More of her.

Here she is in a photo taken tonight.

I swear she's bigger than this photo makes her look. She hardly looks bigger than the last one. But believe me, we're talking beach ball.












(hey! I'm down here! woof!)

A hike down into the volcano!

A beautiful, clear, cool blue sky day. Fairly windy up there but a real relief from the humidity!

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world...

...Those who understand binary notation and those who don't."
- unknown

Oh yes, Guinness in the rooftop pub at the Old Guinness Brewery is quite nice.

If this doesn't inspire awe and bring a tear to your eye, then you're the other kind.

On the river Liffey. No, it doesn't stink.

Don't worry if you think something's wrong with this photo. You're not experiencing delusions from a heat-oppressed brain †.

That's right. Riko has no bangs in this photo. That's because it's an old photo from a walk around downtown Dublin.

More answers

1. We still don't have a TV. We've rented a few DVDs but paying so much for the priv. is irritating, so we don't do that much. I've been downloading TV shows using Bit Torrent, and when they've finally completed the download we're very happy about it. So...

2. I don't know much about how good the cable or satellite packages are compared to San Francisco. From what little I do know, it's not so great.

3. My job started July 16th. The Irish government has granted me the opportunity to stay and work here until at least January 15th, 2008. The university only applied for a six month permit because a new, better permitting process for researchers is supposed to come into effect around October. I'm not worried. Riko is legal too, now. We both have our passports stamped to indicate the longer visa duration and we both have Garda Immigration cards.

4. I'm skipping #4.

5. The dog has eaten through all the cat food Riko mistakenly bought him just prior to our leaving for San Francisco. I insisted we get some proper dog food to dilute the cat food, because Whiskey's howling was starting to sound French.

No such thing as Karma

Hurling is a very old Irish sport. Men run up and down a field with big wooden spoons trying to knock a ball into a goal or between uprights. The opportunities for jokes about this are staggering.

A coworker suggested we go see the hurling quarter finals at Croke Park one Saturday a few weeks ago.

I was vaguely familiar with the game -- about as much as you'd gather about a strange sport you see in a pub on the TV with the volume turned down.

Saturday morning I informed Riko that we were going to a hurling match that day. "Hurling?" She asked, "is that the one where they throw the big sticks?"

Not expecting her to know about hurling but nonetheless puzzled by her question I wondered, "Are you talking about the caber toss?"

"Oh. Yeah. I guess."

I gently explained to her that the caber toss is a competition exclusively among the Scottish peoples, and that Scotland is a whole different part of Ireland. I told her that hurling is kind of like lacrosse.

A few hours later we were in line to purchase tickets with several hundred other people and I said something about how I hope it's an exciting game or some such. Riko came back with another one.

"It's a game? How is it a game?"

"How is it not a game?!" Incredulous.

"Don't they just throw a really heavy ball?" She asked, innocently.

"Are you talking about shotput?"

"Oh. Yeah. I guess."

"Riko, you're just making this story better and better. I told you it's like lacrosse. They run around a field with sticks chasing a ball."

"Oh, that's lacrosse?"

What a gal!

Later, taking a pause from the game I made my way to the beer vendor to beat the crowds. Beer isn't allowed in the stands (!) so I was sipping my Carlsberg by a low wall. A fellow with his hands full with three cups of Guinness asked if he could put them down on the wall. He asked if I could look after them for a moment while he found his friends. I cheerfully agreed to help him.

Ten minutes later he returned, saying one of his friends didn't want a beer (!!) and asked if I'd like to have a Guinness. Again, I cheerfully agreed to help him.

Now, some people would call this karma, but I don't believe in it. It can't be real, because the universe cannot sustain the amount of "karmic" debt that I must have accumulated.

Alright already! By popular demand, Riko.

There she is, all swole up.

Taken August 14, 2007.

Greetings from Dublin. Now get out of bed and take me for a walk.