doolin, population 250

yesterday we drove from galway to doolin, a teeny tiny town that is well known for traditional music, so hostels and bed and breakfasts have cropped up to serve the tourists who come to listen to the music in the pubs.  the town (really just a collection of buildings along one main street) was adorable, right on the water (we're on the west coast of ireland, so this is the atlantic ocean), and we had a great pub dinner (i had a goat cheese tart with a big salad and a side of chips - must get potato products whenever possible) and then we hung out until music started in the pub around 9:30.  honestly?  the music was kind of disappointing.  three musicians who sat in the middle of the pub - super cozy, really great atmosphere, but we'd just seen this amazing band the night before in galway, and these guys didn't seem INTO it - there wasn't the energy we'd seen the night before.  also, EVERY PERSON IN THE PUB WAS A TOURIST.  in retrospect, of course, right?  it's a town of 250, so everyone who frequents the pub doesn't live there.  but the music FELT touristy, with cameras going off every second and the musicians seeming lifeless - like they HAD to be there to get tourism to the town.  i don't know if that makes sense...we had a great evening - delicious dinner, great pub, made some friends at the table next to us - but the music wasn't the highlight of the evening.  i didn't get any pictures in the pub - i didn't want to be THAT tourist - but this is a picture i took from our hostel - the pasture literally across the street.  super rural.  smelled like freshly cut hay when we got back to the hostel at night.  loved that.  it was really homey.

to back up a bit...our drive from galway to doolin brought us into county clare!  yay!!

and county clare is GORGEOUS.  dry rock walls - no mortar - line the roads (sometimes a little TOO close to the road for my liking) and mark off the pastures.  cows and sheep everywhere.  again, we had great weather - some rain as we were leaving galway, but it stopped pretty quickly.  every 10 minutes one of us would say to the other, "look how beautiful!"  it felt like every corner we turned had something new and different to see.  and new and different tour buses going 100 miles per hour to avoid.  eek!

i took this picture to illustrate WHY there are so many rock walls.  in the foreground you see green fields and walls; on the hillside, you see that purple stuff?  rocks.  everywhere.  covering every surface.  it was so incredible to see the contrast between the cleared fields and those that hadn't been cleared and were still rock-covered.  it would have been a LOT of work to start farming this land.

and this is our trusty car!  some people (boys) had asked what kind of mercedes it is; it's an A160.  (how is this an "intermediate" car?!?!)

we've now made our way to dingle for the night - another sea-side town a couple hours further south.  the guidebook says there is an excellent ice cream place here, so that is one stop we've got planned for our evening - otherwise we'll just see where the night takes us!  (i can't recommend the lonely planet series highly enough - great maps, interesting blurbs about the towns that i read aloud to other claire while we're driving into the town, good recommendations for food/drink/etc.)

galway

yesterday we left enniskillen and drove to galway, and about 10 minutes into our drive our "sat nav" died.  she had been telling us she had low battery, but was plugged into the car's plug that is made for such things and the light was on indicating it was trying and that was doing no good - we think the cord was bad.  sooooo...me + printed out google maps directions = our new navigation system.  eek.  we got to galway and our hostel just fine, though, and on the way drove through some GORGEOUS land.  we kept meaning to pull over and take pictures, but only did so once:

galway is (apparently) an area where a lot of people still speak the irish language, and walking through the town (and listening to the radio in the car on the way to galway) we definitely heard people speaking something that wasn't english...and wasn't any other language i could recognize.

in galway the weather was perfect - sun, blue skies.  only i could get a little sunburn in ireland, but i did. be embarrassed about how white i am.  claire and i wrote postcards and ate lunch in a little park, then walked along galway bay - and set up our cameras to take this picture.

we had some awesome italian food for dinner with banoffee pie for dessert - nick and jen in belfast had been telling us we needed to try it, and it was every bit as good as i imagined.  as in: HEAVEN.  we left the restaurant intending to wander around and find some live music, and right across the street from the restaurant we found (by using our ears) this band playing amazing traditional music.

