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I am loving this weather. Today I was walking home and two little girls sold me homemade lemonade for 25 cents. And it was good! I felt like I lived in a small town for a few minutes. I took advantage of the weather this weekend by walking all around Park Slope Saturday afternoon. I also got a pedicure and then laid out in Prospect Park and read. It was a very peaceful day, which was just what I needed after having a donor until 6 that morning on my on-call shift. After running some errands Sunday morning, Patrick and I met up in Hell's Kitchen to browse a flea market. He got a good deal on some nice vintage side tables for his new place. After we brought them back to Williamsburg via taxi cab, we walked to Ralph's where I indulged in a delicious Chocolate Cupcake cream ice. We sat in somewhat-gross McCarren Park afterwards and witnessed an unruly child smacking the dogs in the dog park as his dad stood by and did nothing. We then walked to a bar, had a drink, went back to Patrick's and had dinner. It was a pretty great day. I wish it wouldn't get any hotter than it's been. I'm not looking forward to an insanely hot and humid summer. But I am looking forward to this weekend; Patrick and I have plans to go out and socialize both Friday and Saturday night. I am also looking forward to bringing my brand new featherbed home from work tomorrow. I'm trying to recreate my bedding experience from the bed and breakfast Patrick and I stayed at in Trim, Ireland. I'm watching Bjork's performance on SNL from this past weekend via YouTube and I think it's safe to say she is legally insane. 04*17*07 When I was in Ireland, I got the following text message: I had no idea who it was from, but I thought it was pretty funny. Tonight I got this text message from the same number: I wrote back and asked who the hell it was, she replied: Soror!? WTF? Anyway, I wrote back again and told her she had the wrong number; she replied: I'll forgive her the typos, it's just a text message. But how hard would it have been to spell out anyway? She took the time to spell out relatively, and she only saved one keystroke by leaving out the 'a'. Same thing with kno. LOL and WTF are overused and sometimes annoying, but I admittedly still use them (see above). But shortening three whole words to three letters makes a lot more sense to me than making one word shorter by one letter...then again I guess contractions only save you one letter plus an apostrophe but we still use them. Meh, I'm thinking too much into this. Farewell chloe. 04*16*07 One more thing, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you hit your head really hard, don't be all macho about it and say you don't need a doctor. I had a donor who tripped and hit her head pretty hard on the sidewalk. When the ambulance came, she refused to go to the hospital. The next morning her friends found her unconscious in bed in a pool of vomit. Shortly after she was declared brain dead and became an organ donor. I sound like a PSA. Ok, now I'm really going to bed. 04*16*07 I started feeling a tiny bit nauseous at work this morning. In the afternoon I started feeling really hot, and the nausea got worse on top of a splitting headache. Finally I asked if I could leave early and went home to sleep. I was hoping I'd sleep long enough until the nausea wore off, but that didn't happen and I threw up my lunch. About an hour later I threw up the water I drank after the first time I threw up. I didn't want to take any medicine because I was afraid I'd throw that up too, but when my temperature reached 102, I finally caved and drank some Theraflu. I tell ya, that stuff is great. I don't feel 100% better, but my fever is down and I was able to eat some bread. After having so many donors that die due to an intracranial hemorrhage, I've started to get really paranoid whenever I have, or someone I care about has, the same symptoms I had today. ICHs always start out as an intense headache with vomiting, then next thing you know you're declared brain dead and I'm recovering your eyes (there are a few more details in between those two scenarios). I've had donors in their 30s who've die from it. Granted they were probably super unhealthy; maybe they drank and smoked excessively everyday, were obese, had diabetes and some sort of heart condition. But I've also had donors who appeared to be healthy prior to their ICH. Bottom line is it can pretty much happen at any time for various reasons. It's scares me just a bit. But I don't think I have an ICH. I think I caught whatever Patrick had last week. He's to blame! Anyway I guess I should get some rest and see if I feel well enough to go to work in the morning. 04*15*07 Patrick and I saw Grindhouse last night and I really loved the fake trailer done by the guys who made Hot Fuzz:
