Not Baloney.

Earl and I and Rick and Helen took the day and headed south toward Cork, as we went to tour Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone. The weather was beautiful today, with sunny skies and the temperature around 17 degrees (62 fahrenheit).

The drive was only two hours or so and was quite enjoyable. Only a short section was along dual carriageway (freeway/expressway), the rest was along two lane roads through the countryside. I really like the way Ireland marks the roadways; the signs are simple to follow and you always know where you’re headed. I hope it’s a trend that continues throughout the entire country. We also stopped at a fast food restaurant much like McDonalds for a quick bite to eat, it’s called SuperMac’s.

Blarney Castle is about a five minute walk from the entrance to the grounds.

Blarney Castle.

We found the castle to be quite impressive. The grounds are beautiful and the castle itself is beautiful. Unlike Runbatty Castle we were in yesterday, there’s no furnishings at all in Blarney Castle. This gives the touring experience a more “raw” feel.

Here’s Earl standing next to the watch tower, found along the walk to the castle.

Blarney Castle Watch Tower.

After a climb up a very narrow, very steep spiral staircase, we made it to the top of the castle, where the Blarney Stone is found. Here we are on the roof.

Blarney Castle.

The line for the honour of kissing the Blarney Stone was short. There was little debate amongst the four of us. I ended up being the only one in the group to actually kiss the Blarney Stone. Make a tick mark next to one more thing accomplished in my life. I have a souvenir photo of my actual kiss, Earl snapped this photo after I was being brought back up to the surface.

Kissing The Blarney Stone.

For those unaware, you just don’t lean over and give this stone a kiss. A man sits there as you lie on your back and spidey your way a little bit down the wall, where the ground is a distant site many stories away, and then you give this stone in the wall a peck. Another older gentleman snaps your photo and you’re given a ticket with your file number. Grand things are to happen as you’re bestowed the gift of gab from kissing the stone. Earl said I was gabby enough. Apparently I now have extra gab.

After Blarney Castle we did some touring around the City of Cork a bit, which is a very nice city, before heading back to Ennis for supper and hanging out before calling it a night.

There are more pictures on my flickr page, just click one of the photos about to get there.

23 October 2007 by Fun and Games Dept 3

County Clare, Ireland.

So today has been our first full day in Ireland. In all actuality, aside from a short nap this afternoon it has been a continuation of yesterday, but with the time difference and wildly scheduled meals, I’ve hardly noticed the marathon day aside from the slight dizziness and buzzing in my ears.

We are having a great time. The first order of business was to drive to Limerick to try on our tuxes/kilts for the wedding on Wednesday. Here we are, complete with rental tags.

Wedding Prep.

After we confirmed everything fit properly and we also navigated the mechanics of a kilt, we did some touring of Limerick. Afterwards we headed back up N18 toward our current homebase of Ennis.

I drive like a native of this beautiful land.

N18.

On the way through, we stopped Bunratty Castle for some touring.

Bunratty Castle.

Bunratty Castle.

Since we don’t have buildings nearly this old in the United States, I have to admit that I was quite intrigued by the castle and it’s grounds. I was very impressed with some of the rooms, including this one with it’s lavish furnishings.

Bunratty Castle.

This evening went to a local pub for some dinner and drinks and did some touring around the town center of Ennis. It has been a great start to our vacation.

22 October 2007 by Fun and Games Dept 3

Ennis, County Clare, Ireland.

Earl and I, along with Rick and Helen, are in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. I think that’s how you’re suppose to write that. The flight was a smooth as glass, though we didn’t really get any sleep on the red-eye that was extra short due to the time difference.

I love the laid back feel of Aer Lingus. I’ve always found the flight attendants to be quite cranky on U S Airways, their counterparts on Aer Lingus have this laid back thing going on that is quite enjoyable.

It’s 8:30 a.m. and we are getting ready to head to breakfast and do some sight-seeing. My body is screaming for sleep, but I’m trying not to sleep until the natural time to do so per this time zone, it’ll help me adjust to the time difference and circumvent jet lag. I hope.

One more highlight of the trip so far: I totally love driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the vehicle. It’s fun for all, including the manual transmission!

22 October 2007 by Fun and Games Dept Geek 3

Changes.




Buggy Parking.

Originally uploaded by iMachias.

Earl and I dropped Tom off with my dad today in preparation for our trip to Ireland tomorrow. He was relatively well behaved on the ride, I think he’s mellowing out in his later years.

We took a drive through my hometown on the way back. With a new substantial Amish population in the area, most of the commercial establishments now feature buggy parking spots in addition to the obligatory handicapped parking. Some places, such as Arby’s, provide buckets. I like to think they’re feed buckets, but they could be for something else I suppose.

20 October 2007 by Flickr 2

Mantra.

I’m not perfect. I don’t pretend to be perfect. I do strive to be perfect, but if I were perfect then I would not be human, and the last time I checked I was still human.

I don’t expect others to be perfect. But I do expect others to try to be the best that they can be. Whether a person is driving on the freeway, pushing a grocery cart or watching television, I expect a person to do it to the best of their ability.

I have one rule in my life that I never waiver from. “Always be aware of your surroundings.” Whether you’re driving, your walking or your watching television in a hotel room, know where you are, who is near you and what is occurring at any given moment. I believe that if you adhere to this little guideline, you’ll be two steps ahead of anyone around you that may not be aware of their surroundings.

There are many that stumble through life without a clue as to what is really going on around them. Such a person just tried to mow me over in Panera not ten minutes ago, as she balanced her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo with one hand and cradled her cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she made a bee-line for a table. She was completely oblivious to fact that other people were standing in the same general area as she. Had I not stepped back and allowed her blind passage, she would have smacked directly into me and lost her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo and cell phone. It would have been messy.

