A string of sausages

A song came on the radio yesterday, Pancho and Lefty. "Oh, I love this song," I said to my buddy in the car. "Morrissey." He looked down his nose sideways at me. "Not Morrissey. Sheesh." "Right," I said. "Of course I meant Townes Van Zandt. Obviously." Except to him, it wasn't obvious at all. He...

Cementing your words

I was chatting with someone who still uses a typewriter, and I asked him what the appeal was. He answered that it was the physicality of it, the way a typewriter stamped out the words and cemented them into the real world. I don't get it. I have a typewriter, I love the way it...

Warning: Gratuitous Begging

I always wonder about these 'blog about it and get extra entries' bits. I mean, do they have a minimum readership qualification? That seems to be a glaring loophole. So hello, to my half dozen readers: Close your ears if you hate ads, but open them if you also are broke and would love to...

In my library

I stumbled upon this post on journal writing prompts the other day, and one of them caught my eye. "Name a totally useless possession and how you came to acquire it." My first thought was, jeez, how do I choose? I've toned it down over the years, since I stopped working retail book shops and...

All the rest

The time is running out. My memories and notes are still fairly clear, but I think if you write a post more than 2 weeks after an event, half-truths start to filter in. So I'll keep this brief, fast, and mostly in picture form. After Inishmore, we returned to spend a bit more time in...

Aran Islands

The night before we caught the ferry to Inis Mor, we had snuck into a B&B that technically wasn't yet open. The landlady was sweet enough to do up a full Irish breakfast for us, though, which prepared us well for the wild crossing. Despite jouncy seas and crazy strong wind, we stayed bundled up...

From Dublin to the West

Our first stop outside of Dublin was Bru na Boinne, for some prehistoric goodness. Unfortunately Dowth is closed in the off-season, so we were only able to take the more populated tour of Newgrange, but it was pretty stupendous still. And it made me wonder, for the rest of the trip, what was hiding under...

Dublin

Gaynelle and I started our tour of Dublin by wandering through the Temple Bar area, then heading straight for the closest graveyard. Yes, that may have been my idea. Mt. Jerome was a beautiful cemetery to wander about, and we ran into some odd folks walking their dogs and resting on the headstones. After a...

Days 1 & 2: London

Yes, my trip is over. However, in the interest of staying sane, I'm going to break it up and blog it in bits. Let's start at the very beginning, shall we? After a lovely flight in exceedingly cramped quarters (but with massive amounts of free tv and movies), we landed in London and hopped on...