I need an IRELAND! icon...

I am on hold with Aer Lingus, to confirm my ticket bookings that Dad made last night.
It's frustrating, but also hilarious. Their hold music is a lady singing what I'd like to call "Irish pop lite"--a tinny, phone version of a vaguely, stereotypically Irish song in an elevator-music style. Mmm, just what I wanted. Except that she keeps getting interrupted by a man's voice, almost-accented with Irish, who tells me about all these fabulous deals I can get on their website.

Oh, god...the piano just came in...

Yay! A real person! & it's all good. :D

I'm starting to get really excited about this trip--I mean, I was before, but then I got bogged down in details & organization...but I had one of those moments today where I fully realized I was going to be living in Ireland and studying theater in Dublin for nearly four months! (& yes, all the italics are warranted. This is thrilling.)

It's also these moments that make me realize how incredibly lucky I am, both in what I'm going to & what I'm leaving behind when I go. It works both ways, & I'm overflowing with it.

the things one finds...

I was putting things away at the end of the day at work, & discovered an old notebook in the file drawer, a Writing Center Journal from several years ago, in which WC consultants posed questions (both serious and silly), wrote answers, discussed ideas & pasted cartoons. Even though I'm past time to leave, I have to share my favorite so far. It was written in beautiful handwriting & signed with illegible initals, and reads as follows:

Another woman in blue was writing a paper on "The Historical Subjugation of Women," and the theories that explain it. As an ESL student, she sought assistance from the Writing Consultant at the [International Student Center]. The consultant found "ability to produce multiple organisms" to be one of the students text-based arguments for the subjugation of women (ie, the men are jealous). Upon checking the text, the word was found by the consultant to be not "organism" but "orgasm." The consultant further discovered not one dictionary in the ISC with which to explain the meaning of the word, and thus, the idea. The consultant did her best, but the nun from Africa did not give much credence to the idea and stuck with "organisms."