it was clear that they were truly talented, and fun, and the place was packed.  it immediately put me in a good mood.  such a lucky find!

today we're headed south to doolin, a town of 250 that is a tourist stop because it's famous for its traditional music.  we're hoping for another great night in a pub!

car radio

yes, today we listened to a radio station called clare FM.

tomorrow the two claires will be in county clare!

there are so few radio stations while driving through rural ireland that our requirements for stopping on a station are: music? not classical? not britney spears or club music?  well then we are listening to it.

enniskillen

(i meant to post this yesterday evening, but the wireless internet at the hostel we're staying at does not work and by the time i realized that fact, all the cafes with internet access were closed. enniskillen kind of shuts down (other than the pubs) at about 5:30...i guess that's what you get in a small town...)

so this is from monday:

today we packed up from nick and jen's house in belfast - they were absolutely the best hosts ever - and took a cab to the rental car place, where we picked up our rental car and other claire drove the 90 miles to enniskillen, our next stop. now, that sounds easy. in fact, the company we'd made a rental car reservation through gave away our automatic car when we were 2 hours later than scheduled (we didn't really know what time nick and jen would need to leave for work, so we erred on the early side) and now they only had manual transmissions. apparently "reserving" a rental car is a loose term. sheesh. we paid a bit more for an automatic car at the next rental car counter over because the only automatic they had was in the "intermediate" class. aka a mercedes. you know, us teachers - we're high rollers. this is claire driving and the "sat nav" (satellite navigation - what they call GPS) helping. but only sort of helping. it didn't know this one road existed that we drove on for like 30 miles.

oops. thank goodness for road signs that said "enniskillen"...

and other claire is a rockstar driver. hooray!

we couldn't check into our room until 5pm, so we explored enniskillen until then. we bought and wrote postcards (and finally bought stamps), checked out the little shops, had a pub lunch (a veggie burger and chips for me - it was delish) at a pub called the linen hall, and during the pub lunch discovered a sign advertising a pub quiz (trivia night) THIS VERY NIGHT at THAT VERY PUB!! obviously we will be going. hooray again!

as part of our wasting time / exploring enniskillen, we went to enniskillen castle which was only barely worth the 4 pounds we paid to tour it. it was pretty small and this photo makes it look more glamorous than it actually is.

but, whatever - the sun came out and it was sort of interesting to look around. this is a view from the castle looking away from the town.

now, a little rest before dinner!

note from tuesday morning: turned out there WAS NO PUB QUIZ (boooooooo), but i had a really nice strawberry cider before we figured that out, and a 70 year old dude (who we initially thought was creepy) came up to talk to us - turns out he is just a lonely old local man and in fact very sweet. he became the second person since we got here to ask us if we are from the west coast of america once he learned we were american. thoughts on why this might be? we are confused. we're blonde? we don't have jersey shore accents? old guy liked to talk american politics; he told us all about how the economy of europe changed after "ronnie reagan" and the others ended the cold war, and he thinks obama is "very intelligent" and hopes he gets reelected. oh, old dude - you entertain us.


we're off to galway now!

giant's causeway

you've waited a while for photos - sorry!  here are some to tide you over; i've got a couple more on facebook if you want to check those out, too.

last night we had dinner at belfast castle, which is owned by the city council and has a nice little restaurant inside.  after dinner we walked around the grounds a bit and i took this picture from the garden looking out over the city and belfast lough (pronounced the same way as a scottish "loch," though this is the ocean, not a lake).

today we drove an hour to the north coast to a place called giant's causeway (learn about it here - thank you, wikipedia).  it was a beautiful day (well, by standards over here - which i agree with) - in the 60s, cloudy, but no rain - and we spent an hour or two walking around and loving the rocks.

hooray - claire and i!