As it now stands, she is able to continue to waltz through life oblivious to all around her. Perhaps I’ve done the world a disservice.

20 October 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Good Day.

Acura.
Driving Home From A Good Day At School.

Have you ever woke up and just had a feeling that the day was going to be a wonderful day? What a beautiful feeling; you wake up without needing the alarm clock, your eyes flutter a little bit, the glorious dreams of the night before linger like a warm hug and there’s no paw searching for a little tuna in your eye.

That’s how I woke up this morning.

Today was the last day of midterms. Professor Frightful didn’t get the midterm ready in time, so he decided to give us a “double quiz” covering the last two chapters. His teaching style is out there, but I’ve pretty much acclimated to it and gone into self-study mode, so I think I did well on my midterm turned quiz.

I feel confident with the paper I turned in for English. I wrote a dissertation on “My Antonia” by Willa Cather discussing all the gender confusion and homosexual tendencies in the novel.

Always trying to be the responsible student, I signed up for an extra Surveying lab to make up for the lab I’ll miss next week while Earl and I are in Ireland. Today’s lab was with the other Surveying professor and the class was considerably smaller; my normal class has 22, today’s class had 5, including myself. That made a big difference in many ways. Having a different professor gave me a new perspective on how to do things (he’s much more strict with procedure, which is a good thing) and being a small class gave me considerably more hands-on time with the equipment. I was nervous going into the class because I didn’t think I’d know anyone, but the guys were great and I felt comfortable with the “new” crew. I plan on signing up with this professor for my next Surveying course in January.

Lately I’ve been feeling like my professional destiny ended with asking “do you want fries with that?” for the rest of my life, today it was a great feeling to get back on track and start feeling the DOT thing again.

To end the day on a great note, Earl indulged my geek ways and sat down with me as we watched an episode of “The Secrets of Isis”, followed by the “Bewitched” movie with Nicole Kidman and Will Farrell. I hadn’t watched the movie in a couple of years and while still quite disappointing, we both enjoyed the experience. (Nicole Kidman should beg Sony to do ANOTHER Bewitched remake and this time make it more like the real thing.)

Today has been a good day. I feel confident in taking this vacation now.

19 October 2007 by College Kid. Ponderings and Musings 1

My Space.

You know, I can’t say that I get the MySpace thing. I mean, I know what it’s for and what you’re suppose to do on there but some of the profile pages make me go “gak”. There’s such a wild assortment of mismatched colors with lots of noise blaring out of speakers and flashing beacons that could induce epilepsy in a boulder. Quite frankly, I don’t really take the site seriously but there’s a lot of people (especially my fellow students at school) that do so I suppose I should pay some attention to it. At least it lets me feel hip.

So I have a profile on myspace. Is it myspace, MySpace or My Space? There’s not a lot of dirt on my profile, nor is it particularly juicy, but it’s there in the glorious default style under my online persona. At least having a profile gives me the ability to show Earl who the cute guy in the back of the classroom is (after I play “elimination” by watching the attendance sheet, he says batting his eyes innocently.)

18 October 2007 by Geek 2

Milestone.

I am just arriving home after taking my first final exam of the semester. Today’s foray into testing was for my “Health and Wellness” course. As a half-semester class, we get to squeeze a final into the flurry of midterms.

My initial reason for taking this course was to sidestep being the overweight father figure dressed in a pair of shiny workout shorts in a sea of buff, teenage male muscleheads and still make my physical education requirements. I figured the course would be like the health classes we all had to take in high school and in many ways it was just as I had imagined. The professor was the soccer coach, was usually dressed in coach attire (complete with a whistle around his neck) and somewhat resented the fact that he had a class of students that were trying to get out of physical exercise for their physical education requirements. On the whole I enjoyed his presentation style, preparedness for the class and the relatability of the topics to real life.

Surprisingly, this course turned out to be my favorite course of the semester. And I find this a little odd for several reasons. First of all, it has nothing to do with my major. Always looking for signs from the Universe, this aspect concerns me a little bit and leaves me to do some thinking about the path that lies ahead. Secondly, because I really enjoyed the class I managed to drag myself, on time, to this 8 a.m. course twice a week. I made it to every class and I think I might have been one of a very small number of students with perfect attendnace. Night owls usually don’t make it to 8 a.m. class.

So now I’m well versed in a smattering of health related topics. And I feel good about it.

18 October 2007 by College Kid. Ponderings and Musings 1

Startling.

So today’s topic in Health Class was sexuality. Any word that contains “sex” somewhere in it always piques my interest, so I was curious to see how the class would progress today. Would the professor treat it like my high school health teachers did so many years ago – by running a well worn 16mm film on the Singer film projector, out of focus, so we couldn’t see the important parts?

I’m glad to say that he did not. Instead, he invited a speaker from the local Planned Parenthood to address the class.

The speaker blew me away with his frankness, personality and confidence he displayed while discussing a potentially taboo subject. If I’m to be honest, there are few subjects, when it comes to sex, that will make me blush and it was refreshing to hear a speaker address the class in much the same manner.

During the presentation he threw out several statistics that I found startling:

1. HIV infections are back on the rise.
2. 20,000,000 Americans per year are infected with a sexually transmitted infection and this does NOT include HIV infection.
3. Of those 20+ million, a good share of them are young adults aged 16-24.

Cluephone ringing for our conservative folks, the whole “let’s ignore it/abstinence” approach isn’t working.

Don’t be surprised if I hand you a condom sometime.

16 October 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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