I had such a perfect title for this post, but blogspot cut me off becuase it was too long, so it is below...

“I don’t want to go to your wake and have your parents look at me out of the corner of their eyes saying ‘He’s the one who told Joe he’d take a picture if he sat on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher.’”

Saturday October 27, 2007

11:37 p.m.

Dublin

I have a paper and a presentation due on Tuesday, so I decided it would be a good idea to take the first two days of this long (Ireland Bank Holiday) weekend and head out to Galway and the Cliffs of Moher. Ricky and Josh had gone to Spain for the weekend, so on Thursday night, when James suggested a west-coast trip that would not include missing any baseball games, Rory had I hopped on board, and added Liam first thing Friday morning. I bought train tickets online for the four of us while James and I waited for Rory and Liam to get back from their morning classes, and then we set off for Heuston Station to catch a 2:30 train to Galway.

We pulled into Galway station around 5:00 and bought tickets for the bus to Doolin, about an hour and a half’s drive south where Rory and booked a B&B the night before. Besides rises and dips and the road that made us think we were going to lose the McDonalds we’d grabbed while waiting for the bus, the ride down to Doolin along the coast was remarkable. The brightest full moon I’ve ever seen hung out over the water and illuminated the rolling hills of the Burren that whipped by us on the other side. We got to the little town and settled into our room by about 8:30 and then headed for the pubs that Rory and I had read about in our guide books.

Our first stop was McDermott’s, where James lost the bet he made to Rory when he said that Rory couldn’t finish the Beef and Guinness and French Fries stew that he got, on top of the double cheeseburger that was already sitting in him. We had read in our books that the three pubs in Doolin were, up until recently, a Mecca for Irish trad music, where people would come from far and wide to play. We hadn’t been in the pub for 5 minutes when we met a guy from Atlanta who had flown to Ireland for the weekend with his banjo just to come to Doolin. We were all pretty impressed. After a few pints and a few songs from both our banjo friend and the house band of the night, we headed down the street to McGann’s. The pubs in Doolin are completely different than those in Dublin, unsurprisingly. There were very few young people around (except for the little kids dressed up in Halloween costumes hanging out at the bar while their parents had a few drinks). We also sat next to the woman who ran our B&B and petted the mutt that was running around that apparently belonged to some dude sitting at the bar. Nobody really seemed to mind (definitely a long way from Dublin). The guy with the banjo followed us in a few minutes later, and before we left he gave us a crash course and even let me play it for a few minutes, which was really cool. I mean, who doesn’t like a guy holding a banjo?

After a long day of traveling and having put way too much food in our stomachs, we all slept very well in our strange beds. In an effort to make the most of our 24 trip, we woke up early this morning and, already showered and packed, arrived at breakfast promptly at 8. We devoured our meals, talked about crummy jobs we’d had in high school, and watched Liam (who admits to having a slight case of OCD) carefully cut the egg white from around the sides of his sunny-side-up egg, so as to not break the yolk, then one by one eat the pieces of egg white, and carefully place the remaining yellow center of the egg in the “discard” pile on his saucer.

We got a ride down to the Cliffs of Moher from the husband of the woman who’d checked us in the night before, and, happy to see that we were some of the first people there of the day, walked over to the visitors’ center. We had three and half hours to explore the cliffs before the last bus of the day left for Galway, so after doing the officially sanctioned touristy things, taking the “Look I went to the Cliffs of Moher” pictures, and reading in our guidebooks that there was a not-so-safe cliff walk if you jumped the fence at the end of the observatory platform (Rory’s book “strongly discouraged” jumping the fence, whereas my Rick Steves book mentioned how it was really cool to lie down and stick your head out over the edge), we opted to live dangerously, jumping the fence, taking a behind the “DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT” sign, and heading off on the little path along the tops of the cliffs.

I was throwing caution to the wind (literally, the gusts were incredibly strong and the rain was no prize either) a little more than the other guys as I asked them to take my picture sitting on the edge and opted to take the paths closer to the edge when the dirt trail split in two. (Keep in mind when I say “path” I mean a slippery, muddy, dirt ditch about twelve inches wide and 4 inches deep that ran anywhere from 3 feet from the edge to about 8 inches from the edge.) We walked and walked out to what seemed to be the highest point of the cliffs, at which point we were about a mile away from the visitors’ center which had since vanished in the clouds and fog. This seemed to be the point where most fence-jumpers stopped, undoubtedly for a great picture, since the path seemed to get even less official after this. From up at the top, however, we could see a little castle/watchtower about 4 cliffs further out, and that became our new goal. We stopped and took some more pictures on the way, slipped on some rocks, jumped some barbed wire fences, and watched and listened to James inadvertently grip on to an electric cow fence with both hands. Overall, we were making good decisions.