SUCH a cool place to go, and we had a great little walk out to the rocks and then around the area, with lots of breezes from the sea and great views.

we're back and nick and jen's house now, and nick's making dinner (curry - yum).  in other news, i have successfully memorized the six counties in northern ireland (antrim, londonderry, down, armagh, fermanagh, and tyrone) and the four provinces on the island of ireland (leinster, ulster, munster and connacht), so nick says that i'm doing just as well as a 2nd grader.  go me!

tomorrow morning claire and i are off to our next location: enniskillen, northern ireland.  more from there!

belfast

cast of characters necessary to understand this post:
me (duh)
other claire (duh)
nick (a teacher at the program i worked at in oxford last summer; one of my best friends from the program)
jen (his wife, who i met briefly last summer when she came to visit nick)

facts to know:
nick and jen live in belfast.
claire and i have come to visit them for the weekend to start our ireland travels.
they are doing an AWESOME job being our hosts and showing us around and answering all my questions about ireland/northern ireland, the history of sectarian tension here, etc.
they are just awesome in general - good friends to have - and it's easy to be around them.  i love that.

and...begin scene!

before arriving in belfast this morning, nick emailed me this:
if you hear of any rioting in Belfast try not to worry its just a few idiots. And i live nowhere near that (deliberately!!)

i was like, um, i definitely haven't been watching the news...the BBC gave me this article (no mom, you aren't allowed to worry).  and now we're here.  and you guys, i am FASCINATED by belfast.  the four of us took a bus tour of the city today, which nick and jen were kind enough to (a) want to do, and (b) genuinely enjoy.  i learned some history and have come to sort of understand what has caused people to riot this week.  and then we drove on the bus tour through the loyalist neighborhood with their british flags everywhere and huge murals marking the deaths at the hands of nationalists...and then we drove through these huge metal gates with barbed wire on top (open today - "a good sign," said the tour guide - the police close them if the tension gets too high) and then a mile long tall fence between the two neighborhoods - literally, i have never seen anything like it - and we were in the nationalist neighborhood with anti-loyalist murals and a empty lot with a pile ten feet high of old tires to burn when they riot and probably (i'm not kidding) 40 policemen lining the route of a planned march later in the day. (info about the march here, and you should click on the link if only because the still image to start the video is of the huge gates that divide the tense parts of the city from one another.)  it never felt dangerous at all, but you wouldn't catch us in these neighborhoods at night...

i don't know if i'm describing this well, but it was incredible to see a city so divided...while life goes on like normal for young people like nick and jen who live in the suburbs.

i'm tired now and going to bed...but i have a lot more to share about belfast and our time here, so stay tuned for more tomorrow!

i read this post - "mysteries of a nazi photo album" - before leaving for europe, and was totally consumed by it.  the BEAUTIFUL photos, the mystery surrounding who had taken them, the horrible (and intriguing) things they depict, the desire of their current owner to sell them to avoid bankruptcy.  you should know that all these elements put together got me HOOKED.  the new york times published them to try to find information about the photographer and gain publicity so the current owner might be able to sell them.

and within 3 hours online readers had identified the photographer.

this is what is incredible to me, as you probably know - how the internet can connect people all around the world, and not just in trivial (facebook, perhaps) ways...how our collective knowledge is greater than anything you can look up in a book or online.  people solved this mystery, not a search engine.  i'm blown away by all this.  "mystery...solved..."  all of this is worth reading and worth following, i think.

chicago (again)

somehow we booked our flight to belfast for tomorrow morning at 7:15am.  7:15am.  sheesh.  i know that this was the cheapest option, so that's why we picked it, but still.  i'm trying not to think about our wake up in the 4am hour.  sigh.  as that is not very many hours away, i'll make this short...

