sitting in my room in arlington heights

my oh my has it been a busy last few days. I had my last in class final on monday, and I had to finish my paper for 211 before I left (so, basically, on monday). I reviewed all of cicero's de senectute in a very short period of time, and when I took the test at 9.30 monday morning, I think I knew about 80% of it, and was able to fake another 15%. then I set to work on the history paper, which had to be about 3000 words. I was not just starting to research the paper, otherwise I probably would have shot myself. I'd been working on it for a couple weeks, and had made a good dent on the background, and had written an intro for the paper. what I did was I went through a book called "the irish penitentials," which is kind of like a collection of handbooks for priests about what punishments to give for certain sins. although the penitentials have been the subject of a lot of discussion, there had never been an attempt to systematically classify all the sins listed into general categories, so that's just what I did. I came up with twelve general topics: familial matters, fiscal, fornication, violence, church, justice, gluttony, behavior, animals, pagans/magic/heresy, and other. then I went through all (except one) of the penitentials in the book, which ended up being 15 different texts, assigning every sin to the category/categories which they belong to. this is what took me the longest, and I worked on it throughout eastern europe, though by that time I had finished up a lot of it already. so on sunday I entered everything into an excel spreadsheet, which truly is a work of art. it's not a comprehensive way to present the data, but I think that it's a pretty good start. once I had the chart, I started working on the paper. I felt that it would be important to explain my process, and between that, giving a brief background on penitentials in general, and summarizing the results for each of the document, it was the easiest 2953 words that I've ever written. I had emailed my teacher earlier to see if I good submit the paper electronically, not because it was going to be done late, but because printing the spreadsheet would have required 9 pieces of regular paper, and it really looks much nicer in excel. he said ok, so as soon as I finished the bibliography and cover sheet, off it went. this was about 4.30, monday evening. I felt like celebrating. but I still had to pack.
I was catching the 7.05 bus to shannon airport, and I hadn't really packed much. in fact, I hadn't really packed at all. so I started working on that. but we were supposed to be having dinner as an apartment, so while we watched the simpsons, tara and I tried to coordinate with elisa, who was at the library working on a paper. there was some discussion about someone cooking at home, but I suggested la salsa since it would be closer for elisa and faster for all of us. so we went into town and I sent ashley a text inviting her as well since I hadn't seen her since thanksgiving. we all kind of straggled in to la salsa and ate, then elisa and parique (her french boyfriend, whose name I have undoubtedly butchered) went back to the library and ashley, tara and I went off in search of an internet cafe, since I needed to print out my plane reservation for the next day. after that ashley headed off and tara and I went to a bar for one last pint together. we came back and I spent a long night (evidence of which is my last, slightly delirious post), packing and picking things up. I said my good byes to the roommates, since I knew there was no way they were going to be waking up before I left (I know that I sure wouldn't have). around 6.15 I called the cab company, since the length of time that it takes them to get to any given place can range from three to thirty minutes. it ended up being about five minutes, but I was ready, and with that I locked my door and said a quiet goodbye to apartment 81.
I got to the bus station obscenely early, so I sat on a bench and read faust, which was the only book that I had in my carryon luggage, so it was the only one worth digging out. I got on the bus and tried to stay awake, since I had to get off at ennis to transfer to another bus to the airport in shannon, and I almost made it, but about ten minutes before ennis I dozed off. fortunately I was sleeping lightly, so I woke up in ennis, got up and moved to the other bus.
I got to the airport around 10.15 and I checked in and went through the rigamarole that comes with carrying a laptop through security. then I wandered around duty free, and saw that johnny walker red was selling for 16 euros a bottle. it seemed like a pretty good deal, and I thought it would be a nice thing to bring home to the folks. there also happened to be a large number of american soldiers milling around the airport, waiting for their flight to iraq. one such young man was in front of me at the check-out. he asked me, would I buy some bottles on my ticket? (he was also buying j.w.r.) I said sure, no problem, how many did he want? he had two, but he said that if I was buying them, he would get more. he ran off and came back with three more bottles, so in all there was 6 bottles of scotch. he said that he didn't want one of his officers to see him getting the liquor, so as the man wrapped up the bottles he just stuck them straight into his backpack. I was all ready to pay in euros, since I would have given your man a much better exchange rate than the duty free people, but he pulled out a wad of money, which now that I think about it, he probably wouldn't have had many opportunities to spend in iraq. he paid for the whole lot, and thanked me, saying that this was going to make his christmas. he made it sound like he was going to be drinking it all, but he's going to make a killing off of selling that to other soldiers. so he got a little christmas present, and I got a bottle of scotch for free.
the flight was fine, although we actually ended up flying to dublin first, which was the roughest part of the trip, especially with this little girl who was screaming her lungs out the whole time we taxied and were taking off, though once we were off the ground she was out like a light. the flight from dublin to chicago was uneventful, if a little late. I figure that that was ireland giving me one last taste of her timeliness for a while. I got to Chicago and my luggage took forever to come off the plane (seriously, there were only 11 bags that came out after my own). then I walked out to be greeted by a teary-eyed mother who had snuck inside the barrier so she could run up as soon as I got through the door. dad didn't sneak through too, but he was right there, waiting with a big smile on his face. we drove home, stopping at hackneys for a real cheeseburger on the way. I stayed up as long as I could, then went to sleep and was out until about quarter to one this afternoon. now I'm going to watch jeopardy, and that's all that's going on in my life. cheers.