old news...

...well, to some people, anyway.

it all started way way back in april with an age-old (admit it, 4 semesters can equal a lot of time at WU) theatre tradition involving wackily innovative directors, creatively costumed actors, and most important for our story--writers who like their characters to wax religious and play with dolls. that's right, something significant was actually produced at a 24-hour theatre festival.

anyway...flash forward through graduation, a very long summer, and one trip to the sierra nevadas later...

a story:

scott and steph were hiking one day, on a trail scott thought he knew quite well. turns out, after much off-roading through various types of scratchy brush only found in desolation wilderness, scott got his cute little self and his increasingly irate and grumpy girlfriend lost. luckily, through his uncanny sense of direction, and his tremendously admirable wilderness survival skills (read: we found the damn trail by accident), he managed to turn the little detour into a shortcut to the top of mount tallac. brilliant, no?

regardless of whatever level of brilliance (or lack thereof) was employed in getting to tallac's summit (over 9,800 feet!), nothing could've prepared our strikingly beautiful and brilliant heroine (kidding--i was being incredibly mean and looked like i'd been rolled down the mountain instead of led up) for what was to come next. dessert. we'd saved our cookies for the top, as a little reward, and once we had made it to the stunning view on top:



(stephie's mountains)

...we enjoyed our oatmeal and chocolate chip treats. well...one of us enjoyed them. the other (the female of the species) was badly out of shape, and a bit fatigued from the 3,000 foot climb. The male on the journey, to his credit, was trying very hard to cheer our old girl up, and along those lines mentioned something about another surprise he'd been saving for the mountaintop.

after several double-takes and a loud "what is that?" she decided to take the ring box and see what was inside. i guess she liked it, cause she's here writing this with me, and it's still on her finger.



(the inscription is ogham [ancient irish alphabet], it means "love forever")

if you're looking for practical details about when the wedding will be, and where, and in what country, well, tough cookies. sort of like the ones we ate on the mountain. but when a politics aficionado and a theatre major get together, there's bound to be good times. and good music. and friends. so, if you fall into one of those categories, then keep your ears peeled, and your dancing shoes handy.

slainte! (it's irish, look it up)

steph & scott

(And PS- there will never be any such woman named "Steph Herman"...I'm keeping my last name. :-))

fun (???) times in donegal

hello all.

this weekend i set out with lofty ambitions and big plans to go north and be an outdoorsman. specifically, i was off to donegal, to a tiny little town called dunlewey, in hopes of climbing the highest mountain in donegal, mt errigal. this is the mountain:



sadly, as you will soon hear, this is about as close to the mountain as i was able to get, and my affair was far from lofty.

the easy part of the trip included taking the bus to letterkenny. this is about 40 km away from dunlewey, and as far as my plans of the time took me. four hours later i arrived in letterkenny, and inquired about busses to dunlewey. the man at the station informed me that there was a bus at 6:05 (it was currently around 2:30), and it could take me to a junction about 1.5 miles from dunlewey, from there i could walk. unperturbed, and knowing that this was not the only bus company in the area, i headed to the tourist information office, about a mile away. there i was informed that there were more busses, but they would also only take me within 2 miles of the tiny town. still full of gusto, i agreed, and headed back to the bus stop to wait for a bus at 4:15.

i wandered about for a while before realizing i was not in the part of letterkenny with things to do. i settled on getting a convenient store sandwich and started to wait for the bus, reading ulysses. 4:15 came and went, and no bus to be found. then, two busses came out of nowhere, but neither one from the company i was waiting for. at this point, i was thinking that if i left now, i could go back to dublin from letterkenny, and be home by 9 or so. however, i thought i would regret it if i did, and so i persisted. i decided to ask the driver of one of the busses if he went anywhere near dunlewey. the driver (a friendly chap) informed me that he could drop me off right in the middle of the village. delighted, i got on the bus, and settled in for the second leg of my trip.

upon arrival in dunlewey, i was dropped right by the road to the lakeside center, where i was to get information about climbing the mountain, and right next to the backpacker's lakeside hostel, where i planned to stay the night. so far, things are looking up. not for very long, however, as upon further inspection, i found the hostel closed up, completely empty (though still furnished), and shut down. finding a back door open, i stored that info in the back of my mind as a possible location to crash. i then discovered that the lakeside center was closed early, as it is the off-season, and would not open the next morning until i had planned to be back on the road to dublin. a slight problem.

