Chicken wit' me head cut off

Hi All,

As you can probably tell by my lack of postings, it's been a busy two weeks. Had some more lovely American visitors (Miss Ilana and Sir Rich.) We did a ridiculous amount of everything during the week that they were here. Went to see a play in a tiny theatre down an alley in Dublin (as part of Dublin Fringe.) It was kind of a Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Jacques meets Broadway type venture with the three characters being: Kitty, Miss Pussy and Queenie (and yes, he was a queen.) Good stuff. The next night, our very cultured selves went to an Art opening in Temple bar showcasing a Korean Master Woodblock printer (with lots of free wine...yahooo) and Tom purchased his first piece of art (don't ask how much it cost, best not to think about it.) An Indian feast and several glasses of wine later (at the Odeon) and my hangover was guaranteed.

The next day we headed up to Co. Sligo and Donegal which were stunningly beautiful...rocky coastlines, steep cliffs, sky-blue water and miles and miles of orange-tinged coutryside. Will post pics soon. We spent the weekend eating seafood, drinking, hiking, shopping for crafty-type things, exploring castles and driving around the scariest, narrowest, windiest roads ever in our Volkswagon Polo. Ate the most tremendous oysters at a whole in the wall in a tiny town. I am becoming an oyster addict... I have yet to have a bad oyster in this country... one of the benefits of living on an island, I suppose. Love those slimy little feckers... it's a pure salt high. yum. The weather was pure Irish with intermittent rain (meaning it comes on like a train wreck, pours for five minutes and then moves on and becomes sunny (ish) again. Great weather for rainbows of which we saw many and waterfalls (of which we saw one.) Everytime I think I've seen the most beautiful parts of the country, I find some new loveliness to explore. If only it was a bit warmer in these parts, it would be brilliant... a nation of beaches and mountains.

This week has been absolutely mad. The yeast-beast is back to haunting me which puts me in bad form and work has been very busy. Not to mention, the cold I've been avoiding and a debacle regarding an Italian class that I'm taking (not worth going into details.) Despite all this, I went to a comedy club event last night. (Should have stayed in and gone to sleep early but we got the tickets weeks ago.) It was actually really good craic (as they say). Six Irish comedians and one extremely funny MC and it was all televised for RTE. Almost ended up being part of the show when the MC asked if there were any Americans in the audience and all the people we were with started pointing in my direction as I was apparently the only American in the place. Luckily he moved on quickly when I hid under the table...haha (just kidding.) I was able to cop on to most of the Irish humor but there were definitely a few times when I had to turn to Tom for an explanation of exactly why a joke was supposed to be funny. Huh?

Looking forward to a weekend of rest. Strangely, I'm going to watch the Red sox game on Friday night (as Brice and Michelle have sky sports and get all the baseball and every other sport imaginable.) Will have to bust out my Red sox cap and represent.