one more miracle

After literally a full day of pretty much abject misery, I have arrived in Dublin! The abject misery was mostly because I was crampy and bleeding profusefuly for the entirety of a 4 hour car drive, 2 plane flights totalling 9 hours, and several more hours in airports, causing me to continually curse my ovaries passionately.

BUT NEVERMIND THAT, FOR I AM HERE! \o/ Riding the bus in from the airport was pretty breathtaking - I'm home. It's pretty incredible how familiar everything feels, so much more familiar than any other place in my life. I have so much affection for this city. It's taking some adjusting being back in a decent sized city - Dublin may be dinky as far as metropolitan European capitals go, but there's still millions of buses and taxis dashing hither and thither! I love it.

My trip, however, is not off to the most auspicious start. Emily was supposed to fly in tonight and we were going to have three days together with Cary and Cary's boyfriend Mike. Emily was staying at a hotel downtown with me. However, because of a strike in France, she didn't make it here!! :(((((( It's so unfair because, wtf, France? All she had to do was fly OVER France, but she couldn't even do that. I'm really really sad because I wanted to see her so badly, and because my plans for the next few days centered around her. We were obviously going to spend time with Cary and Mike, but we also wanted to let them have their couple time. Now I'm going to be the awkward third wheel, or finding my own things to do. Which I can do! But I was so, so looking forward to just having a couple days with Emily to be girly, go shopping and eat good food and catch up on life. I haven't seen her since August 2008!!! It's so unfair and I'm really sad. She said she spent a couple hours in the airport just crying, and I totally understand. :((( Stupid life, whyyy!

Luckily I have Irish people that love me, because I told Bren about this on GChat and he immediately offered to come into town from the suburbs just to hang out and have a pint and a chat. I love my Bren! I'm sure things will work out, because hey, I'm in DUBLIN! This was just a terrible way to start the trip. Hopefully I'll get to see her somehow soon - but she'll be in California and I Michigan. Gah. :(

Anywho, I am safe! Don't worry about me! I'm going to venture out and meet Bren and have a BULMERS ON TAP omggg (or maybe even a Kopparberg! SO MANY CHOICES) and a crepe from Lemon for dinner and it will be a good evening. And then I will sleep a million more hours because my four hour nap was nowhere near enough to recover me.

I'll update more because I'm in a hotel with wireless! ♥

I had a most lovely weekend! My dear cousin Meg came down to visit me from where she lives near Lansing. She's 36, married to a great guy with two kids, and she and I have received many of the same genes from our shared side of the family so we have clicked ever since I was a wee thing. She is made of awesome and win and we had such a great time with our girls' weekend! The weather was PERFECTION the entire time - sunny, 70s, with a light breeze. Saturday we went to lunch at a great place, and then we went to a bead store, the used bookstore, a great fair trade clothing shop where Meg bought TWO awesome jackets, and my favorite coffee shop Lab (where the adorable German barista remembered me again and I found out his name is Toby - which is also Meg's son's name, hilarious) where one of the baristas recommended a iced raspberry mocha to Meg and she was very pleased. Then we went to my actual lab and I showed her around, and we hung out with Francisco because he was the only one there late in the afternoon on a Saturday, what, nerd. She was super charmed by him and even sadder for me that he's leaving. This was a theme of the weekend.

We went home, watched some Big Bang Theory with my roomies, and one of my roomies and her boyfriend grilled chicken and veggies for us! ♥ Then we went out for cocktails because Meg wanted to pretend to be a grad student for a night. :) We hit up two of my favorite bars with my roomies and Francisco, and there was some hilarious girltalk over martinis while Francisco literally squirmed and tried not to look like he wanted to die. IT WAS ADORABLE. Meg reiterated that the universe is a cruel cruel thing for stealing him away from me, and all I can do is agree. Ugh, it's ridiculous.

Hilarious explication of my post title: my roommate Nichole has a super intense Korean boss who frequently drives her to tears. However, this boss sometimes comes out with hilarious gems when they are out drinking as a lab (which they do pretty frequently!). Apparently, according to Nichole's boss, if you don't meet the other person's eyes when you are clinking glasses, you will have SEVEN YEARS OF BAD SEX. LOLOLOL WHAT IS THAT. So, APPARENTLY, when they are out drinking and people go to clink glasses, Nichole's boss just says "Seven years. SEVEN YEARS." and is super intense about it. OMG HILARITY. So of course we kept clinking and staring intently into each others eyes. Awesomeness.

