whoooo

so here I am back from ireland. let me brag to you about my awesome free trip.

We crammed all 53 of us onto a bus with 53 seats, so I was stuck sitting with the old people (aka the proffesors, lol). Our bus driver was a guy named Micheal who I'm pretty sure was recently some gangsters bitch in prison. He had what was OBVIOUSLY a prison tat on his fore arm and a nose that leaned so far to the left I wondered if it impeded his vision. He also liked to talk on the phone and play with his tom-tom while going 80 miles an hour down little country roads.

We took the ferry over which was awesome because I got my own cabin, SUCKERS. We spent 3 nights in Limerick, 2 in Gort (about a half hour south of Galway) and 2 in Killarney. We took the kids to all these awesome castles and museums and historic sites but all you ever heard on the bus was "LOOK AT THE CUTE BABY SHEEP!!!" And I swear I wasn't the only one shouting it.

But seriously, they were so fucking cute I could have puked.

I died of boredom at every meal because I had to sit with previously mentioned old people and all they talked about was school and their gardens. In French. Which, you know, gets tiresome after a while. Though it was fun hearing all the horrible things they say about students they don't like, HA.

When I could I spent time with some of the older students, who like to play asshole with shitty rules and don't know how to shuffle cards. I wooed them with my american rules and amazing shuffling skills. If they were ten years older and I was a man they would totally have my babies.

While in Ireland I got Christophe addicted to the Dropkick Murphys, which was a lot of fun until he started hogging my Ipod. I learned how to play le loup-garou, which is a more complicated version of some game we play in the states whose name I can't remember, but like its when you have a detective, a killer, and one other special character, and everyone closes their eyes and you have to figure out who the killer is before they kill everyone... right.

Saturday was absolutely perfect, so obviously everything had to go wrong on Sunday. The ferry had mechanical problems and was five hours later, so instead of arriving back in montargis at 9 we got back at 1:30.

After today the appartment is mine, YAY. Tomorrow I need to go to Orange and Town hall to fix some things, seeing as I asked Ysmay to ask a question about our deposit but she never did. She never did any of the things I asked, it was so fucking annoying. Before I left, I wrote a note asking her to arrange the inspection and to ask about the deposit and they keys. FRIDAY NIGHT I got a message asking when I would be available for the visit, so when I call I find out she hasn't even called yet. Then on Sunday I get a message from Manuel asking me the same information which Ysmay obviously didn't share, and since Manuel really doesn't speak french he didn't understand me yelling at me. Today I find out that they already did the inspection, but they never asked about the deposit. FUCKIN A MAN.

oh well. I think I might just eat the deposit, since my almost 200 euro rent check probably won't get cashed before I close my account BITCHES. I'm still going to ask, though. I'm greedy, what do you want from me????

I have to go eat shitty cafeteria food now, since I didn't have time to cook me a lunch before I left. YUCK.

today was like the worst day ever.

I did not fall asleep until 6 am, and only after I crawled out of my bed and onto the futon. I was awoken to the lovely sounds of manuel-smoke-a-pack-a-day-rodriguez hacking up what is probably a part of his cancer-laden lung. its worse than listening to a cat hack up a hair ball.

I made myself a cup of coffee, drank about a third of it, then headed out to town. It was a very pretty day and I took lots of pictures. I went to the sous prefecture and picked up my new carte de sejour that actualy has my name spelled correctly. then I went to the tresor public and paid off my last two monts of rent. after that it was town hall to learn about closing down the appartment and all that. I had just two more things to do--cancel phone and internet, then talk to my bank. Everything with the phone goes ok, but to cancel the internet I had to call a number. At the number they couldn't find my name in the system, and the account number I had was wrong. So I go to the guy, wait 5 minutes, he gives me a new number. I call and the woman says "no you can't delete over the phone you have to write a letter, and either ways you will owe for the 7 months you are cancelling"

WTF. Bitch informs me that as of dec1 2007 my account was changed to be a year long contract, and not the month by month we had signed up for. Except I never changed it, I never signed anything, nothing like that. And if they let Manuel or Ysmay change something than I will be killing those two then suing orange for letting nonauthorized users make changes to my account.

So I get back in line, hypverventilating, and start explaining what happened and how she says I have this contract, but its impossible because we never said we wanted one. We bought everything in october, got it all set up pretty, but noticed our international phone wasn't working. So Ysmay and I went back to ask about it, and aparetly they never entered it into our account, and that she would set it up so that it would start working on nov 6, so other than that we never made contact with orange or france telecom. and at the store they dont know who made the change on my account. but they will try and see what happened, they said and then will call. if I don't get a call by wednesday there is going to be a shitshow

speaking of shit show, of which I am currently starring in, sleeping bills have to be classified as hallucinogetics. even as I type this I see the words shuffling around and bouncing back and forth across the screen totally just took up a good 10 minutes of my time but I've gotten to the point where I can't see words clearly which means knock out shall commense in t-5 therefor I need to end this licketysplit so I don't spend the night cuddling my poor laptop

grrrr I wish I was tired.

have descended into levels of grossness that even I did not know existed.

so I have been ill'n and chill'n these past few days, trying to get better before next week, so really all I do is sleep and watch movies. have been taking a hot bath every night, though last night was the first time I washed my hair in I don't know how many days. wore clothing briefly the other day to run an errand for tinette, but other than that it has been days since I donned anything besides skivs and my yummy scrummy bath robe.

am on to the sneezy runny nose part of the illness, so I am not as fatigued and dizzy as the headachey part, so I think today I will put clothes on (gasp!) and wash the floors.

have fallen ill, always a great way to start off a vacation. it's just a cold, but the headache is killer and I get woozy if I'm vertical for too long. thankfully the appartment is empty so I can be miserable in beautiful silence. it also means I get to cleeeaaaaan once I'm feeling better.

what stinks is that when I'm fiiinally asked out on a date I have to go ahead and get sick! I plan on doing nothing but sleeping so that I can get better asap and be wooed by a frenchman!

hey kids

I had a crazy awesome weekend so I am here to tell you about it.

Heidy and I bought concert tickets in November, and finally the date of the concert had arrived. On Friday I took off for Redon, about 5 hours total from my house to hers. Everything was going perfectly until, on the 40 min ride to Redon from Rennes, some kids 40+ pound duffle fell ON MY HEAD. obviously I was in the middle of the train so everyone noticed and made a huge fuss and I was just trying really hard not to cry, lol. Fear not, however, since I survived.

After a nap and dinner in Redon we took off for Vannes. We deposed our stuff at Rachel's (an assistant friend of Heidy) then took off for the concert. We took the bus there and got right up front. Calogero was AWESOME. He played a really mixed set of new and old, rock and piano, and he played 2 encores. The weird thing was the crowd was much older than we were expecting. Most people there were early/mid 30's which was a bit bizarre and made me feel really old, but whatever. I paid too much money for a tshirt.

THen of course we had to get back in town...but the buses stopped running at 8. We had to call Heidy's boyfriend several times to get taxi numbers, and it took us about 30 minutes and 7 numbers to find a taxi who was anwering his phone. Our driver, though, was super nice. We were starving, so he drove us until we found someplace to eat for dinner, and he cut about half a dollar off the fare. Heidy and I had some delish pizza, although the people behind us were having a loud drunken fight.

Saturday we walked around Vannes for a few hours then headed back to Redon where Heidy made absolutely delicios baked ziti.

Now I am just waiting for my day to be over so I can go back to bed. The sun doesn't set now until 8:30ish so my body is all confused about when to sleep, so I didn't really sleep last night. I reset my alarm on my phone twice after turning my alarm clock off, which is a good things because my alarm when I woke up this morning was 7 hours off--I dropped it something major before I left,and now I can only turn the alarm wheel and switch with a pair of tweewers, and it took a lot of effort to get the battery in. Methinks it is time to retire my cute little alarm clock.

ow. typing, for some reason, has really taken an effort. Damn crap keyboards.

I am very grumpy. Manuel is playing his ugly death metal music in singing along in falsetto and it makes me want to cut his tongue out with a rusty bread knife. We are currently not talking to each other (not that we ever really talked) since yesterday I left him a strongly worded note about his inability to do his dishes in a timely minor, inconveniencing everyone else (aka me).

Today I had a lovely easter at the laundromat and I am looking forward very much to sleeping in nice clean sheets tonight after walking around in my nice clean robe. In the name of savings I have started doing all my laundry in the bathtub (to wash and dry a load of laundry costs about 6 euro, aka around $9) but it takes everything about 2 days to dry, so my heavy duties (sheets, towels, bath robe) I took to the laundromat. It was actually quite a happening place, let me tell you.

I was supposed to clean my room today but where is the fun in that?? I shall leave it unto tomorrow.. DAMNIT. Tomorrow is a bank holiday which means no postal service which means no package from the parents... I think, let me google. well let me tell you google doesn't know SHIT.


and now I have the hiccups