we had a great day today - had lunch with vin, whose apartment ("flat") we've been staying in - it was SO good to see her, even though it was brief - she is en route to india now for three weeks.  we passed some afternoon time in a park and then had a drink in a pub before seeing chicago, which was awesome.  but, um, i forgot that i'd seen it before.  when we bought the half price tickets i was like, "i don't think i've seen this show before," and i maintained that belief until we were in the theater waiting for the show to start and all of a sudden it came to me that yes!  i had seen it before - two summers ago, also in london, starring jerry springer.  longtime blog readers may remember that.  i am apparently an old woman, because until that moment i had NO MEMORY of seeing the show before.  oops.  but it was really fun and i'm glad we saw it (again)!

after dinner we got a light dinner at a place vin had recommended - opera tavern - i had some gorgonzola and date fritters (delish - i could have eaten 10, but it was probably good the portion size was limited to 4) and ricotta gnocchi with spring vegetables and pesto (delish), and we got some free drinks (also delish).

tomorrow: ireland!!

bank card update and british museum

so i call my bank and they're like, "um yeah, we've got the notation that you were going to be out of the country - your card wasn't blocked because of that.  we just thought one of your withdrawal attempts looked funny, so it blocked that transaction."  turns out it was "funny" because it was from london.  PEOPLE: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRAVEL - YOU WITHDRAW MONEY FROM "FUNNY" LOCATIONS.  whatever.  all is well in the world now.

after a nap yesterday and a pretty excellent night's sleep last night, i'm feeling good and on british time.  i went to the british museum this afternoon while other claire had lunch with a friend who is also in london.  the british museum rocked; their 100 objects from the podcast "a history of the world in 100 objects" (which i've been listening to well in advance of this trip) were clearly marked on a free map of the museum, so i visited some of them.  the mummies and rosetta stone were particularly crowded, but SO interesting, and the sutton hoo burial stuff was really interesting and less crowded.  the mummies made me a little uneasy, though - that someone's actual remains are the center of attention in a museum hundreds of miles away from where they died...and that these remains have been taken out of egypt and are kept as property of england.  i don't know - felt a little weird.  but i was certainly grateful to be able to see them...so...

the weather is beautiful - 60s and sunny, though i did get sprinkled on for a couple minutes around lunchtime - and we're finding our way around the neighborhood we're staying in.  we're resting right now (hooray for afternoon lie downs!), and then off to dinner and a pub tonight!

in other news...

my debit card doesn't work.  it will not get money out of ATMs for me.  i have tried 3.  and i called my bank before i left to tell them i'd be traveling and not to block my card in other countries, just like i've done in the past.  I DID ALL THE RIGHT THINGS.  AND NOW I AM HERE AND IT IS BLOCKED.  grrrrr.  i have my credit card, though, and i'm really really thankful that other claire is here, because i might be freaking out if she wasn't - she is buying those small things that cash is needed for.  i emailed my bank a couple hours ago (no response) and i'll call them tomorrow, but seriously folks: i'm not pleased.

in other other news, other claire did NOT call her bank, and her card works.  wtf folks.  wtf.

london!

we have arrived!  the flight was long and i didn't get much sleep (it's that weird situation where i have zero idea how much sleep i got.  somewhere between 5 minutes and...a couple hours?  it felt like i woke up every 5 minutes), but we maneuvered our way to pick up keys to my friend vin's flat, found the flat, got some...dinner? (it was 4:30pm and we intend to eat again), and are now checking emails and getting ready for a little nap.  as a reminder to you all: i'll be 5 hours ahead of you for the next seven weeks, and i'll adjust the posting time stamp on this blog to reflect that.

hooray for being settled in vin's super cute flat - and hooray for sleeping in a bed!

now, on to more important news: ANDERSON'S 30TH BIRTHDAY is today, even though we celebrated it a couple weeks ago.  happy birthday to a kind, thoughtful, loving friend (who makes a MEAN batch of cookies).  we love you!  i only got to be friends with you for 10 of your first 30 years; i'm a lucky girl to be able to spend the next 30 as your friend.

claire and claire's ireland adventure!

oh, get excited about what i have made for you:

(yes, i know it is a little too large for this window, but you wanted to be able to see it all in detail, right?)

i've explained to so many people where i'm going this summer and when i'll be there and i know it's all very confusing - and i'm a really visual person, so this map pleases me.  if you're interested, here is our itinerary:

june 21 - depart atlanta for an overnight flight to london
june 22-24 - london (blue pinpoint on the right)
june 25-26 - belfast (A and G on the map)
june 27 - enniskillen (B), still in northern ireland
june 28 - galway (C) - we'll cross the border into the republic of ireland

(brief interlude to sing this song.)