We ended up going to sleep at like 4 AM, what, and then Sunday morning we went to brunch at this amaaaazing place downtown. I had a spiced apple and walnut crepe, om freaking nommmm. Also amazing coffee. Then we went to my favorite, the Cupcake Station, because it is an Ann Arbor MUST. Thennn we walked around an art supply store and Borders, walked by Lab and saw the Cute German Barista there again (he seems to sit outside reading a lot - we hypothesized that he might actually be one of the owners? Hmmmm!), and finally headed to my apartment so she could drive back home. All in all it was a relaxing/exhausting (because of all the walking!) weekend filled with good chats and good friends. Meg has worked nonstop for the last 7 weeks (LITERALLY - she runs her own company dyeing yarn, and works 65 hours a week, on TOP of being a mom to two) so I think this downtime was really good for her. She seemed to enjoy herself, anyway! Yay. :)

I finished off my day today by taking a beautiful drive through the country in the sunshine - there are few things more relaxing to me than zipping along back roads, blasting music and generally feeling at peace with life. Then I went to Kohl's, where I got an AMAZING deal on luggage - I bought this adorable five piece luggage set for only 67 DOLLARS. Down from $180! Eee I love Kohl's. I had pretty much no decent large suitcases, and I wanted something good to bring to Dublin. I got more than I was hoping for, because the small suitcase is going to be awesome for short trips too! Love itttt. And it's all pretty too. :D

OH YEAH I'M LEAVING FOR DUBLIN IN TEN DAYS OMGGG MY LIFE WHAT. :DDDDD

Ahem. Yay for good weekends! Now I am numb with exhaustion and have to face a Monday morning, but whatev whatev. ♥

In NEWS OF AWESOMENESS, I have almost-concrete plans to go back to Dublin! YAAAAAY! With Cary and Emily, two of my American friends from my year in Dublin! YAAAAAAAAAAY!

*does the boogie dance of I'm-going-back-to-Dublin-YAY* You WISH you could see this dance!

For all newcomers to this here corner of the internet (I'm so sorry to the vets! At least I haven't rambled about Dublin in the recent past?), a brief recap: from 2007-08, I spent 9 months studying abroad at Trinity College Dublin, studying chemistry/biochemistry. I lived in a posh apartment in downtown Dublin, met dozens of wonderful Irish folks who became literally some of my best friends in the world, met 4 American girls who formed a very close pod of awesomeness and with whom I still keep in touch almost daily, had more life experiences than I have in my other 20 years of life combined, and kinda-sorta-maybe fell a little bit in love... with the city, with a boy, with the person I discovered inside myself when I was there. The before and after photos of my soul would be striking - Before Dublin (B.D.) I was withdrawn, shy, lonely, and wracked by self-consciousness and self-doubt, but After Dublin (A.D.) I was confident, assertive, bold, and happy. I emerged a different person, complete with a whole new passel of friends who accepted me completely for who I was. They still keep me going on a day-to-day basis.

I cannot say enough about the transformative and joyful nature of that experience. I have said loads in the past - if you are at all curious, my "dublin" tag has all the dirty details (including the sordid accounts of eleven ~encounters with Irish boys. Mm hmmmmm ;) My first kiss was from a red-headed Irish boy in a pub while drunk on Guinness during my first week in Dublin - top THAT) and my "dublin - missing" tag has all the nostalgia and reflection. I have often gone back and read those entries in order to recapture even just a fraction of the joy I felt while writing them.

SO ANYWAY, I went back to Dublin last May, and it was everything I remembered and more. I've resolved to make Dublin returns an annual thing whenever possible, a biannual (as in, every other year) thing when not. This year, I was going to try to go with the 4 American girls mentioned above. Unfortunately, a couple people have fallen through, but it looks like 3 of us are going to be able to go at the same time! We'll only overlap a couple days, but they'll be a GREAT couple of days (I haven't seen these girls since August 2008!!!) and then I will stay about a week longer to see my Irish loves (most of them are still there doing PhDs, Masters, or working). It is the MOST EXCITING EVER and I am practically vibrating out of my skin with anticipation.

THE CAVEAT: This plan hinges pretty sharply on whether or not Jason accepts me into his lab. If he does, I am 95% certain that he will totally okay this plan and everything will move ahead smoothly. If he does not, the problem is twofold: I will have to work hard to find another advisor I want to work with, and also I have absolutely no way of knowing if that person would be amenable to me taking a week off to fly to Europe during my rotation.

SO. In short. I am so fucking nervous about Jason's decision I could puke. The ramifications go FAR FAR beyond my trip to Dublin. If Jason accepts me, I will have a wonderful graduate experience and get to do science I am truly excited about. If he doesn't - I honestly don't have a clear alternative at the moment. FML.

I just emailed Jason about setting up a meeting. It's likely the meeting will occur within the next week or two.

Everyone cross all of your appendages, pray to whatever deities you believe in, and send good vibes my way, will you? ♥