aaah! i'm so excited. i am sitting here with gen in panera and i am using their free wireless! wahoooo. yes, we looked like really nerdy walking into panera carrying our laptops, but you know what, there's tons of other nerds here too! its the geek squad!

however, as super excited as i am about free wireless, i am not happy at all with the haircut i got today. yes, it was my fault that i told her to cut that much off, but damn, she didnt have to curl it under to make me look like holly housewife from the 60s. ugh, immediately after i came out of the hairdressers, i went straight to dominicks and bought a super big bottle of styling gel and basically coated my hair five times over with it. its still a little curled under though. grrr.

well i've had a good last couple days though. gen and i have watched all our blockbuster pics....

13 going on 30 ::: alot funnier than it looked like it would be. actually really really funny! "MATTY! THRILLER!"..."Cause of death: chicness"...
spellbound ::: pretty funny, but makes me realize how much 8th graders are better at spelling than me.
don't tempt me ::: heaven/hell spanish movie. entertaining. i cant really remember it so well, so i cant say too much about it.

also went downtown to visit monica again. we stayed over in her super posh appartment! they all got moved into different housing because they're dorms were deemed structurally unsafe. so now they live in a really nice place, but with real people too, not just college kids.

well i'm leaving on thursday. looking forward to new york, and the us open on thursday! but now, i gotta get back to more downloading. whee

one more week and i'm back to school. i'm excited and not excited....really looking forward to seeing everybody and living in hogan with carmen 8 crew finally! but really going to miss bumming around watching the olympics and having my highest responsibility be grocery shopping.

anyway, last week should be okay...gen's back! i dont know when you go back to school, but i'm looking forward to finally seeing you since a long long time ago. (ps. you know what i found the other day when i was cleaning my room...that package we sent ourselves from san fran with all the quotes on it.... "i have no idea whats going on" and "uh, i don't know if we should be high-fiving this"..etc. it made me laugh real hard)

my dad and i went downtown last night to see a movie called Nicotina. at first when i heard it i thought it was a spanish movie about some girl named nicotina. then as the opening credits start, i realize its some mexican movie about nicotene...guess i should have taken spanish. stupid french hasnt gotten me anywhere!

anyway, the movie was actually really good. it managed to incorporate a decent amount of violence, but still came off as really funny and witty. i recommend it, highly. and if you're a smoker, i imagine you'll really get a kick out of it.

i also waste alot of time surfing the web, and i have been checking up on the worlds beach ultimate tourney alot cause i know alot of the irish guys playing in it, and i start reading about this new "ultimate" nation, currier island. "Ultimate gives birth to a Country."
. i thought it was funny. they have their own pickup nation!

allright, we'll keep it short and sweet.
ps. i'm getting baja fresh tonight finally, even if its by myself.

two things i hate while driving.

1. summer road construction. i know its the only time they can work outdoors, but still, it sucks.
2. people who dont know good highway driving etiquette. when someone driving faster than you is coming up behind you and there is nobody in the right lane, you should move over to the right lane! don't just sit there putting along in the fast lane. infact if nobody is in the right lane, you should be driving there all the time. stupid slow drivers.

anyway, after a minorly frustrating drive, i just got back from u of i in good time. as usual, i very much enjoyed myself down there, barring two minor incidents with the toilet. it was great to see cass who i havent seen in a long time, and i was also happy to find my brother still alive and kicking after his 'hell week' in the frat house.

also saw that napoleon dynamite movie that everyone was "still laughing" from. i thought sitting through it was absolutely tortuous. several times i eyed the exit sign ready to just bolt out of there. but its strange now, because when i find myself looking back on the movie or talking about it with kern, i start laughing at all these little oddities and quirks in the movie and actually find it kind of funny now.

but still laughing implies you actually laughed in the movie. so i'm not still laughing. i'll say i've just broke into a chuckle.

the olympics!!

i love the olympics. its really strange, it doesn't really matter what sport/event it is, but i will watch it if its part of the olympics. like beach volleyball or this canoe slaloming...i would never go channel flicking and stop to watch these sports, but when its on the olympics, i'm glued to the damn tv.

my favorite events so far though are the swimming, diving and gymnastics. especially the men's gymnastics..i finally watched the mens all around final this morning (thanks steve, kern, for not blurting out the end result). all last night i had been trying to avoid hearing who won the final because i was recording it at home (someone even jumped to change the tv channel when the news started to say"and paul hamm comes home with the__") and so when i was watching the final, and paul hamm fell, i never believed he would come back gold. that was incredible. thats why the olympics are so cool.

well its been nice being home, settling back into being lazy again. i am working a little bit in my dad's office, but the majority of my time i spend sleeping or lazing around watching the olympics.
speaking of olympics, olin was showing me pics of this event called the beer olympics. they had all these random teams and competed in team drinking games. it looked like so much fun i started telling my friends at home about it, and they decided to throw their own beer olympics, although there really was only one event to compete in, survivor flip cup. survivor flip cup is the normal flip cup really race, but you have to vote off one of your team members when you lose and someone has to pick up the remaining cups. despite the fact i showed up late, i had a great night.

also finally saw garden state. i looove zach braff and i looove scrubs so i was really looking forward to seeing the movie all summer long. it was an enjoyable the movie. i thought it was really great in some parts, but kind of loose in others. the soundtrack sounds spectacular though. apparently other people think so too because everywhere i go to buy it, its sold out. i guess i'll just order it online.

allright, i think i'm gonna go watch some table tennis or something. yaay olympics!

home again. home again. jiggety-jig. isnt that how that nursery rhyme goes?

anyway, i'm home. i returned to find my room in the exact condition i had left it...a mess. the bed wasnt even made! oh well, at least cleaning my room gives me something to do when i wake at three in the morning, thanks to jet lag.

