In anticipation of the sibs

Conor and Eileen are coming out on Tuesday. Huzzah!

I went out in Boston for the first time last night, to a place nearby called the Joshua Tree (which was surprisingly lacking in U2 memorabilia). It was pretty fun. I played pool, badly. I’m still milking my birthday so I got a few free drinks, which was nice. Though there was something disturbing at the end of the night – saw a guy who’d been stabbed being loaded into an ambulance.  The wound looked dreadful. I’d never seen anything like that before.

I want a skateboard. At home you have to be an unwashed teenager but here they’re a legitimate mode of transport. It’s both awe-inspiring and annoying to see them weaving past you when you’re powerwalking to 8am class.

I dropped Feature Writing – because I’m a wuss, basically. The workload just seemed too much. We have to write a dissertation for DCU this semester as well, so I don’t want to be swamped. I did write one feature before I left – a profile of a classmate, which we all had to do. One of the girls in the class was telling me that the profile of me was read out at the last class, and the reaction was – who is this bizarre person? I don’t think I interview very well. At least not very flatteringly.

Just noticed my dress has a hole in the front – I knew I’d pay one day for never acquiring sewing skills …

Yeah! New York

I went to NYC from Thursday to Sunday as a 21st birthday treat to myself. Just a quick post – here’s some of the stuff I did …

• Ate New York cheesecake, which tastes of evil.
• Saw Curtains (twice) and Chicago – John Kander will probably live off me for a week.
• Told David Hyde Pierce he’s a genius. (‘Cause I bet he never gets that …)
• Gazed at Ian McKellen and Vanessa Redgrave from a distance, but was too intimidated by their awesomeness to approach.
• Passed Rufus Wainwright on 8th Avenue … I think.
• Went into a pub solely because it was called Robert Emmetts, only to be charged $7 for a bottle of Corona. Patriotism doesn’t pay!
• Tipped a street rapper for ingeniously rhyming Eimear with ‘dreamer’. (Boston Dreamer would have been a much less strange blog title, wouldn’t it?)
• Had a mini crisis because I felt unmoved at Ground Zero.
• Got the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty, but wasn’t allowed up the plinth.
• Went to the top of the Empire State Building after midnight.
• Exercised extreme willpower in the MTV Store, the Apple Store, and M&Ms World.
• Loosely grasped the rules of baseball while watching the Yankees play the Blue … Somethings.

Some pictures … first, the NY Times. So shiny!

Blurry pic of me with DHP. It’s him, I swear.

Terrifying Statue of Liberty guys in Battery Park. They look decidedly X Files to me.

My hamfisted self-photography on the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty.

Statue of Liberty and blimp: two great American icons.

Resisting doing the torch pose.

A sculpture in Battery Park representing immigrant suffering … and a guy in a Spiderman suit. I love America.

Me in Central Park.

Beardy Ian McKellen! In a fedora! Awww …

We have a mouse now.

Truly, we have made this place our home.

It’s weird – you have such nice everyday associations with the word ‘mouse’: computer, Mickey, Modest. And then you see the real deal squeezing in behind your cooker and even though it’s tiny and meek and you are large, you still scream and jump on the furniture (such as it is) and sprinkle poison pellets until you’re ankle-deep in the stuff.

NYC tomorrow … still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to the question “Why do they call it the Big Apple?” (Second only to “Why did Chris and Gwynnie call their child Apple?” in inscrutableness.) My dad calls it ‘An t-Ull Mor’, which is brilliant.

I’ve been a negligent blogger.

Well, it’s college’s fault. Y’know, at home they wait the customary six weeks before giving you any work to do. Not so here. I’ve already had to write a short story (awful, AWFUL) and interview one of my classmates for Feature Writing. Plus endless reading.

About a million little dramas have unfolded over the past week. Leisha has had to go home for family stuff – hopefully she’ll be able to come back soon. I keep trying to order a cable subscription for the apartment but it keeps bamboozling me, mostly because I have no idea whether the channels I’m signing up for are any good. I am very very tempted to buy a $30 DVD player and lots of yummy R1 DVDs.

Am going to NYC on Thursday – my 21st birthday – just for a few days. Going to do touristy things and see period murder mystery backstage musical comedy extravaganza Curtains. Will take copious photographs.

Been watching a lot of Buffy DVDs (thanks Andrea dear!) on my nights in (i.e. every night of the week). It’s making me all nostalgic for high school. That’s what TV does to you – makes you nostalgic for experiences you’ve never even had.