i then went to the pub to inquire about other places to stay. i was informed of another hostel near the service station (the pub and the service station, by the way, basically composed the village in its entirety). i headed to the other hostel, only to find that it was shut down as well. indeed, this was the hostel i had originally tried to book, but found it closed. upon inquiry at the service station, i found that both were being torn down in order to build a new hostel, a better hostel, but for now, nowhere to stay. in my searching aroung the other hostel, i happened upon what appeared to be the path up the mountain. it looked easy enough, and i had climbed harder, and so, spirits lifted, i returned to the service station to buy supplies. you see, i had borrowed a tent and a sleeping bag from a friend, and so i had prepared for the camping contingency. so, freshly prepared with another service station sandwich, and a package of 6 fruit scones, i headed off up the mountain.

i didn't make it very far. as it turns out, there is a reason no one else had come to climb the mountain for a good month. it gets wet. so wet, that i was practically hiking in a stream or a bog the entire time, and not only did my pants get muddy and soaked, but i couldn't even take one step without squishing, much less find a suitable camp site. i went up the mountain just a ways, took a few pictures, and then decided to wise up and go find a place to spend the night. asking again at the service station, i found that there was in fact no place in town to stay at all, and if i wished to sleep in shelter without breaking and entering, i would have to go to the next town over. i conceded my defeat to my hopes of hiking, and was soon getting into a cab, to go to bun beg.

in bun beg, there are no hostels, but there is a hotel that has off-season rates. this is still not nearly as cheap as hostel rates, mind you, but i really wasn't in a position to argue. after being shown my room, i promptly decided to soak in the tub as i consumed my purchased sandwich, and three of the scones. being now clean and having eaten, i found out that the bus to letterkenny the next morning was at 7 am, and the next one being around 11 am. the fun continues. realizing my wallet was getting quite light, i decided to go to an atm, and then settled down at the hotel pub.

the two hours i spent at the pub were by far the most enjoyable of the trip. besides myself and the barman, everyone else was over 50, and that's being generous. luckily, they were also drinking quite heavily, and i was soon accepted as one of their own. although their accent was remarkably hard to understand (the hardest i have found yet in ireland), i managed to hold several conversations with about 70% success. after a few beers, i found i could comprehend quite a bit more, and could even adapt to a semi-colloquial accent myself. our conversation ranged through quite a bit of topics, from sports (i am a hurling fan myself, though most there were gaelic football fans, or hung up on the world cup qualifiers), music (we both liked van morrison and agreed that irish country-western was far superior to american country-western), and education (personality vs. intelligence in a conversation partner). i was soon known as "the american who's going to write a book", and soon after learned not to try and correct the point.

after things died down, i retired, setting my alarm for the alarming hour of 6:30 am. i then read some more ulysses and went to sleep. kind of. i did not sleep well, and soon found myself out in the cold of the morning waiting for a 7 am bus to take me to letterkenny. along the way i saw some pretty scenery, but was really just glad to be sitting down in a warm location. upon arrival in letterkenny, i found that i had missed my connecting bus, and would have to wait another three hours for the next one, or i could stay on my current bus (a private coach, and not my prepaid bus), and go to dublin then. i chose the latter, and was on my way home, but not before i paid up again.

i got home to dublin, collapsed for a while, showered, ate, and resolved to do nothing strenuous for the rest of my life. so far, it's going ok, but i think the weekend is a much more realistic goal.

so that was my trip, it was certainly an adventure, i will give you that. here is one more picture that i took from the foothills, which is ok. i didn't even end up keeping most of the pictures. go figure.



so, as i relax for the rest of the weekend, i leave you with this advice: make sure you have a place to stay before going anywhere, and don't think about camping in northern ireland after september.

cheers,

scott

north o' dublin

howdy all you buckaroos out there in americaland!

this weekend has been full of fun exploits for me. i went grocery shopping AND cleaned the kitchen in the apartment. and that was only sunday!

actually, what i did on saturday i suppose would be more interesting (not if you saw the state of our kitchen before i started cleaning...). what we (rob and myself) did was take a trip north of dublin, to the very top of dublin bay actually, to the little town of howth (pronounced like "both"). we went on the advice of my flattie adam (flattie is to flatmate as roomie is to roommate, get it?), and we were not disappointed. it is a very neat little village on the bay, with some cool island off shore and a harbor with lots of ships. it also happens to be on a hillside, so rob and i went climbing up the bluffs in hopes of good views and such. we found quite a bit of good stuff. we saw some munchkins playing gaelic football, and realized that over-zealous sports parents are not exclusive to america. we then took our time finding our way up the bluffs and saw some neat stuff, which you can see now...