The wind and the rain picked up as we got out there, but once we reached our goal (an estimated four miles from the center) we felt pretty good about what we had done and etched our names in a little rock at the bottom of the castle. At this point we had to hustle back to catch the bus, though, so we took the less-scenic route once we turned around, cutting through some grazing pastures and doing our best to avoid huge clumps of fresh manure. Tired, dirty, wet, a little dazed, but undoubtedly accomplished, we reached the visitors’ center with about 15 minutes to spare. After putting down a celebratory ice cream, we headed back outside and caught the bus that brought us back to Galway. We killed our two hour layover in a pub in the city, and then headed to the train station and came home. From out our front door and back again, the whole trip took about 33 hours and was a great success.

Other news and notes: Thursday night was a long, but very exciting night as a few of us stayed up to watch the Red Sox win game two and watch the little ESPN gamecast box showing BC’s remarkable comeback at the end of the game against Virginia Tech… Zach Friedman, a friend of mine from BHS who is studying in Galway, and his two friends are in Dublin for the weekend and stayed at our place Thursday night, last night, and are staying tonight before leaving for their respective cities tomorrow afternoon… Ashley is stopping by for the game tonight (she watched game 2 with her friend Natalie, and the Sox still won, so that was a relief)… Flag/touch football started on Wednesday. There were about 5 Americans and 30 Irish kids who were very okay with being atrocious at football. We didn’t actually play any games, just ran some drills and put some plays together in hopes of running some scrimmages in a few weeks…Thursday night the program sponsored an “Irish House Party” which was a lot of fun. I’ll write more about that later, I just didn’t want to forget…Lyd is coming out on Friday, and the next few weeks after that are pretty busy, but for now I’m just going to worry about this presentation and paper. I should probably start writing more about Irish history and less about my rompings around the country.

Go Sox.

Later.

12:55 a.m.

The Craic in Cork is decent (and there's someone out in the hallway wearing a full-body dinosaur costume)

Wednesday October 24, 2007

2:04 p.m.

UCD Study Lounge, Dublin

I’m sitting in the study lounge at school waiting for my Globalization group meeting to start. We’re doing an examination of the effects of globalization in Sierra Leone and Liberia from 1990 to the present day which led to civil war. Should be pretty cool once we get it more focused and researched. Anyways.

Thirteen BC students studying in Dublin (including myself) went to Cork this weekend on a trip sponsored by the school. They covered our train ticket and hotel and meals and everything, so it was nice to have a relatively inexpensive couple of days, just to start. On Saturday morning Liam (the only other Eagle in my house) and I woke up early, packed a backpack each, and walked the hour-or-so to Heuston Station up by Phoenix Park to meet up with the others and catch an 11:30 train to Cork. The ride out wasn’t so bad, as I caught up on some sleep, took in the countryside, puzzled over the woman sitting across from me who ate her tic-tacs by biting them in three pieces, and prayed for my iPod battery to last just a little longer. When we got there, the thirteen of us, plus Leann from the BC house in Dublin, met up with the other two BC leaders in Cork and hopped in cabs to the hotel. I caught up on some more sleep for an hour or so, and then Liam, myself, and three A&S girls who are studying at Trinity ventured into the city to poke around and find a pub. We ran into Chris, Dave, Pete, and Morgan in the first pub we stepped into, had a beer, and headed over to the famous English Market, which was kind of like a supersized, less-commercialized, well-organized Faneuil Hall. After that we went out to a very nice dinner. I had a salad (hi, mom), a very good steak, and the best ice cream I’ve had since hopping the pond. We left dinner around 8:30 and walked across town to a pub and watched the uneventful second-half of the Rugby World Cup championship game. Most people in the place, and apparently the country, were rooting for and overmatched England team against South Africa due to northern-hemisphere pride. I’m not kidding.

