No clever post title today

I tried. I got nothing.

There's not an awful lot to report on, as its been a pretty quiet week. The weather's been pretty crappy for the most part, though the sun's poked through for a few minutes here and there occasionally.

The biggest news is that I'm heading to Dublin tomorrow for an interview. This will be round 3 (and 4?) with this particular company (whose products include this blogging engine). There's possibly another round or two to go, but so far, things are looking pretty promising. It'll still be a tough decision if I get it, but its the sort of opportunity I don't think I could say 'no' to. But we'll see how things go.

Other than that, it's been a good week for getting out and hanging out with folks. On Sunday, while Aoife was still here, one of her friends from her theatre troupe, Rachel, was having a barbecue. Rachel lives in a co-op over in Salthill (a suburb of Galway). Aoife, Kesstan, Conal and I headed over there, along with two other friends of Aoife's, Pearl and Emma (who's moving in here today). It was fun just chatting and hanging out with folks. It was quite the international gathering. Aussie's, Yanks, Canadians, Germans...even a few Irish folk! It'd been a while since I'd hung out with hardcore theatre types, so it was a stitch. Dramatic readings and the whole works. And some good food and beer, too. No, they didn't 'throw another shrimp on the barbie', but there was Foster's--which Rachel nearly choked with laughter when she saw Emma drinking. Remember, folks.... Foster's--Australian for piss.

The biggest thing I got out of the experience though was just realizing how many people there are doing more or less just what I'm doing, or some variation of it. Some, it seems, have more or less made a life of it. Some have jobs, some are legal, others are just scraping by doing whatever they can.

On Monday, as I hinted at with yesterday's 1000 words, my friend Traci was in town to visit. Traci used to tend bar at The Grafton on Mondays and I got to know her pretty well. Her fiance is originally from Kilfenora, Co. Clare and they're over here visiting for a bit, after having just moved from Chicago back to her home town of Bethlehem, PA. They came up to Galway for a while on Monday and I had lunch with her and Aidan at The King's Head. It was good to reminisce about Chicago a bit, as well as seeing a familiar face again!

Then last night, we decided that an official house 'night on the town' was in order. Conal, Kesstan, Emma and I headed out and grabbed a few pints at Coili's, then another round at Neachtain's just before they closed. With all the pubs closing up on us (pubs generally close at midnight here, at least during the week.), we headed off to the local club, the Roisin Dubh and proceeded to close that place.

We headed back to the house around 2 and felt that breakfast was in order. Kesstan made up some great scrambled eggs, peppered mackerel, sausage and black pudding--the first black pudding I've had on this particular trip, in fact! That hit the spot, especially washed down with a shot of Jaeger. Heh.

After that, I tried teaching Conal and Kesstan how to play Texas Hold 'Em. It was about 4:15 by the time we all stumbled to bed.


Okay, so maybe it hasn't been that quiet of a week. Maybe it's just that I still can't hear anything due to the ringing in my head from the Roisin Dubh.

I have a few pics of some of us hanging out, but I'm waiting to get some more. I didn't take my camera to the BBQ, unfortunately, but Emma did and I'm hoping to get some of her pics once she gets settled in, so I'll post those when I can.

But as a teaser, here's short clip of Conal (in the foreground with his back to me, playing the fiddle) playing in a session at The Crane the other night. It wasn't a great clip anyways, and uploading it to YouTube made the picture even darker, but at least it's something: