Catching Up

Been a while since I updated, so here goes!

I went to Dublin last week to hang out with my two oldest friends (as in, I've known them longer than anyone outside my family, not as in they are of a more advanced age than any of my friends), and that was amazing. Rode one of the tour buses around the city, went past the Guiness factory (8 stories, so we didn't go in 'cause we were all tired), went to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells, which was one of the highlights for me. I'd never heard of it, but the Book of Kells is the oldest Latin edition of the Gospels from Ireland, and they had it on display there along with some other texts from Ireland, and information on the creation of manuscripts like that. I already knew most of the stuff in that section, but seeing the texts was awesome. I even got to read bits from the fragments for my friends, showing off my awesome Dead Languages skills (got to use Latin and, strangely, Coptic, 'cause they had a Coptic fragment on display. Go figure). And we ate some good Dublin food, and then I was gone: touchdown in Ireland at 9:04am, wheels up at 9:10pm, so one fast but awesome day was had by all.
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This guy I know here in Edinburgh who is from Colorado just got engaged, which I think makes me the only single male postgrad student here. I thought at first I was the only single postgrad, but I think a couple of the female postgrads are single, also, so I take some relief from that. But yeah, everyone I know is either in a serious relationship, engaged or married. Correction: Philip the German is single, I think. But as he's only 20, he only barely counts. Heh. But I seriously can't imagine trying to balance the life of another person whilst studying here. I can barely keep my own life sorted.
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I just saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop at the cinema. From Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, it stars Kevin James as Paul Blart, a somewhat inept mall security officer who dreams of working for the State Patrol. On Black Friday, a group of cyber criminals takes over the mall, and Paul is the only one who can stop them.

All-in-all, it wasn't bad. Started out kind of slowly, but picked up after the first 20 minutes or so. And Kevin James, in addition to being very funny, is very relatable and loveable; he's the reason I went to see it, as I've always enjoyed his stand-up and what I've seen of The King of Queens, his sitcom. Some of the film was ridiculous, of course (like why all the criminals happen to be acrobats who leap from stairs and kick of walls while chasing Paul, or why those not on foot were on BMX stunt bikes or skateboards...I mean, c'mon), but it was still a good ride. And special note of Keir O'Donnell who played the villain...very nice turn for him.

If you're skint (oh! Today's vocab: skint: broke, out of money), I'd wait and rent it.
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I think that's it for now. Still working away on drafts of chapters and reading through articles. And I'm going to go and double check my finances, to make sure I budget appropriately for the coming months. As I'm notoriously bad at maths, I always quadruple check these things.

-stephen