Some people stayed out after the game, but I had more sleeping to do before the Red Sox came on at 1:30 a.m. (I was extremely fortunate with my room assignment, as I was on the second floor, directly above the lobby which had WiFi. The network had Youtube, ESPN.com, and other streaming sites blocked out (I was trying to download the latest Office episode), however mlb.tv worked wonderfully. Apparently the Quality Inn in Cork doesn’t have a long history of problems with guests getting rooms near the lobby and watching Major League Baseball games in the middle of the night.

I realized how very far away from home I was as I watched J.D. Drew’s grand slam sail into the camera stand and found myself sitting there dumbstruck with no one there to so much as pinch my arm. Needless to say, the game was amazing.

The next morning we all got up and went to Blarney Castle. I kissed the stone with no misadventures and thought about how cool it would be to have a moat around my house. We left there for Kinsale and walked around the Charles Fort for a little while before heading back to the train station and heading home. All in all, a successful trip.

Ashley, Liam and I all watched game seven back at the house. We celebrated with Fosters, which is about the worst way you can possibly celebrate anything, but was the best we could do at 5:15 on a Monday morning. (Note: I am containing my excitement about these games for sake of brevity. Most of you who are reading this probably know me well enough to accurately assess my level of excitement regarding the Red Sox success over the past week, so I’ll leave it at that.)

I’m done with another brutal week of class, and prepping for a 5 day weekend (we have Monday off for a national Bank Holiday). Most of the kids in the program are traveling this weekend because of the extra day off, but back in August and September I made sure I left this week free in the event that the Sox actually made it to the World Series, just to be sure that I wouldn’t find myself in some strange city in some strange country unable to gain internet access to watch the games. Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

Tonight is the first night of Flag (American) Football, so that should be great fun. Yesterday the air had that cool crispness that just makes you want to go outside and play pick-up football with your friends, so I guess this is a pretty decent substitute considering the circumstances. After that we have the “Irish House Party” night sponsored by the program where I guess we’re going to fill up on soda bread and do a little Irish step-dancing. Should be interesting. Then it’s probably out for a beer and then back to the house by 1:30 to watch the sox. I’m still trying to find someone to play golf with tomorrow (which is proving quite a challenge since so many people are going away). Oh well. Anyways, pretty busy night, here’s hoping for great success all around.

Later.

2:51

I took an hour break in the middle of writing this post. That's about all I got.

Thursday October 18, 2007

10:12 p.m.

Dublin

It’s about three hours until game five of the ALCS starts, and I’m not really in a writing mood. This week has been pretty standard so far, which really just means there have not been any worthwhile distractions to keep me from worrying about the Red Sox losing, and then losing again, and again. I was supposed to go to London to visit Kevin this weekend, but BC scheduled a free trip to Cork, so I’m going to go on that instead. When I tried to change my RyanAir flights, they wanted to charge me 50 euros to change my 30 euro ticket. However, doing my best Dwight Schrute impersonation, I beat the computer system and went ahead and booked myself a completely new ticket, besting the computer by 20 euros. Nice. Now, uh, does anyone want a round trip ticket to London from Dublin that leaves, uh, 4 hours ago? Get back to me.

Should the Sox lose tonight, this little excursion to the southwest should serve as a nice distraction, which is good. This afternoon I played golf with James (roommate James) down at Elm Park. He threatened me with his 6 handicap (or “off six” as they say here), and scared me out of playing him for anything besides pride. Turns out I should have taken the bet. I’m finally getting a knack for the new putter I got from Uncle Tommy, including sinking a 50 footer just as the course ranger drove up and got out of his cart to watch us putt. Everyone at Elm Park is pretty nice, and the ranger had stopped by to suggest that we jump from the 4^th to the 16^th so that we could not be held up by the ladies tournament in front of us. He even said we could go ahead and play 1 and 2 again because there was no one else teeing off the rest of the day. So James and I jumped on the back of his cart and he whisked us over to 16 where it was wide open and we could play at our own comfortable, steady pace. A couple of the fairways had recently been aerated, but they did an impeccable job cleaning up the little dirt cylinders and it barely affected playability at all. Also, I think the aerate machines they use over here have smaller punchers than they do at home because the holes seemed much smaller. Anyways. James and I felt pretty good about making use of the beautiful day (we’re still being blessed with awesome weather) while most of the other guys just hung around the house. We ordered a couple pizzas that were getting delivered to the house just as we rounded the corner, and we declared the afternoon an all-around success.