this is the village and port of howth, as seen from the highest bluff we could find. that is only the actualy village and sadly it is not nearly as remote as it might seem, as it is only a 30 minute bus ride out of dublin. still, if you overlook the tourists, it has a very small town feel, and i liked it a lot. it's close enough to the city to not be in the boonies, but remote enough to feel out of the city. i highly recommend it.



this was in an old broken down church on a hill in howth. the doors and windows were all barred up, but we managed to find a way in...it was converted into a graveyard, and there were some really old tombstones that were pretty cool. i thought this image was just a cool image, the tombstone lying broken, the descrated cross, just packed full of symbolism, so take your pick.



this was a neat glade we found on our way up the bluff. right before we got to this glade, we ran into a woman walking her three dogs. or rather, we saw her with two of her dogs while hearing a third barking in the trees. she smiled at us and said she thinks he found a hedgehog. we smiled back and walked on, and then passed a yellow lab with a dead hedgehog in its mouth. fun.



on our way back down, rob decided to find his own way down. he kind of succeeded in finding a path...

anyway, that was our trip to howth. i have lots of other pictures, but most of them are of clouds. i don't know what it is, but ireland has the coolest clouds of anywhere i've seen. i keep using up all my pictures on clouds. maybe at the end of all this, i'll publish a book on irish clouds.

hope all is well, and keep in touch!

cheers,

scott

wutheatre special!

hello all you theatrites!

i thought i would write you a special blog thanks to a bit of ironic fortune i had recently. as you all should know, you are just about to close what i'm sure is a fabulous show of dear charlotte. (i know, it comes as a shock, doesn't it?).

well, i was informed last week, that this week i would be viewing a show entitled "bronte", by polly teale. it's about brontesauruses, naturally, but i thought you would all get a kick out of it.

anyway, i saw half the show last night. i saw half because almost our entire class left at intermission. i know i know, it's a terrible thing to do, but we were mostly taking our cue off of our professor, who also left. he's a part time theatre critic here and makes a habit of leaving at interval.

it's not that the show was bad in any respects. ok, it was bad in some respects. whoever played branwell over there in salem, i know he did a better job than this one. the story was somewhat interesting, but it was kind of half-ass brechtian, as in the playwright didn't really commit to it, and just kind of had the actors break out occasionally and talk about how hard life was for the brontes, and how amazing they were. anyway, i found myself wondering how much longer the act was going to run, and by the time interval rolled around, i'd had enough, and i had a lot of work to do besides. under different circumstances, i might have stayed, but not last night.

so i thought i would treat you all to a little review of theatre over here that you might be able to appreciate. actually, i bet with what you all know now about the brontes after working on your show, you probably could've enjoyed this one a lot more than i, who is bronte-ignorant. of course, you may just be sick of everything bronte, and that's ok too.

here's a promo picture for the show:



the one in front is anne, next back is charlotte and standing against the wall is emily. this is a funny way to put them, since at least in the first half, most of it was focused on emily, then charlotte, then branwell, and least of all anne (sorry jess). anyway, strange stuff.

good luck to all of you on your closing weekend! i know you'll have everything up to snuff and tip top and all. i hope to see good pictures when i return.

so, that's it for now, i'll let you know next time something interesting happens over here.

cheers,

scott

county down pt 1

hallo! and welcome to more fun times in ireland with me, your guide.

in this exciting installment we travel to the mysterious and dangerous land of northern ireland. that's right, we are off to the UK (kind of), to see things in the land of down. county down to be precise, and what a trip it will be. or was. i guess tehnically i already went. hmmm...i seem to be failing in my guide duties already. allow me to take a long time to ponder what it means to be a "dutiful" guide, and end it by shooting either myself or you. (anyone? anyone? 10 points who gets the reference)

so yeah, dad and i went to county down to try and find the family farm. kind of. our great-something descendent, danial magorian, was supposedly from the town of downpatrick, in county down, so we went off to see what we could find, and maybe even find some long lost relatives. so, we started out our trip with the exciting task of learning to drive on the left. dad developed a mantra of "on the left, herman", whenever pulling out into traffic. go dad go.

anyway, after the interstate, we took a scenic route and drove along the coast, which was very nice, and our first stop was castlewellan, where we stayed the night. not right then, but we ate lunch at the inn where we were staying. it was a very cool inn, and reminded me of the inn at bree in LOTR. decent food. good atmosphere.