(claire and i often go out to a irish pub in atlanta called limerick junction that has live irish music / covers of whatever you want him to sing, and our favorite musician plays this song.  I THOUGHT THIS SONG WAS OLD AND TRADITIONAL AND SUCH BUT SOME INTERNET RESEARCH HAS REVEALED THAT IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2000 BY AN AMERICAN.  wowsers.  internet, thank you for teaching me that.  i still love this song.  okay, time to get back on track.)

june 29 - doolin (D)
june 30 - dingle (E)
july 1 - dublin (F)
july 2 - drive back to belfast to fly back to london.

(google maps tells me that our week-long road trip in ireland will require us to drive 683 miles.  in terms that i can understand...683 miles is roughly the distance of a one-way trip from atlanta to washington DC.  or atlanta to miami.  or just a little bit longer than a round trip home to see my parents.  there.  i've put it in perspective for myself. now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)


july 3 - i travel to oxford (the blue pinpoint to the west of london), where i'll be working and hanging out (at this job they are sometimes the same thing) until august 8
august 9 - travel to london; fly back to atlanta

(august 10 - start work at my real job.  eek.  let's not think about that right now.)

i'm off to the airport now, dear friends.  as i've said before: when i'm far from home and can't talk to friends and family in person or over the phone, i have LOVED having this blog and sharing my adventures that way.  for those of you who read regularly, please know how much that connection means to me.  and please share your adventures, too!  and comment.  i love comments.  happy summer, all.

my next post will be from the uk!

what i'm listening to right now:

love this song - it's so sweet.



my favorite line: "it may be years until the day / my dreams will match up with my pay."  tell 'em, feist.
what does the title mean?  zero clue.

(shout out to colin, m.d., for introducing me to this song!)

(note: when one does not have a real life job any more because it is summer, and one's roommate is out of town, one has a lot of time for playing music and dancing around the house to it, mostly in one's pajamas.  hoo-ray.)

i think you know this about me: that i will passionately follow a sport (that i otherwise don't care about) for a short period of time if there is a goal in mind that everyone is fighting for.  see: the world cup.  (i don't follow soccer for 3 and 10/12ths years in a row, and then i will follow it obsessively for 2 months while they fight for the big prize.)

also see: rory mcilroy.

rory mcilroy, you broke my heart at that other tournament thingy a couple months ago where you were up by A LOT YAY YOU'RE YOUNG AND FROM NORTHERN IRELAND and then you FELL APART.  it made my heart hurt to watch slash follow it on my computer.  well, YOU'RE UP BY A LOT AGAIN YAY AND YOU'RE STILL FROM NORTHERN IRELAND and the commentators are saying you're breaking records.  i have no choice but to believe them, as i know nothing about golf history.  when you are a an occasionally obsessive fan you don't know these facts yourself.  you just believe the commentators.

don't blow this, rory - i believe in you.  i'll be watching golf tomorrow.  i can't believe i just typed that.

you see that wednesday there?

i'll be in london on that wednesday.

eeeeeee!

last night i sat on a patio AT NIGHT and sweated and sweated.
today i volunteered at world peace and sweated and sweated.
wednesday?  wednesday i won't be sweating.
that was, honestly, the most profound difference i noticed during my first summer in england.  the day i returned to the united states and stepped out of the atlanta airport and it was 90 degrees and the air was HEAVY and the heat enveloped me and sweat sprung out on my back and i realized: i hadn't sweated in six weeks.

