Entry #1 in the dark














Entry #1 in by day













Entry #2 in the dark













Entry #2 by day













Entry #3 in the dark












Entry #3 by day













Entry #4 in the dark


















Entry #4 by day

Please forward my mail to State College, PA

I now have plans for what will happen after I finish this program in August. This week I accepted a place in the English graduate program at Penn State. Feels good to have a plan. Now I suppose I'm in the market for an apartment up that way. I'm hoping for something that has space for a grill. And maybe will allow me to have a cat. Those two criteria have nothing to do with one another.

In other news, my sash window fell from it's open position and shattered yesterday. It's been a cold couple of days in here. Good thing this didn't happen last week when the temp dropped below freezing every night.

I have about a million pictures from my parents' and brother's visit last week. I'll post them soon.

Was February 22nd really the last time that I posted on this thing? I'm getting negligent. I forgot to mention my zoo trip from a few weeks ago, which is important because they had an aviary with bats in it. And I walked through it. That has to be thought of as progress considering my former habit of hiding under patio furniture when bats came around, right? Sam, if you're out there, do you think you could make it through an aviary of just birds today?

I have some pictures of things other than my shower controls because I went to the my market with some friends who actually use cameras instead of simply carring them along and forgetting about them. So here are some pics of the Temple Bar Market:

I go to the market every Saturday for lunch and groceries. These little barrels are full of olives, pesto, hummus, sun-dried tomatoes, and other wonderful things like that. If I could, I would do all of my shopping out of little barrels.

Fruits and veggies are the main event here, but I have a great greengrocer along my walk to college, so I rarely rely on the market for my produce












Plenty of options for dessert at the market.










This is one of my favorite booths at the market. Nothing makes me quite as hungry as a buncha raw meat hanging on a line. Sometimes they have a whole, unplucked chicken beside the sausages, but they spared me that sight on this particular day.

Here's me and my friend Kate beside the best cake booth at the market. That little lady under the awning to the far left is really friendly, which adds to the already considerable appeal of her wares. Kate and I both have cakes from that booth in our hands here.

And another friend of mine is standing beside the produce, looking less than excited. I think Kate made her stand in for the picture when maybe she didn't want to.











And it's me at the tea shop after the market. I'm drinking chai or some such nonsense. I learned that day that chai's nice but perhaps a little too fancy for me. Generally prefer the regular ol' black tea.

revolutionary occurence

A few months ago, I posted concerning my shower situation in the apartment and how briefly the water stays warm. I have gotten pretty good at fast showers, and I generally have to resort to that thing that Dad always insisted that Seth and I do when we lived at home: I turn off the water while I lather up. On cold mornings in Dublin, sometimes I didn't want the warm water off, but I wouldn't have any warm water at the end of the shower if I didn't play it that way.

To save on electricity, I have a switch that turns the hot water heater on and off. I have to get up an hour or so before I want to take a shower in order to let the thing warm up (I've experimented with this; longer than an hour does me no good). This is no problem as I am a breakfast-eater and generally a slow starter. On the same panel that controls the power to the hot water heater, I have a switch to choose between hot water for the sink and hot water for the shower. It's labeled like that and everything. Today, I accidentally left the hot water on for the sink for a while before I took a shower. When I got into the shower, I noticed that I didn't have to bump up the heat throughout the shower--it's generally all the way on the hot side by the time I finish every morning. I decided to hang out in there for a while and see how long it would last. Turns out quite a while. Longer than normal shower length for an adult male human. There are still further tests to run, but at the moment, it looks like someone installed the switch backwards and I have actually been using the "sink" setting all this time for my showers. This changes everything and bodes well for any of you thinking of coming to visit.

If I make it like this, good things happen.













My shower control used to look like this (the heat turned all the way up) after 5 minutes in the shower. Shortly thereafter, the water would get cold.

Christchurch Cathedral

Today my friend Rivkah and I went to Christchurch Cathedral after my usual Saturday market trip. I've walked by the cathedral several times but hadn't been inside until today. I have a few pictures, but the dim cathedral lighting didn't entirely agree with my camera.

Here's the outside of the Cathedral. It's difficult to get the whole thing in one shot because the city has grown up around it; I couldn't back far enough away from the thing to catch it all in my lens.









This is a shot of the nave, the section of the church where the congregation would have stood or sat during the service.



This is the altar. It turned out much clearer than the nave. I tried about 10 times on that nave too.






Like many old churches, it has a crypt underneath it. And they let you wander around down there with the dead folk. They've thrown a display or two of church treasures down there to make it a little less creepy (not pictured).

I had Rivkah take my picture in front of this thing (though again, it's almost impossible to get the whole church in a photo). See, Mom, I'm still alive. And even wearing the things you bought me for Christmas.









So there you have it. Some pictures with my camera newly arrived from Alabama. And even one of me. I almost took some pictures of the market that I go to every weekend, but the weather was really nasty today, and I just didn't bother with it. I'll get to that one day.

New pictures

Yesterday I left County Dublin for the first time since I've been studying at Trinity and went down to Glendalough in County Wicklow, the county just to the south of us. I visited the Glendalough National Park and its monastic ruins. It's a beautiful place settled in a valley with huge cliffs to either side and two lakes on the valley floor. Waterfalls and streams descend the cliffs and empty into the lakes. I can see why someone would have come to this place to seek God. I hiked around for a few hours and wandered through the remains of the medieval monestary, cathedral, and accompanying buidings. It was good to get out into some Irish countryside and leave the city behind for a day.

Now, I know that this would have been a good place to have taken my camera if I hadn't left it in Alabama. But I did. Maybe I'll go back sometime and get some pictures. For now, I have some pictures of Dublin Castle that I have never posted. I found them today on my computer.

Dublin Castle is a bit of a hodgepodge of different kinds of builings from different periods. This picture shows three different elements of Dublin Castle today. The round tower in the center is the oldest of the structures in the picture, a remainder from the 13th century castle on the site. The other two are non-medieval (modern) structures. To the left is the 18th century state building or palace of sorts, and to the right is a Gothic revival chapel designed to seem older than it is. It all kind of looks funny mashed together like that, in my opinion.

This garden stands on the site where a deep and dark pool formed in the medieval castle moat. Some believe that Dublin comes from the Irish for "Black Pool" and that this place gave Dublin its name. Seems plausible enough to me. Now they have a lawn with this elaborate Celtic design worked into it in stones or bricks. This is a view from one of the state palace windows.

To the right of the garden (and outside of the picture) there is a book museum donated to Ireland by a rich American tycoon. It contains fragments and books of papyrus Gospels and letters of St. Paul from the second and third centuries among many other old and interesting books from all around the world. They have some especially fine illuminated Korans as well. Admission is free, so I slip in there fairly often. Unfortunately they do not allow pictures inside.

There's a different explanation as to why I don't have a lot from inside the state palace: 18th century palaces kind of bore me. I do have this picture of St. Patrick's Hall, the room in which the Irish presidential inagurations take place. In this picture, they are preparing it for some kind of banquet to be held that night. Maybe a bit on the gaudy side, but it's still fairly impressive.

Dublin Castle's not the most exciting thing to visit in Dublin, but maybe these pictures can keep this website from getting too dull while I wait for the arrival of my camera.