I really shouldn’t be allowed out by myself.

Finished college early today, so decided to head into town on the spur of the moment. Along the way it started lashing rain. That’s the first rain since I got here. I hadn’t a coat or anything, just a t-shirt. So I get out at Park St to have a look around Boston Common, but I’m getting drenched, so the first thing I have to do is buy an umbrella.

I hate the things. They look stupid, they’re awkward, you can easily poke someone’s eye out if you’re not concentrating. Also, they keep banging off other people’s in the street. You ever see two people with golf umbrellas heading towards each other in the street? It’s like high noon in a western. They frown at each other, size each other up and end up having to dance awkwardly round each other. Umbrellas are just not good. But yeah, I had to buy one, and it was one of those ones with buttons on it that I can’t handle. Long story short, I wasn’t able to make it fold down, so had to leave it up the entire time. Yes, even in the subway station. Oh Jesus. To make matters worse, I got really lost and confused in the station and went out the wrong exit, so I ended up buying a $5 ticket just to get back in. Don’t ask me why, I’m stupid today.

I did find a really nice bookshop, though. Commonwealth Books. Lots of old, out-of-print and rare books there. And it’s the kind of bookshop that has armchairs, as if to say, “Stay here reading all day and don’t buy anything, we don’t mind.” So I stayed there for about half an hour reading biographies and using the indexes to skip to all the juicy bits.

I continue to adore my Shakespeare class. We’re on Richard III right now. The language is so delightfully ornate. I especially love the scenes with the Duchess of York, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Margaret, where they’re all basically standing around bemoaning their fates and cursing each other fiercely. “Be copious in exclaims” – I have to use that in a sentence someday. “I hope you’ll come to support us at the match today. Be copious in exclaims.” There’s a a character called Sir James Blunt, weirdly. So, he might be saying stuff like “Richard hath no friends but what are friends for fear”, but all I hear is a womanly voice going “You’re byooootiful …”

Wexford beat Cork in the camogie final. So, so delighted. They haven’t won for 36 years or something. And since 2000, Tipp and Cork have dominated to such an extent it’s become boring. So, go on the yellowbellies (do they still answer to that? Probably not) and all that jazz.

When did creative writing get so … creative?

Had my first creative writing class today. It was the class I was most looking forward to. It’s held in this great old building with rickety stairs and wood floors and small, terrifyingly intimate classrooms. There are 15 in the class, all of them prodigious and blessed with that easy American confidence. I discovered today that half of the course will involve writing fiction; half will involve writing poetry.

Thing is – I don’t really like poetry. I’ve never really written it, except for those ill-advised teenage scribblings that everyone does – basically rants with the odd rhyming couplet. I think poems are usually a lot more interesting for the writer than for the reader, unless you’re Wilfred Owen or TS Eliot or Derek Mahon – and I’m not.

We have to write five poems and two short stories for the course, and they’re going to be workshopped in the class. In other words, ripped to shreds by all those prodigious people. I don’t mind that happening if I’m proud of what I’ve written and enjoyed writing it. But I don’t think my poems will be anything other than lame. I dunno. Maybe I’ll get over it; maybe I’ll drop the class, do something else.

The last three nights have been fun. It’s hard finding nighttime activities for under-21s. The was a free outdoor film festival in Copley, held on the grass under that tall shiny building I posted below. Tuesday was Raising Arizona, Wednesday The Princess Bride, and last night Napolean Dynamite. I think Knocked Up is showing somewhere on campus tomorrow. Just thirteen more days before they let me into pubs, huzzah!

First day o’ class

And I missed the first lecture: General Psychology. In fairness it was on at 8am, which shouldn’t be legal. For some reason – denial, probably – I decided it was on at 8.30am, and when I got there it was in full swing and I really didn’t want a hundred pairs of eyes on me as I walked in and have to do the sheepish apology to the lecturer. Not the best first impression.

Made my second class though – Reading Shakespeare, which involves watching a surprising amount of films. Not that I’m complaining. The lecturer is absurdly excited about Shakespeare and its modern relevance and a bit hell-bent on making it ‘hip’ for the young folk. But I think it’ll be good.

Leisha’s here now, so we are four. Huzzah! We now have a modest amount of furnishings, a TV (so, somewhere to point all the furnishings), stocks of food and stuff. We’re settling in fine. Also, I ordered an inflatable mattress on Amazon. And the soundtrack of Curtains while I was at it. I don’t think I should be allowed to have a credit card.