First Weekend

Back at work tomorrow, or at least, back at my desk, since technically, I was working for three of the days I was in Ireland. It felt like work too, sitting in the too hot or too cold rooms of the conference centre, trying to listen to scientists talk about stuff I didn't have a hope of understanding. But tomorrow, back to the same ol' same ol'.

I'm kind of dreading it. If travelling is at least in part a vacation from your regular self, then going back to work is the real end. I'm still riding on the fumes of having been away, still feeling a little detached, though less and less as the hours back pile into one another.

Been a reasonably busy weekend. More phone calls than I normally make, plans for catching up in person. A nice letter received, read, responded to. Movie watched. Emails written. Music listened. Much coffee drunk.

Man, one thing, I do not miss the shitty fucking coffee of Ireland. I couldn't live in a country where it's so hard to find a good coffee, which, Paul assures me, are actually available in Ireland. Just not anywhere I bought one. In desperation, I had a Tim Horton's coffee, just to have some shitty coffee that was at least familiarly shitty. It was the first of my undrinkable coffees that day. That's right, you read it. The one convenience store in Saggart, Ireland, sells Tim Horton's coffee. And it is even shittier than Tim's here, which is good coffee by Irish standards, so far as I can tell.

After reading all my complaints about the coffee, you might be surprised to know that I'm actually not all that picky about my coffee. If I'm on a road trip, or at a conference, I drink whatever's poured, I drink it black, and even if I can't say I always like it, I will almost always lump it.

My last day in Ireland pushed me over the edge. I threw out about half of three coffees, couldn't be bothered to finish them, just hoped the next place was better. It never was.

The coffee I drank last night at home (bodum, black) still felt like relief, even after a couple of days back. That and the late afternoon nap helped me get through Rock and Roll Friday with Jennifer, which, due to the jet lag, had been postponed to Saturday.

We went out to see Immaculate Machine, which was a huge disappointment.

It's no secret that I love a keyboard band. Or a band with keyboards. (And keyboard players, certainly not least, if listed last.) Well. IM has replaced their on-hiatus keyboard player not with another keyboard player, but with a bass player and a guitar player, and I am here to tell you, well, I will quote Jennifer, who leaned over to me and said "You know, I didn't think I cared about keyboards at all, but this is."

"Ugh. I know. "

All I could hear were the gaps where keyboards should be.

I should say that they weren't terrible, just not as good as I was expecting. If I hadn't seen them before, I probably would have thought they were good, though I still would have found the Burton Cummings hair and 'stash on the lead singer right distracting, giving all the songs a classic rock twinge I'd never noticed before.

Tonight has been a quiet night. Listening to Jennifer's excellent Razorcake podcast, family dinner with Shelley and Steve, drinking good German beer, feeling my sore core muscles from yoga this morning. The laundry put away, the litter cleaned, the garbage out, tomorrow's lunch defrosting in the fridge.

Back at it, then, here we go.