Gutted

Jon Foreman is playing in SLO on 11th Aug.

This is the first time since I've been in Northern Ireland that I have seriously considered coming home early.

I absolutely canNOT believe it. Please, someone go for me.

Education

There isn't much about my time here in Ireland that I wouldn't share with you. And by share I mean I would happily have you come along and experience things with me, or I could tell you about them.

Presently, I have discovered a traybake (Americans might say cookie?) which tastes like cookie dough--but has not made me sick--I'm guessing there's no eggs in it.

I also discovered a band that sounds strangely exactly like Delirious. Not an Irish band... actually Bethany "became a fan" of them on facebook--apparently they are from San Diego. But they are brilliant. "Future of Forestry" and I fell in love immediately.

But beyond that, since my intern family left in June, I spend my time at Ground, like this...

With my tea in my face.





I've been considering my future a great deal, mostly while sitting with tea in my face, at Ground.

I've been considering how many coffee shops use the coffee-making process to inform their shop name: Higher Groundz, Ground, It's a Grind (by far, the worst name), The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, the Nautical Bean to name a few. I prefer shops named for people, or at least having people names: Roughans, Linnaea's, Steynberg Gallery, and much much more. A second best option to a human name, is a street name, or a random name: Starbucks, Jamba Juice... oh wait. I guess I'm digressing (Di-gres: verb [intrans.] to leave the main subject temporarily in speech or writing) OH no. now I might be temped to go back through this document and change the size of words for effect.

Now I've done it.

Obviously I'm bored with this present Saturday. What you don't know is that I'm bored now after having watched Season 1 of House, mostly in the last two days. It's a great show. I believe I'm a better person for having seen it. But how much better could I be had I done something else??

seems to be the question facing me, and facing all of us who are so privileged that opportunity is like passing driftwood in a river on which we row steadily towards yet another bend. I mean, people who have the option to gainfully earn...specifically ones who want to do something besides earn, but who have a rich young ruler complex in spite of themselves.

In other news, I'm still in Ground, but my tea is all gone and the myspace music turned off, so there's no music coming through my headphones. I feel like I'm eavesdropping on the conversations around me, though I can tell they are dropping their voices, in spite of the fact that I shouldn't be able to hear them.

It's 4:48pm on a Saturday and they are about to come up here to start cleaning up so they can close at 5:30. It's okay though, I have books to read, vegetables to cook, scones to bake and more importantly, Alias Season 4.

(sorry the text become all tiny... not sure why it did that. c'est la blogger)

Stats

May = beautiful
1/2 June = beautiful
July so far = raaaaaaayne.

June:
I spent a week in London,
a week babysitting,
a long weekend in France,
half a week saying goodbye to my near-and-dear interns friends,
the last few days moving out of Turnberry Terrace
and welcoming my parents who are visiting!

This week I am traveling the west coast of Ireland with my parents, which is good craic minus the obvious pitfalls of traveling with one's parents :)

playing @ fete de la musique in Falicon (just outside Nice)
(video at blog.andyrogersmusic.com)

parents near carrick-a-rede

<3 Ireland

p.s. 7 weeks to Aug 22: SFO Aug 23: SLO

Interpretation?

This explains a lot about my family, I think. Here's a dream Daniel had the night before my birthday:

I woke from an interesting dream this morning. In it I had been at a meeting of an elite society of RC model airplane fliers (who, by the way, were the cast of American Idol). I happened to run into you at this event. A bunch of funny stuff happened but its all jumbled in my memory.

However, I do remember how it all ended. We decided to go down to the Beach to fly our planes. On the walk, you and I were skipping around, doing some free-style walking while talking in the Jelly Voice. The odd thing was that every time there was a lull in the conversation you would started saying "eep eep eep" in a very rhythmic sort of Jelly Voice. When I questioned you on it, you claimed that you had always done the "Jelly Chirp." And then I realized that my alarm clock makes the same rhythmic chirping when it goes off. This dreamland Megan was an imposter cast by my mind as a disguise for my real
world alarm clock.

Great Questions

I was lucky enough to catch the Swell Season in London last week. It was a truly jaw-dropping concert complete with an amazing opener who first sang in gaelic and then two other "pre-colonial" world languages.

You build a crack in the Tate Modern and everyone says, "That looks like a real crack." On the other side of the world an earth quake is causing mass devastation. We wouldn't know how to create a realistic-looking crack, if the things in our lives didn't fall apart. Then the invented cracks hanging on the wall help us see the cracks in our lives, which inspire more artistic cracks, and so on, in infinite reflections of disrepair until it's a razor cut on a blank canvas, framed and famous.

I'm afraid everything's been said, reflected into oblivion. Every conversation's been had and is recorded somewhere. That there are no new songs. Yes, sing to the Lord a new song. Behold, all things are made new. But I'm tromping through quotes to write a line. I'm filtering out movies to see my life. I'm stuck on the delete key to remove pages and pages of cliche which just pour out of me. See, they pour out. If I really wanted to be original I'd have to make up my own language--at which point I'd probably have to grow dreads and become a nomad together with my german shepherd.

last night with dear Rachel, whose face is responding to the camera

My neighborhood...

Surveying the Ground for Ants

It's raining again... I hope it's a fluke.

Three weeks of sunshine was truly wonderful, enough to forget how cold it is here. I'm having climate-shock again.

See we had a bbq!



and I went to the Northwest 200!



and I took a lovely walk yesterday (no pictures currently as I left the cord thingy back at my house).


California, I hope you are enjoying your heat wave.