An amazing conversation:

Jackie: (listing her movies) The Kid
Me: I love that movie!
Jackie: Really!?
Me: The one with Bruce Willlis?
Jackie: No, the one with Charlie Chaplin...
Me: Clearly we have different tastes in movies.

Something I gotta know

I've been catching up on my Colbert and he is wearing a cast-type wrap around his wrist, what happened to him?

Junktiques

My mom and I stopped at a "junktique" yard on the way home from Kentucky and boy was I amazed at all the crap this place had. I mean look at it! Have you ever seen so much crap piled outside like this with such pride?! It was truly amazing. I took some pictures of a couple things I found interesting:
I never realized just how huge a stop light was until I was standing looking down at this baby. I mean it's HUGE!As I walked through the endless piles of stuff I came across this table filled with old fans and I couldn't stop thinking of Pottery Barn, people pay good money for crap like this and here it was baking in the Kentucky sun just waiting to be sold.

Another Sweatshop

Well this weekend I visited my sister Jill in Louisville, Kentucky. The real reason for the visit was her baby shower which took place on Saturday and turned out just fantastic. She got lots of stuff for little Alex and is well on her way to being prepared for his grand arrival. Jill also decided to take up quilting what with her extra time and recruited me to help her with the job. After many many "jammers" situations and sewing machine troubles we managed to knock up this little baby in a day and a half, not too shabby. Anyway, it was a great weekend and I'm really happy I got to see her.

A Little Trespassing

Well last night I fulfilled a little goal of mine. There is this really amazing property near my parents house and on that property there is a dead tree. The owners must have decided it would be a grand idea to decorate their loss with a bunch of brightly painted chairs hung from the branches, because that’s exactly what they did. So with a little bravery I hopped the fence and took some pictures of this VERY interesting sight. It was fun, and a little exciting.

Life Changing

Well this weekend I took a little trip to Utah...again. I was exposed to many many new and interesting things, the choicest of which was a little game called Guitar Hero. The above picture shows me doing some serious shredding and raising my goblet to the gods of rock.....right.

Anyway, I had an amazing weekend filled with lots of movies (Hot Fuzz, Super Bad, Knocked Up, The Simpsons Movie and The Prestige). When all of those are listed together it seems as though I have quite poor taste in movies, wow. Rio was eaten a couple times as well as some really good sushi, poker was played and some]video games. All of those things aside it was fantastic to see some people I have missed very much, Annalise, Kristin, Jackie, Adam, Kaleb, and Kelly. Good times guys, I had a blast.

Quick Question

If you had one hand in your pocket what would the other one be doing?

Strange things in Texas

I was driving through Pilot Point today and noticed a huge billboard that said: "quality stud seaman" it's not everyday you see something like that advertised quite so boldly. Sometimes I love the country.

I Heart Ireland

Well I posted several days ago claiming to tell stories about my trip to Ireland. After sending out pictures my momentum seems to have struggled, however I will now make an effort so share some of my travel stories. I feel like I’ve told most of you these stories so bare with me if you already know this stuff. There were many highlights and plenty of craic (pronounced crack…and means fun) as they say in Ireland. Because we drove there I had plenty of time and opportunity to take in all the Emerald Island as it’s called. The scenery was beautiful and filled with lots of rolling green hills and mountains broken up by many many stones. It was amazing to see how many castle ruins we passed along the way, there were far too many to count.

The road from Rosslare to Galway brought lots of stops. My favorite was probably the cliffs of Mohr. I’ve seen ocean cliffs before, but these were unlike any I have ever seen, steep, with lots of inlets and very green. Catherine’s family lives in Galway, a city directly West of Dublin on the opposite coast. We spent most of our time in Galway in search of the craic and were able to find it in many forms:

One night we met a street performer called Todd who proclaimed several times that he was from Detroit. He managed to put himself in a straight jacket and wrap himself in chains, then climb to the top of a ladder and get out of his little predicament.

We went and listened to traditional Irish music (diddly-aye) in a pub and I got to watch as an Irish man decided he fancied Catherine…very entertaining.

We went on a little walk along the coast and I got to take part in a Galway tradition of kicking the wall at the end.

I was also able to impart my love of basketball and air hockey on Catherine at the local game center where I earned the high score on the basketball shoot-out game…not too shabby.

Next we headed to Dublin for a couple days and stayed in the home of two of Catherine’s friends Maggie and Roisin (pronounced Rosheen). They have been slowly redecorating the place and it is really cute. In Dublin we tried to visit the Natural History Museum but found that it was closed for remodeling so we went to the National Gallery instead. We ran into Sonia and Stephen on the street and had a fun meal at The Hard Rock Café (Sonia’s favorite), which was fun. Most of our time was spent walking around the city which I really enjoyed. Our last day there we decided since I’m doing book conservation I should see the Book of Kells at Kings College. We managed to get in for free because we arrived just before they were closing so the man working the till where you pay told us to go on and go in without paying. The books were beautifully illuminated with gold and other natural pigments. I would have to say the more impressive sight was The Long Room where hundreds of volumes are stored.

On our way out of the city we stopped in the equivalent of New York’s Central Park (but in Dublin). A herd of deer lives in the park and we (by we I mean Catherine) were able to find them and get very close to them. I had never heard a deer make a sound before and am here to tell you that their voices are not pretty. The young ones sounded a little like cats crying and the older mothers made a sound that I cannot even begin to describe.

After that we headed back to Galway and the following day I flew back to England for a night and then back home. It was an excellent trip and if you ever have the opportunity to visit Ireland I would strongly recommend it.

You find out something new everyday.

Yesterday I found out several things about my eyes. For example, my cornea is very thin…I always new there was a part of me that could be described as thin, however I never thought it would be the light refracting portion of my eye. I was also informed that I have very large pupils, which I feel cancels out the newfound thin body part (if a cornea qualifies as a body part). They give me thin cornea and immediately take it away by telling me my pupils are large. And man did they prove the whole large pupil thing by dilating my eyes as you can see in the picture above. Those babies are huge!