are going to go haring off to Dublin on Sunday long enough to get her to sign something (and perhaps if we’re lucky have lunch with and , she said hopefully!), and then go haring back down to Cork for Monday and back up to Dublin to do Dublin things on Tuesday if we’re not exhausted beyond belief by then. :)

This is going to prove a sort of odd vacation thing for Emily, because I have work to do, and we’re waiting for Things To Happen around here, but we did have a nice afternoon of going over to St. Finbarr’s Cathedral and having a look about. On the way home we went by the Cork Butter Museum, and I said, “I want to go there while you’re here!” and she said, “Why not go now?” And I blinked, and said, “Why not!” and so we did. It was pretty interesting, in a buttery kind of way. :) And now Emily’s doing homework and I’m going to go to work. As soon as I tell you about the

Ted and I were both really tired and neither of us much felt like going to the concert. But we had tickets, so we went, and we got there early enough that we were just one row back from the stage, which was pretty damned cool. The show started at 8, which meant, unbelievably, that Elton John and his band walked out on stage at 8pm and sat down and played for two and a half hours straight. No opening band, just the main event. It was incredible.

They did an introductory montage like you’d have in a musical, and then went into the first song, which I can’t even remember anymore, but I nearly fell over. Elton John sounds just like himself. I mean, I kind of expected him to, but it’s … that voice, and those songs, are so much part of my consciousness that being in the same room, twenty feet away from the guy, and hearing this so-amazingly-familiar-sound come bursting out from the actual person instead of the radio was just sort of mind-blowing. The Who sounded just like themselves too, but this was…more. I’m more familiar with Elton John’s voice, I guess, so it really sort of took me off guard. In a good way.

They did so many hit songs I can’t do justice to a list, but– oh, is basically the set. Yay, I don’t have to list it. :) At the opening bars of one song, the trio of fifty year old women who were to my immediate left actually squealed and seized each other with excitement over whatever song it was. I thought that was great. *beam* *laugh* And he did Candle in the Wind, which was the one song I really, really wanted to hear, and so yay! And Ted was getting concerned that he wasn’t going to do Crocodile Rock, but finally toward the end he did it, and during the ‘na na na’ bit of the lyrics, the audience blew the band away.

Apparently Cork gives good audience. During *most* of the show Elton kept looking astonished at the general level of enthusiasm (which was *very* high: the Who audience was extremely good, but this one might’ve been better), and saying thank you, thank you, wow, thank you, my god, you people, thank you, as everyone screamed their fool heads off, but when the band cut out to let the audience sing the ‘na na na’ bits, Elton’s jaw actually dropped. I said to Ted, “What, didn’t he expect that?” and Ted said, “I don’t think he expected it to be that *tuneful*,” (because it really was very tuneful), and then the second time the band dropped out to let the audience sing, the *entire band* just staggered around laughing and shaking their heads, apparently because the audience was just so loud and enthusiastic and tuneful and with them. At the end of the show, Elton said, “It would be an insult to say you’ve been one of the best audiences on this tour. You’ve been one of the best audiences ever.” And the audience went nuts. It was great. It was all just amazing and great, and we are so very very glad we went. :)

So it’s been a good few days. :) I’ll post photos from the concert (and heck, from today at the cathedral) later. And I gotta remember to see if I can get tickets for a concert later this summer at Marlay Park: the Nine Inch Nails are opening for the Foo Fighters. I like NIN and Ted likes the Foo Fighters, so it’d be an awesome double-header for us.