Not much else new around here. I’m talking with Kevin on finding a good time for him to come visit. Also I’m working on a time and traveling companion to go to Prague. That’s about it. Go Sox.

Later.

11:31

Another post about everything else (The last 2 weeks, continued. Are they playing Christina Aguilera downstairs?)

Saturday October 13, 2007

1:48 p.m.

Dublin

So after Oktoberfest we all came back to the Isle. James and I went down to Corrigan’s to watch Ireland get their teeth kicked in playing Rugby against France (really the final nail in the coffin for what was an overall very disappointing World Cup for the home town team), and after that we went home, and James flew back to Boston the next morning.

Sunday night my friend Danielle from BC and a couple of her friends from school who I hadn’t met before came into Dublin after being out west for the previous couple days. The three of them were on a trip from studying in Paris for the semester, and having a welcoming place to stay with someone who at least one of them knew well seemed to be a great relief. They also could not get over what a luxury it was to be able to speak English to everyone. After 3 days in Munich, I know the feeling.

I had the great inconvenience of going to class Monday through Wednesday the next week, but on Tuesday night after class I went down to practice with the UCD Ultimate Frisbee team. Running around and getting some competitive exercise was, along with music, the one thing my daily routine from the last 15 years has really been lacking, so it was good to get out there, get dirty, get a little hurt, and knock some people around. The team is decent, and about half the players Americans or Canadians. Moving on.

Thursday afternoon Ricky and Rory (two of my roommates), Danny (Bentley/Woburn) and I all played golf at a place down the street from the school. It was a very nice, semi-private course. The regular greens fees were something north of 80 euros, but being UCD students we got to play for 14 euros, which was great. I’m sure we’ll all play there a few more times, but we’re also all interested in finding a Links course to play before too long. Wherever we play, though, it’s good to have a solid foursome together.

That brings me up to last weekend. Hanover Ashley and her friend Natalie from Trinity/Lexington, MA came over to watch the three division series games, including the first one (the Manny game) which lasted until the sun came up in Ireland. Sacrifices, man. Sacrifices.

Last Saturday the program sponsored a trip out to Newgrange and Knowth to tour the ancient burial grounds out there which were wicked cool and about 500 years older than the pyramids. Crazy! The view from the top of the Knowth tomb was remarkable, and was one of those “Man I really wish I was more of a picture-taking kind of guys” moments.

The rest of this week was pretty standard with class Monday thru Wednesday, Frisbee Tuesday night, and sitting in anticipation of the ALCS to begin. I had my first real kind of assessment this week in the form of an Accounting test. It went pretty well, but time was tight and my only real problems came when trying to interpret Irish phrases, terms, and sayings in the questions. Seeing as I was the only non-Irish kid in the class of 75, I really didn’t feel like raising my hand in the middle of the test to be like “uh, I’m an American…and I really just don’t know what this means.” So I made do, and I think it went okay. I’ve been hanging out with some different people now and then, trying to branch out from my roommates and meet some new people, which is going decently well so far. There are good people all around, so it’s really hard to go wrong. Last night I was the anti-social king as the sox played from 12 a.m. local time until about 3:30. The game was great, as I’m sure you all knew, but being in a city where the nightlife doesn’t really start happening until 11:30 (no joke, most places don’t even open their doors until 11, it’s crazy), I felt a little bit bad deserting everyone to go watch my baseball. But not that bad. Not really at all. James my roommate has a couple of friends from school staying with us for the weekend, so hopefully we’ll all get a chance to hang out before the Sox come on at 1 a.m. tonight. Ashley (my Red Sox/Patriots watching partner in crime) is visiting a friend in London for the weekend, so I’m flying solo for now. I might call Danny to see if he wants to stop by and watch the game tonight, just to have someone to yell and scream in unison with. Seeing as that’s about the 5^th sentence I’ve ended with a preposition, I’d say it’s about time for me to wrap this up and go do something with my Saturday.

Later.

2:15

A brief review of the last couple weeks. (Really just Oktoberfest, I’ll make another post about everything else.)

Friday October 12, 2007

8:24 p.m.

