Cappuccino, Chips, and James Joyce

A blustery day in Blackrock today, I walked down to Avoca Bar and Cafe for lunch, bringing my newly purchased A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with me.  Mushroom soup, chips (the portions seem to get bigger every time I go to Avoca), and a cappuccino made for a delicious lunch while Joyce's novel made for strangely appropriate reading as it begins with Dedalus going off to school and missing his family.  When I got to the cafe, it was pretty empty... I might have been the only person there.  When I left, though, it was nearly full and included a woman who looked like she could have been a younger Bertha Stone (a woman who lives with her husband, John, down the hall from Granny).  I guess I eat lunch too early :)

For the rest of the day, I am going to finish up my reading for tomorrow and do some hand-washing.  Apparently no one at UCD does the reading at all, let alone before classes start.  But I would hate for that to be a dirty rumor and to have to say "unprepared" on the first day of class to a room full of giggles.  On the hand-washing note, laundry is EXPENSIVE here.  It's 3 euro for wash and 1.5 for drying.  So, I've been washing a couple of shirts and some undies/socks every couple of days and hanging them to dry on a make shift clothes line.  It seems to work well and saves me 6-7 US dollars, so I'll take it.