short form:

kitty’s fine & curled up on the bed leaning on me right now.

blackwater castle is fscking awesome, & my mad love affair w/the whole island of ireland has gained a point of very sharp geographical specificity. in the works: recommending patrick and his stunning property and his overwhelmingly generous hospitality and his impish cheer to everyone who ever again even mentions the emerald isle in my hearing, and figuring out how to get back there.

headlamps and raspberry-picking expeditions are essentials for castle-occupation.

italy–or at least the 3 of her major cities that i was in for my 2-and-a-half-day-tour with walkinthewilds–is sunny and friendly and kind to those who fumble with her tongue, as well as being just as red-tile-roofed and liberally peppered with mountain-skylines and statuary as one would expect.

also, she is awash in gelato and wine.

stadium tours are stadium tours, with or without cactus-flowers, so the sound and the lighting are a bit brash, but you can’t keep the magic down, and the old songs layer well with new songs, and the crowd didn’t seem to mind at all singing in english–of course, there’s no language required for the tonal variations on “ohh-oh-ohh” that dominate a number of those tunes and roar so rewardingly skyward from 100,000 throats howling all together.

a particular couple of italians at san siro got a crash course tuesday in “don’t mess with texas.”

my students have either taken care of themselves or dropped the ball on their own; i came home to no angsty e-mails at all, just one question and a follow-up answer, & a smaller-than-it-should-have-been folder of assignments that i’ve skimmed and downloaded to grade tomorrow when my brain catches up w/my body a bit.

i spent my entire birthday in airports/planes–all 24 hours worth. no cake, no booze (except for a wee duty-free sample of coole swan in dublin at our stopover), no wild antics of any kind, really. now that i am done w/class prep, i am considering devoting the rest of my day to catch-up tv and more sleep. after grading, there will be photo organizing. and after organizing, there will be pictures.

to tide you over, l_stboy put one up he took of me when we were climbing on the ruins of an abbey on the lake-isle of innisfallen.