Dublin

So it’s been a while since I’ve made a real journal entry. I am sorry for that, both for the sake of you, a loyal reader, and me, because this is really the best thing I have for keeping track of the whirlwind that has been this trip.

So the past few weeks: I’ll try to start at the beginning and work my way towards today the best that I can. James came to visit unexpectedly, which was great. The day he flew in I was on a trip out to Kilkenny, which I mentioned in my last post, and we met up and had ourselves a grand old time. The most exciting part of his visit (and my trip to this point) was our trip to Oktoberfest. We flew to Munich via Zurich on Thursday morning but didn’t find our way to the campground until about 11:00 p.m. We had no reservations, and when we got to the gate the man there turned us away, saying they had no more room. Bummer. So James and I stood there thinking of what we should do (James thinking along the lines of “Hey I know a hotel would be expensive, but we gotta sleep somewhere” and me thinking more “Hey we’ve got a tent. There’s woods next to this road. We gotta sleep somewhere.”) Anyway, as we were standing there the man at the gate finished talking to a group of what sounded like Italians and wandered over to us, saying quietly, “You guys speak English?” to which we responded in the affirmative. “Well I’ll tell you what,” he said, “there’s a company in there called Top-Deck who has a few more openings, but they don’t want any trouble and are only interested in Australians and English guys, so you go in there and ask for Top-Deck and they’ll work something out for you.” What luck! We thanked him and walked into the campground, at which point James realized that he didn’t have his passport. Bummer. But after checking in, that was going to be tomorrow’s problem. We got set up with a dank, puddle-ridden tent in the back area of the campground, and went into town to find the internet in the beginnings of the find-the-passport adventure. Later we came back to the campingplatz, grabbed a beer out of a vending machine (hey it’s Oktoberfest), talked with some of the other people who had come hundreds/thousands of miles to be there, and called it a night.

The next morning James and I set off to the US Consul’s Office. I know this isn’t what you’re interested in, so I’ll skip over the 4 hours that we spent there, while just noting that our company in the waiting room consisted mainly of other absent-minded (see: stupid, excluding James) Americans who had come to Oktoberfest and lost their passports and who took a fascinating interest in my presence, trying to come to a consensus on whether I was a really good brother or just the most stupid person in the building, seeing as I had a passport of my own and could have been at the festival. Moving on.

That evening we made our way to the festival which was nothing like I would have expected, but probably should have. The place was crowded (it was Friday evening) and James and I set up shop at one of the little side-bars on the grounds and spent a while talking to a 30-something year old guy from Norway who was there with his friends. The rest of the night we hopped around from little-bar to little-bar seeing all sorts of strange people doing strange things and going on all these crazy roller coasters and other rides. We ran into a couple Red Sox fans and sat and talked with them for a while before setting off on more rides and eventually going home to our pleasant accommodations. When we got there the party was in full swing, and we met some cool people from the Netherlands and made some friends from Spain who shared their Spanish Ham with us. If you’ve never had it, there’s nothing like it. It’s the best meat I’ve ever had. Period.

The next morning we woke up to bright sunshine and decided to take advantage of the nice weather to see some of Munich. We walked around downtown through a huge marketplace and made our way over to a huge park that runs along the river (which is kind of disgusting, by the way. The river. Not the park. The park is nice.) After a couple hours of moseying James declared that, seeing as we were wet, smelly, tired, sore, and had a 7 a.m. flight the next day we would be better off in a hotel that night. We stopped by an internet café and found a pretty good deal on the Airport Marriott, which was perfect. We went back to the campground, packed up our stuff, and set off for the airport, which is pretty far away via train. We found the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and grabbed some falafel on the way back to the train station. We got to the festival grounds a little later that night, and went to a couple more bars and went on pretty much every ride that we had skipped the night before. I saw my friend Arndt plummeting downward on the freefall as we were standing in line waiting to get on, and, when he got off and saw it was me, then I think it’s safe to say that Heinrich Arndt Lutjens III was the happiest German to see me the entire time I was there. Good old Arndt.

The cool thing about thrill rides in Germany is that they don’t have all the regulation that American rides do, which means the freefall can go about twice as high as any ride in the States. It was pretty cool, and a great view. We left a little later on and headed back to the hotel. In the morning we woke up (I had a rare half-cup of coffee) and headed to the Airport for our flight home. All in all, it was a great trip, and I think the coolest part was just being somewhere where I was surrounded by millions of people who not only spoke a different language than I did, but that everyone else did too. Just off the top of my head, thinking about the countries that were represented at the campground, I can remember Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Irish, English, Australians, New Zealanders, Danes, French, and Americans. What a crazy place.

