The hoard descends

I said a few entries ago I'd say what happened with the French guy, but to be honest I don't feel like going into it. He was a jerk. End of story.

I've returned to my secret obsession with one of the National Library librarians. I call him "George." Age? Hard to say. Married? I don't know. Hot? Totally--although not necessarily in an OBVIOUS way. He's the male equivalent of Melanie Griffith's mousy secretary in that film (you know the one I mean -- a golden oldie, always on TV).

We actually spoke today. He said: "No pens are allowed in here, sorry," and I said, "Uh, yeah. of course." And I looked at him yearningly, prompting him to ask me if I was OK, followed by which I coughed and examined my book.

It's a gradual sort of thing.

Anyway, yesterday my sister arrived. As this blog is anonymous, we will call her Phoebe. She's staying in a hotel not that far from my place. There's her and assface (my brother-in-law) and the smallest kid in one room and the mother-in-law and the two bigger kids in another. I booked the place for them and I was pretty nervous because the brother-in-law is one of those people who objects to most things but so far so good. They are taking it easy this morning and I will be meeting them later on. The kids are all boys and they are a bit of an unknown quantity to be as--OK I admit I've kind of been avoiding them for most of their lives as I'm not really a kid person. The mother in law is a real sweet old lady who brought her knitting and is making me a hat and has never been out of Newfoundland before. Swear to God. She's been going around exclaiming about how big everything is.

So I have to arrange everything. I'm going to get online after this post and book things up for the next four days so that they'll be having fun and not bugging me too much.

One good thing: Dublin Tourism has been able to give me some free passes so I am looking super-generous right now as that must've saved them a bunch of money. Only downside is that they expect me to arrange EVERYTHING.

It is a bit of a bummer that they will be here for the whole Bloomsday celebration. But hey--back before the first rug rat came along my sister used to be a great reader, and I'm hoping that she will come to some of the events with me while her man does something--I don't know--manly and boring. What do I care?

Finally, I promised that in the interests of impartiality I would mention three things I don't particulary like about Dublin, so here goes:

1) The weather. "What's that?" you cry. "You're from Newfoundland. You can't complain about the weather!" To which I say: It's not that it's bad, because it's really not. In fact it's been pretty pleasant a lot of the time. What cheeses me off is the unpredictability, so that you always need a plan A, a plan B and sometimes a plan C. You've got to be prepared for it to rain when you wanted a picnic, so you've always got to check what's on at the museum or the cinema too. Or on the day you planned to go to the Writer's Museum the sun shone gloriously and you just looked sadly out the window wishing you were in the park;
2) Chewing gum. What gives? How hard it is to put gum in the trash? It's all over the place--on the ground, under cinema seats. Come on guys. Dublin is a beautiful city. Stop spitting gum all over it!
3) You don't know what you've got til it's gone. How many times have I started looking for something to do only to find that there was something fabulous on--YESTERDAY! We need a better all-round entertainment site. www.entertainment.ie only has a teeny-tiny portion of the goods.

I met a girl in the National Library this morning. I haven't figured out yet if she's a potential friend or a potential rival for the heart of --sigh-- George the Librarian. But we're going out for a drink just as soon as I've offloaded the family.

Now I'm going home to plan my sister's vacation. Wish me luck.