so so so excited about my coming trip.  and missing atlanta already.  wtf.

what i'm listening to right now:

more blasts from the past!  thank you, shuffle function on my ipod.



there is no more beautiful voice - and few better songwriters - than joni mitchell.

what i'm listening to right now:

LOVE this song...it just came up on my ipod, which was set to shuffle (it's amazing what music you forgot you had until the shuffle finds it)...

this is a post in honor of flag day

just kidding!!  it is a post in honor of my dad's birthday.  DUH.  happy birthday, dad!

this is us at some point in the 1980s.  i have always loved swimming - a result of being in the water a fair amount when i was younger, and in this photo i'm totally like, "let me go, dad - i can do this on my own!" except that becky was the more adventurous one in the water when we were littler and i probably really did want him near me. just in case something scary happened.  i was kind of a weenie.  one thing my parents did pretty well, in retrospect, was walk that line between pushing me to try new things but not throwing me when i wasn't ready.  example: i got my driver's license after my freshman year of college, at 18.  dad: thank you for not making me learn to drive a manual transmission car before i was ready.  i turned out okay, i think.

my dad is awesome because he can fix almost anything that needs fixing.  he told some bad ass bedtime stories when becky and i were little.  he makes a mean omelet.  he instilled in me a love of history that i didn't realize at the time, but was absolutely a factor in my major in college and my career.  he rarely tells me what to do (even when i want him to, such as when i have no clue what to do when filing my taxes), but rather helps educate me on all the options.  as a teacher i see parents who push their kids unabashedly in the direction that they, as the parents, think is best.  my parents never did that - they always let me make my own decisions.  (except for that time when i was like 9 and dad came home and asked me if i wanted to play rec league soccer again this season.  i said i guessed so.  he said, "good, because i already signed you up."  no, dad, i will never forget that, and yes, of course it was the right move.)  thank you for coming to understand what would make me really upset as a child: that i am really pretttttty sensitive and i need people to be gentle with me sometimes.  thank you for being financially generous, for allowing me to go to duke (again: i have seen parents with a great deal more money than we had who "can't afford" to let their kids go to the school of their choice, yet they have vacation homes and fancy cars).

i love you, dad.  happy birthday!

today...

...the air conditioning works again!  thank you, air conditioning repair man who told me that a capacitor "exploded."  um, yes, i'm pretty glad you fixed that.
...i watched mike and kelly unload boxes on the today show and i decided that mike is the tallest person in alaska.
...i'm looking at hostels for our last night in ireland.
...i'm making corn and bean tacos for lunch with corn that's cut off the cob!  delish.
...i miss our charleston weekend for ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY - seriously an awesome weekend.
...i'm mourning that i don't really have a good book to read - right now i just have a book i'm GETTING THROUGH, if you know what i mean.
...i'm planning fun things to do for my last eight (eek!!) days in atlanta before i go to england and ireland.  it doesn't feel real that i'll actually be back over there, but i will, and i'm giddy about it.  today: dinner with wendy after my favorite class at the gym!

i'm at the beach for the weekend for ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY WEEKEND!  (if you are here, you are required to say that several times a day in an excited manner.)  anderson is the first of the duke crew in atlanta to turn 30; we wanted to have a big celebration and planned a surprise beach weekend.  hooray.  the little house we rented is adorable (and the air conditioning works quite well; mr. air conditioning man is coming to my house in atlanta on monday...).  the beers are plentiful.  the weather is excellent.  all is well in the universe!

in other news, i am reading the immortal life of henrietta lacks and it is INCREDIBLE and I CAN'T STOP READING IT.  (mom and nora: this is right up your alleys.)  this is a minor problem, as i've read 200 pages in two days and, um, may finish this book today.  what will i read for the rest of the weekend?!  eek.  i did not plan well.