Otherwise the movies were ok. I liked Planet Terror better than Death Proof. Quentin Tarantino's film had way too much dialogue for something that was supposed to be a horror/action movie; none of the action even happened until 3/4 of the way through the movie! He really gets on my nerves sometimes. I also helped Patrick tidy up his new apartment yesterday. It still needs a lot of work. We're going to tackle painting in probably a couple of weekends. I get really obsessive when it comes to home makeover projects. I don't necessarily enjoy the cleaning and painting, but I love the end result. Today I've basically done nothing but watch movies all day. I had planned on doing laundry and going grocery shopping, but I didn't feel like going out in the rain again once I got back from Patrick's. This weather sucks. I'm ready for warmer weather already! 04*12*07 So Ireland was pretty amazing. London was pretty awesome as well, but very brief and we had half a day of drizzle and gray skies which kind of sucked. The weather in Ireland, however, was gorgeous every day; didn't rain once. We really lucked out. Dublin was pretty anticlimactic for us. A lot of where we were was a big tourist trap, we only found one bar that was halfway decent, and the food everywhere was very mediocre. But we did find an amazing park called St. Stephen's Green; it was small, but for a little space it was beautiful. We also saw Hot Fuzz our last night there and loved it--I highly recommend it. Otherwise we didn't like the hostel we stayed at because the communal bathroom was disgusting and the staff was unfriendly. Patrick was fascinated with London's architecture. I was excited to see Westminster Abbey and Big Ben and all those other things you see in movies. Overall we were just excited to be there. We definitely felt overwhelmed with how much we wanted to see and what little time we had to see it in. Plus we were tired from not sleeping too much the night before in Dublin due to noisy assholes outside our hostel. Also, London is very expensive. I know that's a no-brainer, but when you're looking for things to do, or you just want to walk around and shop, it can be very limiting. We actually left for Heathrow to go back to Dublin kind of early the next day because we grew tired of walking around London in the rain. When we finally got back to Ireland and went to get our rental car, it turned out they had somehow managed to cancel my reservation even though it had been confirmed with me several times. We had to wait over an hour for someone to show up and arrange for us to get a new one. We were pretty tired and pissed at that point and had a fight before I started driving to our bed and breakfast in Trim for the night. However we managed to resolve it in under 10 minutes, so it wasn't a huge deal. Driving on the left side in the dark was very nerve-wracking, but we made it and arrived at the most gorgeous bed and breakfast we could have imagined. It was perfect, especially after the shitholes we had stayed at the previous nights. We stayed awake for an hour just in awe of our surroundings. Plus the bed was so unbelievably soft. In the morning I opened the curtains to our huge bedroom window to reveal a really gorgeous view. Breakfast was pretty good....well, mine was--I can't speak for Patrick since he tried the black and white pudding. We explored Trim for a little bit before driving across the rest of the country to Galway. The "major road" to Galway was one lane pretty much the whole way; nonetheless it was a pleasant drive. Plus I was convinced I was driving a lot faster than I was since I didn't convert km into miles. We got lost for almost an hour once in Galway trying to find our B&B. After we got settled we explored the town a bit and ate and drank. The next day we drove to the Cliffs of Moher, the day after that we stuck around Galway to explore more (there wasn't much more than we had seen the first night), and the day before we left we drove to Connemara and a town called Cong to see Ashford Castle. I think the pictures I took pretty much sums up those days. Patrick and I both agree the part of the trip we enjoyed the most (aside from the B&B in Trim) was the drive to and from the Cliffs of Moher, Connemara and Ashford Castle. It was just so peaceful and beautiful. The day we spent in Galway was Good Friday and apparently they take it very seriously; every bar closed and not one store sold liquor. Before we realized the part about the stores, we were sitting by the water watching other people who planned ahead drink. Our desire to drink by the water wasn't that great, but once we realized we couldn't get any liquor, we had never wanted to drink so much in our lives. I spotted liquor through the windows of an Indian restaurant as we were walking back to town and we decided that would be where we'd have dinner that night. Our last night in Galway, I got carded to enter a bar--apparently I look like I'm under 18. Our second night in Galway I was accused of farting by some boys that must have been about 15. It did reek, but it wasn't me. Had I been thinking clearly, I'd have told them "whoever smelled it dealt it", but I wasn't, so I blamed Patrick since he had left only moments before the stench (it's totally something he'd have done as well). But it turned out it wasn't him so we may never know who supplied it. So that's pretty much it. I had a great time and I still wish I was there. I can't believe how chilly it is here still. Also, there are gas stations called "Emo" in Ireland and Frosted Flakes are called Frosties. Oh, and Alex had her baby Easter Sunday. I can't wait to meet her in a couple of weekends! 04*09*07 Pictures from Ireland and London:
04*09*07 I'm back! I woke up a little early this morning, but since I also went to bed pretty early, then I guess it won't matter too much. I have to start getting ready for work in ten minutes, so I don't have time for a full recap of my trip. The important thing is that Patrick and I did manage to see Snoop Dogg waiting to go through customs with us once we got to Ireland. Anyway, I had a great time and now that I have to go to work and I hear a helicopter hovering outside and a dump truck outside my window, it's hitting me just how much I want to be back in Ireland. Meh.
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