A year and a bit...

So I'm clearly not going to be a blogger. On the other hand, every now and then I feel like writing about some stuff. Maybe someone will read it. I'm pretty sure I don't care if they do. It's weird public therapy that the public may never see. So a little over a year after my last post, I am sitting in a cheap hotel in Belfast agonizing over yet another chapter. I finished the one on dads (mostly anyway) and did some fantastic new stuff with the Troubles chapter. Now I'm tackling Travellers and frankly, I'm just tired. I'm so close to the end that I am just ready to be done. This trip came at a less than ideal time. I'm not working on the Troubles chapter at the moment and this summer couldn't have been busier between travel, surgeries and other miscellenaous obligations. Of course, none those obligations included nearly as much running as I should have been doign, but I digress. Now I'm here, trying to figure out how to make the most out of my time. I'm sad. Really sad, actually, because I haven't been away from both Dan and Cillian for this long, well, ever. It's especially bad since Cillian is in a super fun stage that I hate missing. I have developed a knack for sniffing out happy moms and toddlers in a crowd so I can get all weepy about missing mine. I just might be getting creepy for some people too :) The trip felt like it took forever and a day to get here. I flew out of Newark (stupid idea) so I spent two hours in the car, 7 hours on the plane to London (which was extraordinarily uncomfortable), a miserable hour and a half in the London airport dashing between exhausted Olympians and hung over travellers only to go through a perpetual hell of security (three times). Then there was another hour on the plane to Belfast and 30 minutes on the bus into the city. Thrown in a ten minute walk to the hotel and you get one cranky, overly emotional grad student who cried into her Irish stew at lunch and then forgot to buy an umbrella. Twice. In the pouring rain. After a much-needed nap, I am feeling less dramatic about my academic existence and have a plan or something like a plan for the week. I think I might even have some time for some sightseeing. I had a royally healthy dinner of fish and chips and a Guinness at The Kitchen Bar and I'm considerably better. On the down side, I was really hoping to see a more vibrant city than the one we saw in the dead of winter. While there were definitely more people around during the day, it's still a strangly empty little place. So much was shut today (to be fair it is a Monday), but, well, I don't know. We'll see what the week brings.