air conditioning is only awesome WHEN IT WORKS.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

schedule

i've decided that summer in atlanta is all about this:

wake up in the 10 o'clock hour.  watch tv / read book.
eat lunch.
be productive for a couple hours (i ran errands today and stopped by work for a bit to tie up some loose ends there).
go to the gym.
come home during the hottest part of the day - while sweaty from the gym (not a good combo, i know) - and just LIE AROUND.  it is too hot - even in the air conditioned house - to do anything else.  (this is where we are in my day right now.  outside temperature: 91.)
shower.
do something social when the temperature allows you to be outside and not be constantly sweating (today: dinner at taqueria del sol with friends).  drink some sort of delicious summer beverage.  current favorite: mojitos.
sleep.

this will be my life for the next two weeks (minus this weekend - trip to charleston to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday!) and i'm pretty pumped about that.

also:
ohmygodileaveforenglandin14days!!!

“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.”

i hate nothing more than "author unknown," because what that really means is that someone normal said this and every started quoting it like it was really profound.  and i happen to agree that this is profound - i happen to really like this - but somehow quotations are given more weight if we know who said them, and particularly if they were said by someone famous.  either way, i love this.  at our final chapel of the year - our school's version of the final faculty meeting, as it was teachers and staff only - this was read.  and i promptly searched for an author; it's all over the internet in collections of quotations, but never with an author.  sigh.

if you can solve my mystery, i'd be grateful.

cherries!

mom and i picked a couple gallons from the cherry bushes in the backyard - this is half of the amount we picked - and tonight we'll pit them.  i am a little bit skittish around cherries - one sour one negates all the delicious sweet ones you eat - but add enough sugar and all is well (cherry pie is pretty yummy).

i'm home in north carolina for the weekend, where it is warm during the day but oh-so-lovely in the morning and at night.  this was the view from our front porch this morning - dad working hard, me having a bagel and reading my book and watching:

there are birds!  there are stars!  there are cherries to be picked and made into a pie!  i love home.

oh, and my dad joined facebook.  omg is right.

what sounds really fun in principle: free yoga class led by my favorite instructor in piedmont park on a thursday (that would be today) evening.

in practice... well, since it's 94 degrees outside right now and i am instantly covered in a thin layer of sweat upon exiting the house and walking to the car (which i did at noon to go to my eye doctor's appointment), um, what would it feel like to do yoga outdoors for an hour and a half?  tragic?  probably so.  especially since i sweat buckets in the climate controlled yoga studio.  yeah...i just decided to watch the finale of season 1 of dexter in my air conditioned house instead (how is dexter going to save deb from the ice truck killer?!? i MUST know)...and go to the air conditioned gym later this evening.

this is the smart move, i promise.

may: 12 13 14

may was a weird month in general.  this first two weeks were chaos - busy busy busy as the seniors got ready to graduate.  the following two weeks were, frankly, boring on the work front.  my seniors had graduated and i had a lot of time to work on little projects but not a lot of actual work to do.  and now it is SUMMER.  i spent most of yesterday reading and watching dexter and eating.  I LOVE SUMMER.

i read three books this month and i continue to be ahead of schedule to read 25 books this year.  hooray! this month i read...


the city of ember, by jeanne duprau (this is a young adult book that becky encouraged me to read; it's a bit more childish than the hunger games, but had a cool premise and i did enjoy reading it.  after the hunger games i'm pretty spoiled, though.  i'll say it again: i. love. that. series.)


the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, by mark haddon (i've read this before, but re-read it this month.  it's a murder mystery narrated by a kid with asperger's syndrome and it is sweet and funny and really compelling.  a quick read and SO good.)

a clash of kings, by george r.r. martin (the second book in the series, and a doozie - 968 pages.  eek.  after finally finishing this one i need a nice short book for the sense of accomplishment that finishing a book gives you.  this is a re-read, too, but i read it so long ago that i remembered very little of what actually happened...so it was sort of like reading it for the first time.  there are a million characters and a lot of sub-plots, so i'm not surprised that i'd forgotten what happened.)