tinkering with photo stuff

I think I may have found a way to share pictures. for now they're on a website which you can access by going to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilsep33/
the last batch of pictures I put on the computer are pretty good, but I haven't uploaded them just yet. I'm trying to figure out how to mesh that site with this one, so people don't have to flip back and forth, but that's not a project for tonight. they're also not organized in any way, especially not chronologically. it'll get better, I promise.
this weekend was good. tara is an experience, though it's easy to see why some people would come away from it a little disappointed. it doesn't have any stone structures like cashel or clonmacnoise, and there's not a lot of information posted ot tell you what's going on. it mostly consists of what conor newman calls "landscape archaeology." it might sound kind of boring, but when you realize that the huge embankments and ditches and mounds were made up to 4000 years ago, they're pretty impressive. from the top of the hill you can see into 13 counties (on a clear day), and you can understand why the site was chosen for important ritual purposes.
we also visited kells priory (one of the places where the book of kells was worked on) and saw some fabulous high crosses and a nice round tower. I'd like to get back there some time, since we didn't get to spend much time there.
part of the excitement for the day came when we went to a couple of the more out of the way monuments in the area surrounding the hill of tara and we had to climb over barbed wire and electric wires to get into the fields adjacent to them. we had a couple people grab the electric wire on accident, but no serious damage was done. I must have been getting complacent though, because when we were climbing out of the last field I made it over the fence and wall alright, but then I slid down the opposite side of the wall. it wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the blackberry bushes. one of them gave me a bit of a scratch on my left hand, but, even worse, it caused a small tear in my less-than-two-week-old columbia jacket. sigh. I'm going to bring it in to a dry cleaners or something tomorrow to get it fixed, since it seems like the kind of thing that is better taken care of right away.
other than that, though, the weekend was good, though I have been tired today from waking up early yesterday and all the walking. oh, that reminds me, if you do go to tara, you will get sheep droppings on your shoes. it's unfortunate, but there's no way to avoid it. you might prefer that they keep the sheep out of the main enclosure, but they're the one's who keep the grass short, which is much better for preserving the site than lawnmowers or tractors. also, there was a guy out following us around with a camera man and a microphone, taping parts of conor's talk. he's trying to do a documentary on the hill of tara, which he wants to sell to the history channel or something like that. so, if it doesn't actually happen, yours truly will probably be in said documentary. not talking or anything, but just in the general crowd following conor around.

back in the goal

I forgot how much I like playing goalie. I went to my first gaelic football practice in two weeks, and even though I started out on a bad note, feeling kind of dizzy, I ended up enjoying myself a lot. while I was sitting down for a bit, hoping that my head would stop being stupid (good luck), one of the others in our group (we had been seperated into senior players and, well, not-senior players) came over to see if I was ok. we started chatting and whiled away the time spent on that particular drill, which consisted of lots of people trying to get the ball in a very small area. when they had finished with that rather futile exercise (there were 16 to a side in a field the size of a kids soccer field) we all went down to a goal, where there was a drill of three offense trying to score past 3 defense and a goalie. there was another girl in goal, but we decided to switch off every 5 turns or so. I didn't start out very well: one of the first shots against me was a lobber that was coming straight at me, but I didn't time my jump right. a few tries later though, a ball came in low and hard and I couldn't get down, but I stuck out my leg and deflected it beautifully. I had a couple other nice stops, and even though I was able to gain control of the ball, I stopped the offense from scoring. I'm going to have some lovely bruises tomorrow (especially that one on my leg), but they'll look good at the camogie match. I had camogie practice today too, which was pretty short, but it was the first time in a couple weeks where we actually went out and hit slitters around. even though I haven't been practicing all that much, I really seem to have improved. maybe all that time freezing my ass off on the sideline at matches has payed off. who knows.
this weekend in carraroe was great. good, homemade food, sleeping in, a stinky dog, and wonderful people. noel is one of the best cooks ever (besides mom, of course). on sunday we had amazing roast beef with potatoes, carrots, leeks...mmm... it was just so good. and I went to the gaelic football match between carraroe and lettermore (which, for the people of carraroe, is the equivalent of a usc v. ucla game) which domhnall played in. carraroe won, and their goalie was pretty darn good. no fist-fights broke out, but domhnall did get clobbered, so all was not lost.
now I'm going to go to bed early so I can be sure to wake up for history seminar tomorrow.

and remember people, vote early and vote often.