the flight home was eh, not spectacular. the lady next to me started to really annoy me, for no particular reason, but just lots of little ones. she was one of these arsty fartsy ladies with their ten million bracelets and earthy toned outfits and talked with their extravagent hand motions (think mrs. hicks for anyone who went to central). and besides, she was trying to take over the arm rest. its funny how people, or atleast me, get very territorial on planes. anyway, i was always looking for an opportunity to steal the armrest back, like when she went to grab her homemade bottle of tomato juice for her bloody marys, or when she went to press the button to call the air hostess (she pressed it five times during the flight! about the stupidest things too)

i spent the majority of the flight reading my book, the Life of Pi ( a good book for anyone whose intersted) normally i dont read books for three or four month periods, and then i go into a flurry of reading where i read three or four in a week. i'm in one of my flurry periods now. it would be nice to read a little more than i do, but i know that when school starts, reading books that arent about buildings or structures or concrete is the last thing on my mind.

i also have to start getting all this ultimate stuff together. as of right now, we dont technically have captains because we never had an election, but i've decided i'm taking over anyway. i dont know who else will help me with it though..we'll have to see. club sectionals is coming up soon, and i hope we can field a team. i think we have like five or six definite returners, which means we have to do lots of recruiting. enter plan john baldwin. we used to joke about putting him at the girls recruiting table so we could attract more girls, but i think it would actually work. if i saw a superman (tom welling) look-a-like sitting at a table, i would definitely check out what club he was promoting.

okay, its time to empty the dryer.

last blog in ireland. i'm going back to chicago tommorow. sad and excited all at once, its a strange feeling, but i think its why i love traveling. plus flying on planes..i think i'm one of the few who actually get excited about the plane ride.

well in my last few days here, i went up to the north with my mum. we drove through belfast and up to the very top of ireland, where giants causeway is. giants causeway is amazing! the rocks along this coastline are all shaped hexigonally (and naturally too!). i have no idea how this happens, but i intend to look it up sometime. i'll put up a pic of it when i get back, it is really stunning.

anyway, we drove down the coast back to belfast...the coastline up there is beautiful. belfast is also really cool too. its a city where there has been a lot of trouble, but the confict has calmed a bit and you can see the investement starting to come back into the city, and belfast becoming more upmarket. however, the segregated communities of prodestants and catholics are still evident (from the top of our bus tour, anyway). the prodestant area has all the union jack flags are flying and murals depicting the gun trade and the colombia three (all associated with the training of the ira) , and the catholic side has murals of all other 'freedom fighters' of the world who share their struggle. what really struck me as odd, however, was the number of palestinian flags flying in the catholic area... their struggles are supposed to ressemble each other. and between these communities still remain the peace walls which were put up to keep the communites seperate and to quell violence, back in the 70s i think. with the peace process nowadays, the north is doing a lot better. apparently this summer was one of the least violent in a long time. anyway, it was fascinating to see.

definitely the coolest part of belfastn for me, the engineer, was the shipyards (where they built the titanic!) the cranes are huge! its unreal to think how big these ships were, especially for back then.

i'm excited for the rest of today. i get one last swim in the fourty foot, and get to see my cousin who just came back from anguila (she works there). oh, but i have to pack. normally i like packing, but when i have to fit twice the amount of stuff into the same amount of space, it becomes a wee bit stressful.

i cant believe the next time i'll be in ireland, i'll be done with college. scary.

wow, i havent blogged in so long that i almsot forgot my username and password. after about five tries, i picked the right combination.

first things first. i passed my drivers test today! and i am fucking happy with myself. this isnt any drivers test...the test over here is quite hard. in america all you have to do is sit in the car and drive straight, do a little reversing around the corner, and as long as you dont hit anybody, boom! you have a drivers license. over here, however, over 50% of the applicants fail, so i was quite nervous about taking the test. they have you doing all these 'proper' maneovers...looking in the mirrors all the time, downshifting without coasting, mirror signal move over, looking right left right left when you're pulling out...all this crazy shit that if you actually did when you were driving, you wouldnt have the time or the mind to look at the road infront of you. somehow i pulled it off for 30 mins and never have to worry about it again. woohoo!

going back in my week...on sunday, i met up with byrne (to most of you...the kid i was 'stalking' on the facebook...please, it wasn't creepy) again. he had a barbeque on the roof garden of his apartment building. it was amazing! such a fantastic view of dublin, and such a beautiful day. sadly, i had to leave the drinking games to catch the bus.

earlier in the week, i went down to the galway races with my cousin and his friend. the galway races are a huge event...the town of galways goes crazy! theres just so many people there. needless to say, that was a great time..i won some money on a couple races, but shortly after gave it back to the bookies. we then went out to the pubs and nightclubs which were so crowded you could hardly move, but still a great time. ireland, like new york, has recently (i think six months ago) instigated a smoking ban in pubs and clubs and all public places; for such a drinking and smoking culture, i was so surprised it was passed and has been obeyed. anyway, the one thing i notice now though, is that without the stench of smoke invading your nose in pubs and clubs, you now smell people's lovely body odor everywhere. i almost prefer the smoke! almost.

and the night before i went to galway, i went out for one last time with my frisbee friends before they all headed off to finland for worlds. i really hope i meet up with them again becausei really like them, and enjoyed playing with them. i've been following their progress at worlds, but neither team is pulling off any major upsets. they're still a young team i guess, in the world of ultimate. its scary though, because i thought they were pretty good....and they're getting crushed by the likes of usa and canada. i've never seen the the top club teams in the states play, but damn! they must be spectacular. someday i'll go watch them, or maybe play against them.

okay, mostly because i'm bored of blogging now, and a little because i cant remember anything else that happened, i'm going to stop now.