some good news

yes. lets talk about something that involves good news.

- i sucessfully avoided spending €400 on a camera that i really wanted but new i couldn't have. this might be the first time i've avoided a purchase such as this one. i don't know if that means i am growing up, learning what money actually is or simply enjoying the luxury of eating too much.

- one of the glengarry cast, pete, offered me a job in washington dc as a bartender in the event that my travels were to take me there. i never once thought that being a bartender could take me around the world, but now that i know that ...

- i went dancing after work on saturday night with the glengarry crew. they left the following morning, so this was a sort of goodbye party from me to them that i never told them about. i didn't know that the golden compass was set there; that certainly is magical and i am excited to see what's in store there.

- we get our house on friday pending my ability to get to the office and file the paper work. having a bed of my own that i don't have to move out of every few days will mean the world to me. elliott is looking forward to spreading his stuff out all over the room. him and i have decided to bite the bullet and take the single rooms because they'll be cheaper.

- since i've added the clustrmap to the side bar there have been 268 hits to salutmaman from four different countries, with over a hundred of those from southwestern ontario. thanks for tuning in, i only hope i can keep you entertained.

serendipitous

last night we went on a musical pub crawl, which was awesome, and we found out a bout it from two girls from ten minutes outside paris, which is also awesome because not only will we have a place to stay in paris when we go we might also have some visitors to ontario too. they are pretty excited to speak to my four sisters who are fluent(ish) in french!

but enough about the girls, back to the story of the pub crawl. the group, about 40 tourists, gathered at a pub called oliver st johns something something, met our guides, a fiddler and guitar/drum/singer player, and set out around the city stopping at traditional irish pubs. well, we learned that the second pub we stopped at, and the pubs that followed, were traditional and the first one, olivanders (or whatever), was not at all. it is the kind of pub we (the tourist group) would find in our home countries. it seems that "traditional" irish pubs do not have fiddles on the walls, guinness posters on the walls or sells shirts that say the leprechauns made me do it.

at oliver's we got to chatting with a few of the folks with us, a couple from texas who wanted their picture taken and i was happy to oblige. another girl, who i was happy to realize soon into our conversation that she was from Mississauga and we had a common acquaintance from laurier brantford, a couple from a little town outside new mexico called Los Alamos of which he said, and i kid you not, "you might know us from when we bombed japan".

matt and i laughed for a good fifteen minutes about that. "who says that?" was all matty could say.

the crawl came to a close around 10:30 and then headed to another pub where some real trad music session was happening. it was great fun, grand as they say here.

today we had lunch with matt's dads bishop connection who paid for it all too. it was nice to speak with irish natives, and what's more he gave us some connections in Cork to call when we get there (which is set for monday). and of course, being as this is dublin, pop. 1.5 million, who shows up at the same second story restaurant at the same time as us?... but the texan couple from the night before! i went to their table, they hadn't seen us yet, and started speaking ... she looked up with the expression of a woman who was getting prepared to speak to a waiter ... i told her i'd be happy to take their picture again if they'd like.

we had a good chuckle over the whole situation, and then i wished them a happy lunch.

matt's party for tomorrow night is growing in numbers. the two kiwi's i met a day ago are coming, norm from edmonton, and jaka from italy ... the two french girls can't make it cause they travel tomorrow morning which is especially disappointing seeing as the one has the exact same birthday as matty - day and year!.

that's all for now, cheers!

--b