Magic Jewball

And now, where I am going. As an aside, I made this using the iPad app Skitch which I regularly use with my students in just this fashion, that is, grabbing an image from a map and annotating it. Recently, this app has become the latest thing to take sexay pictures of oneself and mark them up for the object of one’s affection with what one would like done to oneself. This has made it very difficult to use in an educational context with children while still keeping a straight face. Curses on you, amorous lovers!

So there’s the itinerary up there. I’ll spend half the time in Belfast because, well, it’s the major city and natural place to go. Then I’ll be filling my need for rugged coastal beauty with some time in Portrush and surroundings. I may go off from there to Derry, which seems to have a lot of history to it and I love history. I find it a little uncomfortable to be a “conflict tourist” but there has been a big conflict there so it would also be weird to not spend some time absorbing aspects of that. But if the coast has enough to do and the weather is fine, I may spend my two days in Portrush actually seeing the sites and meandering in natural beauty. Or “gallivanting” as my boss puts it.

I did speak on the phone to the owner of the Portrush B&B and as much as I could understand her, she said the weather had been good lately and she hoped it would continue for my visit. Both this B&B and the one in Belfast are centrally located and near the top of the listings at Tripadvisor, so I am relieved and feel set. I just have to work out the transport (those are the eight tabs I still have open in Chrome) and whether I should exchange some money before I leave. You see, I will need some cash in Dublin for the train and maybe a snack. Just kidding; of course a snack! But to have to get a second currency just for a transfer seems crazy. (I of course usually use the local ATM but I hate getting off a plane cashless so I exchange a few dollars at the bank here before I leave.) I’ll ponder that.

Tomorrow, a few words about my other trip next week, which I’m actually equally excited about.

And now, the happy thought of the day:

Oh yeah.

Photo from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_White_Rocks,_Portrush_-_geograph.org.uk_-_222351.jpg
Attribution:Kenneth Allen [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

There is a story to this song. One of my favorite co-workers is a hilarious assistant teacher and we were chatting about “the album that changed your life.” Mine, of course, was Girlfriend. Hers was Weezer’s Blue Album. I love that record and had it on heavy rotation for months in 1994, my first year in the music business. I really would like a post that I could title “My Name is Jonas,” but it hasn’t happened in the six years of this blog. I still have hope, though.

Title comes from:
Weezer – Holiday