after lunch we went on to downpatrick, which was kind of a big disappointment, because we ran into...consumerism. i found the first safeway we've seen so far, and lots of big chains, and other stuff. oh, and i found all the skater kids on the island. literally, they were everywhere, and completely indistiguishable from american skater kids, except they were complaining about their parents in an accent. go figure.

anyway, we went to the sites in downpatrick, which included down cathedral, the mound of down (really, it's just a mound), inch abbey, and mcgorrian's jewelry, which we determined was not the right magorian. the next day we just took a scenic route back, including getting lost a few times. oh well.
a fun trip, and here are some pictures:



this is the front of down cathedral. i think technically it's called the cathedral of the holy trinity, but so are half the cathedrals in ireland, so it's really down cathedral.



this is the alter inside the cathedral. it's very impressive looking, and apparently it is one of the last cathedrals to use private pews. so finally, the rich can seek salvation without having to sit by those damned to hell and poverty. (not meaning to offend any catholics out there) anyway, the lady at the gift shop here was the one who pointed us in ther direction of the jewelry store, which was very nice of her. she and dad had quite the conversation, although both were fighting to get a word in, both quite the talkers, these two.



the other famous thing about downpatrick, and down cathedral is that it is the supposed burial spot of saint patrick. and as we all know, he not only drove all the snakes out of ireland, he brought (christian) religion, which brought about a large part of the lovely feud going on in ireland to this day. thanks pat. although, i suppose the whole reformation thing had something to do with the split. but this is his grave, i think it's nice and simple. at first i was worried about finding it in the graveyard because it was rather big, but lo and behold there was a big sign "this way to saint patrick's grave" go figure.



this is a lovely long distance shot of the cathedral. i titled it my "postcard shot", because look at it. it could totally be a postcard for ireland. you have the stone wall, the oak tree, the pond with the swans, and the old cathedral on the hill. call hallmark, i can make millions.

so, there are many more pictures, so keep on scanning down and more you shall see...

county down pt 2

here is group two of the pictures from county down...



this is part of castle ward, which is a huge estate dating back to some time a while ago. it wasn't terribly old, and it was very very big, and closed. so we drove around, and took a few pictures. this is the best one. i like the clouds in the background. ireland has very cool skies. they can be 6 different colors all at once, and then 6 completely different colors 6 minutes later. i'm sure there's probably a castle ward website if you are really interested, but there are cooler things to see in county down.



this is an oak tree. that's it, just a tree. i think it's neat. you occasionally hear about big oak trees in ireland, and now here is one. so there. i like it.



speaking of things irish that i like but others may find boring...here is a road. this was just outside castle ward, but it was much nicer than the actual castle part. just a peaceful irish road in county down...that's it



we saw this really cool rainbow while driving somewhere. i don't remember where, and i tried for a long time to get a good shot of it, but by the time dad found a spot to pull over, this was the best i could do. the really cool thing about it was that you could actually see the end of it most of the time. and if you really looked close enough...you could see the leprechauns hiding their gold in the little caves...

keep reading to get the exciting finale...

county down pt 3

here are the last of the county down pictures, enjoy!



this is a rather lousy picture of a cool image. this was a little tower on a point, with that tree very picturesque-ly framing it. i thought it was a cool little image, and dad and i tried to hike out to the point to get some good shots, but alas, it would have involved trespassing, and while i myself may not have scruples about such pithy things as "property" and "possessions", my dad falls victim to the brainwashing mindset of our capitalistic society, and we did not go. so this was the best picture i could get. sorry.



we took a random detour to see inch abbey, a little ruin in out of the way county down, and we were not disappointed. the light was quite excellent with cloud breaks and all, and the pictures i took there were the best of the bunch. this is one i took on our way out, which is a good overarching shot of the abbey. it was a very tranquil place, and nice to be. dad got startled by a dog.



this is another shot of the abbey, from the other side. as you can see, the weather here will go from sunny to rainy and back again in about 2.53 seconds. but, it led to a good variety of pictures, and we were never bored, so there ya go. you can't really see the abbey that well, but that's what the other picture is for, this one is pretty.

inch abbey was also the place i took the "postcard shot". we had a great view of down cathedral from there.

so, that was our trip through county down. a fun trip, even if not terribly productive, genealogically speaking. oh well. i guess it's just an excuse to go back someday. let me know what you think, and i would love to hear a line from any of you!

all my best to the states (you need it, i think)

cheers

scott