I’ll write more tomorrow about the last couple weeks, I promise.

8:58 p.m.

This is me, learning.

A note from Joe: My most sincerest apologies to my loyal readers for not updating this blog in so long. The following post is from September 26th. I wrote it during one of my classes, so, seeing as I needed to occasionally raise my eyes and pay attention, parts of it are a little rambling. I will try to put up another regular post tonight to give you an update on Oktoberfest and the past week.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Organisational Behaviour (as they call it here), UCD, Dublin

11:15 a.m.

I’m sitting in Organizational Behavior and writing this in my notebook. Considering I’m the only one here even pretending to take notes, my professor’s loving me right now.

I went to Dublin Castle last Friday. All of the little trips we do within the country are completely covered by the program (including meals and pints!) (The teacher is drawing tick figures right now, but anyways…). Dublin Castle was fair, and when I turned to the kid next to me after the tour and mumbled “That was short, huh?” only to see that it was the tour guide, I promptly found my way out of the castle and started the bike ride back home. On Saturday about 45 of us went to Kilkenny for the day. We toured Kilkenny Castle (which was pretty cool) and had Kilkenny Beer, which wasn’t bad. We went on a walking tour of the city, and it was really cool to see all the old churches and get some history outside of the classroom. (note: my teacher just said “It’s alright to giggle”) Almost al the historic Irish stuff is run by the Office of Public Works, who call themselves the Irish version of the National Park Service, only they don’t have cool hats. (I made up that last part.)

When we got back, James (yes, James Harvey) was asleep on the couch in the living room. We met the Hanover girls for a beer that night and crashed on the earlier side.

I’ve been pretty tired lately (I think staying up until 4 to watch the Sox every night is catching up with me) so things haven’t been too wild since James’ arrival. The landlord came by on Saturday also, and apparently was surprised to find James as the only one home (James my roommate, McLovin, and I all were on the Kilkenny trip, while Ricky, Rory, and Josh were all in Sweden for the weekend.)

I’ve had class the last three days, but I guess James has been busy exploring the city and gathering documents for the whole Irish citizenship thing, and has gotten some pretty cool stuff (The California Harveys would be having a field day). On Monday night, James and I booked some last minute tickets to go to Munich for Oktoberfest this weekend. Rory, Ricky, and Josh are going too. It will be my first trip to Continental Europe, and it should be a really great time. We’re flying out Thursday afternoon and coming back Sunday afternoon. I’m pumped. (n.b. My teacher was just talking about the concept of perception and showed us the Muller line illusion to try to prove some sort of a point, and finally finished with the example by saying “apparently they are the same length” in a kind of doubting voice. I’m speechless.) I’ve been taking it easy the class few days because of classes and trying to catch up on sleep and saving budget room for this weekend. I’ve got to stop eating muffins.

Oh! I almost forgot. After two years of Fr. McGowan’s 23 minutes masses up at Our Lady’s, thinking that he could not be beat, I have experienced his match. I started going to the 7:30 daily at the church down the street, and on Monday was back out the door by 7:46. That’s under sixteen minutes. Crazy.

We always get out of this class late, which is really too bad because on Wednesdays at 12 we have our program meeting, including free sandwiches and a very limited number of chairs. We’re supposed to get out at 11:50, but both weeks so far she has stopped lecturing at 12:02 and begun the never-ending attendance-taking process. This class is kind of ridiculous.

Me and another kid from BC, Dan, and I are the only non-Irish kids in the class, and were 2 out of the 7 (out of about 50 in the class) who raised or hands last week when the Prof asked “Who chose to do the assignment this week?”. I talked to a girl the other day who said that not a lot of people get A’s. I think now I understand why.

Oh! She just said “And I’ll finish on this (It’s 11:43), so that means there’s only 20 more minutes of mindless banter before she stops to take attendance.

I should probably wrap up so I can catch these closing words of wisdom and so people won’t be scared off by the length of this post when they see it.

I’ll try to get you another update after this weekend.

I need to shave. Coming from me, that means a lot.

Later.

11:46